Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Parental rights too easily revoked
I am writing in response to David Johnson’s letter to the editor as to bills filed to remove a judge and a marital master.
Johnson was quite correct in his letter and many of the citizens of New Hampshire, as well as people from other states, are quite happy to see our Legislature is working toward helping families torn apart by the corruption of DCYF and our judicial system.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats are safe from this corruption. Our children and families lives are at stake. It’s about time someone within our government held DCYF and judges accountable for the illegal practices used against families in the taking of their children.
There is no judicial accountability or lawyer accountability in this state. Judges and lawyers side with their own, as well as DCYF.
My grandson has been placed in a pre-adoptive home, scheduled to be adopted in December. From what I’ve been told, he’s in the same foster home where he was first placed. He’s been put on Adderall since then to calm down his newly found violent behavior.
The administrator in Concord stated in an e-mail to the Administrative Appeals unit that my grandson’s name has been changed. To change a child’s name before he’s adopted is illegal, yet when does DCYF follow the law? They don’t and neither do the probate court judges.
The judges write the opposite of testimony heard in court in their decisions and the Supreme Court goes right along with them, separating children from their families forever. I know this for a fact.
A DCYF worker told my husband and I that parental rights terminations in New Hampshire are never reversed. I myself haven’t seen this happen. She also told us our government gave them the power to do whatever they want to do, no matter how many children they traumatize and families they tear apart.
Do the Supreme Court judges really believe that these probate judges or even District Court judges are perfect? That they are always right? Or is it just a matter of siding with their own?
Something is definitely wrong with the judicial system. I don’t understand how our government can stand by and let this happen to its own people – the people who voted them into office.
I pray the petitions filed can straighten out this mess.
Dorothy Knightly
Nashua
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/opinion/letters/496741-263/parental-rightstoo-easily-revoked.html
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
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
State investigates mental health policy
State investigates mental health policy
The Associated Press
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 20, 2009 - 12:00 am
The Department of Health and Human Services has finished investigating a policy that allows young children with mental illnesses to be transferred to a state hospital unit that serves teenagers and adults.
Advocates for children have questioned whether the policy harmed two boys ages 6 and 12 who spent parts of two nights in the adult unit last week under a policy that allows such transfers if the number of patients at the Philbrook Center for children drops below four.
Health and Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas told New Hampshire Public Radio that he didn't know anything about the transfer until he read about it in the newspaper. He says he will review the investigation next week and work with those involved to decide what the policy should be going forward.
This article is: 3 days old.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091220/NEWS01/912200364
The Associated Press
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 20, 2009 - 12:00 am
The Department of Health and Human Services has finished investigating a policy that allows young children with mental illnesses to be transferred to a state hospital unit that serves teenagers and adults.
Advocates for children have questioned whether the policy harmed two boys ages 6 and 12 who spent parts of two nights in the adult unit last week under a policy that allows such transfers if the number of patients at the Philbrook Center for children drops below four.
Health and Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas told New Hampshire Public Radio that he didn't know anything about the transfer until he read about it in the newspaper. He says he will review the investigation next week and work with those involved to decide what the policy should be going forward.
This article is: 3 days old.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091220/NEWS01/912200364
Rights group questions children's care (NH)
Rights group questions children's care
12-, 6-year-old kept with adults, teens
By ANNMARIE TIMMINS
Monitor staff
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 16, 2009 - 12:00 am
The state hospital is temporarily housing its youngest mentally disabled students with adult and adolescent patients because there are too few kids to justify keeping them in their own quarters at the Anna Philbrook Center for Children, a hospital official said yesterday.
The decision prompted the Disability Rights Center to contact the New Hampshire Hospital yesterday with concerns about the children's well-being and care, said Richard Cohen, the DRC's executive director.
Philbrook is a school and therapeutic center on the state hospital grounds for kids between 4 and 14 years old who have moderate to severe mental disabilities. There is room for 25 kids, but yesterday there were just two, said Jamie Dall, director of financial and support services. One is 6 years old, the other about 12.
The hospital has a policy based on nursing standards, Dall said, to relocate the Philbrook kids to the other unit when enrollment falls below four students. That way, the staff typically assigned to Philbrook can be reassigned to other shifts in the hospital, he said.
This week, the two kids assigned to Philbrook have spent their days at the center, taking classes, meeting with their families and participating in counseling, Dall said. In the early evening, they go to the adolescent and adult unit of the hospital and remain there under close supervision until morning, he said.
When the hospital admits two more children, Philbrook will return to its normal schedule, Dall said. "There is no plan to close Philbrook," he added.
In the meantime, the Disability Rights Center has asked the hospital for the names of the children's parents or guardians to make sure the two kids there now are not being neglected or harmed by sharing space with adolescent and adult patients, Cohen said.
"We are concerned," he said. "We are looking to determine whether or not this is based on clinical needs or budgetary or administrative needs. This is unusual for Philbrook to be closed down. And it's very unusual for young children to be placed in an adolescent-adult unit at the hospital."
