Teen pregnancy in foster care | NYU News & Doc: "Life has been lonely for Shaniqua since April when her 1-year-old daughter was placed in foster care by the New York Administration for Children Services. Since then, she has spent every night without the one person she loves the most. However, family separation is nothing new for this young mom. She has been in and out of foster care herself since she was 14-years-old.
“I still go through it, I still find myself crying at night, and my mother get’s upset because she knows. She went through the same thing with me, and my twin brother. I can’t just pick up the phone and say ‘hey, where’s my baby, how is she doing?’ or talk to her.”
Shaniqua, whose name cannot be fully identified for privacy reasons, is now 20 and living in a group home provided by the New York Foundling Hospital, which provides services for young women and their babies. She will age out next year, but in the meantime is fighting to get custody of her child."
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Friday, December 31, 2010
Adoption: 'The day my baby was taken away, part of me closed down'
I would just love to see CPS/DCYF worker's children stolen from them. They need to see what it feel's like. I bet they would never survive, that is if any of them even have kid's.
Adoption: 'The day my baby was taken away, part of me closed down' | Mail Online: "During the 1950s and 60s having a child out of wedlock was a huge scandal, and many unmarried girls were forced to give up their babies for adoption. In today's issue of YOU three women talk about their experiences of adoption and the impact it has had on their lives ever since.
We want to hear from you if you were ever forced into giving up your child, or were even adopted yourself. Tell us your story below..."
Adoption: 'The day my baby was taken away, part of me closed down' | Mail Online: "During the 1950s and 60s having a child out of wedlock was a huge scandal, and many unmarried girls were forced to give up their babies for adoption. In today's issue of YOU three women talk about their experiences of adoption and the impact it has had on their lives ever since.
We want to hear from you if you were ever forced into giving up your child, or were even adopted yourself. Tell us your story below..."
Sacramento girl needed amputations after 5-hour wait at emergency room - Medical News - sacbee.com
Sacramento girl needed amputations after 5-hour wait at emergency room - Medical News - sacbee.com: "As his tiny daughter's skin turned blotchy and her body went limp during a lengthy wait at Methodist Hospital's emergency room, Ryan Jeffers panicked.
'This wasn't a simple flu,' he said. 'My daughter needed help.'
Little did he know that the girl was near death from a common infection that had invaded her blood and was raging out of control, ultimately causing the amputation of both of her feet and one of her hands."
'This wasn't a simple flu,' he said. 'My daughter needed help.'
Little did he know that the girl was near death from a common infection that had invaded her blood and was raging out of control, ultimately causing the amputation of both of her feet and one of her hands."
Slain Boy's Family Has Record With CPS
Slain Boy's Family Has Record With CPS - Houston News Story - KPRC Houston: "HOUSTON -- Child Protective Services officials said Thursday that the family of a 12-year-old boy who police said was kidnapped and killed on Christmas Eve has a record with them.
Jonathan Foster
MORE DETAILS ABOUT DISAPPEARANCE, DEATH: Police: Boy Was Killed Same Day He Was Kidnapped
SUSPECT'S HOMETOWN CRIMINAL HISTORY: Previously Charged With Injury To Child
WATCH IT: Slain Boy Lived With Uncle For Years
SEE IT: Remembering Jonathan Foster
Jonathan Foster disappeared from his home near the Villanueva Apartments in the 800 block of Oak Street on Dec. 24. His charred body was found on Tuesday. Mona Yvette Nelson, 44, has been charged with capital murder in his death."
Jonathan Foster
MORE DETAILS ABOUT DISAPPEARANCE, DEATH: Police: Boy Was Killed Same Day He Was Kidnapped
SUSPECT'S HOMETOWN CRIMINAL HISTORY: Previously Charged With Injury To Child
WATCH IT: Slain Boy Lived With Uncle For Years
SEE IT: Remembering Jonathan Foster
Jonathan Foster disappeared from his home near the Villanueva Apartments in the 800 block of Oak Street on Dec. 24. His charred body was found on Tuesday. Mona Yvette Nelson, 44, has been charged with capital murder in his death."
Panel slaps Albany jurist
Panel slaps Albany jurist - Times Union: "ALBANY -- Albany County Family Court Judge Gerard Maney repeatedly asked police for 'professional courtesy' and flaunted his status for 'favorable treatment' during his alcohol-related driving arrest in Green Island in 2009, a judicial panel revealed Thursday in reprimanding the judge.
Maney, 61, of Menands, also tried to contact Albany County District Attorney David Soares in a failed attempt 'of trying to minimize publicity of his arrest,' according to the state Commission on Judicial Conduct. He did not reach the prosecutor."
Maney, 61, of Menands, also tried to contact Albany County District Attorney David Soares in a failed attempt 'of trying to minimize publicity of his arrest,' according to the state Commission on Judicial Conduct. He did not reach the prosecutor."
Kids, mom sue county over abuse in foster care
Kids, mom sue county over abuse in foster care | recordonline.com: "Elvin Laracuente of Westtown sits in an upstate prison cell, 16 months into a 13-year sentence after admitting he molested three of his estranged wife's foster children.
Two of those children and their birth mother are suing Orange County and its Department of Social Services, saying Laracuente wasn't authorized to care for the children and the county ignored warning signs of abuse.
'The county is responsible under the law; they stand in the shoes of the parents,' said the children's lawyer, Pat Owen. 'If you take kids away from their family home, you better make damn sure you take care of them.'"
Two of those children and their birth mother are suing Orange County and its Department of Social Services, saying Laracuente wasn't authorized to care for the children and the county ignored warning signs of abuse.
'The county is responsible under the law; they stand in the shoes of the parents,' said the children's lawyer, Pat Owen. 'If you take kids away from their family home, you better make damn sure you take care of them.'"
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Dumb Decisions and Stupid Mistakes to Avoid in Rhode Island Family Court
Dumb Decisions and Stupid Mistakes to Avoid in Rhode Island Family Court | TV 2M: "In my 13 years as a Rhode Island Child Custody Lawyer, I have seen many fathers and mothers make inane and stupid decisions during the course of Rhode Island Child Custody Proceedings. Sometimes winning your RI Child Custody is about the mistakes that you avoid rather than what you do right."
Class Action Lawsuit against the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers | Reform the Children's Aid Societies in Ontario
Class Action Lawsuit against the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers | Reform the Children's Aid Societies in Ontario
With a little luck, The Ontario College of Social Workers will soon be defending against a lawsuit focused on why they allow employees of various Children’s Aid Societies to practice as social workers without being registered.
The announcement from Canada Court Watch:
A lawyer has approached Canada Court Watch interested in seeking out those in Ontario who feel that their families have adversely affected as a result of CAS workers who are not registered with the Ontario College of Social Workers.
Under law, all CAS workers engaged in the practice of social work must be registered with the College. Most in Ontario are not. The Ontario College of Social Workers has the fiduciary duty to protect the public by ensuring that all CAS workers who engage in social work are registered.
Many, including a number of lawyers, feel that as a result of the College not fulfilling its fiduciary duty to the public that the time has come for the College to be taken to court by those who have been affected. It is time for the College to live up to its obligations to the public or to be shut down and put out of business.
If you feel that your family has suffered harm as a result of CAS workers who are not registered with the College, then please contact Canada Court Watch at info@canadacourtwatch.com.
With a little luck, The Ontario College of Social Workers will soon be defending against a lawsuit focused on why they allow employees of various Children’s Aid Societies to practice as social workers without being registered.
The announcement from Canada Court Watch:
A lawyer has approached Canada Court Watch interested in seeking out those in Ontario who feel that their families have adversely affected as a result of CAS workers who are not registered with the Ontario College of Social Workers.
Under law, all CAS workers engaged in the practice of social work must be registered with the College. Most in Ontario are not. The Ontario College of Social Workers has the fiduciary duty to protect the public by ensuring that all CAS workers who engage in social work are registered.
Many, including a number of lawyers, feel that as a result of the College not fulfilling its fiduciary duty to the public that the time has come for the College to be taken to court by those who have been affected. It is time for the College to live up to its obligations to the public or to be shut down and put out of business.
If you feel that your family has suffered harm as a result of CAS workers who are not registered with the College, then please contact Canada Court Watch at info@canadacourtwatch.com.
Upset with Public Defender’s Office, woman may sue | The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, PA
Upset with Public Defender’s Office, woman may sue | The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, PA: "Lawyer admits mishandling of case in which area couple lost parental-rights appeal.
By Terrie Morgan-Besecker tmorgan@timesleader.com
Law & Order Reporter
A Freeland woman who lost an appeal of a court ruling that terminated her parental rights said she is considering filing a lawsuit against the Luzerne County Public Defender’s Office, which has admitted it mishandled her case.
Jeff Harris, right, and Mary Tullis of Freeland talk about their parental-rights case to get their two children back home.
s. john wilkin/the times leader
Select images available for purchase in the
Times Leader Photo Store
Mary Tullis, of Hemlock Street, has been fighting since last August to overturn a Luzerne County judge’s ruling that terminated her rights to her two children.
Tullis, who was represented by Assistant Public Defender Mark Clinton, initially appealed the ruling to the state Superior Court on Sept. 10, 2009, but the case was dismissed on Feb. 26, after Clinton failed to file a legal brief detailing the issues on appeal."
By Terrie Morgan-Besecker tmorgan@timesleader.com
Law & Order Reporter
A Freeland woman who lost an appeal of a court ruling that terminated her parental rights said she is considering filing a lawsuit against the Luzerne County Public Defender’s Office, which has admitted it mishandled her case.
Jeff Harris, right, and Mary Tullis of Freeland talk about their parental-rights case to get their two children back home.
s. john wilkin/the times leader
Select images available for purchase in the
Times Leader Photo Store
Mary Tullis, of Hemlock Street, has been fighting since last August to overturn a Luzerne County judge’s ruling that terminated her rights to her two children.
Tullis, who was represented by Assistant Public Defender Mark Clinton, initially appealed the ruling to the state Superior Court on Sept. 10, 2009, but the case was dismissed on Feb. 26, after Clinton failed to file a legal brief detailing the issues on appeal."
SD court upholds laws on 3rd-party child custody
SD court upholds laws on 3rd-party child custody: "The South Dakota Supreme Court has upheld state laws that allow grandparents and other non-parents to gain custody of children."
A shroud of secrecy
A shroud of secrecy - From This Corner - Opinions - December 30, 2010 - Chico News & Review
A shroud of secrecy
The issue is confidentiality, not CPS workers
By Robert Speer
roberts@newsreview.com
More stories by this author...
This article was published on 12.30.10.
Related stories:
Reforming child removal
Butte County has state’s second-worst rate of taking children from their families. CN&R, 12.23.10.
Ripped apart at the seams
Two local families fight a losing battle against Children’s Services’ secretive system. CN&R, 12.16.10.
Our Dec. 16 cover story, “Ripped apart at the seams,” by Meredith J. Cooper, has gotten a lot of reader response, most of it favorable but some not. Unfortunately, the negative comments were not publishable as submitted, so I’ve chosen to mention them here.
In an e-mail message, a man whose wife formerly worked for a child protective services agency calls the article “remarkably slanted” and “a serious insult to the really difficult and important work done by the people who work in child protective services.
“They have little recourse against such misguided reporting because of confidentiality,” he continues, “but if my wife’s experience was representative—and I have no reason to think it wasn’t—their work was badly misrepresented in that piece.”
Another writer says she’s a “previous foster child and previous adopted child” as well as a former CPS worker for 10 years who is “tired of uninformed people taking pot shots at CPS workers who are underpaid, overworked and cannot speak out on their own behalf.
“The world of child abuse is a sickening, violent, disturbing and secret place,” she continues. “CPS workers who have to wipe blood off children’s bodies, remove them from lice infested motel rooms and listen (again and again) to a child disclose being raped by a stepfather, or how it feels to see their mother beaten, don’t deserve to be vilified.”
She accuses the story of “inflaming the public’s outrage about a system most of them know nothing about” and insists that CPS workers “should be thanked for the work they do, not excoriated in the press.”
What these writers say about CPS workers is absolutely true. They do extremely difficult but necessary work. Just as important, they’re in a no-win situation. If they judge a family wrongly and a child dies because of it, they get the blame. On the other hand, if they remove children from their families and put them into the troubled foster-care system, they can do more damage than if they leave them at home.
Both writers mention the biggest problem in the system without addressing it: confidentiality. And that’s what Meredith’s story was really about—not whether individual CPS workers are good people doing a difficult but necessary job, but whether the process should be cloaked in secrecy.
That’s why we were happy to hear from Richard Wexler, who authored the Guest Comment in last week’s issue (“Reforming child-removal practices,” Dec. 23). He’s the executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, a group that has studied the CPS system from a civil-liberties perspective and concluded that its confidentiality provisions do little to protect children.
I encourage readers to explore the group’s website (www.nccpr.org). There you’ll find not only a well-reasoned critique of the system, but also commonsensical proposals for reforming it that would benefit not only children and their families, but also everyone else involved in the system, including CPS workers.
Robert Speer is editor of the CN&R.
Contact us about this story
A shroud of secrecy
The issue is confidentiality, not CPS workers
By Robert Speer
roberts@newsreview.com
More stories by this author...
This article was published on 12.30.10.
Related stories:
Reforming child removal
Butte County has state’s second-worst rate of taking children from their families. CN&R, 12.23.10.
Ripped apart at the seams
Two local families fight a losing battle against Children’s Services’ secretive system. CN&R, 12.16.10.
Our Dec. 16 cover story, “Ripped apart at the seams,” by Meredith J. Cooper, has gotten a lot of reader response, most of it favorable but some not. Unfortunately, the negative comments were not publishable as submitted, so I’ve chosen to mention them here.
In an e-mail message, a man whose wife formerly worked for a child protective services agency calls the article “remarkably slanted” and “a serious insult to the really difficult and important work done by the people who work in child protective services.
“They have little recourse against such misguided reporting because of confidentiality,” he continues, “but if my wife’s experience was representative—and I have no reason to think it wasn’t—their work was badly misrepresented in that piece.”
Another writer says she’s a “previous foster child and previous adopted child” as well as a former CPS worker for 10 years who is “tired of uninformed people taking pot shots at CPS workers who are underpaid, overworked and cannot speak out on their own behalf.
“The world of child abuse is a sickening, violent, disturbing and secret place,” she continues. “CPS workers who have to wipe blood off children’s bodies, remove them from lice infested motel rooms and listen (again and again) to a child disclose being raped by a stepfather, or how it feels to see their mother beaten, don’t deserve to be vilified.”
She accuses the story of “inflaming the public’s outrage about a system most of them know nothing about” and insists that CPS workers “should be thanked for the work they do, not excoriated in the press.”
What these writers say about CPS workers is absolutely true. They do extremely difficult but necessary work. Just as important, they’re in a no-win situation. If they judge a family wrongly and a child dies because of it, they get the blame. On the other hand, if they remove children from their families and put them into the troubled foster-care system, they can do more damage than if they leave them at home.
Both writers mention the biggest problem in the system without addressing it: confidentiality. And that’s what Meredith’s story was really about—not whether individual CPS workers are good people doing a difficult but necessary job, but whether the process should be cloaked in secrecy.
That’s why we were happy to hear from Richard Wexler, who authored the Guest Comment in last week’s issue (“Reforming child-removal practices,” Dec. 23). He’s the executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, a group that has studied the CPS system from a civil-liberties perspective and concluded that its confidentiality provisions do little to protect children.
I encourage readers to explore the group’s website (www.nccpr.org). There you’ll find not only a well-reasoned critique of the system, but also commonsensical proposals for reforming it that would benefit not only children and their families, but also everyone else involved in the system, including CPS workers.
Robert Speer is editor of the CN&R.
Contact us about this story
Ripped apart at the seams - Feature Story
Ripped apart at the seams - Feature Story - Local Stories - December 16, 2010 - Chico News & Review
Ripped apart at the seams
Two local families fight a losing battle against Children’s Services’ secretive system
By Meredith J. Cooper
meredithc@newsreview.com
More stories by this author...
This article was published on 12.16.10.
Where to find help
Pacific Justice Institute: Log onto www.pacificjustice.org to find out more about parents’ rights or to find a lawyer to help your case. The nonprofit is based out of Sacramento, with offices in Santa Ana and Oakland.
The Butte College Foster/Kinship Education Program at Butte College offers classes, support and training for those caring for someone else’s children. For information, log onto www.butte.edu/careerservices/fosterkinship
Related stories:
Where is my baby?
