Not worth a tinker's dam.

One of the interesting aspects of the videotaped child abuse news story is found in this paragraph.

Toogood, who said she is an Irish traveler who currently lives in Mishewaka but moves from place to place looking for work, reiterated her feelings that her daughter should at least be allowed to live with her husband or another family member.

The fact that Togood describes herself as an "Irish Traveller" is mentioned, but elicits no journalistic interest whatsoever. This may be a form of journalistic political correctness since the Travellers are commonly known as a band of itinerant grifters and con-men who prey on their host society. These are the people who will paint your address on the curb and then demand payment. A group of them worked Fresno a few years ago with a roof repair scheme. They have been the subject of a pretty decent movie by Bill "Game over, Man" Paxton. As this movie review describes the subject:

On the highways and backwoods of the rural south, a coterie of Irish grifters live in a world distinctly and exclusively their own. Moving from town to town, the Travellers make their living through the family business, conning and scamming nearly everyone whose path they cross

They do exist, as this post points out:

Irish Travellers (sometimes known as "itinerants" or "Tinkers") are a very small minority group in Ireland. They make up less than 1% of the population with approximately 23,000 people in the Republic and another 1,500 in the North. It is also estimated that there are about 15,000 Irish travellers in Britain and another 7,000 in the USA. Irish Travellers belong to a distinct ethnic group within Ireland. They have their own language, beliefs and social customs which have been made stronger over time due to their exclusion and marginalisation from mainstream "settled" society.
Occasionally Irish Travellers have been confused with the Roma or Gypsies in England, who despite centuries of coexistence, cultural interchange and limited intermarriage, remain a distinct people.
Until not so long ago Irish Travellers were referred to as "Tinkers". This word referred to their occupation as tinsmiths and metalworkers and was derived from the Irish word "ceard" (smith) or "tinceard" (tinsmith). This word is now generally used in a derogatory sense. Most of the Travellers' traditional crafts such as spoon-mending, tinsmithing and flower-making have gone by the way now as a result of urbanisation and the introduction of plastic and industrial technology.