Dall said the hospital did not merge the young kids with the adolescent-adult unit to save money. The hospital still heats the Philbrook Center, and the staff still reports to work, Dall said. But there is a savings: With the young kids relocated for the evening, the hospital can use the Philbrook staff to fill shift vacancies elsewhere in the hospital, Dall said.
Children are admitted to the Philbrook Center voluntarily or by a court-ordered involuntary admission. And it's unusual for Philbrook to have so few students, Dall said.
Two weekends ago, there were 15 students at Philbrook. Last week, there were 11, he said. But at day's end on Friday, there was no one due to spend the night at the center, he said.
There was an attempted admission of a 6-year-old over the weekend, but due to "confusion," that admission did not happen, Dall said. He did not know the specifics. The parents of that child brought the child in Monday, and the child remained there as of yesterday, Dall said.
"As a general rule, we have to staff for the worst because we don't know who is going to come in at 2 or 3 in the morning," he said.
Dall said the two children who are spending the evenings and nights with the older patients are being kept at the far end of the adolescent wing, with close supervision.
The adolescent and adult wings are connected, but there is a nursing desk where they intersect, and the populations are kept apart, he said.
This article is: 7 days old.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091216/FRONTPAGE/912160301
12-, 6-year-old kept with adults, teens
By ANNMARIE TIMMINS
Monitor staff
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 16, 2009 - 12:00 am
The state hospital is temporarily housing its youngest mentally disabled students with adult and adolescent patients because there are too few kids to justify keeping them in their own quarters at the Anna Philbrook Center for Children, a hospital official said yesterday.
The decision prompted the Disability Rights Center to contact the New Hampshire Hospital yesterday with concerns about the children's well-being and care, said Richard Cohen, the DRC's executive director.
Philbrook is a school and therapeutic center on the state hospital grounds for kids between 4 and 14 years old who have moderate to severe mental disabilities. There is room for 25 kids, but yesterday there were just two, said Jamie Dall, director of financial and support services. One is 6 years old, the other about 12.
The hospital has a policy based on nursing standards, Dall said, to relocate the Philbrook kids to the other unit when enrollment falls below four students. That way, the staff typically assigned to Philbrook can be reassigned to other shifts in the hospital, he said.
This week, the two kids assigned to Philbrook have spent their days at the center, taking classes, meeting with their families and participating in counseling, Dall said. In the early evening, they go to the adolescent and adult unit of the hospital and remain there under close supervision until morning, he said.
When the hospital admits two more children, Philbrook will return to its normal schedule, Dall said. "There is no plan to close Philbrook," he added.
In the meantime, the Disability Rights Center has asked the hospital for the names of the children's parents or guardians to make sure the two kids there now are not being neglected or harmed by sharing space with adolescent and adult patients, Cohen said.
"We are concerned," he said. "We are looking to determine whether or not this is based on clinical needs or budgetary or administrative needs. This is unusual for Philbrook to be closed down. And it's very unusual for young children to be placed in an adolescent-adult unit at the hospital."
Dall said the hospital did not merge the young kids with the adolescent-adult unit to save money. The hospital still heats the Philbrook Center, and the staff still reports to work, Dall said. But there is a savings: With the young kids relocated for the evening, the hospital can use the Philbrook staff to fill shift vacancies elsewhere in the hospital, Dall said.
Children are admitted to the Philbrook Center voluntarily or by a court-ordered involuntary admission. And it's unusual for Philbrook to have so few students, Dall said.
Two weekends ago, there were 15 students at Philbrook. Last week, there were 11, he said. But at day's end on Friday, there was no one due to spend the night at the center, he said.
There was an attempted admission of a 6-year-old over the weekend, but due to "confusion," that admission did not happen, Dall said. He did not know the specifics. The parents of that child brought the child in Monday, and the child remained there as of yesterday, Dall said.
"As a general rule, we have to staff for the worst because we don't know who is going to come in at 2 or 3 in the morning," he said.
Dall said the two children who are spending the evenings and nights with the older patients are being kept at the far end of the adolescent wing, with close supervision.
The adolescent and adult wings are connected, but there is a nursing desk where they intersect, and the populations are kept apart, he said.
This article is: 7 days old.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091216/FRONTPAGE/912160301
Officials study children's stay at adult psychiatric unit
Officials study children's stay at adult psychiatric unit
By TOM FAHEY
State House Bureau Chief
6 hours, 50 minutes ago
CONCORD – A report on how two children were sent to an adult psychiatric unit two weeks ago has yet to make it to the desk of Health and Human Services Commissioner Nicholas Toumpas.
HHS spokesman Kris Neilsen said yesterday a report has been completed, but Toumpas has not yet seen it. A short-lived policy that called for children to be moved from a children's facility when patient count was low has been rescinded.
"He plans to take a good hard look at the report when he gets it," Neilsen said.
She said the delay does not indicate a lack of interest on Toumpas's part.
"He has a lot of on his plate. This issue is a priority and he wants to give it the time it deserves, once he has an opportunity to review it in depth," she said.