Little Jacob Perry was cared for a loving mother and grandparents, but child-welfare officials removed him from the home anyway. He was only 13 days old. CN&R, 06.25.09.
Family ties in jeopardy
Chicoans Al and Rita Perry vow to continue the battle for theirdisabled daughter’s right to help raise her baby. CN&R, 12.24.09.
We’ve all heard horror stories of children being beaten, molested, exposed to hardcore drug abuse and even prostitution. For most, these situations boggle the mind, melt the heart and justify just about any amount of intervention by government agencies to ensure the future safety of the children.
Child Protective Services—now known as Children’s Services in Butte County—operates under a veil of secrecy and privilege, but because of stories like those above, for many that secrecy and privilege seem justified. Others argue that the secrecy is being used against them, the privilege taken for granted. And if half the services offered to foster parents were offered to biological parents or family members—as the federal government and even Children’s Services suggest—fewer families would be ripped apart.
The priorities outlined on Butte County Children’s Services’ website suggest that keeping the family unit intact is a priority, but the Perrys and Garveys, both Butte County families, know different. In both cases, a child who is most definitely wanted and loved has been plucked from his or her home and placed instead in foster care.
There must be a good reason for these children to be in foster care, you might think while reading this. You’re likely one of the majority whose life has not been touched by Children’s Services. Of course, you could be right—the point of this story is not to discredit the department.
But organizations like the Pacific Justice Institute offer another, darker explanation: That perhaps Children’s Services is not working in the best interest of every child. Perhaps it’s fueled by a need for federal grant money, allocated based on numbers of kids in foster care and those who get adopted. Perhaps the secrecy involved is not so much in the child’s best interest, either, but is used to help increase those numbers—and federal funding—when possible.
Al and Rita Perry have been fighting to keep their grandson in their lives for the past year and a half. Their daughter, the child’s mother, is developmentally disabled, and none of them have money to hire a proper attorney. Gloria Garvey has been fighting to obtain guardianship of her granddaughter since May 2009. She hasn’t had a visit since August, when she was reprimanded for leaving a love note in her granddaughter’s backpack.
Both children are facing possible adoption at the end of this month, and both have loving, caring homes they are not allowed to live in.
Dorothy Perry is shown here in the hospital after delivering J., who had a cleft palate that made nursing difficult.
PHOTO COURTESY OF AL PERRY
In March 2009, Dorothy Perry gave birth to a baby boy. With the help of her parents, she took home baby J. (the Perrys requested the CN&R not repeat his name), but a cleft palate made nursing him difficult.
Dorothy took several trips to Enloe Medical Center for help and had made an appointment at UC Davis Medical Center, but before J. was even two weeks old—and before any trip to Sacramento—Butte County’s Department of Children’s Services stepped in and removed him from the Perrys’ home, citing a “failure to thrive” due to a drop in weight since leaving the hospital (which, if you talk to any pediatrician, you will learn is completely normal).
Dorothy, however, is not your average mother. She is developmentally disabled, and although she is quite capable of holding a conversation and a job—she works as a home health aide—she does have trouble with other tasks. Her father, Al, an Army veteran, believes it’s Dorothy’s disability that made her an easy target for Children’s Services. Two weeks ago he paid a visit to Sacramento, where he dropped off a load of documents with Disability Rights California, a nonprofit with a mission to “advance the rights of Californians with disabilities.”
The Perrys fought for a full year—for Dorothy’s rights as a mother and for Al and Rita to become legal guardians—while baby J. was in foster care. The family taking care of J. has known the Perrys for years—Dorothy, now 24, went to prom with J.’s foster mother’s eldest son. In June 2010, the judge—Tamara Mosbarger, who oversees juvenile cases—stripped Dorothy of her parental rights.
“The judge took away Dorothy’s parental rights, saying that [J.] had only been with Dorothy for 13 days but that he’d been with the foster mom for 13 months,” Al said. “She said there’s no bond between Dorothy and [J].”
“Which is completely untrue,” Rita interjected. “That baby recognizes me, but he really recognizes Dorothy. There’s definitely a bond there.”
To make matters more difficult, the Perrys thought at first that knowing the foster family would be helpful to them, that maybe it would help their case. That outlook quickly changed along with the relationship between the foster family and the Perrys. Before they knew what had happened, the foster mother was relating details of what occurred during the Perrys’ visits with J. to Children’s Services. Seemingly small stories and interactions among friends suddenly turned into information that could be used against the Perrys in court.
“The foster mother even told Dorothy, ‘If you ever have another child, I’ll take that one too,’ ” Al said. Baby J., now more than a year and one-half old, faces possible adoption by the foster mother, despite a plea by Dorothy to adopt him out in another county or at least to someone she doesn’t know.
Gloria Garvey has been close with “Megan” since she was just a baby, housing, clothing and feeding her for most of her 10 years.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GLORIA GARVEY
Al is adamant he will not give up. He and Rita submitted a request to become J.’s legal guardians but were denied.
“The social worker made it her mission to make me out to be an unfit parent,” Al said. They brought up an arrest for a drug offense that’s almost a decade old, he added. After their request was denied, and Dorothy’s parental rights were taken away, the court also took away Al’s rights to visitation. He says it’s because he’s been outspoken to the media and often wrote about the case on his Facebook page.
“It’s my right to go to the media,” Al said. “It’s my story.”
But Children’s Services is used to operating behind closed doors. Because it deals with juvenile matters, it can shut the media out of court proceedings that ordinarily would be public record. An article on the Pacific Justice Institute’s website explains a similar situation to the Perrys’ involving a woman named Roberta who, after scheduling an interview with a reporter to tell her story, was told by her lawyer that if she went to the media she wouldn’t get her children back.
“Roberta, like almost all parents in her situation, felt little choice but to cancel the interview,” the article reads. “In other words, the juvenile court system’s seemingly unbridled discretion creates a wall of intimidation, a wall preventing the kind of public accountability necessary to expose the need for judicial reform.”
The media were allowed in the juvenile courtroom last month, on Adoption Day (Nov. 22), when several families finalized the adoption process for children in their foster care. An Enterprise-Record article brought attention to the feel-goodness of the act of adoption—and for good reason, as the families highlighted obviously cared for the children a great deal—but failed to look at the families left behind.
Gloria Garvey is one of those families. When she started talking about her granddaughter during a recent interview, her face lit up. She told the story of last Christmas, when Megan (not her real name) was celebrating at her house and had a friend over. They had so much fun, Garvey gushed.
Christmas is Garvey’s favorite holiday. On a table at the end of her wrap-around sofa are several framed photographs, all of Megan on Santa’s lap. Garvey excitedly explained the presents she’d gotten her only granddaughter for this year’s holiday. A walk down the hallway in Garvey’s two-bedroom apartment off Rio Lindo Avenue revealed a little girl’s paradise—a twin bed, dolls of all kinds, artwork, a dresser, a desk. Pink was clearly the color of choice.
The Perrys—Rita, Al and Dorothy—have been fighting for Dorothy’s son, now a year-and-a-half, since he was just 13 days old. The court told Dorothy in June that the bond baby J. had formed with the foster mom was stronger than that formed with his biological mother, and took away her parental rights.
CN&R FILE PHOTO
After Garvey related joyfully the favorite toys and games Megan loved to play with, her smiling face turned serious and then sad. She hadn’t seen her granddaughter since August. She didn’t know when she’d see Megan again.
About a year and a half ago, Garvey’s daughter, Elaine Garvey, was arrested and charged with felony child abuse/endangerment after police found a hypodermic needle in her home, accessible to her daughter. Understandably, Butte County Children’s Services stepped in. But Megan had lived with her grandmother for most of her 10 years. Gloria had even filed for guardianship in 2007, but at that time Elaine had decided she wanted to be a full-time mother. Some bad decisions, however, and an addiction to illicit drugs kept her from being a model parent, and now she’s in prison, having just filed an appeal but not expecting to be released for another six months.
When Megan was taken into court custody, Gloria Garvey was heartbroken. She had extended, unsupervised visits, so she was able to spend time with her granddaughter. Over the course of the next year, however, those visits got to be shorter and more restricted. Three weeks unsupervised in January 2010 turned into weekends unsupervised turned into supervised hours until one afternoon in August Garvey left her granddaughter a note in her backpack telling her how much she loved her and longed for the day when Megan could come back and live with her. That, apparently, was a big no-no.
When Megan’s foster mom—at least the third one in a year—found the note, she immediately brought it to the attention of Children’s Services, who called Garvey and explained that she was “upsetting” Megan. She hasn’t seen her granddaughter since.
“You see her room? I have all her clothes, her winter coats, her toys,” she said. “I didn’t know [Megan] wouldn’t be coming back.”
Garvey’s last court appearance was in November, at which time she said the judge agreed to allow a visit.
“The social workers have made it very clear that she’s more than 500 miles from Chico,” Garvey said. “I don’t know how I’ll get to see her. But they did say they would bring her to the courtroom.”
Kevin Snider doesn’t know the Perrys or the Garveys, but he knows what they’re going through. As chief counsel for the Pacific Justice Institute—a conservative nonprofit legal-defense organization that specializes in issues of civil liberties including parental rights—he says that easily 100 cases of California families fighting CPS wind up at the PJI each year.
Gloria Garvey longs to be with her granddaughter, 10-year-old “Megan,” who was taken into custody by Children’s Services in March 2009. Here she is, in her apartment, with a poster Megan made for her last year around Christmastime.
PHOTO BY MEREDITH J. COOPER
“You know that thing called the Bill of Rights in the Constitution? That doesn’t exist for the most part when you deal with Child Protective Services,” Snider said in a recent phone interview. “When it comes to them, we basically live in a police state.”
The evidence used in court against parents and grandparents is often circumstantial at best, he said, and would never stand up in any other court of law. Much of the time the social workers rely on hearsay as testimony. They talk to the children at school when their parents aren’t around; they pressure parents into getting divorces or admitting guilt—and when they don’t admit guilt, he said, they’re labeled “uncooperative.”
“I tell people: Had you murdered your child, you would have had more rights,” Snider said. “My view is that parents deserve the same rights that we give terrorists and criminals.”
Snider’s views may seem a bit radical, but when you read some of the stories on the PJI’s website, and you hear from families like the Perrys and Garveys—and several others who have spoken to the CN&R but were not included in this story—you start to see the picture of a broken system that relies on secrecy to survive.
Messages left at Children’s Services were not returned, although the agency over the years has maintained that its employees care deeply for children and work hard in their best interest. Their priorities, as listed on the website, are family preservation and reunification before putting children into foster homes or adopting them to other families.
In a June 2009 CN&R story about the Perrys, former Assistant Director of Butte County’s Children’s and Adult Services Karen Ely gave some insight into her agency’s role.
“There are some cases where we have to remove a child,” said Ely. “If there is imminent risk to a child of substantial harm, that would be the time we would possibly remove a child from the home. Our philosophy when we go out is we’re not looking to remove a child, but how to leave a child there safely—how can we assist this family?
“The key thing for me is we don’t do anything independently,” Ely continued. “We make the initial decision, but we rely on the courts to sustain that original decision. … We don’t want to keep kids in out-of-home care. … We want those kids to go home, too.”
Despite those priorities, however, some families feel they’ve been overlooked in favor of foster care and adoption.
“I am sincere, and want so much to improve a badly needed system that everyone seems to think is conducted so wisely, with all their overused authority and power,” Garvey wrote in a letter earlier this year to Assemblyman Dan Logue, pleading for help with her case. Without the money to hire a proper attorney, she’s got little hope of getting custody of her granddaughter.
Garvey has applied several times to become Megan’s guardian while her daughter is in prison. She’s been denied every time. On Monday (Dec. 13), she attended a hearing in which she was able to review the evidence used against her. Some of it she’d never seen, she said. She was also able to plead her case. Walking out of the office that houses Social Services off Mira Loma Drive in Oroville, Garvey and her friend, Nancy Collins, shook their heads in disbelief.
“You see that pile of evidence that Children’s Services has, and then you see what Gloria brought—letters [from doctors and friends] and artwork from [Megan]—and you lose hope,” said Collins, who facilitates a support group for people caring for other people’s children at the Butte College Foster/Kinship Parent Education Program. Collins understands Garvey’s position better than most, as she’s been through the system, having obtained legal guardianship of her grandson after a lengthy battle with her daughter-in-law.
Plenty of documents were included as evidence against Garvey, but there was very little to back them up. For example, a lengthy document from 2007 when Garvey had applied to become Megan’s guardian was included. In it were several highlighted sections of interviews with her daughter, Elaine, in which she said Gloria drinks heavily and gets mean when she does.
“There is no evidence to support that I’m a drinker,” Garvey said. She’s never been arrested for DUI, hospitalized or gone through rehabilitation, she said—so those statements, while presented in a very convincing manner, are pure hearsay.
“Plus, they’re taken from an interview with your daughter who at that time didn’t want you to take her daughter away from her,” Collins added. “Now she wants you to take care of [Megan]—so, what changed?”
The biggest strike against Garvey is a misdemeanor child-abuse case from 1995. She had the record expunged last year after it came up in regard to getting guardianship for Megan. Despite the expungement—which, legally, turns a conviction into a dismissal, removing the necessity to declare it a conviction—Children’s Services maintains the conviction and copies of a police report related to the incident as evidence against Garvey. Excerpts from the police report were read at the hearing and quoted a neighbor who said she saw Garvey hit her grandson with a slipper.
She vows, swears to God even, that she’s never harmed a child. And she maintains that she was never given a fair trial—that she was instructed to plead no contest to avoid jail time. She did that, but the misdemeanor has followed her like the plague.
“Most of the time what we see is someone who is poor or working class, and the justice system is out of reach for them,” Snider said. “Even people in the middle class cannot afford a lawyer.”
And that’s what it seems to come down to: money. The problem is that states receive funding based on the number of children in foster care and the number of those children who get adopted.
These financial incentives were created as part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 as an amendment to the Social Security Act in response to an outcry over so many children being in foster care throughout the United States. The way it works is that states qualify for funding when they approve more adoptions this year than they did last year. In 2008, the program was bolstered by the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which added incentives for adopting out special-needs children and those older than 9.
According to the Federal Grants Wire, the Adoption Incentives program, run through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, offers $4,000 per foster-child adoption (based on the number that exceed the number of adoptions the previous fiscal year). That amount goes up for children older than 9 to $8,000. In 2009, the federal government handed out $36.5 million in incentives to 43 states. In California, that number was $1.5 million—that’s money coming into the state to be used for foster and adoption programs, Adoption Day activities, and to improve state and county agencies. Put into perspective, if Megan gets adopted, she represents a possible $8,000, but if she’s reunified with her mother or taken into custody by her grandmother, that money is out of the picture.
“Even as the federal government doles out financial bounties rewarding the states for permanently destroying natural families, and adopting out their children, the evidence continues to mount that this is little more that another phony solution to the seemingly intractable problem of too many children being removed from their rightful homes,” reads a recent post from www.liftingtheveil.org, a website that has been dedicated to child-welfare matters for more than a decade.
“It’s my understanding that there’s a financial incentive to break apart families,” said Snider.
The Perrys are intent on pursuing legal avenues to get J. back to Dorothy. They’re awaiting a phone call from Disability Rights California. They also await word of a court date regarding adoption by the foster mother.
For Garvey, having Megan adopted out would be disastrous. Collins said she hoped that if Megan does get adopted at least she will maintain contact with her grandmother.
“I just love children,” Garvey said. “And I know that if my grandson were here, he would tell you I never hit him. I loved him.” Bradley, who was 5 in 1995, was adopted out, along with his two brothers, after their mother was unable to care for them. Garvey hasn’t seen any of them since.
She’s scared that’s what will happen with Megan—that she will be adopted by a family 500 miles away and her grandmother, who loves her dearly, will never see her again. To see the pain and fear in Garvey’s eyes when she imagines the worst-case scenario is heart-wrenching. Not only is Children’s Services trying to take her grandchild away, they’re trying to make a case that Megan doesn’t have a strong bond with her grandmother.
“She loves me, she loves her grandma,” Garvey pleads. “Nobody can take that away from me. Nobody.”
Ripped apart at the seams
Two local families fight a losing battle against Children’s Services’ secretive system
By Meredith J. Cooper
meredithc@newsreview.com
More stories by this author...
This article was published on 12.16.10.
Where to find help
Pacific Justice Institute: Log onto www.pacificjustice.org to find out more about parents’ rights or to find a lawyer to help your case. The nonprofit is based out of Sacramento, with offices in Santa Ana and Oakland.
