AFRA EDITORIALS It has to end

AFRA EDITORIALS
by J. Holderbaum
June 28, 2010

It has to end

In the United States of America our child protection industry is engaging in Medicaid fraud, racketeering and human rights abuses. We have granted the child protection industry unlimited power to remove children from their families on the basis of suspicion alone. There is no system of accountability or oversight in place to deter this. Its mission of protecting children has been undermined by a criminal element. We are allowing criminals to use child protection for their own greed and personal agendas.

It has to end.

Child abuse is a crime. It is assault, rape, torture, starvation and homicide. It is violent crime and the evidence is obvious. There is no mystery to it. We must bring science, logic and reason back into the way we handle violent crimes against children. We must base our statistics on scientific evidence, not mere accusations.

We must remove the perpetrator, not the child.

We are accusing our citizens of crimes without the use of forensic evidence and denying them due process in a criminal court of law. We are tearing children out of the arms of their mothers and fathers, and their extended families without evidence of a crime. We are warehousing children in foster homes and facilities across the nation without evidence of a crime. We are allowing children to be exposed to sexual abuse in the custody of the states. We are allowing children to be used in servitude in the custody of the states. We are allowing children to be brutalized and murdered in the custody of the states. There are children aging out of foster care into homelessness and crime.

Our prisons are filled with children who grew up in foster care. It has to end.

Taking children for profit and abusing them in state custody is not what Walter Mondale had in mind when he signed CAPTA into law in 1974. It is not what Bill Clinton had in mind when he signed ASFA into law in 1997 and it is not what Hilary Clinton had in mind when she wrote "It Takes a Village."

These leaders entrusted our professionals working within the child protection industry with the resources to protect abused and orphaned children. It was a noble gesture. But child protection let us down. They failed to fulfill their promise to our children, our leaders and to our great nation. They engage in egregious violations of law and human rights abuses. The industry has been taken over by criminals who have no decency or integrity.

They have crossed the line. They have turned child protection into a national disgrace and it has to end.

We can't reform an industry that commits atrocities against children. We must start over with new ideas and a completely different approach. We must change the way we think about child abuse and child protection. We must focus our efforts on helping impoverished families build better lives for themselves, not try to turn a profit on human suffering. It is not only impoverished families who are being subjected to brutality. It is any family who can't afford a costly legal defense against it.

Your family could be next. It has to end.

If we tear down the child protection industry and return to the practice of criminal investigations under due process of law in criminal court, the number of cases will drop dramatically. We will have the resources we need to help our impoverished and save billions of tax dollars at the same time.

We must do better than this for the future of our nation.

We must free our mandated reporters from the threat of losing their licenses if they don't report their suspicions. Let them go back to healing, teaching, protecting and serving without this constant threat hanging over their heads. We must trust that they are competent and intelligent enough to make a distinction between crime and poverty.

We are turning neighbor against neighbor, family against teachers, doctors, police officers, politicians and our country by allowing the criminal element in child protection to continue on this course.

It has to end.

I encourage every American to join together to:

1. Call for an immediate nationwide moratorium on all child abuse investigations that do not use forensic evidence;

2. Call for the immediate transfer of power from child protective services to a division of law enforcement specializing in investigations of violent crime. These investigations must include the use of forensic evidence, and must be conducted independently of anyone working within child protection or in the promotion of child protection, with no financial incentives for taking children whatsoever;

3. Call for immediate state and federal investigations of every organization affiliated with child protection and family court across the nation for the crimes of Medicaid fraud, racketeering and all other crimes, including crimes against humanity;

4. Call for the return of children to families who were accused of crimes and denied due process in criminal court keeping in mind that some children may never be going home.

5. Call for a repeal of CAPTA to end mandated reporting and the child abuse hotline and end the practice of central registries for all cases not proven in a criminal court of law.

Thank you,

J. Holderbaum
Child Protection Reform
child.protection.reform@gmail.com

http://familyrights.us/news/archive/2010/june/it_has_to_end.html