On the weekend of Dec. 12, children aged 6 and 12 were transferred for two nights from the Philbrook Center, which is meant to handle children with severe emotional and behavioral disturbances.
They were placed on a ward at New Hampshire Hospital meant for adolescents and young adults. Each was accompanied by a mental health worker for the entire time they were at the hospital, HHS has said. They were at the hospital overnight, but returned to Philbrook for day programs.
HHS has said the children were kept apart from other patients at the adult facility, known as the F Unit. Their transfer was made based on a decision, made just days before, to empty the Philbrook Center when the number of patients there dropped to three, according to HHS officials. Philbrook can handle up to 20 children. HHS stopped the practice when the children's transfers became public.
The incident has drawn the attention of Richard Cohen, director of the Disabilities Rights Center, and Rep. Cindy Rosenwald, D-Nashua, the chairman of the House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee.
Cohen said he doesn't know how it could be considered appropriate to have a child on an adult ward for psychiatric patients. He said he is waiting to read through the HHS report before deciding his next step.
"We're going to do a full investigation," he said. "We'll review their report and see if we think this needs further inquiry."
Cohen said he suggested to Toumpas and his staff areas that the report ought to cover. He said they include a description of the process that led to the decision to make the transfers, the names of officials involved, "and other legitimate questions any good investigation should cover."
Rosenwald said she, too, is waiting to see the finished report. At this point, she said she's confident the review will be thorough.
"I have spoken with the department and the department is, I think, diligently looking into it," she said. "I think they've been responsive. I think they were wise to rescind the practice even though they hadn't finished the review."
Rosenwald said she has been told that a treatment team that included a psychiatrist made the decision to move the two youngsters.
Rosenwald said that since Philbrook staffers accompanied the two children throughout their stay at the hospital, it may not have saved any money.
"I don't see what the benefit to doing it was in the first place," she said.
© 2009, Union Leader Corporation. All rights reserved.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. © 1997-2009.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Officials+study+children%27s+stay+at+adult+psychiatric+unit&articleId=f23ffc9d-77d8-4b9a-9128-dd8625bc07bb
By TOM FAHEY
State House Bureau Chief
6 hours, 50 minutes ago
CONCORD – A report on how two children were sent to an adult psychiatric unit two weeks ago has yet to make it to the desk of Health and Human Services Commissioner Nicholas Toumpas.
HHS spokesman Kris Neilsen said yesterday a report has been completed, but Toumpas has not yet seen it. A short-lived policy that called for children to be moved from a children's facility when patient count was low has been rescinded.
"He plans to take a good hard look at the report when he gets it," Neilsen said.
She said the delay does not indicate a lack of interest on Toumpas's part.
"He has a lot of on his plate. This issue is a priority and he wants to give it the time it deserves, once he has an opportunity to review it in depth," she said.
On the weekend of Dec. 12, children aged 6 and 12 were transferred for two nights from the Philbrook Center, which is meant to handle children with severe emotional and behavioral disturbances.
They were placed on a ward at New Hampshire Hospital meant for adolescents and young adults. Each was accompanied by a mental health worker for the entire time they were at the hospital, HHS has said. They were at the hospital overnight, but returned to Philbrook for day programs.
HHS has said the children were kept apart from other patients at the adult facility, known as the F Unit. Their transfer was made based on a decision, made just days before, to empty the Philbrook Center when the number of patients there dropped to three, according to HHS officials. Philbrook can handle up to 20 children. HHS stopped the practice when the children's transfers became public.
The incident has drawn the attention of Richard Cohen, director of the Disabilities Rights Center, and Rep. Cindy Rosenwald, D-Nashua, the chairman of the House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee.
Cohen said he doesn't know how it could be considered appropriate to have a child on an adult ward for psychiatric patients. He said he is waiting to read through the HHS report before deciding his next step.
"We're going to do a full investigation," he said. "We'll review their report and see if we think this needs further inquiry."
Cohen said he suggested to Toumpas and his staff areas that the report ought to cover. He said they include a description of the process that led to the decision to make the transfers, the names of officials involved, "and other legitimate questions any good investigation should cover."
Rosenwald said she, too, is waiting to see the finished report. At this point, she said she's confident the review will be thorough.
"I have spoken with the department and the department is, I think, diligently looking into it," she said. "I think they've been responsive. I think they were wise to rescind the practice even though they hadn't finished the review."
Rosenwald said she has been told that a treatment team that included a psychiatrist made the decision to move the two youngsters.
Rosenwald said that since Philbrook staffers accompanied the two children throughout their stay at the hospital, it may not have saved any money.
"I don't see what the benefit to doing it was in the first place," she said.
© 2009, Union Leader Corporation. All rights reserved.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. © 1997-2009.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Officials+study+children%27s+stay+at+adult+psychiatric+unit&articleId=f23ffc9d-77d8-4b9a-9128-dd8625bc07bb
Can Unwed Fathers Block Adoptions? (What about a fictitious Mans Rights Being terminated?)