The Butte College Foster/Kinship Education Program at Butte College offers classes, support and training for those caring for someone else’s children. For information, log onto www.butte.edu/careerservices/fosterkinship
Related stories:
Where is my baby?
Little Jacob Perry was cared for a loving mother and grandparents, but child-welfare officials removed him from the home anyway. He was only 13 days old. CN&R, 06.25.09.
Family ties in jeopardy
Chicoans Al and Rita Perry vow to continue the battle for theirdisabled daughter’s right to help raise her baby. CN&R, 12.24.09.
We’ve all heard horror stories of children being beaten, molested, exposed to hardcore drug abuse and even prostitution. For most, these situations boggle the mind, melt the heart and justify just about any amount of intervention by government agencies to ensure the future safety of the children.
Child Protective Services—now known as Children’s Services in Butte County—operates under a veil of secrecy and privilege, but because of stories like those above, for many that secrecy and privilege seem justified. Others argue that the secrecy is being used against them, the privilege taken for granted. And if half the services offered to foster parents were offered to biological parents or family members—as the federal government and even Children’s Services suggest—fewer families would be ripped apart.
The priorities outlined on Butte County Children’s Services’ website suggest that keeping the family unit intact is a priority, but the Perrys and Garveys, both Butte County families, know different. In both cases, a child who is most definitely wanted and loved has been plucked from his or her home and placed instead in foster care.
There must be a good reason for these children to be in foster care, you might think while reading this. You’re likely one of the majority whose life has not been touched by Children’s Services. Of course, you could be right—the point of this story is not to discredit the department.
But organizations like the Pacific Justice Institute offer another, darker explanation: That perhaps Children’s Services is not working in the best interest of every child. Perhaps it’s fueled by a need for federal grant money, allocated based on numbers of kids in foster care and those who get adopted. Perhaps the secrecy involved is not so much in the child’s best interest, either, but is used to help increase those numbers—and federal funding—when possible.
Al and Rita Perry have been fighting to keep their grandson in their lives for the past year and a half. Their daughter, the child’s mother, is developmentally disabled, and none of them have money to hire a proper attorney. Gloria Garvey has been fighting to obtain guardianship of her granddaughter since May 2009. She hasn’t had a visit since August, when she was reprimanded for leaving a love note in her granddaughter’s backpack.
Both children are facing possible adoption at the end of this month, and both have loving, caring homes they are not allowed to live in.
Dorothy Perry is shown here in the hospital after delivering J., who had a cleft palate that made nursing difficult.
PHOTO COURTESY OF AL PERRY
In March 2009, Dorothy Perry gave birth to a baby boy. With the help of her parents, she took home baby J. (the Perrys requested the CN&R not repeat his name), but a cleft palate made nursing him difficult.
Dorothy took several trips to Enloe Medical Center for help and had made an appointment at UC Davis Medical Center, but before J. was even two weeks old—and before any trip to Sacramento—Butte County’s Department of Children’s Services stepped in and removed him from the Perrys’ home, citing a “failure to thrive” due to a drop in weight since leaving the hospital (which, if you talk to any pediatrician, you will learn is completely normal).
Dorothy, however, is not your average mother. She is developmentally disabled, and although she is quite capable of holding a conversation and a job—she works as a home health aide—she does have trouble with other tasks. Her father, Al, an Army veteran, believes it’s Dorothy’s disability that made her an easy target for Children’s Services. Two weeks ago he paid a visit to Sacramento, where he dropped off a load of documents with Disability Rights California, a nonprofit with a mission to “advance the rights of Californians with disabilities.”
The Perrys fought for a full year—for Dorothy’s rights as a mother and for Al and Rita to become legal guardians—while baby J. was in foster care. The family taking care of J. has known the Perrys for years—Dorothy, now 24, went to prom with J.’s foster mother’s eldest son. In June 2010, the judge—Tamara Mosbarger, who oversees juvenile cases—stripped Dorothy of her parental rights.
“The judge took away Dorothy’s parental rights, saying that [J.] had only been with Dorothy for 13 days but that he’d been with the foster mom for 13 months,” Al said. “She said there’s no bond between Dorothy and [J].”
“Which is completely untrue,” Rita interjected. “That baby recognizes me, but he really recognizes Dorothy. There’s definitely a bond there.”
To make matters more difficult, the Perrys thought at first that knowing the foster family would be helpful to them, that maybe it would help their case. That outlook quickly changed along with the relationship between the foster family and the Perrys. Before they knew what had happened, the foster mother was relating details of what occurred during the Perrys’ visits with J. to Children’s Services. Seemingly small stories and interactions among friends suddenly turned into information that could be used against the Perrys in court.
“The foster mother even told Dorothy, ‘If you ever have another child, I’ll take that one too,’ ” Al said. Baby J., now more than a year and one-half old, faces possible adoption by the foster mother, despite a plea by Dorothy to adopt him out in another county or at least to someone she doesn’t know.
Gloria Garvey has been close with “Megan” since she was just a baby, housing, clothing and feeding her for most of her 10 years.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GLORIA GARVEY
Al is adamant he will not give up. He and Rita submitted a request to become J.’s legal guardians but were denied.
“The social worker made it her mission to make me out to be an unfit parent,” Al said. They brought up an arrest for a drug offense that’s almost a decade old, he added. After their request was denied, and Dorothy’s parental rights were taken away, the court also took away Al’s rights to visitation. He says it’s because he’s been outspoken to the media and often wrote about the case on his Facebook page.
“It’s my right to go to the media,” Al said. “It’s my story.”
But Children’s Services is used to operating behind closed doors. Because it deals with juvenile matters, it can shut the media out of court proceedings that ordinarily would be public record. An article on the Pacific Justice Institute’s website explains a similar situation to the Perrys’ involving a woman named Roberta who, after scheduling an interview with a reporter to tell her story, was told by her lawyer that if she went to the media she wouldn’t get her children back.
“Roberta, like almost all parents in her situation, felt little choice but to cancel the interview,” the article reads. “In other words, the juvenile court system’s seemingly unbridled discretion creates a wall of intimidation, a wall preventing the kind of public accountability necessary to expose the need for judicial reform.”
The media were allowed in the juvenile courtroom last month, on Adoption Day (Nov. 22), when several families finalized the adoption process for children in their foster care. An Enterprise-Record article brought attention to the feel-goodness of the act of adoption—and for good reason, as the families highlighted obviously cared for the children a great deal—but failed to look at the families left behind.
Gloria Garvey is one of those families. When she started talking about her granddaughter during a recent interview, her face lit up. She told the story of last Christmas, when Megan (not her real name) was celebrating at her house and had a friend over. They had so much fun, Garvey gushed.
Christmas is Garvey’s favorite holiday. On a table at the end of her wrap-around sofa are several framed photographs, all of Megan on Santa’s lap. Garvey excitedly explained the presents she’d gotten her only granddaughter for this year’s holiday. A walk down the hallway in Garvey’s two-bedroom apartment off Rio Lindo Avenue revealed a little girl’s paradise—a twin bed, dolls of all kinds, artwork, a dresser, a desk. Pink was clearly the color of choice.
The Perrys—Rita, Al and Dorothy—have been fighting for Dorothy’s son, now a year-and-a-half, since he was just 13 days old. The court told Dorothy in June that the bond baby J. had formed with the foster mom was stronger than that formed with his biological mother, and took away her parental rights.
CN&R FILE PHOTO
After Garvey related joyfully the favorite toys and games Megan loved to play with, her smiling face turned serious and then sad. She hadn’t seen her granddaughter since August. She didn’t know when she’d see Megan again.
About a year and a half ago, Garvey’s daughter, Elaine Garvey, was arrested and charged with felony child abuse/endangerment after police found a hypodermic needle in her home, accessible to her daughter. Understandably, Butte County Children’s Services stepped in. But Megan had lived with her grandmother for most of her 10 years. Gloria had even filed for guardianship in 2007, but at that time Elaine had decided she wanted to be a full-time mother. Some bad decisions, however, and an addiction to illicit drugs kept her from being a model parent, and now she’s in prison, having just filed an appeal but not expecting to be released for another six months.
When Megan was taken into court custody, Gloria Garvey was heartbroken. She had extended, unsupervised visits, so she was able to spend time with her granddaughter. Over the course of the next year, however, those visits got to be shorter and more restricted. Three weeks unsupervised in January 2010 turned into weekends unsupervised turned into supervised hours until one afternoon in August Garvey left her granddaughter a note in her backpack telling her how much she loved her and longed for the day when Megan could come back and live with her. That, apparently, was a big no-no.
When Megan’s foster mom—at least the third one in a year—found the note, she immediately brought it to the attention of Children’s Services, who called Garvey and explained that she was “upsetting” Megan. She hasn’t seen her granddaughter since.
“You see her room? I have all her clothes, her winter coats, her toys,” she said. “I didn’t know [Megan] wouldn’t be coming back.”
Garvey’s last court appearance was in November, at which time she said the judge agreed to allow a visit.
“The social workers have made it very clear that she’s more than 500 miles from Chico,” Garvey said. “I don’t know how I’ll get to see her. But they did say they would bring her to the courtroom.”
Kevin Snider doesn’t know the Perrys or the Garveys, but he knows what they’re going through. As chief counsel for the Pacific Justice Institute—a conservative nonprofit legal-defense organization that specializes in issues of civil liberties including parental rights—he says that easily 100 cases of California families fighting CPS wind up at the PJI each year.
Gloria Garvey longs to be with her granddaughter, 10-year-old “Megan,” who was taken into custody by Children’s Services in March 2009. Here she is, in her apartment, with a poster Megan made for her last year around Christmastime.
PHOTO BY MEREDITH J. COOPER
“You know that thing called the Bill of Rights in the Constitution? That doesn’t exist for the most part when you deal with Child Protective Services,” Snider said in a recent phone interview. “When it comes to them, we basically live in a police state.”
The evidence used in court against parents and grandparents is often circumstantial at best, he said, and would never stand up in any other court of law. Much of the time the social workers rely on hearsay as testimony. They talk to the children at school when their parents aren’t around; they pressure parents into getting divorces or admitting guilt—and when they don’t admit guilt, he said, they’re labeled “uncooperative.”
“I tell people: Had you murdered your child, you would have had more rights,” Snider said. “My view is that parents deserve the same rights that we give terrorists and criminals.”
Snider’s views may seem a bit radical, but when you read some of the stories on the PJI’s website, and you hear from families like the Perrys and Garveys—and several others who have spoken to the CN&R but were not included in this story—you start to see the picture of a broken system that relies on secrecy to survive.
Messages left at Children’s Services were not returned, although the agency over the years has maintained that its employees care deeply for children and work hard in their best interest. Their priorities, as listed on the website, are family preservation and reunification before putting children into foster homes or adopting them to other families.
In a June 2009 CN&R story about the Perrys, former Assistant Director of Butte County’s Children’s and Adult Services Karen Ely gave some insight into her agency’s role.
“There are some cases where we have to remove a child,” said Ely. “If there is imminent risk to a child of substantial harm, that would be the time we would possibly remove a child from the home. Our philosophy when we go out is we’re not looking to remove a child, but how to leave a child there safely—how can we assist this family?
“The key thing for me is we don’t do anything independently,” Ely continued. “We make the initial decision, but we rely on the courts to sustain that original decision. … We don’t want to keep kids in out-of-home care. … We want those kids to go home, too.”
Despite those priorities, however, some families feel they’ve been overlooked in favor of foster care and adoption.
“I am sincere, and want so much to improve a badly needed system that everyone seems to think is conducted so wisely, with all their overused authority and power,” Garvey wrote in a letter earlier this year to Assemblyman Dan Logue, pleading for help with her case. Without the money to hire a proper attorney, she’s got little hope of getting custody of her granddaughter.
Garvey has applied several times to become Megan’s guardian while her daughter is in prison. She’s been denied every time. On Monday (Dec. 13), she attended a hearing in which she was able to review the evidence used against her. Some of it she’d never seen, she said. She was also able to plead her case. Walking out of the office that houses Social Services off Mira Loma Drive in Oroville, Garvey and her friend, Nancy Collins, shook their heads in disbelief.
“You see that pile of evidence that Children’s Services has, and then you see what Gloria brought—letters [from doctors and friends] and artwork from [Megan]—and you lose hope,” said Collins, who facilitates a support group for people caring for other people’s children at the Butte College Foster/Kinship Parent Education Program. Collins understands Garvey’s position better than most, as she’s been through the system, having obtained legal guardianship of her grandson after a lengthy battle with her daughter-in-law.
Plenty of documents were included as evidence against Garvey, but there was very little to back them up. For example, a lengthy document from 2007 when Garvey had applied to become Megan’s guardian was included. In it were several highlighted sections of interviews with her daughter, Elaine, in which she said Gloria drinks heavily and gets mean when she does.
“There is no evidence to support that I’m a drinker,” Garvey said. She’s never been arrested for DUI, hospitalized or gone through rehabilitation, she said—so those statements, while presented in a very convincing manner, are pure hearsay.
“Plus, they’re taken from an interview with your daughter who at that time didn’t want you to take her daughter away from her,” Collins added. “Now she wants you to take care of [Megan]—so, what changed?”
The biggest strike against Garvey is a misdemeanor child-abuse case from 1995. She had the record expunged last year after it came up in regard to getting guardianship for Megan. Despite the expungement—which, legally, turns a conviction into a dismissal, removing the necessity to declare it a conviction—Children’s Services maintains the conviction and copies of a police report related to the incident as evidence against Garvey. Excerpts from the police report were read at the hearing and quoted a neighbor who said she saw Garvey hit her grandson with a slipper.
She vows, swears to God even, that she’s never harmed a child. And she maintains that she was never given a fair trial—that she was instructed to plead no contest to avoid jail time. She did that, but the misdemeanor has followed her like the plague.
“Most of the time what we see is someone who is poor or working class, and the justice system is out of reach for them,” Snider said. “Even people in the middle class cannot afford a lawyer.”
And that’s what it seems to come down to: money. The problem is that states receive funding based on the number of children in foster care and the number of those children who get adopted.
These financial incentives were created as part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 as an amendment to the Social Security Act in response to an outcry over so many children being in foster care throughout the United States. The way it works is that states qualify for funding when they approve more adoptions this year than they did last year. In 2008, the program was bolstered by the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which added incentives for adopting out special-needs children and those older than 9.
According to the Federal Grants Wire, the Adoption Incentives program, run through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, offers $4,000 per foster-child adoption (based on the number that exceed the number of adoptions the previous fiscal year). That amount goes up for children older than 9 to $8,000. In 2009, the federal government handed out $36.5 million in incentives to 43 states. In California, that number was $1.5 million—that’s money coming into the state to be used for foster and adoption programs, Adoption Day activities, and to improve state and county agencies. Put into perspective, if Megan gets adopted, she represents a possible $8,000, but if she’s reunified with her mother or taken into custody by her grandmother, that money is out of the picture.
“Even as the federal government doles out financial bounties rewarding the states for permanently destroying natural families, and adopting out their children, the evidence continues to mount that this is little more that another phony solution to the seemingly intractable problem of too many children being removed from their rightful homes,” reads a recent post from www.liftingtheveil.org, a website that has been dedicated to child-welfare matters for more than a decade.
“It’s my understanding that there’s a financial incentive to break apart families,” said Snider.
The Perrys are intent on pursuing legal avenues to get J. back to Dorothy. They’re awaiting a phone call from Disability Rights California. They also await word of a court date regarding adoption by the foster mother.
For Garvey, having Megan adopted out would be disastrous. Collins said she hoped that if Megan does get adopted at least she will maintain contact with her grandmother.
“I just love children,” Garvey said. “And I know that if my grandson were here, he would tell you I never hit him. I loved him.” Bradley, who was 5 in 1995, was adopted out, along with his two brothers, after their mother was unable to care for them. Garvey hasn’t seen any of them since.
She’s scared that’s what will happen with Megan—that she will be adopted by a family 500 miles away and her grandmother, who loves her dearly, will never see her again. To see the pain and fear in Garvey’s eyes when she imagines the worst-case scenario is heart-wrenching. Not only is Children’s Services trying to take her grandchild away, they’re trying to make a case that Megan doesn’t have a strong bond with her grandmother.
“She loves me, she loves her grandma,” Garvey pleads. “Nobody can take that away from me. Nobody.”
Reforming child removal
Reforming child removal - Guest Comment - Opinions - December 23, 2010 - Chico News & Review
This article was published on 12.23.10.
Reforming child removal
We can start by opening up court hearings
By Richard Wexler
The author is executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (www.nccpr.org), in Alexandria, Va.
