Poor Parents Lose Kids to Authoritarian Welfare State

Poor Parents Lose Kids to Authoritarian Welfare State December 5, 2007

http://thestateofamerica.wordpress.c...welfare-state/


(Parental Rights 11/27/07) While it may take weeks, months or years to
take someone’s freedom away, on May 16, 2005, it took only 17 minutes to
take three children away from their mother.

Vanessa Shanks of Hardin County, Kentucky, is one of the many parents
each year who lose their children to the state, often in confidential
hearings. Shanks was originally charged with truancy, but social workers
later declared her home to be unsafe after they discovered an open
bleach bottle on the floor: left out because she had just finished doing
the laundry. Apalled by what they had found, Kentucky Child Protective
Services moved to terminate Shanks’s parental rights to three of her six
children.

The state accused Shanks of educational and medical neglect. The
evidence? The social worker testified that Shank’s eleven year-old child
had a kindergarten reading-level, and that some of the children had
missed days at school, though no records or testimony from the school
was produced. The evidence for “medical neglect� was equally spurious:
the social worker testified that one of the three children, who had been
diagnosed with spina bifida, had missed some doctor’s appointments.

But this scanty evidence was more than enough for the family court
judge, who ruled after only seventeen-minutes that the children should
be placed in the custody of the state.

“I didn’t see my children for 11 months. It is the hardest thing you can
go through,� said Shanks. “It’s like someone close to you just dies,
like you don’t have a part of you anymore.�

When Shanks decided to appeal the decision, the unthinkable happened:
CPS came after her again, this time removing her other three children,
as well as fourteen children from her extended family.

“The first thing they came to us and said was, ‘Well, you started an
appeal,’� Shanks said. “Nothing else.�

Shanks turned to local attorney Bob Bishop for help, who said he
couldn’t believe what he saw when he took Shanks’s case. “There has to
be something, some evidence of wrongdoing that has placed a child in
danger or has hurt the child, and a pattern of conduct not due to
poverty alone,� said Bishop.

In response, CPS removed Bishop’s adopted daughter from his home. “They
said if you don’t cooperate with us, we’re going to take all of your
children away, and we’re going to charge you with emotional abuse,� said
Jennifer Bishop, the attorney’s wife.

In 2006, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled that the judge made a
mistake in removing Shanks’s three children, unanimously ruling that the
state had acted in haste and offered no proof of abuse or neglect. But
reunions like this are ra terminations of parental rights have been
upheld in the majority of such cases before the court over the past 10
years.

Shortly after Shanks’s children were restored, the director of Kentucky
CPS said that the state would review the way parental rights are
terminated. Yet earlier this month, a report issued by the state
inspector general found that some social workers have been accused of
“suspicious conduct� by fellow social workers, including lost records
and conflicts-of-interest in termination proceedings.

Vanessa Shanks’s story highlights the dangers that parents face when the
state steps in and takes the role of the parent. It can take years to
bring a shattered family back together, but it only takes seventeen
minutes to tear one apart.

Please join with us to protect parental rights. Join the campaign today
at https://www.parentalrights.org/petition.

To see the full report on Vanessa Shanks’ story, see this report done by
Channel 32 News, Louisville, Kentucky.

Sources:
Target 32: Kentucky’s Child Protection System Investigated
http://www.wlky.com/target32/9478131/detail.html

Target 32 Investigates: Child Protective Services
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21760886/




CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAMS....

CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.

every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS

*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*

Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.


CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...


BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...