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Whose Children Are They, Anyway?



 
 
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Old June 11th 08, 08:21 PM posted to alt.support.child-protective-services,alt.support.foster-parents,alt.dads-rights.unmoderated,alt.parenting.spanking
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Default Whose Children Are They, Anyway?

Whose Children Are They, Anyway?
By: Gregory A. Hession, J.D.
June 23, 2008


http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/8344


How does a state child protective services agency even begin to take
nearly 500 children from families living in a peaceful religious
community in West Texas? Answer: a night-time raid with tanks, riot
police, SWAT teams, snipers, and cars full of Texas Rangers and
sheriff’s deputies. That is the new face of state child protection —
social workers backed up with automatic weapons.

In a surprise attack coordinated by the Texas Department of Family and
Protective Services (DFPS) on April 3-4, the Rangers and sheriffs
removed an initial group of the 468 children at the Yearning for Zion
Ranch (YFZ) in Eldorado, Texas. The raid was initiated with a court
order — not a warrant — authorizing them only to have “investigatory
access” to a particular teenage mother and her child, neither of whom
actually existed. Soon thereafter, the rest of the 468 children were
removed, with over a thousand government agents participating in the
raids at a cost of nearly $2.3 million according to the Associated
Press. The basis for taking these children was a false report to a
child-abuse hotline that a teen girl was being forced into an underage
marriage at the YFZ Ranch, owing to beliefs of their Fundamentalist
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) religion.



This article does not attempt to analyze the FLDS religious belief
system, nor does it endorse or disapprove of it. The issue of taking
children from any family — regardless of its ideology — must be governed
by law and due process, not hysteria over religious or political beliefs
fanned by a statist press corps.

It will be useful to chronicle the actions of the Texas child protection
agency in the FLDS case — based on my review of the actual court
documents, case plan, affidavits of the social workers, warrants, and
detailed written accounts of the two-day hearing in court — with a
critical eye to see how these same tactics are used in individual
actions against innocent families nationwide. Thus, families can be
prepared to defend themselves against false allegations of abuse, and
not become victims like the children of the FLDS group.
State Child Protection, Wholesale Version

The Texas DFPS first got involved with the families at the Yearning for
Zion Ranch when a woman from Colorado phoned a report to the Texas
child-abuse hotline on March 29. This woman, Rozita Swinton, age 33,
falsely identified herself as a 16-year-old named “Sarah,” from the YFZ
Ranch, and stated that she had an eight-month-old child, and was
pregnant again by her 50-year-old husband. This Colorado call originated
from a person known to be a serial false reporter with a criminal record
for making false reports. However, the agency used it to seize on the
opportunity that they apparently had been waiting for — a plausible
excuse to raid this ranch.

This fraud points to the widespread potential for manipulation in the
child-abuse-hotline reporting system. Any disgruntled neighbor, angry
ex-spouse or boyfriend, roommate, or enemy can make an anonymous false
report and be believed. A mere allegation from such a person will prompt
the agency to literally knock down the door to get into a home to check
on the children. If and when the agency figures out it has been played
for a chump and has improperly brought down the entire weight of the law
on an innocent family, a great deal of harm has already been done, as is
the case with the children at the YFZ Ranch.

Once the DFPS agency had the false report from “Sarah,” it enlisted
legions of law-enforcement personnel and carried out the April 3
military-style raid of the YFZ Ranch starting at 9:00 p.m., without a
warrant or a court order. Published photographs show that the Texas
Rangers and sheriffs used armored personnel carriers, snipers, and riot
gear to force their entry. Once in, agents of the DFPS carried out
interviews of parents and children throughout the night and into the
next day, and the agents took trucks-full of documents.

The agency readily determined that there was no “Sarah” at the ranch,
and no “husband” abusing her. In fact, court records indicate that the
agency found no credible evidence of any abuse whatsoever in any home at
the YFZ Ranch. However, as the night-time raid stretched into the
following day, officials proceeded to remove all 468 children at the
ranch from their homes, most under the age of five, starting at 3:00
a.m. Texas law allows removal of a child only if “there is an immediate
danger to the physical health or safety of the child,” or if it is clear
that “the child has been the victim of sexual abuse.” (Tex. Fam. Code,
Sect. 262.104(a))

One can imagine the terror that these babies and toddlers felt being
ripped from their mothers in the middle of the night by armed strangers.
The abducted children were then farmed out to various foster homes
around the state, separated from parents and split off from their
siblings. This allowed the state to begin accessing large federal
reimbursements for foster care, and to unleash an army of social
workers, therapists, and state lawyers.

Next, the state put on a show trial on April 17 and 18, to officially
verify that the children needed to be rescued from their parents. This
hearing was conducted in the District Court for Schleicher County in San
Angelo, Texas, presided over by Judge Barbara Walther. Press accounts
described the trial with headlines like, “Chaos Rules at Sect Trial,” as
could be expected at a proceeding involving 468 children, their parents,
and their lawyers. To make matters worse, prior to the trial, the judge
had issued a separate order confiscating all the cellphones belonging to
both the children and their parents, so that they could not even talk to
their lawyers or to each other.

