It was primarily supportive.

Systems designed to help reunited families facilitated Bourdin’s integration into the Barclay family in ways that more skeptical systems might not have.

This is not a criticism of the people who operated those systems.

They were doing their jobs in the way those jobs were designed to be done.

But the design of the systems — oriented toward facilitating reunifications rather than preventing fraudulent ones — created opportunities that Bourdin exploited.

The media involvement in the story — Hard Copy, which employed Charlie Parker, was itself a television news magazine program — adds another layer.