Can Unwed Fathers Block Adoptions? (Not in N.H., Rights are terminated to fictitious men and the real father's are not allowed custody or even paternity tests.)Navigating a Tricky Legal Terrain
By JOANNA L. GROSSMAN
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
When can an unwed father's biological child be adopted without his consent? In a recent ruling, the Nebraska Supreme Court held that the state's statutory scheme for determining the rights of unwed fathers was unconstitutional as applied to the plaintiff before them – an unwed father who had not been adjudicated to be a legal father, but who had maintained a longstanding familial relationship with the child.
Unwed fathers in most states do not have the same rights as unwed mothers vis-à-vis their children. Their parental rights turn not just on biology, but also on whether they have carried out the obligations of fatherhood and, in some situations, whether they have complied with technical legal requirements necessary to establish their status. The Nebraska case, In re Corbin J., reveals the limitations of this approach to determining legal fatherhood.
In re Adoption of Corbin J.: The Facts
The recent Nebraska case involves a child, Corbin J., who was born to Rusti M. in 1999. John J. is named as the father on Corbin's birth certificate, and no one disputes that John J. is, indeed, the child's biological father. Rusti and John never married, but, for the first three years of Corbin's life, the three lived together as a family. In 2002, however, Rusti took Corbin and left the house, leaving no indication of their whereabouts.
Shortly after leaving, Rusti filed a court action seeking to establish John's paternity, to get full custody of Corbin, and to impose a child support order on John. The trial court issued a temporary order granting custody to her and visitation to John, and ordering John to pay child support. For a little more than a year, John exercised his visitation rights and paid child support. During that time, Rusti married another man, Ilja M.
In July 2003, the court dismissed Rusti's paternity action for lack of prosecution (Rusti, in other words, had not taken all the steps necessary to pursue the petition.) After that ruling, John stopped paying child support for Corbin, though he continued paying for Corbin's health insurance.
In September 2003, Rusti did not arrive at the time and location where John usually picked up Corbin for visitation. Moreover, John claims that Rusti's phone had been disconnected and he had no way of knowing how to track them down. For five years, John had no contact with Corbin. He says he could not find them; she says he knew the location and phone number of her family's ranch and could easily have found them.
John received a legal notice in September 2008 informing him that Ilja, Rusti's husband, was planning to file a petition to adopt Corbin. The lawyer representing Rusti and Ilja sent John the forms necessary to relinquish his parental rights and to make Corbin available for adoption by his stepfather. However, John did not sign the forms and filed a formal objection to the adoption once the petition was formally filed in January 2009.
Over John's objection, the adoption was granted.
Background on the Rights of Unwed Fathers
The issue on appeal before the Nebraska Supreme Court is whether the trial court correctly treated John as a "putative" father – one who was without standing to object to the adoption because he had failed to properly exercise his rights – or whether the Constitution requires that John's rights vis-à-vis Corbin be more robustly protected.
A little background on adoption law and unwed fathers' rights is necessary to understand the choice before the court:
As a general rule, a child is available for adoption when its biological parents have surrendered their parental rights or had them terminated. An adoption has the effect of severing the legal ties between the child and his biological parents, and establishing a new parent-child relationship with the adoptive parents.
In the context of a stepparent adoption, a child can retain legal ties to one biological parent, while being adopted by that parent's spouse. But here's the hitch: A child cannot have three legal parents, so, before a stepparent adoption can proceed, the child's other biological parent must be out of the picture, legally speaking. Stepparent adoptions can thus take place when the other legal parent has died, has had parental rights terminated, has relinquished parental rights, or, as allegedly occurred in this case, has failed to take the steps necessary to have legal rights as a father in the first place.
Children born out of wedlock were considered the "child of no one" in early American law; as a corollary to this principle, neither unwed mothers nor fathers were legally tied to the child. States changed that rule for mothers during the Nineteenth Century, assigning the same rights and obligations of motherhood regardless of legitimacy. But for unwed fathers, the law's shift was slower and, ultimately, the law stopped short of granting unwed fathers legal rights on par with those of unwed mothers.
By the early Twentieth Century, virtually every state imposed a duty of support on unwed fathers, enforceable through "bastardy" proceedings in civil or criminal court. But the obligation of support came with little or nothing in the way of parental rights for the fathers who desired them. Those rights came later, after a series of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, beginning in the 1970's, that established constitutional protection for the rights of unwed fathers.
In the 1972 case of Stanley v. Illinois, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for Illinois to remove three children from their father when their mother had died, simply because the couple had never married. The law in question presumed unwed fathers to be unfit, and relied upon that presumption to justify the placement of the children in foster care. But the Court said that this categorical denial of parental rights for unwed fathers violated the Due Process Clause, which had been interpreted to provide strong protection for the right of parents to control the care and upbringing of their children. In another case, Trimble v. Gordon, the Court struck down a law categorically denying illegitimate children the right to inherit from unwed fathers.