The gist of the state’s complaint was that female children at the ranch
were being groomed for marriage to older men at too young an age and
that male children were being encouraged to be sexual predators. The
agency asserted that 31 children, aged 14 to 17, were pregnant or had
borne children by adults. However, the agency now admits that over half
of those 31 persons are actually adults, including one who is 27 years
old. At the time of the hearing, the agency could not identify a single
child married below the legal age, including the nonexistent “Sarah.”
(Texas law allows marriage at age 16, or younger with court approval.)
Nor was there testimony that any person was physically abused at the ranch.

The DFPS argued, as a reason to take the children, that “there is a
mindset that even the young girls report that they will marry at
whatever age, and that it’s the highest blessing they can have to have
children.” Thus, in the agency’s view, inculcating respect for
motherhood is “abuse.”

A review of the trial transcript shows that the judge made no pretense
of providing due process, or of trying to decide the cases on an
individual basis. Key evidence included a recommendation from a
psychiatrist that the children not be returned to their homes, a
psychiatrist who admitted that he got most of his information from the
media and had never spoken to the leaders of the community. Several DFPS
supervisors also testified, repeating the party line about abuse,
although they could not cite any instance of it. The state also failed
to provide evidence, as required by both federal and state law, that it
had made reasonable efforts to keep the children with their parents
prior to removing them.

After the two-day preliminary trial, and without hearing any evidence of
abuse and neglect, the judge ruled that the DFPS would keep custody of
all the children.

After the agency secured possession of the children, they then imposed a
case service plan on each parent, which was put together by “culturally
sensitive” experts. The plan, which pre-supposes abuse, sets forth tasks
that the parents must do, such as taking parenting classes and
undergoing psychological evaluations. In reality, these plans contain
boilerplate provisions that are primarily designed to provide
information to the agency to use at the final trial against the parents
— a tactic I’ve seen repeatedly in my legal representation of families
torn apart by the so-called child-protection services.

A cover letter of the “plan” contained the following statement: “CPS’s
[Child Protective Service’s] investigation of the Yearning for Zion
Ranch found evidence under Texas law of sexual, physical, and emotional
abuse. Because of what CPS found, CPS removed your child from the ranch.
After a hearing, the judge agreed with CPS’s belief that your child was
not safe from abuse. The judge gave CPS temporary custody of you [sic]
child.”
Happy Ending Elusive

A crack in the foundation of the case came after several of the FLDS
parents petitioned the Texas Appeals Court, which quickly overturned the
district-court custody order, and threatened to act if the court “failed
to comply.” The May 22, 2008, opinion was unflinching in its
condemnation of the agency’s actions. The court found that there was no
evidence that male children or pre-pubescent females were in any danger
of abuse. There was no evidence as to whether the small number of
pregnant teens — five in all — were married or were victims of abuse.
The court stated bluntly that “there was no evidence of any physical
abuse or harm to any other child.”

The appeals court also noted that DFPS had not “made reasonable efforts
to eliminate or prevent the removal of any … children.” The district
court had made a perfunctory certification that such reasonable efforts
were made, but that was exposed as a false finding by the appeals court.

The appeals-court ruling was a huge public embarrassment for the agency
and a repudiation of the DFPS position. The agency was certainly not
going to allow the largest child-protection case in United States
history to be thwarted without a fight, so it immediately appealed to
the Supreme Court of Texas. In a brief five-page opinion, the highest
court affirmed that the appeals court was correct when it overturned the
district-court order, for the same reasons, i.e., that there was no
evidence of abuse. The opinion stated tersely, “On the record before us,
the removal of the children was not warranted.”

Despite these state high-court rulings, the agency and the district
court are placing numerous restrictions and qualifications on the
children’s return. The district court is keeping the case open and
demanding that parents cede much of their family liberty and privacy as
a price for getting their children back.

DFPS has prepared a draft court order for Judge Walther’s signature that
requires that parents let DFPS agents enter their homes at any time to
inspect them, and allows the DFPS to order psychological testing for the
children and parents, as well as to obtain medical exams of the children
at any time and place. The agency wants no family member to travel more
than 60 miles from home and desires photo identification of all parents
and children. The form parents must sign before release of their
children chillingly states: “By my signature … I accepted physical
possession of the above-referenced child for the Department of Family
and Protective Services.” This is a raw power grab, and it is unclear
whether or how the higher court might react to this apparent contempt of
its order.
But That’s the Way We Always Do It

The tactics perpetrated on the YFZ families are the same ones that CPS
uses in almost every child-protection removal case nationwide:
insufficient investigation, a superficial initial hearing, a boilerplate
case plan whose real purpose is to provide evidence to the agency,
splitting children in foster care and moving them far from family, a low
standard of proof for abuse, and failure to use reasonable efforts to
avoid removal from the home, among others.

What turned this situation around was the extensive publicity that
exposed the normally hidden agency wrongdoing. These revelations forced
the higher court to reverse the rulings of the agency and of the lower
court, which was acting as a puppet of the agency. If each of these 468
cases had been adjudicated individually, hidden from public scrutiny in
secret courtrooms as the law provides, the agency might have won most of
them, despite having no evidence.