Related stories:
Ripped apart at the seams
Two local families fight a losing battle against Children’s Services’ secretive system. CN&R, 12.16.10.
Thank you for telling the side of the child-welfare story we almost never hear and that too many reporters won’t report, because it’s so much harder than simply bashing all birth parents.
Our organization has compared the propensity of California counties to take children from their families. Of all counties large enough to measure, Butte is second worst, tearing apart families at a rate 70 percent above the state and national averages, and a rate far higher than other California counties that do a better job of keeping children safe. Details are on our website here: http://bit.ly/aVKEok.
That counties taking fewer children often keep children safer should come as no surprise. In addition to the enormous harm done to children when they are needlessly torn from everyone they know and love, all the time, money and effort wasted destroying these families is, in effect, stolen from finding those relatively few children in real danger who really do need to be taken from their homes.
And you’re right about those adoption bounties—except that, in some cases, states now can pull in $12,000 for every foster child adopted over a baseline number.
We suggest a number of solutions on our website, but for starters how about opening up court hearings to press and public in these cases, as more than a dozen other states have done? (No state has closed them again because none of the fears of opponents came to pass). A proposal to do that in California died a few years ago, in part because of strong opposition from the California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.
And this is an issue that crosses ideological lines. As you mention, the Pacific Justice Institute is conservative. My organization is best described as “the family-values Left”—we’re even funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. But we’re pleased to be working with Pacific Justice and a wide range of other groups on a case soon to come before the Supreme Court on interrogating children in child-abuse investigations.
Unfortunately, too many of my fellow liberals forget everything they’re supposed to believe about civil liberties as soon as someone whispers the words “child abuse” in their ears. And too many “family values” conservatives, like Newt Gingrich, think it’s a great idea to throw poor people’s children into orphanages.
This article was published on 12.23.10.
Reforming child removal
We can start by opening up court hearings
By Richard Wexler
The author is executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (www.nccpr.org), in Alexandria, Va.
Related stories:
Ripped apart at the seams
Two local families fight a losing battle against Children’s Services’ secretive system. CN&R, 12.16.10.
Thank you for telling the side of the child-welfare story we almost never hear and that too many reporters won’t report, because it’s so much harder than simply bashing all birth parents.
Our organization has compared the propensity of California counties to take children from their families. Of all counties large enough to measure, Butte is second worst, tearing apart families at a rate 70 percent above the state and national averages, and a rate far higher than other California counties that do a better job of keeping children safe. Details are on our website here: http://bit.ly/aVKEok.
That counties taking fewer children often keep children safer should come as no surprise. In addition to the enormous harm done to children when they are needlessly torn from everyone they know and love, all the time, money and effort wasted destroying these families is, in effect, stolen from finding those relatively few children in real danger who really do need to be taken from their homes.
And you’re right about those adoption bounties—except that, in some cases, states now can pull in $12,000 for every foster child adopted over a baseline number.
We suggest a number of solutions on our website, but for starters how about opening up court hearings to press and public in these cases, as more than a dozen other states have done? (No state has closed them again because none of the fears of opponents came to pass). A proposal to do that in California died a few years ago, in part because of strong opposition from the California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.
And this is an issue that crosses ideological lines. As you mention, the Pacific Justice Institute is conservative. My organization is best described as “the family-values Left”—we’re even funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. But we’re pleased to be working with Pacific Justice and a wide range of other groups on a case soon to come before the Supreme Court on interrogating children in child-abuse investigations.
Unfortunately, too many of my fellow liberals forget everything they’re supposed to believe about civil liberties as soon as someone whispers the words “child abuse” in their ears. And too many “family values” conservatives, like Newt Gingrich, think it’s a great idea to throw poor people’s children into orphanages.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
COURT WHORES - COURT WHORES
COURT WHORES - COURT WHORES: "COURT WHORES
Court Officials and their Accomplices who Sell Out
**Innocent Children**
to ABUSERS and MOLESTERS
for
PROFIT and POWER
========================
'I cannot tell a lie.'--President Abraham Lincoln, Attorney
Court Whores are liars and their lies harm children. We need more attorneys, judges and court officials like Abraham Lincoln.
The mission of this website is to expose Family Court officials and their Accomplices who cover up abuse and coerce children to live with parents who abuse or molest them. It is intended as a warning to anyone who is trying to protect children that the "professionals" listed here have been known or are believed to aid and abet abusive (especially sexually abusive) parents who have money and power to gain access to their victims.
These despicable Court Whores must be held accountable and Protective Parents and Child Advocates warned:
"Steer clear of these Court Whores who Steer cases to Abusers!"
If you know of any court-related officials who abuse their power
causing children to be placed with molesters and abusers,
please submit their names on the CONTACT page or email them to:
courtcriminals@yahoo.com
We will expose them here and hopefully save many innocent children.
The Blood of Countless Children is on the hands of these Court Whores
______________________
**This website is Dedicated to all the Children harmed by Court Whores**"
Court Officials and their Accomplices who Sell Out
**Innocent Children**
to ABUSERS and MOLESTERS
for
PROFIT and POWER
========================
'I cannot tell a lie.'--President Abraham Lincoln, Attorney
Court Whores are liars and their lies harm children. We need more attorneys, judges and court officials like Abraham Lincoln.
The mission of this website is to expose Family Court officials and their Accomplices who cover up abuse and coerce children to live with parents who abuse or molest them. It is intended as a warning to anyone who is trying to protect children that the "professionals" listed here have been known or are believed to aid and abet abusive (especially sexually abusive) parents who have money and power to gain access to their victims.
These despicable Court Whores must be held accountable and Protective Parents and Child Advocates warned:
"Steer clear of these Court Whores who Steer cases to Abusers!"
If you know of any court-related officials who abuse their power
causing children to be placed with molesters and abusers,
please submit their names on the CONTACT page or email them to:
courtcriminals@yahoo.com
We will expose them here and hopefully save many innocent children.
The Blood of Countless Children is on the hands of these Court Whores
______________________
**This website is Dedicated to all the Children harmed by Court Whores**"
Teachers to be trained in social work
Teachers to be trained in social work: "TEACHING students at La Trobe University will next year be able to study social work and student welfare as part of a new degree aimed at connecting troubled school students with the right help at the right time.
The Bachelor of Community Outreach is designed to help teaching professionals understand the students they teach and the support they may need to stay in school and thrive."
The Bachelor of Community Outreach is designed to help teaching professionals understand the students they teach and the support they may need to stay in school and thrive."
WikiLeaks Reveals (More) Foul Play in Pfizer Drug Case - Hartford Advocate
WikiLeaks Reveals (More) Foul Play in Pfizer Drug Case - Hartford Advocate: "Connecticut has been sucked into the controversy surrounding the WikiLeaks release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, and the reason is the legal and financial issues swirling around Pfizer’s controversial 1996 drug test on desperately ill children in Nigeria. One of those secret documents could result in new lawsuits in Connecticut, according to a lawyer in the case.
The world’s largest pharmaceutical company’s Groton-New London research facilities developed the drug Trovan used in the allegedly illegal test, which critics say resulted in death for at least 11 children stricken with meningitis and major injuries to others."
The world’s largest pharmaceutical company’s Groton-New London research facilities developed the drug Trovan used in the allegedly illegal test, which critics say resulted in death for at least 11 children stricken with meningitis and major injuries to others."
Child Welfare League of America: Advocacy
Child Welfare League of America: Advocacy
CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2010
S. 3817
Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act December 10. CAPTA was first passed in 1974 and was last reauthorized for five years under the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003. In late September 2010, Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Michael Enzi (R-WY), and Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the reauthorizing legislation (S. 3817).
In addition to CAPTA, this reauthorization bill encompasses the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978 (Adoption Opportunities), and the Abandoned Infants Assistance Act of 1988.
Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act: CAPTA is the only federal legislation exclusively targeting prevention, assessment, identification, and treatment of child abuse and neglect. It is also the only federal legislation providing for universal primary prevention of child abuse and neglect capacity building. See an in-depth summary of changes to CAPTA below.
Family Violence Prevention and Services Act: FVPSA is the only dedicated federal funding resource for emergency shelter, direct services, and assistance for victims of domestic violence and their dependent children, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The legislation includes three formula grants, one competitive grant, and small discretionary grant.
This reauthorization bill makes dating violence victims eligible for services, addresses systems collaboration by coordinating reporting data, includes resource centers focused on expanding access for underserved populations, creates a program for children exposed to domestic violence, makes improvements to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and strengthens confidentiality provisions.
Adoption Opportunities - A discretionary competitive grant program funding projects that eliminate barriers to adoption and promote permanent families through adoption for appropriate children. The legislation includes a national adoption information exchange system, adoption family recruitment, post-permanency services for adopted children with special needs, and other programs supporting child placement in kinship care, pre-adoptive, and adoptive homes. The reauthorization strengthens focus on minority and older children adoptions by reserving 30-50 percent of funding on key areas, including post-adoption support and recruitment efforts for older children, minority children and children with special needs.
Abandoned Infants Assistance Act - This act funds prevention and assistance programs that target infants abandoned in hospitals and churches and infants born with drug dependencies or HIV. It also includes preservation and foster family training for families of this population. The reauthorization bill strictly reauthorized this act.
CAPTA
Summary of New Provisions
The reauthorization bill targets improved child protection services systems, improved training programs for mandatory reporters and child workers, and enhanced service collaboration and interagency communication across systems. It does so by addressing the following topics in pertinent sections of the legislation:
Differential Response
Differential response allows greater flexibility in investigations and better emphasis on prevention, by offering more than one method of response to reports of abuse and neglect. This approach recognizes the variation in the nature of reports and the value of responding differently.
The bill adds differential response as an eligible use of state grants and requires states to identify "as applicable" policies and procedures around its use. The bill also requires HHS to disseminate information on differential response best practices. Furthermore, differential response is added as an eligible topic of research and personnel training under the discretionary grants.
Domestic Violence
CAPTA's findings are amended by recognizing the co-occurrence of child maltreatment and domestic violence. The bill then adds services for children exposed to domestic violence as an eligible expenditure under the state grants and requires states "where appropriate" to show procedures in place to address the co-occurrence of child maltreatment and domestic violence. The bill also requires HHS to disseminate information on effective programs and best practices that address this co-occurrence and ameliorate its negative effects. Discretionary grant programs providing research, training, and technical assistance are each amended to include domestic violence as an eligible target. Finally, services and treatment to children and their non-abusing caregiver are added to eligible CBCAP services.
Substance Abuse
Here again, CAPTA's findings are amended by recognizing the relationship between child maltreatment and substance abuse. Furthermore, the collaboration between substance abuse treatment services and maltreatment prevention services is promoted by including substance abuse as an eligible topic under the research, technical assistance, and program innovation discretionary grants.
Tribes
For the first time, tribes are recognized in CAPTA by including tribal representatives on the advisory board and, in that forum, treating tribes as states. Tribes are also eligible for discretionary grants, but not the basic state grants.
CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2010
S. 3817
Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act December 10. CAPTA was first passed in 1974 and was last reauthorized for five years under the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003. In late September 2010, Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Michael Enzi (R-WY), and Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the reauthorizing legislation (S. 3817).
In addition to CAPTA, this reauthorization bill encompasses the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978 (Adoption Opportunities), and the Abandoned Infants Assistance Act of 1988.
Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act: CAPTA is the only federal legislation exclusively targeting prevention, assessment, identification, and treatment of child abuse and neglect. It is also the only federal legislation providing for universal primary prevention of child abuse and neglect capacity building. See an in-depth summary of changes to CAPTA below.
Family Violence Prevention and Services Act: FVPSA is the only dedicated federal funding resource for emergency shelter, direct services, and assistance for victims of domestic violence and their dependent children, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The legislation includes three formula grants, one competitive grant, and small discretionary grant.
This reauthorization bill makes dating violence victims eligible for services, addresses systems collaboration by coordinating reporting data, includes resource centers focused on expanding access for underserved populations, creates a program for children exposed to domestic violence, makes improvements to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and strengthens confidentiality provisions.
Adoption Opportunities - A discretionary competitive grant program funding projects that eliminate barriers to adoption and promote permanent families through adoption for appropriate children. The legislation includes a national adoption information exchange system, adoption family recruitment, post-permanency services for adopted children with special needs, and other programs supporting child placement in kinship care, pre-adoptive, and adoptive homes. The reauthorization strengthens focus on minority and older children adoptions by reserving 30-50 percent of funding on key areas, including post-adoption support and recruitment efforts for older children, minority children and children with special needs.
Abandoned Infants Assistance Act - This act funds prevention and assistance programs that target infants abandoned in hospitals and churches and infants born with drug dependencies or HIV. It also includes preservation and foster family training for families of this population. The reauthorization bill strictly reauthorized this act.
CAPTA
Summary of New Provisions
The reauthorization bill targets improved child protection services systems, improved training programs for mandatory reporters and child workers, and enhanced service collaboration and interagency communication across systems. It does so by addressing the following topics in pertinent sections of the legislation:
Differential Response
Differential response allows greater flexibility in investigations and better emphasis on prevention, by offering more than one method of response to reports of abuse and neglect. This approach recognizes the variation in the nature of reports and the value of responding differently.
The bill adds differential response as an eligible use of state grants and requires states to identify "as applicable" policies and procedures around its use. The bill also requires HHS to disseminate information on differential response best practices. Furthermore, differential response is added as an eligible topic of research and personnel training under the discretionary grants.
Domestic Violence
CAPTA's findings are amended by recognizing the co-occurrence of child maltreatment and domestic violence. The bill then adds services for children exposed to domestic violence as an eligible expenditure under the state grants and requires states "where appropriate" to show procedures in place to address the co-occurrence of child maltreatment and domestic violence. The bill also requires HHS to disseminate information on effective programs and best practices that address this co-occurrence and ameliorate its negative effects. Discretionary grant programs providing research, training, and technical assistance are each amended to include domestic violence as an eligible target. Finally, services and treatment to children and their non-abusing caregiver are added to eligible CBCAP services.
Substance Abuse
Here again, CAPTA's findings are amended by recognizing the relationship between child maltreatment and substance abuse. Furthermore, the collaboration between substance abuse treatment services and maltreatment prevention services is promoted by including substance abuse as an eligible topic under the research, technical assistance, and program innovation discretionary grants.
Tribes
For the first time, tribes are recognized in CAPTA by including tribal representatives on the advisory board and, in that forum, treating tribes as states. Tribes are also eligible for discretionary grants, but not the basic state grants.
The Color of My Brain
The Color of My Brain
In southern America during the 1950s if they didn't like who you were or how
you lived, they came out in the night with sheets over their heads and simply
burned your house down so that you lose everything and must start over and
over again in trying to live your life. Today - they rake you over via an enduring
silent war in the form of legal abuse that drains you financially, ruins your career,
crafts you into a mentally ill person when you are not, then exploits emergency
procedures and archaic laws that prove nothing and drive you into stress in
every area of you life. All this in a twisted race to the courthouse or an unlawful
bending of the judge's ear. Quite frankly, I'd rather have my house burned down
so at least there is quite obvious and visible evidence of the wrong doing that
is plain for everyone to see and hard to look the other way on. As I sit in grief
among the rubble, trying to mourn all the loss, yet preserve my dignity, it is the
sense of liberty that gives rise to the adaptive power of anger and injustice. yes?
I know these are strong statements. However, I was told that 8 out of 10 cases
in the family court are run this way on strategic purpose: to economically drain
the disadvantaged person, any weakness found is to be exploited - and with no regard
for the children or their attachments to parties, peg someone as mentally ill or contrive
a crime or a contempt to get it to stick and so "win". Thus, one can rule the day in
their day in court. Well, and so it was in the 1950s there were separate lunch
counters and the "colored" folk had to sit at the back of the bus. Just because
that was how things were being run - on purpose - did not make it right. Nor
did it fail to ring a loud bell of civil fairness that imposed an equally loud trumpet
call for change within the hearts of those who would live free, and equally.
Just because there are some colorful people like me in family court that others
don't understand or even just don't like, or simply want to criminalize because
of mind you - not the color of my skin - rather, just the color of my brain -does
not make it right to ostracize us and burn our house down. Someone must put
a stop to it. There must be the power of one person, maybe someone like me,
who shall refuse to sit at the back of the bus of family court. So be it. So be me.
I am an injured person. I am not a stupid person. I understand dignity, civility,
respect and integrity. And there is no lack of courage in me. Do you see?