States responded to these cases by eliminating most of the categorical rules regarding unwed fathers. But rather than equalize the rights of unwed mothers (who were automatically given the full benefit of a parent-child relationship) and unwed fathers, most states adopted a compromise approach that gave full rights to unwed fathers only if they had satisfied certain criteria.
Under a typical law, an unwed father could earn full parental rights through marriage to a child's mother, being named on a birth certificate, being adjudicated the biological father, or living openly with the child and its mother. Most states also set up a "putative father registry," which would permit men who registered to be notified of proposed adoptions or other actions regarding their children.
Can Unwed Fathers Refuse to Allow Their Children to be Adopted by Another Man?
In two subsequent cases, the Supreme Court addressed the specific right that is at issue in Corbin J. – the right of unwed fathers to veto a proposed adoption. In the 1979 case of Caban v. Mohammad, the Court struck down a New York law that gave unwed mothers, but not unwed fathers, the right to consent to (or veto) an adoption of their child.
The trial court in that case had permitted two children to be adopted by their stepfather without the consent of their biological father. The children were 8 and 10 years old when the adoption was proposed and had lived with both biological parents during their early years of life.
The Court rejected the idea of "any universal difference between maternal and paternal relations at every phase of a child's development," insisting that unwed mothers and fathers be treated equally with regard to children with whom they had an existing relationship. However, it left open the question whether unwed mothers and fathers necessarily deserved equal treatment with respect to infants, with whom they had not yet developed a relationship.
In 1983, the Court answered that question in Lehr v. Robertson, a case also involving a proposed stepfather adoption. In that case, the child was born in New York, which maintained a putative father registry. The child's biological father, Jonathan, was not listed in the registry, but he filed an objection to the proposed adoption of his daughter by his stepdaughter once he learned of the proceedings. He argued that a putative father's "actual or potential relationship" with a non-marital child is protected by the Due Process Clause, and also challenged the statute for providing greater procedural rights to unwed mothers than unwed fathers.
The Court, however, upheld New York's statutory scheme and its bypassing of Jonathan's consent to the child's adoption. By not satisfying any of the statutory criteria for legal fatherhood, the Court reasoned, Jonathan had not earned full-blown protection of his parental rights. As the Court wrote, the biological tie "offers the natural father an opportunity that no other male possesses to develop a relationship with his offspring. If he grasps that opportunity and accepts some measure of responsibility for the child's future, he may enjoy the blessings of the parent-child relationship and make uniquely valuable contributions to the child's development. If he fails to do so, the Federal Constitution will not automatically compel a state to listen to his opinion of where the child's best interests lie."
The Nebraska Supreme Court's Ruling in In re Corbin J.
Like most states, Nebraska has a somewhat technical scheme for dealing with the rights of unwed fathers. An adjudicated father – one who has been determined to be the father by a court of law – must give his consent in order for an adoption to proceed. A mere "putative father," however, has less solid rights.
To have standing to object to an adoption, a putative father must file a "Notice of Objection to Adoption and Intent to Obtain Custody" with the state's registry within five days of the child's birth or of receiving notice of a proposed adoption. The putative father's failure to do so entitles the mother to request a certificate of non-compliance; and that certificate eliminates the need for the father's consent to an adoption. A putative father, in other words, loses his standing to object to adoption unless he makes the timely filing required by the statute.
In the Nebraska Supreme Court case, John argued that he was an adjudicated father, but he lost on this claim. Although Rusti had brought a paternity action against him, the court had issued only a temporary order before the suit was dismissed for lack of prosecution. His paternity was therefore never "adjudicated" in a final court order.
As a putative father, John had to jump through an additional hoop in order to gain standing to object to the adoption. But he did not file the requisite "Notice of Objection" within five days of learning of the Ilja's proposed adoption of Corbin. He did make his objection clear, but not until the petition to adopt was actually filed, six months later, and not in the right technical form. Under the Nebraska code, his failure to make the appropriate filing in a timely manner means, ultimately, that his "consent shall not be required" for the proposed adoption.
The Nebraska Supreme Court, however, ruled that the statutory scheme was unconstitutional as applied to John. The constitutional violation, in the court's view, arose from the fact that John both was Corbin's biological father and had "established a familial relationship" with him. These two factors, the court reasoned, were enough to trigger constitutional protection for John's parental rights – per the U.S. Supreme Court's precedents on unwed fathers' rights.
Those cases, discussed above, distinguish between biological fathers who have developed a parent-child relationship with the child at issue and those who have not. To the extent that the putative father laws do not reflect that distinction, the Nebraska court held, they cannot be constitutionally applied. Here, John's longstanding relationship with Corbin was disregarded completely in the Nebraska lower-court proceedings; his parental rights were effectively severed because of his mere failure to file a simple form, just as they would have been had he never laid eyes on Corbin.
