The morning after the fight, Maureen Torres-Thompson picked up the baby and left.

She ran her beautiful home in a gated community just outside LA like the disciplined mid-level corporate executive she had once been. She often thought that the only thing she could say with certainty she wanted, was to bring goodness and beauty to the life of her family. And now Scott was telling her they were broke. If they could no longer afford a gardener, it had seemed sensible to replace the high-maintenance la petite rainforest with an architecturally interesting cactus garden. Inevitably that had required some initial outlay. They had a fight. Scott left too.

When Scott and Maureen finally return home, the children have gone. Shocked at their own behaviour and terrified by what people will think of them they do what any right-minded middle-class parents would do. They lie. And accuse the maid.

As a national media circus explodes over the 'abduction', carefully constructed lives begin to fall apart. In a city divided between a wealthy privileged class and a rising immigrant population, every organization from the broken criminal justice system to the social services has a reason for wanting the story to end a certain way.

A compelling portrait of our time, THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES questions how far we'll go to protect our ambitions, our liberty and our family.