~ Patrice V. Livingston
August 2010
“Z” Dragon
“ART FROM A CHILD’S HEART”
original artwork by:
Jaxine LIvingston Wolfe
(c) 2009
In southern America during the 1950s if they didn't like who you were or how
you lived, they came out in the night with sheets over their heads and simply
burned your house down so that you lose everything and must start over and
over again in trying to live your life. Today - they rake you over via an enduring
silent war in the form of legal abuse that drains you financially, ruins your career,
crafts you into a mentally ill person when you are not, then exploits emergency
procedures and archaic laws that prove nothing and drive you into stress in
every area of you life. All this in a twisted race to the courthouse or an unlawful
bending of the judge's ear. Quite frankly, I'd rather have my house burned down
so at least there is quite obvious and visible evidence of the wrong doing that
is plain for everyone to see and hard to look the other way on. As I sit in grief
among the rubble, trying to mourn all the loss, yet preserve my dignity, it is the
sense of liberty that gives rise to the adaptive power of anger and injustice. yes?
I know these are strong statements. However, I was told that 8 out of 10 cases
in the family court are run this way on strategic purpose: to economically drain
the disadvantaged person, any weakness found is to be exploited - and with no regard
for the children or their attachments to parties, peg someone as mentally ill or contrive
a crime or a contempt to get it to stick and so "win". Thus, one can rule the day in
their day in court. Well, and so it was in the 1950s there were separate lunch
counters and the "colored" folk had to sit at the back of the bus. Just because
that was how things were being run - on purpose - did not make it right. Nor
did it fail to ring a loud bell of civil fairness that imposed an equally loud trumpet
call for change within the hearts of those who would live free, and equally.
Just because there are some colorful people like me in family court that others
don't understand or even just don't like, or simply want to criminalize because
of mind you - not the color of my skin - rather, just the color of my brain -does
not make it right to ostracize us and burn our house down. Someone must put
a stop to it. There must be the power of one person, maybe someone like me,
who shall refuse to sit at the back of the bus of family court. So be it. So be me.
I am an injured person. I am not a stupid person. I understand dignity, civility,
respect and integrity. And there is no lack of courage in me. Do you see?
~ Patrice V. Livingston
August 2010
“Z” Dragon
“ART FROM A CHILD’S HEART”
original artwork by:
Jaxine LIvingston Wolfe
(c) 2009
Advocates: Foster Kids Over-Medicated
Advocates: Foster Kids Over-Medicated
ATLANTA —
Half of Georgia’s teenagers in foster care are taking one psychotropic drug. And one in three are on anti-psychotic medication. That’s according to data the state collected in 2009. (photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Advocates for children say Georgia’s foster kids are over-medicated. A bill that’s already been filed would establish oversight on how much the children are prescribed.
Half of Georgia’s teenagers in foster care are taking one psychotropic drug like anti-depressants. And one in three are on anti-psychotic medication. That’s according to data the state collected in 2009 says Melissa Carter with the Barton Child Law and Policy Center at Emory University.
"Children in custody because of behavior management issues are really over-prescribed a lot of medication . So it costs the state a lot of money in Medicaid billings,"says Carter, "and of course it’s not the right quality of care for the children who are in state custody."
Carter says new legislation would provide independent oversight of the process, establish guidelines for the use of the drugs, and change how treatment is signed off on. One change would be to give case managers access to a psychiatrist before they approve treatment.
She says other states who have reformed their process have seen tens of millions of dollars in savings to the Medicaid program.
ATLANTA —
Half of Georgia’s teenagers in foster care are taking one psychotropic drug. And one in three are on anti-psychotic medication. That’s according to data the state collected in 2009. (photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Advocates for children say Georgia’s foster kids are over-medicated. A bill that’s already been filed would establish oversight on how much the children are prescribed.
Half of Georgia’s teenagers in foster care are taking one psychotropic drug like anti-depressants. And one in three are on anti-psychotic medication. That’s according to data the state collected in 2009 says Melissa Carter with the Barton Child Law and Policy Center at Emory University.
"Children in custody because of behavior management issues are really over-prescribed a lot of medication . So it costs the state a lot of money in Medicaid billings,"says Carter, "and of course it’s not the right quality of care for the children who are in state custody."
Carter says new legislation would provide independent oversight of the process, establish guidelines for the use of the drugs, and change how treatment is signed off on. One change would be to give case managers access to a psychiatrist before they approve treatment.
She says other states who have reformed their process have seen tens of millions of dollars in savings to the Medicaid program.
Thanks to my readers – regarding last night’s BS « I Was A Foster Kid
Thanks to my readers – regarding last night’s BS « I Was A Foster Kid
Thanks to my readers – regarding last night’s BS
December 29, 2010
i came to the library this morning and was surprised to see several posts by a Tara Little. they were hurtful and filled with anger and hate towards me. they insulted me and my blog. ironically this Tara did not even read alot of my blog and made several accusations about me and the foster care system.
i want to thank my readers who logged on last night, for your responses in support of my blog and especially the FOSTER KIDS that responded.
i deleted Tara Little’s comments (and her other alias), because i did not want them on my blog.
Now, i may be stupid and i may have a learning disability, but guess what….
over a year of blogging has taught me some stuff about computers…Tara…
….you know, when you leave a comment on a blog, it also leaves an IP Address
which is like a fingerprint.
and shit, did you know that you can look up those IP addresses to see where they come from….
….so fucking cool. LOL
.
that behavior was not very nice…. from a so-called foster parent — Jxxx er, i mean Tara….
hope the weather is nice in Missouri. …. and yes, those fingerprints give exact cities/towns/etc.
don’t you think 2 sets of attacks on my blog in less than a week from you is enough? find something better to do with your time, and leave my blog alone.
.
and if you are truly a foster parent…you proved my point……… not all of them are “good.”
.
your comments hurt me at first, but the truth is, my story is real. and if you had read any of my blog, you would see throughout is spread advice to foster parents and messages and suggestions for reform. and yes, alot of my pain and frustration trying to figure out life…
i never had the foster parents you wrote about. i grew up in a state with a notoriously bad foster care system. but i am not alone. there are thousands of foster kids like me…look at the statistics. they do not lie. i also suffered severe abuse. my biofather beat the crap out of me, raped me for years, and then stabbed me….and went to prison. the story made the news and i could give you his name and he is a registered offender for life and on life-time parole. put foster care and severe abuse in childhood together and what you get is what i write about.
foster care is so variable, the children in care are so variable, experiences are so variable.
to insult me and my life story is an attempt to hide the truth. so go away.
the point of this blog is to open people’s eyes up to the failing of the foster care system, to make suggestions for reform and changes, to help people involved in the system learn from “a child’s point of view,” and to let me write about my life and feelings. if you don’t like it, don’t read it. find another blog to bother.
.
.
Anyway, readers i am off to cool down, see Dr. Val and maybe i will return to the library to write later.
peace.
Thanks to my readers – regarding last night’s BS
December 29, 2010
i came to the library this morning and was surprised to see several posts by a Tara Little. they were hurtful and filled with anger and hate towards me. they insulted me and my blog. ironically this Tara did not even read alot of my blog and made several accusations about me and the foster care system.
i want to thank my readers who logged on last night, for your responses in support of my blog and especially the FOSTER KIDS that responded.
i deleted Tara Little’s comments (and her other alias), because i did not want them on my blog.
Now, i may be stupid and i may have a learning disability, but guess what….
over a year of blogging has taught me some stuff about computers…Tara…
….you know, when you leave a comment on a blog, it also leaves an IP Address
which is like a fingerprint.
and shit, did you know that you can look up those IP addresses to see where they come from….
….so fucking cool. LOL
.
that behavior was not very nice…. from a so-called foster parent — Jxxx er, i mean Tara….
hope the weather is nice in Missouri. …. and yes, those fingerprints give exact cities/towns/etc.
don’t you think 2 sets of attacks on my blog in less than a week from you is enough? find something better to do with your time, and leave my blog alone.
.
and if you are truly a foster parent…you proved my point……… not all of them are “good.”
.
your comments hurt me at first, but the truth is, my story is real. and if you had read any of my blog, you would see throughout is spread advice to foster parents and messages and suggestions for reform. and yes, alot of my pain and frustration trying to figure out life…
i never had the foster parents you wrote about. i grew up in a state with a notoriously bad foster care system. but i am not alone. there are thousands of foster kids like me…look at the statistics. they do not lie. i also suffered severe abuse. my biofather beat the crap out of me, raped me for years, and then stabbed me….and went to prison. the story made the news and i could give you his name and he is a registered offender for life and on life-time parole. put foster care and severe abuse in childhood together and what you get is what i write about.
foster care is so variable, the children in care are so variable, experiences are so variable.
to insult me and my life story is an attempt to hide the truth. so go away.
the point of this blog is to open people’s eyes up to the failing of the foster care system, to make suggestions for reform and changes, to help people involved in the system learn from “a child’s point of view,” and to let me write about my life and feelings. if you don’t like it, don’t read it. find another blog to bother.
.
.
Anyway, readers i am off to cool down, see Dr. Val and maybe i will return to the library to write later.
peace.
Edited Message to Nashua, NH DCYF Supervisor Tracey Gubbins
To the one and only Tracey Gubbins who thinks she runs the Nashua office. After going through more of my daughter's paperwork, which was never included in the file sent by her caseworker, I found some very interesting paper's, signed by you.
The case plan for December 7,2005 states my daughter "Will participate in a medical detoxification program", for methadone detox, "Immediately".
My question is: How could she participate in a medical detox program when there was no such program in the state of NH? A program that was cut from the budget by your Boss, former DHHS Commissioner John Stephen? Don't tell me you NEVER got the memo? Did you lead her caseworker, Kris Geno (now owner of RTT Associates in Manchester)to believe there was such a program in NH, or was she in on the fraud also? I'm sure she got the memo also, as well as all your baby stealer's did. You even led Judge Tenney to believe there was a medical detox program in NH. Therefore he court-ordered my daughter into a medical detox program December 7,2005 at the Dispositional Hearing. I'm sure he would love to hear how you pulled the wool over his eyes and got your caseworker to lie in court, or was he in on the deception also?
Something else I found, which I and many other's were witness to:Case Plan for March 29,2006, again signed off by you;On February 23,2006 the division received a call from Odyssey House, where you decided to send my daughter and her baby because you don't won't young mother's getting help from their parent's. They advised my daughter had to be off the methadone by March 8,2006 and brought to Odyssey. Also stated, the division immediately contacted my daughter and advised her that she needed to contact her physician to make arrangements for medical detox. This never happened and there is NO paperwork in her file confirming it. Her caseworker told her she was trying to find her medical detox, as she was the one who guaranteed she would get her into medical detox when it came time to get into Odyssey House. That was back in December of 2005 when my daughter wanted to start detoxing on her own, but was forbidden to do so by her caseworker, stating it would be too dangerous. If Kris Geno had really been trying to find her medical detox, wouldn't have all the call's she supposedly made on by daughter's behalf, been in the phone log's in her file? There wasn't even one. I called everywhere in the state myself, only to be told ALL medical detox had been cut from the budget.
So now she's given thirteen days to detox on her own, which is now even more dangerous due to her diagnosis of Sheehan Syndrome, after her pituitary gland hemorrage during the birth of her stolen daughter. Thirteen day's, even after Kris Geno's call log show's she spoke to Joanne Ukraine from Odyssey House, who told her it takes at least six month's to detox anyone off methadone. If you were any kind of a human being, who was REALLY working toward reunification, you would have allowed her to go to Massachusetts for medical detox, but that was totally out of the question even though I had already set everything up. And why would you let her go to Mass.? It would mean she and her daughter would be back together and you would lose your sacred incentive money. So you screwed her over some more. By this time we shouldn't have been surprised. So did you put your caseworker up to this one also?
The date for Odyssey was changed to March 30,2006 as my daughter couldn't detox that quickly. It would have killed her, but isn't that what you were hoping for? Get her out of the way and adopt out her newborn? You and the rest of the baby stealer's in the state must have thought that would be the end of it. Did you really think I would stop this fight? Has anyone else ever stood up to your deceitful practices in the stealing of their children or grandchildren?
You sent your Kris Geno into court and had her lie to Judge Leary. She told him my daughter was not showing up for drug tests, her doses weren't going down and the methadone levels weren't going down. Her visits had even been canceled with her daughter throughout the month of March because she was still on Methadone, legally. If she wasn't going for drug test's, how did the Kris know the doses and levels weren't going down? Why didn't Judge Leary ask that question? I'm sure he'd love to know how you pulled the wool over his eyes also. That is unless he was also in on the illegal kidnapping. Is he even aware that your DCYF psychic Lawyer Kate McClure committed perjury in order to place by granddaughter in foster care instead of with her family? I'm sure he is aware seeing how my daughter and myself have been denied the recording from that hearing in court, for the last five year's. The court is helping Kate McClure hide her dirty little secret. But YOU are the one who put her up to it. She work's for YOU and the state!
If my daughter's files had been given to her sooner, we would have known much earlier how she was being screwed over again. I have in my possession all drug test's from the month of March 2006 that show the levels and methadone doses were going down. I also have the caseworker's call logs, which show the Kris was calling the Methadone clinic every day checking on her doses. March 29,2006, before the court hearing she went for her last dose of 5 mg. Because of Kris's lie, which I'm sure you put her up to, my daughter was not allowed to go to Odyssey House.
Are you also the one that told Kris to give the court a fictitious mans name as my granddaughters father? You must be aware that she was illegally adopted. Are you also the one who told Kris to tell my daughter not to tell anyone that her daughter is half Dominican? Is that because white children are worth more to you? Then you deny me a foster care license because I fight for my families rights and won't lie for you. I would die for my family. They mean more to me than life itself. Something none of you at DCYF know anything about. All you care about is money, NOT family!
So I hope you like my letter. I'm sure everyone else will and I will be forwarding it everywhere. My daughter and my family have now lost five year's of our lives which we could have been spending with our precious granddaughter, thank's to you and your deceitful practices and the corruption within the Nashua office. Because of your lies, my grandson tried to hang himself and is now on psychiatric medication for violent behavior. We practically raised him, but we weren't allowed to raise him because of your lies in the home study. A home study that was NEVER completed that took ten month's , instead of the norm of six month's. An incomplete home study that you signed, after one of your worker's admitted you were the one that screwed us over, which I already knew.
You need to go and the Nashua office needs to be shut down. I heard the Nashua office has more complaints filed against them than any other office in the state. Could the reason be because of you? Because you think you run the office, not the person who is really supposed to be in charge, Geraldo Pilarski? The head of the Nashua office who told me DCYF would NOT make the same mistake twice, after the illegal kidnapping of my granddaughter, after I gave him all my proof of deception. But it did happen again, even though he know's how crooked you are. I thought he wasn't going to watch your back? And you've sold off my drugged up grandson also, after we were told he would be with us. My grandson, whose father's right's were NEVER terminated. This seem's to be the norm in Nashua. Terminate the wrong man's right's so you don't have to spend your bonus money looking for the REAL father. You wouldn't have had to look far. You had all his information. You even had his address and phone number, but you chose someone twenty year's younger with the same name!
My fight will go on for as long as it takes to get my grandchildren back. You can blame yourself for the fight I am giving this state. My grandchildren are worth more than any amount of money. Unlike you I DO look out for the best interests of my children and grandchildren. They are worth more to me than all your incentive money!
The case plan for December 7,2005 states my daughter "Will participate in a medical detoxification program", for methadone detox, "Immediately".
My question is: How could she participate in a medical detox program when there was no such program in the state of NH? A program that was cut from the budget by your Boss, former DHHS Commissioner John Stephen? Don't tell me you NEVER got the memo? Did you lead her caseworker, Kris Geno (now owner of RTT Associates in Manchester)to believe there was such a program in NH, or was she in on the fraud also? I'm sure she got the memo also, as well as all your baby stealer's did. You even led Judge Tenney to believe there was a medical detox program in NH. Therefore he court-ordered my daughter into a medical detox program December 7,2005 at the Dispositional Hearing. I'm sure he would love to hear how you pulled the wool over his eyes and got your caseworker to lie in court, or was he in on the deception also?