The Right Ruling; Unwed Fathers Deserve Rights When they Shoulder Commitments
The court in Corbin J. was right to stand up for the rights of unwed fathers – or at least this particular one. The putative father registries, which determine rights for unwed fathers in many states, are seldom used. Thus, there may be many men like John who are both biological and functional fathers, and yet are deprived of parental rights by technicalities. Balancing the rights of unwed fathers with adoption procedures and their goals can be tricky, but the Nebraska court was right here to side with John. Although there may well be good reasons to distinguish legally between unwed fathers and mothers in some cases, men who, like John, have acted as a father – and carried out the concomitant obligations – ought to see the benefits of that status as well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joanna Grossman, a FindLaw columnist, is a professor of law and John DeWitt Gregory Research Scholar at Hofstra University. She is the coeditor of Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship (Cambridge University Press 2009), an interdisciplinary collection that explores the gaps between formal commitments to gender equality and the reality of women's lives. Her columns on family law, trusts and estates, and discrimination, including sex discrimination and sexual harassment, may be found in the archive of her columns on this site.
..Ads by FindLaw
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/grossman/20091222.html
By JOANNA L. GROSSMAN
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
When can an unwed father's biological child be adopted without his consent? In a recent ruling, the Nebraska Supreme Court held that the state's statutory scheme for determining the rights of unwed fathers was unconstitutional as applied to the plaintiff before them – an unwed father who had not been adjudicated to be a legal father, but who had maintained a longstanding familial relationship with the child.
Unwed fathers in most states do not have the same rights as unwed mothers vis-à-vis their children. Their parental rights turn not just on biology, but also on whether they have carried out the obligations of fatherhood and, in some situations, whether they have complied with technical legal requirements necessary to establish their status. The Nebraska case, In re Corbin J., reveals the limitations of this approach to determining legal fatherhood.
In re Adoption of Corbin J.: The Facts
The recent Nebraska case involves a child, Corbin J., who was born to Rusti M. in 1999. John J. is named as the father on Corbin's birth certificate, and no one disputes that John J. is, indeed, the child's biological father. Rusti and John never married, but, for the first three years of Corbin's life, the three lived together as a family. In 2002, however, Rusti took Corbin and left the house, leaving no indication of their whereabouts.
Shortly after leaving, Rusti filed a court action seeking to establish John's paternity, to get full custody of Corbin, and to impose a child support order on John. The trial court issued a temporary order granting custody to her and visitation to John, and ordering John to pay child support. For a little more than a year, John exercised his visitation rights and paid child support. During that time, Rusti married another man, Ilja M.
In July 2003, the court dismissed Rusti's paternity action for lack of prosecution (Rusti, in other words, had not taken all the steps necessary to pursue the petition.) After that ruling, John stopped paying child support for Corbin, though he continued paying for Corbin's health insurance.
In September 2003, Rusti did not arrive at the time and location where John usually picked up Corbin for visitation. Moreover, John claims that Rusti's phone had been disconnected and he had no way of knowing how to track them down. For five years, John had no contact with Corbin. He says he could not find them; she says he knew the location and phone number of her family's ranch and could easily have found them.
John received a legal notice in September 2008 informing him that Ilja, Rusti's husband, was planning to file a petition to adopt Corbin. The lawyer representing Rusti and Ilja sent John the forms necessary to relinquish his parental rights and to make Corbin available for adoption by his stepfather. However, John did not sign the forms and filed a formal objection to the adoption once the petition was formally filed in January 2009.
Over John's objection, the adoption was granted.
Background on the Rights of Unwed Fathers
The issue on appeal before the Nebraska Supreme Court is whether the trial court correctly treated John as a "putative" father – one who was without standing to object to the adoption because he had failed to properly exercise his rights – or whether the Constitution requires that John's rights vis-à-vis Corbin be more robustly protected.
A little background on adoption law and unwed fathers' rights is necessary to understand the choice before the court:
As a general rule, a child is available for adoption when its biological parents have surrendered their parental rights or had them terminated. An adoption has the effect of severing the legal ties between the child and his biological parents, and establishing a new parent-child relationship with the adoptive parents.
In the context of a stepparent adoption, a child can retain legal ties to one biological parent, while being adopted by that parent's spouse. But here's the hitch: A child cannot have three legal parents, so, before a stepparent adoption can proceed, the child's other biological parent must be out of the picture, legally speaking. Stepparent adoptions can thus take place when the other legal parent has died, has had parental rights terminated, has relinquished parental rights, or, as allegedly occurred in this case, has failed to take the steps necessary to have legal rights as a father in the first place.
Children born out of wedlock were considered the "child of no one" in early American law; as a corollary to this principle, neither unwed mothers nor fathers were legally tied to the child. States changed that rule for mothers during the Nineteenth Century, assigning the same rights and obligations of motherhood regardless of legitimacy. But for unwed fathers, the law's shift was slower and, ultimately, the law stopped short of granting unwed fathers legal rights on par with those of unwed mothers.
By the early Twentieth Century, virtually every state imposed a duty of support on unwed fathers, enforceable through "bastardy" proceedings in civil or criminal court. But the obligation of support came with little or nothing in the way of parental rights for the fathers who desired them. Those rights came later, after a series of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, beginning in the 1970's, that established constitutional protection for the rights of unwed fathers.
