In England its perfect legal to hit your children, so unless they could prove Dad had caused actual harm, it would be very hard to actually have him found guilty.
Post adoption depression is a big issue, it isn’t taken seriously by the NHS or social services. If we then combine that with the fact that it is fairly common for SS to lie about the needs/history of a child and to ignore problems an adoptive parent is suffering. I really struggled with my son at first and attempted to disrupt, social services told me if I did that I was personally destroying his future and increasing his chance of being placed back with his birth parent. Both bullshit, but when you’re vulnerable you’re not able to see that.
No one knows how they will cope being a parent, no one knows how they will cope parenting a child who has suffered trauma and has attachment difficulties who is also a small stranger in your home, as for many adoptive parents the bond isn’t there at the start.
You’re also just left to it, I wasn’t visited at all in the first five weeks of my sons placement, in those five weeks not a single professional saw him, I tried to give him back on week three and even that didn’t trigger a visit. My daughter had a visit on day six and has had nothing since.
There are always going to be people who harm children, as awful as that sounds its true, but we could reduce that by providing actual support to people. From reports if he had been having SS visits, injuries should have been detected, so while the parents appearing okay wouldn’t have flagged anything, the injuries would. Developing a relationship with your social worker would also increase the number of people asking for help if they’re struggling, where as having constant new (and often incompetent) social workers is the experience of many of us.