Something else I found, which I and many other's were witness to:Case Plan for March 29,2006, again signed off by you;On February 23,2006 the division received a call from Odyssey House, where you decided to send my daughter and her baby because you don't won't young mother's getting help from their parent's. They advised my daughter had to be off the methadone by March 8,2006 and brought to Odyssey. Also stated, the division immediately contacted my daughter and advised her that she needed to contact her physician to make arrangements for medical detox. This never happened and there is NO paperwork in her file confirming it. Her caseworker told her she was trying to find her medical detox, as she was the one who guaranteed she would get her into medical detox when it came time to get into Odyssey House. That was back in December of 2005 when my daughter wanted to start detoxing on her own, but was forbidden to do so by her caseworker, stating it would be too dangerous. If Kris Geno had really been trying to find her medical detox, wouldn't have all the call's she supposedly made on by daughter's behalf, been in the phone log's in her file? There wasn't even one. I called everywhere in the state myself, only to be told ALL medical detox had been cut from the budget.
So now she's given thirteen days to detox on her own, which is now even more dangerous due to her diagnosis of Sheehan Syndrome, after her pituitary gland hemorrage during the birth of her stolen daughter. Thirteen day's, even after Kris Geno's call log show's she spoke to Joanne Ukraine from Odyssey House, who told her it takes at least six month's to detox anyone off methadone. If you were any kind of a human being, who was REALLY working toward reunification, you would have allowed her to go to Massachusetts for medical detox, but that was totally out of the question even though I had already set everything up. And why would you let her go to Mass.? It would mean she and her daughter would be back together and you would lose your sacred incentive money. So you screwed her over some more. By this time we shouldn't have been surprised. So did you put your caseworker up to this one also?
The date for Odyssey was changed to March 30,2006 as my daughter couldn't detox that quickly. It would have killed her, but isn't that what you were hoping for? Get her out of the way and adopt out her newborn? You and the rest of the baby stealer's in the state must have thought that would be the end of it. Did you really think I would stop this fight? Has anyone else ever stood up to your deceitful practices in the stealing of their children or grandchildren?
You sent your Kris Geno into court and had her lie to Judge Leary. She told him my daughter was not showing up for drug tests, her doses weren't going down and the methadone levels weren't going down. Her visits had even been canceled with her daughter throughout the month of March because she was still on Methadone, legally. If she wasn't going for drug test's, how did the Kris know the doses and levels weren't going down? Why didn't Judge Leary ask that question? I'm sure he'd love to know how you pulled the wool over his eyes also. That is unless he was also in on the illegal kidnapping. Is he even aware that your DCYF psychic Lawyer Kate McClure committed perjury in order to place by granddaughter in foster care instead of with her family? I'm sure he is aware seeing how my daughter and myself have been denied the recording from that hearing in court, for the last five year's. The court is helping Kate McClure hide her dirty little secret. But YOU are the one who put her up to it. She work's for YOU and the state!
If my daughter's files had been given to her sooner, we would have known much earlier how she was being screwed over again. I have in my possession all drug test's from the month of March 2006 that show the levels and methadone doses were going down. I also have the caseworker's call logs, which show the Kris was calling the Methadone clinic every day checking on her doses. March 29,2006, before the court hearing she went for her last dose of 5 mg. Because of Kris's lie, which I'm sure you put her up to, my daughter was not allowed to go to Odyssey House.
Are you also the one that told Kris to give the court a fictitious mans name as my granddaughters father? You must be aware that she was illegally adopted. Are you also the one who told Kris to tell my daughter not to tell anyone that her daughter is half Dominican? Is that because white children are worth more to you? Then you deny me a foster care license because I fight for my families rights and won't lie for you. I would die for my family. They mean more to me than life itself. Something none of you at DCYF know anything about. All you care about is money, NOT family!
So I hope you like my letter. I'm sure everyone else will and I will be forwarding it everywhere. My daughter and my family have now lost five year's of our lives which we could have been spending with our precious granddaughter, thank's to you and your deceitful practices and the corruption within the Nashua office. Because of your lies, my grandson tried to hang himself and is now on psychiatric medication for violent behavior. We practically raised him, but we weren't allowed to raise him because of your lies in the home study. A home study that was NEVER completed that took ten month's , instead of the norm of six month's. An incomplete home study that you signed, after one of your worker's admitted you were the one that screwed us over, which I already knew.
You need to go and the Nashua office needs to be shut down. I heard the Nashua office has more complaints filed against them than any other office in the state. Could the reason be because of you? Because you think you run the office, not the person who is really supposed to be in charge, Geraldo Pilarski? The head of the Nashua office who told me DCYF would NOT make the same mistake twice, after the illegal kidnapping of my granddaughter, after I gave him all my proof of deception. But it did happen again, even though he know's how crooked you are. I thought he wasn't going to watch your back? And you've sold off my drugged up grandson also, after we were told he would be with us. My grandson, whose father's right's were NEVER terminated. This seem's to be the norm in Nashua. Terminate the wrong man's right's so you don't have to spend your bonus money looking for the REAL father. You wouldn't have had to look far. You had all his information. You even had his address and phone number, but you chose someone twenty year's younger with the same name!
My fight will go on for as long as it takes to get my grandchildren back. You can blame yourself for the fight I am giving this state. My grandchildren are worth more than any amount of money. Unlike you I DO look out for the best interests of my children and grandchildren. They are worth more to me than all your incentive money!
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Youth Today-States Starting to Move on Federal Guardianship, Foster Care-to-21 Programs
Of course New Hampshire hasn't submitted a plan, because they don't believe in Guardianship by family member's or anyone else. Their too greedy. All they want is incentive money for their illegal adoption's.
Youth Today: "More than a year after passage of a law intended to give more support to youths aging out of foster care, the federal government is now pushing states to participate in two programs that promote guardianship placements and extension of foster care until age 21.
The two programs were included in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which was signed into law in October of 2009 and allows for two new uses of federal IV-E funds, a large federal entitlement that matches state expenditures for child welfare services. One allows states to use federal IV-E funds to help pay for a guardianship assistance program (GAP); the other enables states to use IV-E money on young adults up to the age of 21"
Youth Today: "More than a year after passage of a law intended to give more support to youths aging out of foster care, the federal government is now pushing states to participate in two programs that promote guardianship placements and extension of foster care until age 21.
The two programs were included in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which was signed into law in October of 2009 and allows for two new uses of federal IV-E funds, a large federal entitlement that matches state expenditures for child welfare services. One allows states to use federal IV-E funds to help pay for a guardianship assistance program (GAP); the other enables states to use IV-E money on young adults up to the age of 21"
If the foster care system was a teacher, what would it TEACH long-term foster kids? « I Was A Foster Kid
If the foster care system was a teacher, what would it TEACH long-term foster kids? « I Was A Foster Kid
1. Younger is better, whiter is better, and lets put those with special needs in “specialized care.”
.
2. You will most likely stay at least 2 years…so don’t think you are going HOME any time soon.
3. You are not important and your feelings do not matter.
We move you “just because.”
We don’t answer your phone calls; and never check voice mail.
We don’t check in on you like we are supposed to; because we are too busy.
We split up bio-siblings.
When we move you, instead of talking about your feelings, we take you to McDonalds or Dairy Queen so that you can eat your pain away; afterall, food is a great comforter.
We move your “stuff” in trash bags and boxes; afterall you are no better than that…right?
Lies are part of life. We lie because we dont know the answer. We lie because we dont want to give you the answer. We lie because well, you dont deserve the truth…you are a kid.
We talk about you in court and in the sessions before court like you are NOT there.
We ask your opinion and it goes in one ear and out the other…because we already made the decision.
.
4. The longer you stick around, the more you are unwanted, unwelcome, and unworthy.
.
.
5. You are not worthy of or deserving of good health care, good dental care, or a good education.
If no providers are available that take Medicaid, oh well…
We move you around schools without any thought regarding the disruption in your education. We don’t care if you learn, really….we just have to find a placement.
Crap, where are your school records? Hold on. We will get them.. it should only take a month for you to be able to register in your new school. Really, does it matter? — you are so far behind anyway!
It doesn’t matter if you were doing well with THAT therapist … we just have to find a placement.
Dentist? what is that?
You can’t see? Squint harder…
.
.
6. Once TPR happens, you are NOBODY’S CHILD.
There is a small shot in hell you will become “somebody’s child” if you are older than 5 years old; no-one wants older kids.
You have NO parents — you have the state.
If your parents are available, we will allow you one last goodbye visit. Anyone see how fucked up this is?
If your parents are not available, all the better. Prison great! Abandonment great! Your parents are lost and who cares about one last visit.
We won’t try to keep any photos or mementos for you when you get older. We dont have the time to try and help explain your life.
Placements get harder to find, so we just give you to anyone…anyone…yup, anyone! (until they get caught)
.
7. As you age and get more scared and more sad….. you get more hated and more feared. Teens, oh god! What do we do with them?… Since no one wants them, throw them into group homes; let them learn to survive since they will be out on the streets shortly anyway.
.
8. If you are not a foster care “success” through reunification or adoption, we don’t care about the failures.
We kick you out with nothing; many without a highschool degree.
We do not have enough ILPs.
We force you to go to another agency to help or save you – like Covenant House or shelters.
Once you are out and on the streets — we don’t “see you,” even when you knock on our door for help.
You aren’t really OUR problem.
We wont give you your foster care records. Some are confidential under social service laws, some are lost, some it takes years of red tape, some require legal battles…. ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS OF MY LIFE…….shouldn’t they be mine?
.
.
9. … after all it is YOUR fault for never getting a family — you should have been better behaved, less problematic, cuter, displayed less acting-out … you see no-body really wants you and you blew it.
Great lessons to be taught… eh?
1. Younger is better, whiter is better, and lets put those with special needs in “specialized care.”
.
2. You will most likely stay at least 2 years…so don’t think you are going HOME any time soon.
3. You are not important and your feelings do not matter.
We move you “just because.”
We don’t answer your phone calls; and never check voice mail.
We don’t check in on you like we are supposed to; because we are too busy.
We split up bio-siblings.
When we move you, instead of talking about your feelings, we take you to McDonalds or Dairy Queen so that you can eat your pain away; afterall, food is a great comforter.
We move your “stuff” in trash bags and boxes; afterall you are no better than that…right?
Lies are part of life. We lie because we dont know the answer. We lie because we dont want to give you the answer. We lie because well, you dont deserve the truth…you are a kid.
We talk about you in court and in the sessions before court like you are NOT there.
We ask your opinion and it goes in one ear and out the other…because we already made the decision.
.
4. The longer you stick around, the more you are unwanted, unwelcome, and unworthy.
.
.
5. You are not worthy of or deserving of good health care, good dental care, or a good education.
If no providers are available that take Medicaid, oh well…
We move you around schools without any thought regarding the disruption in your education. We don’t care if you learn, really….we just have to find a placement.
Crap, where are your school records? Hold on. We will get them.. it should only take a month for you to be able to register in your new school. Really, does it matter? — you are so far behind anyway!
It doesn’t matter if you were doing well with THAT therapist … we just have to find a placement.
Dentist? what is that?
You can’t see? Squint harder…
.
.
6. Once TPR happens, you are NOBODY’S CHILD.
There is a small shot in hell you will become “somebody’s child” if you are older than 5 years old; no-one wants older kids.
You have NO parents — you have the state.
If your parents are available, we will allow you one last goodbye visit. Anyone see how fucked up this is?
If your parents are not available, all the better. Prison great! Abandonment great! Your parents are lost and who cares about one last visit.
We won’t try to keep any photos or mementos for you when you get older. We dont have the time to try and help explain your life.
Placements get harder to find, so we just give you to anyone…anyone…yup, anyone! (until they get caught)
.
7. As you age and get more scared and more sad….. you get more hated and more feared. Teens, oh god! What do we do with them?… Since no one wants them, throw them into group homes; let them learn to survive since they will be out on the streets shortly anyway.
.
8. If you are not a foster care “success” through reunification or adoption, we don’t care about the failures.
We kick you out with nothing; many without a highschool degree.
We do not have enough ILPs.
We force you to go to another agency to help or save you – like Covenant House or shelters.
Once you are out and on the streets — we don’t “see you,” even when you knock on our door for help.
You aren’t really OUR problem.
We wont give you your foster care records. Some are confidential under social service laws, some are lost, some it takes years of red tape, some require legal battles…. ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS OF MY LIFE…….shouldn’t they be mine?
.
.
9. … after all it is YOUR fault for never getting a family — you should have been better behaved, less problematic, cuter, displayed less acting-out … you see no-body really wants you and you blew it.
Great lessons to be taught… eh?
CPS worker arrested for child porn, social services commish arrested for dwi - Albany CPS and Family Court | Examiner.com
CPS worker arrested for child porn, social services commish arrested for dwi - Albany CPS and Family Court | Examiner.com
The Observer Dispatch out of Utica, New York recently reported the arrest of a Child Protective Services investigator, who was also a cop for twenty years, for allegedly possessing child porn.
Says the OD, "An Oneida County employee responsible for investigating child abuse cases appeared in federal court Tuesday on felony child pornography charges.
Stanley Dorozynski, a Child Protective Services case worker who is also a former Utica police officer, is charged with receiving and possessing child pornography, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Syracuse."
Meanwhile several newspapers in the Montgomery County area reported yesterday and the day before the arrest of Montgomery County Social Services Commissioner, William M. Cranker, for dwi. According to one report, Cranker had a blood alcohol content of .0.18. As Social Services Commissioner, Cranker oversees Child Protective Services, Child Preventive Services and Adult Protective Services.
Commentary on Cranker's arrest can be found here.
The Observer Dispatch out of Utica, New York recently reported the arrest of a Child Protective Services investigator, who was also a cop for twenty years, for allegedly possessing child porn.
Says the OD, "An Oneida County employee responsible for investigating child abuse cases appeared in federal court Tuesday on felony child pornography charges.
Stanley Dorozynski, a Child Protective Services case worker who is also a former Utica police officer, is charged with receiving and possessing child pornography, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Syracuse."
Meanwhile several newspapers in the Montgomery County area reported yesterday and the day before the arrest of Montgomery County Social Services Commissioner, William M. Cranker, for dwi. According to one report, Cranker had a blood alcohol content of .0.18. As Social Services Commissioner, Cranker oversees Child Protective Services, Child Preventive Services and Adult Protective Services.
Commentary on Cranker's arrest can be found here.
Child Abuse investigator charged with child pornography - National Child Welfare | Examiner.com
Child Abuse investigator charged with child pornography - National Child Welfare | Examiner.com
It’s sad when the a person whom you assume to have the best interests of the children at heart turn out to be quite the opposite.
An Oneida County Child Protective Services case worker has been released on his own recognizance while he faces pending charges of possessing child pornography, according to federal court documents.
The conditions of his release include:
Participating in a home confinement program, which will include electronic monitoring and a daily curfew from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Must not possess any computer with online capabilities or use any Internet site without court approval.
Stay away from places where anyone younger than 18 are likely to gather, including schools, parks and arcades, and must not have any direct contact with a person younger than 18.
On Tuesday, Dorozynski was charged in federal court with receiving and possessing child pornography after law enforcement officials searched Dorozynski’s Frankfort home earlier this week. His former girlfriend alerted authorities after her daughters told her that they had seen Dorozynski watching videos of naked girls on his computer. The girlfriend searched the computer when Dorozynski was not home and found sites related to child pornography. She then searched a trunk that he kept locked and found hard drives containing what appeared to be child pornography.
Dorozynski was a Utica police officer from 1980 until he retired in July 2000. He then became a county child protective services caseworker in 2008, where he was responsible for investigating child abuse cases.
The case will be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
If convicted of the felony charges, Dorozynski faces a minimum of five years and a maximum of 20 years in federal prison, fines of up to $250,000 and a minimum of five years of supervised release. He also would be required to register as a sex offender, the release stated.
It makes you wonder what kind of person who sees firsthand the damage abuse does to children and whose job is to investigate, can also be a part of the problem.
**********
By the time you finish reading this article 2-3 children will have suffered abuse in the United States. Within the next hour 166 children will have suffered abuse or neglect. By the time you go to bed tonight, this number will have reached close to 4000. Out of those 4000, 4 children will die at the hands of their abusers. These statistics are outrageous, but show that we need to be the voices for these children. If you suspect child abuse, please report it. Protect our children!
It’s sad when the a person whom you assume to have the best interests of the children at heart turn out to be quite the opposite.
An Oneida County Child Protective Services case worker has been released on his own recognizance while he faces pending charges of possessing child pornography, according to federal court documents.
The conditions of his release include:
Participating in a home confinement program, which will include electronic monitoring and a daily curfew from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Must not possess any computer with online capabilities or use any Internet site without court approval.
Stay away from places where anyone younger than 18 are likely to gather, including schools, parks and arcades, and must not have any direct contact with a person younger than 18.