In the 1972 case of Stanley v. Illinois, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for Illinois to remove three children from their father when their mother had died, simply because the couple had never married. The law in question presumed unwed fathers to be unfit, and relied upon that presumption to justify the placement of the children in foster care. But the Court said that this categorical denial of parental rights for unwed fathers violated the Due Process Clause, which had been interpreted to provide strong protection for the right of parents to control the care and upbringing of their children. In another case, Trimble v. Gordon, the Court struck down a law categorically denying illegitimate children the right to inherit from unwed fathers.
States responded to these cases by eliminating most of the categorical rules regarding unwed fathers. But rather than equalize the rights of unwed mothers (who were automatically given the full benefit of a parent-child relationship) and unwed fathers, most states adopted a compromise approach that gave full rights to unwed fathers only if they had satisfied certain criteria.
Under a typical law, an unwed father could earn full parental rights through marriage to a child's mother, being named on a birth certificate, being adjudicated the biological father, or living openly with the child and its mother. Most states also set up a "putative father registry," which would permit men who registered to be notified of proposed adoptions or other actions regarding their children.
Can Unwed Fathers Refuse to Allow Their Children to be Adopted by Another Man?
In two subsequent cases, the Supreme Court addressed the specific right that is at issue in Corbin J. – the right of unwed fathers to veto a proposed adoption. In the 1979 case of Caban v. Mohammad, the Court struck down a New York law that gave unwed mothers, but not unwed fathers, the right to consent to (or veto) an adoption of their child.
The trial court in that case had permitted two children to be adopted by their stepfather without the consent of their biological father. The children were 8 and 10 years old when the adoption was proposed and had lived with both biological parents during their early years of life.
The Court rejected the idea of "any universal difference between maternal and paternal relations at every phase of a child's development," insisting that unwed mothers and fathers be treated equally with regard to children with whom they had an existing relationship. However, it left open the question whether unwed mothers and fathers necessarily deserved equal treatment with respect to infants, with whom they had not yet developed a relationship.
In 1983, the Court answered that question in Lehr v. Robertson, a case also involving a proposed stepfather adoption. In that case, the child was born in New York, which maintained a putative father registry. The child's biological father, Jonathan, was not listed in the registry, but he filed an objection to the proposed adoption of his daughter by his stepdaughter once he learned of the proceedings. He argued that a putative father's "actual or potential relationship" with a non-marital child is protected by the Due Process Clause, and also challenged the statute for providing greater procedural rights to unwed mothers than unwed fathers.
The Court, however, upheld New York's statutory scheme and its bypassing of Jonathan's consent to the child's adoption. By not satisfying any of the statutory criteria for legal fatherhood, the Court reasoned, Jonathan had not earned full-blown protection of his parental rights. As the Court wrote, the biological tie "offers the natural father an opportunity that no other male possesses to develop a relationship with his offspring. If he grasps that opportunity and accepts some measure of responsibility for the child's future, he may enjoy the blessings of the parent-child relationship and make uniquely valuable contributions to the child's development. If he fails to do so, the Federal Constitution will not automatically compel a state to listen to his opinion of where the child's best interests lie."
The Nebraska Supreme Court's Ruling in In re Corbin J.
Like most states, Nebraska has a somewhat technical scheme for dealing with the rights of unwed fathers. An adjudicated father – one who has been determined to be the father by a court of law – must give his consent in order for an adoption to proceed. A mere "putative father," however, has less solid rights.
To have standing to object to an adoption, a putative father must file a "Notice of Objection to Adoption and Intent to Obtain Custody" with the state's registry within five days of the child's birth or of receiving notice of a proposed adoption. The putative father's failure to do so entitles the mother to request a certificate of non-compliance; and that certificate eliminates the need for the father's consent to an adoption. A putative father, in other words, loses his standing to object to adoption unless he makes the timely filing required by the statute.
In the Nebraska Supreme Court case, John argued that he was an adjudicated father, but he lost on this claim. Although Rusti had brought a paternity action against him, the court had issued only a temporary order before the suit was dismissed for lack of prosecution. His paternity was therefore never "adjudicated" in a final court order.
As a putative father, John had to jump through an additional hoop in order to gain standing to object to the adoption. But he did not file the requisite "Notice of Objection" within five days of learning of the Ilja's proposed adoption of Corbin. He did make his objection clear, but not until the petition to adopt was actually filed, six months later, and not in the right technical form. Under the Nebraska code, his failure to make the appropriate filing in a timely manner means, ultimately, that his "consent shall not be required" for the proposed adoption.
The Nebraska Supreme Court, however, ruled that the statutory scheme was unconstitutional as applied to John. The constitutional violation, in the court's view, arose from the fact that John both was Corbin's biological father and had "established a familial relationship" with him. These two factors, the court reasoned, were enough to trigger constitutional protection for John's parental rights – per the U.S. Supreme Court's precedents on unwed fathers' rights.
