I agree with your reading of the reports. It just makes me wonder all the more why the visits were allowed to continue. Didn't the therapist continue to note that Josh was unable to stop his inappropriate ranting - even right there in front of her where he must have known it would be reported. It was also reported that one of the children (I forget which) had stated on that last day that he didn't want to go see his father but the Coxes convinced him to go because they were afraid they would get in trouble with the court. Why weren't they confident that if the children said no then that would be backed up by the court? I'm not coming down on them - I think that there is someone somewhere who should have made them aware of the children's rights as outlined by this report. Maybe their lawyer??
The therapist's report was based, as I understand it, on a single assessment visit rather than on ongoing therapy.
As distasteful as it sounds, parents do still have First Amendment rights. A parent can teach their child that Mormons, Jews, Islam or any non-Abrahamic religion are wrong, evil and trying to take over the world. Parents can teach their children white supremacy and involve them in white supremacist events (for example, Lynx and Lamb Gaede who made up the band Prussian Blue).
So just voicing distasteful views is not enough to get custody taken away; the government agency with jurisdiction has to show that the expression of those views is harming the children. For instance, if a white supremacist goes on intense rants with violent hand motions, etc, that cause their children to cry in fear, then that's legitimate grounds for requiring the parent to modify their behaviour.
As for Charlie and Braden not wanting to go see Josh that day...
The problem is that it's pretty common for kids in shared custody arrangements to say they don't want to visit the other parent (or guardian or whatever)...
BOTH ways! For instance, they start out at Dad's place saying they don't want to go visit Mom and then after they've been at Mom's place for awhile, they say they don't want to go back to Dad's place.
Normally, it just means that kids prefer to keep having fun where they are, rather than stop the activity in one place and start a different activity in a different place. No big deal.
So it takes more than just some "I don't wanna go today" on the part of the children to raise a red flag. The children have to show abnormal levels of stress or protest and it just doesn't sound like that was the case with Charlie and Braden.
According to this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio.../09/gIQA88LF2Q_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop
Griffin-Hall said Charlie and Braden loved being with their father.
One of them said what he wanted to do was go home and live with his daddy, she told ABC, adding that the boys would light up during visits with Josh Powell.
So I think the reluctance to leave the Coxes's house was probably viewed as the normal sort of transitory reluctance expressed by many, many children.
Obviously that reluctance didn't last for long or the CW would not have had the impression that the boys were looking forward to their visits with JP.