On Tuesday, Dorozynski was charged in federal court with receiving and possessing child pornography after law enforcement officials searched Dorozynski’s Frankfort home earlier this week. His former girlfriend alerted authorities after her daughters told her that they had seen Dorozynski watching videos of naked girls on his computer. The girlfriend searched the computer when Dorozynski was not home and found sites related to child pornography. She then searched a trunk that he kept locked and found hard drives containing what appeared to be child pornography.
Dorozynski was a Utica police officer from 1980 until he retired in July 2000. He then became a county child protective services caseworker in 2008, where he was responsible for investigating child abuse cases.
The case will be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
If convicted of the felony charges, Dorozynski faces a minimum of five years and a maximum of 20 years in federal prison, fines of up to $250,000 and a minimum of five years of supervised release. He also would be required to register as a sex offender, the release stated.
It makes you wonder what kind of person who sees firsthand the damage abuse does to children and whose job is to investigate, can also be a part of the problem.
**********
By the time you finish reading this article 2-3 children will have suffered abuse in the United States. Within the next hour 166 children will have suffered abuse or neglect. By the time you go to bed tonight, this number will have reached close to 4000. Out of those 4000, 4 children will die at the hands of their abusers. These statistics are outrageous, but show that we need to be the voices for these children. If you suspect child abuse, please report it. Protect our children!
Bill gives grandparents priority in custody cases
What about New Hampshire and all the other states?
Bill gives grandparents priority in custody cases
A bill prefiled in the South Carolina legislature would give grandparents and other immediate family members a higher priority in child custody cases.
Rep. Rita Allison (R-Spartanburg) has sponsored a bill that would change how family courts determine the fate of children who no longer have a parent to take care of them. The legislation would require the courts to give priority to grandparents and other family members in an adoption case.
In South Carolina, the only priorities in child custody cases right now is the child’s preference and if the person or agency has a similar religious background. Theoretically, if a child’s parents die or are jailed, family members would be considered equals in family court with any other qualified candidate who wanted the child.
Allison says she’s heard from several grandparents concerned about the current laws for family court.
Let’s just say there was somebody else who wanted to adopt the children, grandparents wouldn’t have any more priority than… a stranger to the child.
Family members would still have to meet the same requirements to qualify. Allison did not say if she knew of any instance where a qualified family member was not able to get custody of the child under current law, however.
Allison said she thinks the bill will have no trouble making it to a vote.
Usually, in any type of legislation, you will have some kickback with it. So far, we haven’t. I do expect it to move rather quickly through the system.
The bill heads to the House of Representative’s judiciary committee.
Bill gives grandparents priority in custody cases
A bill prefiled in the South Carolina legislature would give grandparents and other immediate family members a higher priority in child custody cases.
Rep. Rita Allison (R-Spartanburg) has sponsored a bill that would change how family courts determine the fate of children who no longer have a parent to take care of them. The legislation would require the courts to give priority to grandparents and other family members in an adoption case.
In South Carolina, the only priorities in child custody cases right now is the child’s preference and if the person or agency has a similar religious background. Theoretically, if a child’s parents die or are jailed, family members would be considered equals in family court with any other qualified candidate who wanted the child.
Allison says she’s heard from several grandparents concerned about the current laws for family court.
Let’s just say there was somebody else who wanted to adopt the children, grandparents wouldn’t have any more priority than… a stranger to the child.
Family members would still have to meet the same requirements to qualify. Allison did not say if she knew of any instance where a qualified family member was not able to get custody of the child under current law, however.
Allison said she thinks the bill will have no trouble making it to a vote.
Usually, in any type of legislation, you will have some kickback with it. So far, we haven’t. I do expect it to move rather quickly through the system.
The bill heads to the House of Representative’s judiciary committee.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Father Harassed By CPS For Feeding Kids Organic Food
Father Harassed By CPS For Feeding Kids Organic Food
“See Something, Say Something”: Neighbors report on man for refusing to make daughters drink tap water or take vaccines
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 13, 2010
A father of two was harassed and investigated by Child Protective Services and police for feeding his daughters organic food, refusing to make them drink fluoride-poisoned tap water and not having them injected with mercury-laden vaccines, all of which constitutes “suspicious activity” in the new Sovietized America, a foretaste of what’s to come once Big Sis’ Wal-Mart spy campaign gets up and running.
Relating his story to the Sherrie Questioning All blog, the man states that a child abuse investigation was launched after one of his neighbors reported him to the authorities, prompting a CPS worker to visit his home accompanied by a police officer, during which she bombarded him with questions and conducted a warrantless search of his house, even down to the contents of his refrigerator.
The case worker turned up at the man’s door with a police cruiser in close attendance. The woman nervously began to question him and was obviously under the impression that he could pose a physical threat.
“She said that there were allegations that I wouldn’t give my children tap water,” writes the father, before noting how he explained to the woman that municipal tap water in most parts of the United States is poisoned with sodium fluoride, a form of toxic waste that contributes to innumerable health problems, including disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland, as well as lowering IQ.
The woman’s line of questioning took an even more bizarre turn after she told him that one of the accusations against him which led to allegations of child abuse was that he fed his daughters organic food. That’s right – Americans actually think that if you don’t feed your children genetically-modified, gluten-stuffed, high fructose corn syrup-crammed, aspartame-laden garbage like KFC or McDonalds then you’re probably a child abuser. Eating natural, clean and healthy food not sprayed with sickening pesticides is now a suspicious activity.
“I was still quite frightened by this woman in my house, I mean really think about it,” writes the father. “This woman has the authority to take the only things worth living for away from me. My girls. So the allegations continued.”
The CPS worker then demanded to know why the man refused to have his daughters vaccinated, again implying that this was a form of child abuse. “I said yes that’s true, I refuse to allow my children to be poked with syringes filled with squalene, thimerasol, mercury,etc. I promptly produced my states exemption form. That was the end of that allegation,” he writes.
The interrogation concluded with the CPS worker asking the man’s daughters if he smacked them.
“They said ‘oh yeah my daddy will whoop my backside if I say a nasty word,’ he writes. “The woman asked me if this was true, I said yes, and it is completely legal to spank your child in this state, in fact there are school districts here in my state that allow ii in public schools.”
The woman, who had not obtained a legal warrant to search the house, inspected the girls’ rooms and even the father’s fridge before leaving.
Despite the fact that the man’s behavior in not making his kids drink toxic waste and eat GMO garbage, while protecting them from mercury-filled vaccines, actually proves that he is an outstanding parent who cares deeply for his children, he was subject to a one month investigation before the case was closed.
The man was able to confirm that he was informed on by someone he knew after the case worker asked him about his “bug bag,” a 72 hour emergency preparedness kit. Apparently, even though Homeland Security itself encourages Americans to prepare for emergencies, actually doing so is a sign of “child abuse”.
Presumably, this is the kind of community spirit Big Sis is seeking to encourage as part of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” program, where Wal-Mart shoppers are encouraged to report suspicious activity to the authorities after watching a video message at the checkout featuring Janet Napolitano.
Since the DHS program makes no reference to what constitutes “suspicious activity,” expect to read many more stories about Americans being investigated and harassed for their personal lifestyle choices as a result of being turned in by ignorant Americans who think that being knowledgable about health issues is a form of child abuse.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
“See Something, Say Something”: Neighbors report on man for refusing to make daughters drink tap water or take vaccines
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 13, 2010
A father of two was harassed and investigated by Child Protective Services and police for feeding his daughters organic food, refusing to make them drink fluoride-poisoned tap water and not having them injected with mercury-laden vaccines, all of which constitutes “suspicious activity” in the new Sovietized America, a foretaste of what’s to come once Big Sis’ Wal-Mart spy campaign gets up and running.
Relating his story to the Sherrie Questioning All blog, the man states that a child abuse investigation was launched after one of his neighbors reported him to the authorities, prompting a CPS worker to visit his home accompanied by a police officer, during which she bombarded him with questions and conducted a warrantless search of his house, even down to the contents of his refrigerator.
The case worker turned up at the man’s door with a police cruiser in close attendance. The woman nervously began to question him and was obviously under the impression that he could pose a physical threat.
“She said that there were allegations that I wouldn’t give my children tap water,” writes the father, before noting how he explained to the woman that municipal tap water in most parts of the United States is poisoned with sodium fluoride, a form of toxic waste that contributes to innumerable health problems, including disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland, as well as lowering IQ.
The woman’s line of questioning took an even more bizarre turn after she told him that one of the accusations against him which led to allegations of child abuse was that he fed his daughters organic food. That’s right – Americans actually think that if you don’t feed your children genetically-modified, gluten-stuffed, high fructose corn syrup-crammed, aspartame-laden garbage like KFC or McDonalds then you’re probably a child abuser. Eating natural, clean and healthy food not sprayed with sickening pesticides is now a suspicious activity.
“I was still quite frightened by this woman in my house, I mean really think about it,” writes the father. “This woman has the authority to take the only things worth living for away from me. My girls. So the allegations continued.”
The CPS worker then demanded to know why the man refused to have his daughters vaccinated, again implying that this was a form of child abuse. “I said yes that’s true, I refuse to allow my children to be poked with syringes filled with squalene, thimerasol, mercury,etc. I promptly produced my states exemption form. That was the end of that allegation,” he writes.
The interrogation concluded with the CPS worker asking the man’s daughters if he smacked them.
“They said ‘oh yeah my daddy will whoop my backside if I say a nasty word,’ he writes. “The woman asked me if this was true, I said yes, and it is completely legal to spank your child in this state, in fact there are school districts here in my state that allow ii in public schools.”
The woman, who had not obtained a legal warrant to search the house, inspected the girls’ rooms and even the father’s fridge before leaving.
Despite the fact that the man’s behavior in not making his kids drink toxic waste and eat GMO garbage, while protecting them from mercury-filled vaccines, actually proves that he is an outstanding parent who cares deeply for his children, he was subject to a one month investigation before the case was closed.
The man was able to confirm that he was informed on by someone he knew after the case worker asked him about his “bug bag,” a 72 hour emergency preparedness kit. Apparently, even though Homeland Security itself encourages Americans to prepare for emergencies, actually doing so is a sign of “child abuse”.
Presumably, this is the kind of community spirit Big Sis is seeking to encourage as part of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” program, where Wal-Mart shoppers are encouraged to report suspicious activity to the authorities after watching a video message at the checkout featuring Janet Napolitano.
Since the DHS program makes no reference to what constitutes “suspicious activity,” expect to read many more stories about Americans being investigated and harassed for their personal lifestyle choices as a result of being turned in by ignorant Americans who think that being knowledgable about health issues is a form of child abuse.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
BEVERLY TRAN: States get bonuses for boosting enrollment for uninsured children in Medicaid
BEVERLY TRAN: States get bonuses for boosting enrollment for uninsured children in Medicaid
What does this mean for foster care? It means there will be a significant reduction in child abuse along with the removal of children whose parents "fail to provide for the necessary needs of the child"... oops, I mean less kids will be processed as abuse and neglect because they now have medical coverage.
Yes, lack of medical coverage is considered abuse and neglect.
States get bonuses for boosting enrollment for uninsured children in Medicaid
What does this mean for foster care? It means there will be a significant reduction in child abuse along with the removal of children whose parents "fail to provide for the necessary needs of the child"... oops, I mean less kids will be processed as abuse and neglect because they now have medical coverage.
Yes, lack of medical coverage is considered abuse and neglect.
States get bonuses for boosting enrollment for uninsured children in Medicaid
Scientific study shows the voice of moms activate a baby’s brain and learning - Pittsburgh Medical Technology | Examiner.com
Scientific study shows the voice of moms activate a baby’s brain and learning - Pittsburgh Medical Technology | Examiner.com
Scientists from the University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center in Canada attached electrodes to a group of 16 24 hour old babies to monitor brain activity. After performing the study, the researchers found the following remarkable result: the voice of a mother but not of a nurse, doctor or a stranger robustly activate the language processing centers of the brain in the newborn. In other words, this is the first study of its kind that shows that the voice of mothers is unique and babies inherently recognize their mother's voice possibly even inside the womb. More importantly, the electroencephalography and MRI studies show high resolution scans that pinpoint the activation of the Wernicke's area of the left hemisphere of the brain, the brain area that is specialized in language development and recognition in human beings.
The scientists used a couple of controls in their studies to help with the interpretation of their results. The researchers also involved a nurse who is herself a mother in their studies and also ruled out the "novelty" aspect by having the mother talk to a nurse at regular intervals before birth. Amazingly, their results still held water and proved that a mother's voice is only recognized by babies as the brain scans only showed selective activations of the language areas of the brain.
Bottomline-
It has been well documented that newborn babies do have some innate language capacities. Moreover, infants may not only learn to specifically recognize their mother's voice but also show adult-like responses in the brain to human voice at 7 but not 4 months of age. However, scientists are only just beginning to understand what the cognitive capacities of newborn babies are and the mechanisms by which babies learn and vocalize language. Nevertheless, what these studies do not currently show is whether the mother's voice is also important for brain development and learning in the child. Hence, future studies are imperative to determine whether there are any deficiencies seen in babies in which mothers spend less than the average or ideal time talking to their newborn babies. Moreover, studies like this have never been performed in such young participants which stresses the fact that many exciting and useful scientific discoveries with regards to the developing infant brain can be discovered with such a low number of participants (16) and can help us understand the pathological basis for speech language deficiencies and autism.
Moreover, the implications of these clinical findings are broad and other leading hospitals in the nation that perform pediatric research should conduct future studies as to whether a speech-language deficiencies in the infant could partly be a result of low mother to infant contact and interaction, even at such an early age.
At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children's Hospital, there are a variety of speech language pathology programs that perform cutting edge research which also involve clinical trials. Right now, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh is conducting a long term child neurology research registry. This is a large scale research initiative to store and track medical records of infants of all ages for statistical purposes. Moreover, this local clinical research initiative will help to elucidate the etiology and root causes of many neurological diseases including infant speech language deficiencies.
Scientists from the University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center in Canada attached electrodes to a group of 16 24 hour old babies to monitor brain activity. After performing the study, the researchers found the following remarkable result: the voice of a mother but not of a nurse, doctor or a stranger robustly activate the language processing centers of the brain in the newborn. In other words, this is the first study of its kind that shows that the voice of mothers is unique and babies inherently recognize their mother's voice possibly even inside the womb. More importantly, the electroencephalography and MRI studies show high resolution scans that pinpoint the activation of the Wernicke's area of the left hemisphere of the brain, the brain area that is specialized in language development and recognition in human beings.
The scientists used a couple of controls in their studies to help with the interpretation of their results. The researchers also involved a nurse who is herself a mother in their studies and also ruled out the "novelty" aspect by having the mother talk to a nurse at regular intervals before birth. Amazingly, their results still held water and proved that a mother's voice is only recognized by babies as the brain scans only showed selective activations of the language areas of the brain.
Bottomline-
It has been well documented that newborn babies do have some innate language capacities. Moreover, infants may not only learn to specifically recognize their mother's voice but also show adult-like responses in the brain to human voice at 7 but not 4 months of age. However, scientists are only just beginning to understand what the cognitive capacities of newborn babies are and the mechanisms by which babies learn and vocalize language. Nevertheless, what these studies do not currently show is whether the mother's voice is also important for brain development and learning in the child. Hence, future studies are imperative to determine whether there are any deficiencies seen in babies in which mothers spend less than the average or ideal time talking to their newborn babies. Moreover, studies like this have never been performed in such young participants which stresses the fact that many exciting and useful scientific discoveries with regards to the developing infant brain can be discovered with such a low number of participants (16) and can help us understand the pathological basis for speech language deficiencies and autism.
Moreover, the implications of these clinical findings are broad and other leading hospitals in the nation that perform pediatric research should conduct future studies as to whether a speech-language deficiencies in the infant could partly be a result of low mother to infant contact and interaction, even at such an early age.
At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children's Hospital, there are a variety of speech language pathology programs that perform cutting edge research which also involve clinical trials. Right now, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh is conducting a long term child neurology research registry. This is a large scale research initiative to store and track medical records of infants of all ages for statistical purposes. Moreover, this local clinical research initiative will help to elucidate the etiology and root causes of many neurological diseases including infant speech language deficiencies.
FAMILY PRESERVATION ADVOCACY: Adoption Anger
FAMILY PRESERVATION ADVOCACY: Adoption Anger
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010
Adoption Anger
I've been reading a memoir by an Australian mother entitled "Coming Home to the Truth" by Judith Roseboom (Emerging Press, PO Box 1866, Albany, WA 6331).
