Child Protective Services: former DCF worker said that she had beenordered by her supervisors to withhold the boys' "little Ted Bundys" recordsfrom the adoptive parents. DCF's priority?

Loving their 'little Ted Bundys'

By Elisa Cramer

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion...rcol_0615.html

Friday, June 15, 2007

If Debbie and Jorge had known on May 16, 1998, what they know now,
Debbie said, "we wouldn't have taken these children."

But the three brothers who were supposed to spend the night with the
Boynton Beach couple refused to go home to their foster parents. Nine
years since Debbie and Jorge adopted them, the couple can't look at
paperwork documenting what one psychiatrist described as the boys'
"steady pounding rain of trauma" the same way they do their 15-, 14- and
12-year-old sons. They've been told that they're raising "little Ted
Bundys" with "sociopathic tendencies." But give them back to the state?
"We said this is impossible," Debbie said under oath. "We love them."


So the couple, living north of Gainesville, continues to live "hour by
hour," in "crisis mode every day." The state owes them for that.

A lawsuit the parents filed against the Florida Department of Children
and Families in 2002 to get millions for sex-abuse therapy and damages
is set for trial in the fall, if mediation next month fails. "I would
say they (the adoptive parents) were not treated properly," new DCF
Secretary Bob Butterworth said. "We have to give absolute full
disclosure of everything that we know. We owe that to adoptive parents."

Yet the Legislature just this spring rejected a requirement that
adoption agencies provide prospective parents all available background
information.

As Post reporter Kathleen Chapman wrote June 3, prior to the adoption,
DCF refused to disclose to Debbie and Jorge the extent of the boys'
repeated abuse.

(Go to
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/...tion_0603.html)

In a March deposition, a former DCF worker said that she had been
ordered by her supervisors to withhold the boys' records from the
parents. DCF's priority?. The director of the Community Intervention and
Research Center wrote to a DCF counselor on April 3, 1996: "This is a
very delicate case that should be monitored closely by your most
experienced caseworker because it has the potential to be a 'newspaper'
article that would be detrimental to (the department) and others concerned."

No one knows what to do with the three boys, especially the oldest - not
the residential treatment center that drugged him with 14 pills a day,
or the juvenile justice agencies or group foster homes that don't keep
him isolated from other children. Hundreds of pages of depositions, case
files and memos show how chaotic, how extraordinary Debbie and Jorge's
lives have become - alarms required for every door, constant monitoring
to ensure that the children weren't sexually abusing each other.

"All of a sudden they were like prisoners of war," Debbie said in a
deposition in January, "and we were their captors." The boys would soap
up the floor, call their parents for help, then wait to watch them fall.
Or set a trap of tacks - points up - for another of Debbie and Jorge's
adopted sons.

Or poison Debbie's drink with contaminated chicken blood. Or break her
jaw. Or hide scissors and knives and threaten to kill her. Or drink
hazardous cleaning fluid. Or smear their poop on the computer, TV
screens and walls. Or smash windows, dig out electrical outlets and make
tunnels to the next room.

That is the kind of behavior that can develop when malnourished,
sexually abused children with impetigo and scabies enter the state's
child welfare system, only to get bounced from unfit foster home to
unfit foster home: a pedophile who also starved them; adults who hit
them with newspapers, threatened to cage them in a wire chicken coop,
called the 3-year-old middle son "the devil's child," put them in
time-out for hours at a time, kept toys locked away and posted lists of
all the children did wrong.

The state finally must take the advice it ignored Aug. 11, 2000: "I
think it would be helpful," adoption specialist Carol Hutcheson wrote to
DCF, "to approach this family with a different attitude. We need to
remember that they are attempting to parent children who were severely
damaged while under our care. They have practically given up all aspects
of a normal life to accommodate the needs of these kids. We need to
communicate to the family that we own this problem with them. Telling
the family that 'by law' there isn't much we can do to help is not a
good approach."







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 PROGRAM....

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.

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...