As of this writing, the YFZ families have won an important round in
their fight, by getting the Texas Supreme Court to order the return of
their children. As of Monday, June 2, the judge had signed a temporary
order allowing return of the children to their families, with the many
restrictions outlined above.

This temporary order will be in place only until a full trial of the
matter, or until the agency comes up with more reasons to take the
children away again. It is uncertain what the ultimate outcome of this
case will be. The matter could end in a trial, the outcome of which
could be anything from full vindication of the parents and dismissal of
the case, to a permanent removal and adoption of all the children. Or
the Texas DFPS could ultimately decide that it acted without a basis,
and ask the court to dismiss the case. Nothing is predictable in
child-protection cases, but it should be. The reluctance of District
Court Judge Walther to follow the law and provide due process for the
affected families compounds the problem.

It is easy to get caught up in the media hype regarding the alleged
practices of this religious sect, and thus consider the removal of their
children necessary or justified. However, our Constitution guarantees
freedom of religion and the right to direct the upbringing of one’s
children without government interference, in absence of criminal action.
All parents are entitled to due process prior to having their children
taken, and this was not provided by either the agency or the court. If
the state can take children without due process from this religious
group, then it can take them from anyone whose religious or personal
beliefs are disfavored by the state.

This episode should be a warning to all families that an arbitrary
attack by the state against a family can happen to any of us and that a
court will likely not protect the family from overreaching state social
workers or false reports of child abuse.



Gregory A. Hession practices constitutional and family law in
Springfield, Massachusetts.






An Inconvenient Truth about Child Protective Services, Foster care, and
the Child Protection "INDUSTRY"

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

every parent should read the free handbook from
connecticut dcf watch...

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/Foster care 160, biological Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS/Foster care 112, biological Parents 13
Neglect CPS/Foster care 410, biological Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS/Foster care 14 biological Parents 12
Fatalities CPS/Foster care 6.4, biological 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.

THIS IS AMERICA'S HIDDEN HOLOCAUST

Currently Child Protective Services violates more constitutionally
guaranteed liberties & civil rights on a daily basis then all other
agencies combined, Including the National Security agency/Central
intelligence agency wiretaping programs…

THE CORRUPT BUSINESS OF CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES
BY: Nancy Schaefer Senator, 50th District of Georgia

http://www.senatornancyschaefer.com/...s.php?filter=6

This is Child Protection?
By Gregory A. Hession, J.D.

http://www.jbs.org/node/4632

Mercenary Motherhood: "Memoirs of a Babystealer."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...nion-rightrail

FOSTER CARE IS A 80 PERCENT FAILU. A Brief Analysis of the Casey
Family Programs. Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study. By Richard Wexler

http://www.nccpr.org/reports/cfpanalysis.doc

HOW THE WAR AGAINST CHILD ABUSE BECAME A WAR AGAINST CHILDREN

http://www.nccpr.org/issues/1.html

Adoption Bonuses: The Money Behind the Madness
DSS and affiliates rewarded for breaking up families
By Nev Moore Massachusetts News

http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/...May/mayds4.htm

A recent study has found that 12-18 months after leaving foster ca

30% of the nation’s homeless are former foster children.
27% of the males and 10% of the females had been incarcerated
33% were receiving public assistance
37% had not finished high school
2% receive a college degree
50% were unemployed

Children in foster care are three to six times more likely than children
not in care to have emotional, behavioral and developmental problems,
including conduct disorders, depression, difficulties in school and
impaired social relationships. Some experts estimate that about 30% of
the children in care have marked or severe emotional problems. Various
studies have indicated that children and young people in foster care
tend to have limited education and job skills, perform poorly in school
compared to children who are not in foster care, lag behind in their
education by at least one year, and have lower educational attainment
than the general population.
*Casey Family Programs National Center for Resource Family Support

80 percent of prison inmates have been through the foster care system.

The highest ranking federal official in charge of foster care, Wade Horn
of the Department of Health and Human Services, is a former child
psychologist who says the foster care system is a giant mess and should
just be blown up.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=2017991

Four rigorous studies have found that at least 30 percent of America’s
foster children could be home right now if their parents had decent housing.

This study found thousands of children already in foster care who would
have done better had child protection agencies not taken them away in
the first place.

Front-page story in USA Today.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...m?csp=34#Close

Read the studies online.

Casey "alumni" study: "Improving Family Foster Ca Findings from the
Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study,"

http://www.casey.org/Resources/Publi...lumniStudy.htm

MIT study: "Child Protection and Child Outcomes: Measuring the Effects
of Foster Care,"

http://www.mit.edu/~jjdoyle/doyle_fo...arch07_aer.pdf

http://www.cftl.org/documents/2008/FCfullreport.pdf

Texas comptroller's "Forgotten Children" reports:

http://www.window.state.tx.us/news/60623statement.html

www.window.state.tx.us/forgottenchildren

The bottom line? - Child Protective Services and the Foster Care system
for the most part turns out young adults that are nothing more than
walking wreckage...

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

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...
 




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