In 1972, at 16 years of age, Judith was taken advantage of by an older boy who offered her a ride. Her parents sent away to a maternity home when they discovered she was pregnant.
She describes the treatment by the nuns who ran the home in ways common to all who spent time in Catholic maternity homes and how she was repeatedly told it was not "her" baby she was carrying and wanted to keep.
Like so many of us, Judith functioned, mostly aided by medication prescribed for "depression" as a result of her trying to "put it all behind her" and get on with her life.
"Ironically," she writes, "my parents thought the medications were helping me because I stopped crying. Really this was when I was at my lowest."
She worked and she married and she had three more children, all the while tyring to keep a lid on her memories.
In the late 1980s Judith met other mothers who lost children to adoption, she began to really confront all that happened....
"By then I had been on antidepressants for years. I was labelled as depressed but in actual fact I had been silently grieving a loss no one, except other mothers who had been through the system, understood or even noticed back then."
Suppressed grief. Stuffed. Silenced. How that eats at us!
In the midst of reading this account from the vantage point of this mother, I was sent a link to a post by a very angry adoptee.
Here is her story of the anger that explodes when losses are unrecognized and gratitude expected, just as mothers who lose children are expected to also be grateful to be freed of their obligation and freed to get on with their lives!
I’m fucking angry at Korea
I used to think that anger could save me. It protected me, kept me going. It helped me survive. I hope it still works.
Three months ago I found my Korean family. And for the first time in a long time, I felt hope. I thought I had located the source of this deep sadness I’ve been carrying with me my whole life, and I would finally know the answer to “Why?”
But no one told me family reunification would be this way.
However I look at it, there’s no resolution, no relief, no peace of mind. My grief has only multiplied since I met my family. Knowing more about the reasons why doesn’t make it hurt any less. Knowing more about what I’ve lost, I wish I’d never started searching.
Here in Korea experiences are raw and overwhelming. People keep telling me to be strong, but I think I am weak. Korea makes me feel like I can’t survive, like there’s no reason to keep trying so fucking hard. I’ll never make it here anyway. I felt such relief from American racism when I first returned, I failed to notice that Korea doesn’t want me either.
My birth family doesn’t understand why I cry so often. Smile. Our family is complete now. We are so happy you are here. You should be happy too. They expect me to fit right back into their lives. They’ve been waiting for me, building up hopes, anticipating my arrival. It feels eerily like adoption. The pressure to perform the same kind of emotional labor that was required of me as an adoptee is enormous.
I’m told that anger is the wrong response in this situation. But it’s all I’m feeling. There is no fresh start. Too much has already been taken from me. As a “reunited adoptee” I have even more I’m supposed to be grateful for, and so many things I’m told to be careful about.
Maybe get to know them first, and tell them you will address the marriage issue later. Things are changing, but it’s uncertain how they will respond to you.
You mean because I’m GAY? I thought I would just be myself in this situation. I finally have a chance at an authentic relationship with a family, my family. But the fear of rejection is huge.
I depend on others to translate culture, and I feel lost. The gifts from my birth family make me angry. Especially the envelope of money shoved into my purse. But I’m told to accept it because it is a symbol of love. One translator orders me to say “Thank you.”
You should accept your family’s goodwill. They are your strength.
I want to punch him. This feels exactly like adoption.
1. Add instant adoptee.
2. Shake until happy.
My birth mother assumes that I will drop everything and come live with her, now that we are reunited. She tells me to study hard and learn Korean because she’s too old to learn English. Live with me. Speak Korean. Just like nothing happened.
I know this is also out of her control in so many ways, but I refuse to believe this is all she can do to show her love. I understand not wanting to feel pain. But this will never fix what’s broken. What if we tried confrontation, anger, even rage? Will I be told that it’s not Korean to behave this way?
If I could, I would tell my birth family that last weekend in Seoul, an adoptee tried to kill herself. She jumped from the balcony of our hostel. I was sitting in my room on the first floor, and I heard her body hit the ground outside my window. I knew instantly what she had done, because I had thought about doing it myself. But I knew it wasn’t far enough to fall.
Adoptees
I can’t help it if it’s wrong. I have to tell. I want other adoptees to know what happened. It’s traumatic. But I can’t pretend to forget, and just do nothing. It’s common knowledge among us that Korean adoptees have a very high suicide rate. Maybe we’ve internalized the message that our pain is private, individual, unique. But it’s also systemic. How can we hold Korea accountable for selling us off if we continue to erase each other?
I wonder how many adoptees have to commit suicide before Korea will be embarrassed enough to do something about it. Maybe it’s not numbers that matter, but our response as adoptees when it happens. The atmosphere here feels desensitized. I need other angry adoptees.
I have to keep saying the ugly things that no one wants to think about or remember. I heard her body hit the ground. It’s not poetry. I don’t want to make a film about it. I hear that horrifying noise when I lie in bed at night, and I think, how is it that adoptees do not explode with anger at how disposable we are in Korea?
I feel despair here, but also an intense anger, which reassures me that there’s work to be done. I still believe there’s power in our collective anger. If we can let ourselves feel it, and talk about it. Ignoring, pretending, forgetting. I do it too, I think we all learned different ways to cope with the bullshit of adoption. But I didn’t come to Korea to pretend.
It's not Korea. It's adoption! They take our our kids. They take identity away from our kids. And we're all supposed to be happy and GRATEFUL!!
The similarities of these two perspectives is evident. Adoption invalidates our reality. It's like being incested and having everyone in your family say you imagined it, it couldn't have happened. That kind of denial and invalidation of such a deep primal wound to the very soul is devastating. It becomes impossible to separate which hurt is the greater of the two.
Grief of loss is REAL! Our pain is real. Mothers who miscarry or whose infant passes away are ENCOURAGED to GRIEVE. Yet those who lose children to adoption are not supposed to. We are supposed to forget it as if "it" never happened. Be glad [read: grateful] our child has a "better" life, and some of us have even been told to be happy for the otherwise childless family we brought such happiness to, as if we were intetonal surrogates or organ donors.
The needs of mothers today who are in open adoption will be further misunderstood. They can see their kids, but they are still not mothers! Does anyone understand what they've lost and their need to grieve? Are their friends and family understanding or compassionate or does everyone feel they got what they wanted and remind them how LUCKY they are that their adoption is "open." Where does the anger go? INSIDE US ALL!
We are disallowed human emotions and any show of concern for our losses because adoption dehumanizes us! As non humans we are expected to have no emotions, no need to mourn or grieve, We are things: commodities and the warppings of gift came in. Non human things.
The only wonder is why more of us don't EXPLODE with anger! Far too many of us play the part, keep the peace. Smile for the camera. Do the "polite" "good girl" thing! Stuff the anger. Deny ourselves the right to be frustrated and pissed off!
Now compare that to gays who are fighting for marriage equality, the right to serve in the military and to adopt children. They're getting what they want - at least in part. So too did the first responders of 9/11. They did not get anything and would never have gotten anything, by sitting back and being "good" and polite....or by being angry and simply writing about it or bitching to one another. They got what they got by getting angry and focusing their anger into legislative activism!
We need to channel that anger into righteous indignation and legislative activism! Fight to change what is wrong with adoption - how mothers are exploited and children commodified...all to meet a demand!
If you aint angry about that you aint paying attention...you're numb, brain dead...like a zombie victim of Stockholm Syndrome.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010
Adoption Anger
I've been reading a memoir by an Australian mother entitled "Coming Home to the Truth" by Judith Roseboom (Emerging Press, PO Box 1866, Albany, WA 6331).
In 1972, at 16 years of age, Judith was taken advantage of by an older boy who offered her a ride. Her parents sent away to a maternity home when they discovered she was pregnant.
She describes the treatment by the nuns who ran the home in ways common to all who spent time in Catholic maternity homes and how she was repeatedly told it was not "her" baby she was carrying and wanted to keep.
Like so many of us, Judith functioned, mostly aided by medication prescribed for "depression" as a result of her trying to "put it all behind her" and get on with her life.
"Ironically," she writes, "my parents thought the medications were helping me because I stopped crying. Really this was when I was at my lowest."
She worked and she married and she had three more children, all the while tyring to keep a lid on her memories.
In the late 1980s Judith met other mothers who lost children to adoption, she began to really confront all that happened....
"By then I had been on antidepressants for years. I was labelled as depressed but in actual fact I had been silently grieving a loss no one, except other mothers who had been through the system, understood or even noticed back then."
Suppressed grief. Stuffed. Silenced. How that eats at us!
In the midst of reading this account from the vantage point of this mother, I was sent a link to a post by a very angry adoptee.
Here is her story of the anger that explodes when losses are unrecognized and gratitude expected, just as mothers who lose children are expected to also be grateful to be freed of their obligation and freed to get on with their lives!
I’m fucking angry at Korea
I used to think that anger could save me. It protected me, kept me going. It helped me survive. I hope it still works.
Three months ago I found my Korean family. And for the first time in a long time, I felt hope. I thought I had located the source of this deep sadness I’ve been carrying with me my whole life, and I would finally know the answer to “Why?”
But no one told me family reunification would be this way.
However I look at it, there’s no resolution, no relief, no peace of mind. My grief has only multiplied since I met my family. Knowing more about the reasons why doesn’t make it hurt any less. Knowing more about what I’ve lost, I wish I’d never started searching.
Here in Korea experiences are raw and overwhelming. People keep telling me to be strong, but I think I am weak. Korea makes me feel like I can’t survive, like there’s no reason to keep trying so fucking hard. I’ll never make it here anyway. I felt such relief from American racism when I first returned, I failed to notice that Korea doesn’t want me either.
My birth family doesn’t understand why I cry so often. Smile. Our family is complete now. We are so happy you are here. You should be happy too. They expect me to fit right back into their lives. They’ve been waiting for me, building up hopes, anticipating my arrival. It feels eerily like adoption. The pressure to perform the same kind of emotional labor that was required of me as an adoptee is enormous.
I’m told that anger is the wrong response in this situation. But it’s all I’m feeling. There is no fresh start. Too much has already been taken from me. As a “reunited adoptee” I have even more I’m supposed to be grateful for, and so many things I’m told to be careful about.
Maybe get to know them first, and tell them you will address the marriage issue later. Things are changing, but it’s uncertain how they will respond to you.
You mean because I’m GAY? I thought I would just be myself in this situation. I finally have a chance at an authentic relationship with a family, my family. But the fear of rejection is huge.
I depend on others to translate culture, and I feel lost. The gifts from my birth family make me angry. Especially the envelope of money shoved into my purse. But I’m told to accept it because it is a symbol of love. One translator orders me to say “Thank you.”
You should accept your family’s goodwill. They are your strength.
I want to punch him. This feels exactly like adoption.
1. Add instant adoptee.
2. Shake until happy.
My birth mother assumes that I will drop everything and come live with her, now that we are reunited. She tells me to study hard and learn Korean because she’s too old to learn English. Live with me. Speak Korean. Just like nothing happened.
I know this is also out of her control in so many ways, but I refuse to believe this is all she can do to show her love. I understand not wanting to feel pain. But this will never fix what’s broken. What if we tried confrontation, anger, even rage? Will I be told that it’s not Korean to behave this way?
If I could, I would tell my birth family that last weekend in Seoul, an adoptee tried to kill herself. She jumped from the balcony of our hostel. I was sitting in my room on the first floor, and I heard her body hit the ground outside my window. I knew instantly what she had done, because I had thought about doing it myself. But I knew it wasn’t far enough to fall.
Adoptees
I can’t help it if it’s wrong. I have to tell. I want other adoptees to know what happened. It’s traumatic. But I can’t pretend to forget, and just do nothing. It’s common knowledge among us that Korean adoptees have a very high suicide rate. Maybe we’ve internalized the message that our pain is private, individual, unique. But it’s also systemic. How can we hold Korea accountable for selling us off if we continue to erase each other?
I wonder how many adoptees have to commit suicide before Korea will be embarrassed enough to do something about it. Maybe it’s not numbers that matter, but our response as adoptees when it happens. The atmosphere here feels desensitized. I need other angry adoptees.
I have to keep saying the ugly things that no one wants to think about or remember. I heard her body hit the ground. It’s not poetry. I don’t want to make a film about it. I hear that horrifying noise when I lie in bed at night, and I think, how is it that adoptees do not explode with anger at how disposable we are in Korea?
I feel despair here, but also an intense anger, which reassures me that there’s work to be done. I still believe there’s power in our collective anger. If we can let ourselves feel it, and talk about it. Ignoring, pretending, forgetting. I do it too, I think we all learned different ways to cope with the bullshit of adoption. But I didn’t come to Korea to pretend.
It's not Korea. It's adoption! They take our our kids. They take identity away from our kids. And we're all supposed to be happy and GRATEFUL!!
The similarities of these two perspectives is evident. Adoption invalidates our reality. It's like being incested and having everyone in your family say you imagined it, it couldn't have happened. That kind of denial and invalidation of such a deep primal wound to the very soul is devastating. It becomes impossible to separate which hurt is the greater of the two.
Grief of loss is REAL! Our pain is real. Mothers who miscarry or whose infant passes away are ENCOURAGED to GRIEVE. Yet those who lose children to adoption are not supposed to. We are supposed to forget it as if "it" never happened. Be glad [read: grateful] our child has a "better" life, and some of us have even been told to be happy for the otherwise childless family we brought such happiness to, as if we were intetonal surrogates or organ donors.
The needs of mothers today who are in open adoption will be further misunderstood. They can see their kids, but they are still not mothers! Does anyone understand what they've lost and their need to grieve? Are their friends and family understanding or compassionate or does everyone feel they got what they wanted and remind them how LUCKY they are that their adoption is "open." Where does the anger go? INSIDE US ALL!
We are disallowed human emotions and any show of concern for our losses because adoption dehumanizes us! As non humans we are expected to have no emotions, no need to mourn or grieve, We are things: commodities and the warppings of gift came in. Non human things.
The only wonder is why more of us don't EXPLODE with anger! Far too many of us play the part, keep the peace. Smile for the camera. Do the "polite" "good girl" thing! Stuff the anger. Deny ourselves the right to be frustrated and pissed off!
Now compare that to gays who are fighting for marriage equality, the right to serve in the military and to adopt children. They're getting what they want - at least in part. So too did the first responders of 9/11. They did not get anything and would never have gotten anything, by sitting back and being "good" and polite....or by being angry and simply writing about it or bitching to one another. They got what they got by getting angry and focusing their anger into legislative activism!
We need to channel that anger into righteous indignation and legislative activism! Fight to change what is wrong with adoption - how mothers are exploited and children commodified...all to meet a demand!
If you aint angry about that you aint paying attention...you're numb, brain dead...like a zombie victim of Stockholm Syndrome.
Legally Kidnapped: Couple uses billboard to try to adopt a child
All they had to do was pay off CPS and they would have stolen them a newborn!
Legally Kidnapped: Couple uses billboard to try to adopt a child
Legally Kidnapped: Couple uses billboard to try to adopt a child
Derek Benham charged with foster son's 2008 death - todaysthv.com | KTHV | Little Rock, AR
Derek Benham charged with foster son's 2008 death - todaysthv.com | KTHV | Little Rock, AR: "A prosecutor says he's filed a first-degree murder charge against a Pope County man whose 5-year-old foster son died in 2008.
Pope County Prosecutor David Gibbons told the Courier on Monday that he had charged Derek Benham with murder in the 2008 death of Dale Young Jr., 5."
Pope County Prosecutor David Gibbons told the Courier on Monday that he had charged Derek Benham with murder in the 2008 death of Dale Young Jr., 5."
Top psychologist says children need traditional values | Deadline Scotland
Top psychologist says children need traditional values | Deadline Scotland: "A TOP Government advisor has recommended a return of good old fashioned family values in a bid to stem the increase of violent teens.
In response to the latest figures that show a sharp rise in violence by youngsters towards adults, Tommy MacKay, a professor of psychology at Strathclyde University and a leading authority on the subject in Scotland has said that traditional values should be brought back."
In response to the latest figures that show a sharp rise in violence by youngsters towards adults, Tommy MacKay, a professor of psychology at Strathclyde University and a leading authority on the subject in Scotland has said that traditional values should be brought back."
CPS took my baby girl last night...I'm a total wreck!! - CafeMom
CPS took my baby girl last night...I'm a total wreck!! - CafeMom: "If you are here to read and bash, please just stop reading here. I don't need anymore stress on my plate right now. I've got enough going on!
If you ARE here to read and bash, don't expect me to be nice about it"
If you ARE here to read and bash, don't expect me to be nice about it"
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