Those cases, discussed above, distinguish between biological fathers who have developed a parent-child relationship with the child at issue and those who have not. To the extent that the putative father laws do not reflect that distinction, the Nebraska court held, they cannot be constitutionally applied. Here, John's longstanding relationship with Corbin was disregarded completely in the Nebraska lower-court proceedings; his parental rights were effectively severed because of his mere failure to file a simple form, just as they would have been had he never laid eyes on Corbin.
The Right Ruling; Unwed Fathers Deserve Rights When they Shoulder Commitments
The court in Corbin J. was right to stand up for the rights of unwed fathers – or at least this particular one. The putative father registries, which determine rights for unwed fathers in many states, are seldom used. Thus, there may be many men like John who are both biological and functional fathers, and yet are deprived of parental rights by technicalities. Balancing the rights of unwed fathers with adoption procedures and their goals can be tricky, but the Nebraska court was right here to side with John. Although there may well be good reasons to distinguish legally between unwed fathers and mothers in some cases, men who, like John, have acted as a father – and carried out the concomitant obligations – ought to see the benefits of that status as well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joanna Grossman, a FindLaw columnist, is a professor of law and John DeWitt Gregory Research Scholar at Hofstra University. She is the coeditor of Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship (Cambridge University Press 2009), an interdisciplinary collection that explores the gaps between formal commitments to gender equality and the reality of women's lives. Her columns on family law, trusts and estates, and discrimination, including sex discrimination and sexual harassment, may be found in the archive of her columns on this site.
..Ads by FindLaw
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/grossman/20091222.html
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Help Save Our Children-Defeat Children's Services
Defeat Children's Services Blog Please check out this blog at:
http://defeatdcs.blogspot.com/search/label/Press%20Release
This blog is intended to help those having to deal with an evil organization called Children's Services or often referred to as CPS. Far too often they have stolen children without evidence. They care little about fact finding and are an agency that regulates themselves. They are another example of wasteful government. This blog will tell you how you need to battle Children's Services. When all else fails sue, sue, sue!
December 21, 2009
A Press Release From June
One of the goals of Defeat DCS and other advocacy groups is to not only educate those of you who have had your lives destroyed by CPS, but to educate the general public on what we have allowed basically are entire government to become. The following is a press release sent out in June from Colorado. Never have truer words been spoken.
Help Save Our Children
For Immediate Release
June 6th, 2009
Hundreds and Thousands of children all across America are currently being affected by Child Protection Services (C.P.S.). Studies have shown that only 2 out of every 50 children that have been removed from their homes actually “fit” the criteria for a necessary removal (1).
Which means; out of every 100,000 children removed by C.P.S., there is roughly 95,000children who should have never been taken from their rightful families. These children were never physically abused or emotionally abused by their families. These children were never neglected, only unconditionally loved by their families. The Legal Definition for Kidnapping is; “The crime of unlawfully seizing and carrying away a person by force or “fraud”, or seizing and detaining a person against his or her will with an intent to carry that person away at a later time”. If these 95,000 children did not need to be removed, is that not kidnapping?
The United States Government acknowledges that children who are removed from their biological families suffer thereby irreparable, long-term emotion damage (2). According to C.P.S., emotional abuse is child abuse. C.P.S. is fully aware of these consequences, yet they continue to needlessly tear down the emotional well-being of innocent children and their families. New evidence has come to light recently that proves children in foster care are so distraught from being separated from their parents that C.P.S. is now drugging them. C.P.S. currently has approximately 85% of children residing in foster care on psychotropic drugs. Going back to the earlier studies of the 95% of children who are in foster that should not be there, this new study that shows 85% of those children are being drugged. Is C.P.S. drugging these foster children, so that the foster children can be forced into thinking that what C.P.S. has done to them in okay? Whatever their reason is, this new information proves that C.P.S. is willfully and wantonly, destroying these children’s lives! C.P.S. has complete disregard for parental rights, as most of these children are being drugged over the objections of their biological parents.
C.P.S is a government agency, created with the sole purpose of “protecting” the best interest of our children. The facts show that C.P.S. does protect approximately 5% of those 100,000 children, but what about the remaining 95% of those children’s lives that they destroy? It appears that C.P.S. is causing more harm than good.
So why do they continue to remove children that do not need to be removed? C.P.S. is a business that depends on the lives of children to increase their revenue. They benefit financially through federal funds like Title IV-E, Title IV-B, “Adoption Incentive Bonuses, as well as Adoption Subsidies. C.P.S. has now become an “empire” built on taking children and separating families.
In 2008, Former US Senator Nancy Shaefer updated her scathing report regarding the corruption within Child Protection Services. Senator Schaefer has personally worked with hundreds and hundreds of families, throughout the United States, who are desperate to remove their children from the “clutches” of C.P.S. She witnessed that C.P.S. caseworkers’ are often guilty of fraud. Caseworkers’ are known to fabricate evidence, commit perjury, as well as intentionally mislead the court in order to substantiate their false allegations of child abuse and/or neglect.
The majority of parents’, who are accused, are never charged with any crime. The reason for this is so that C.P.S. can keep child abuse and/or neglect in civil court. There are different rules for civil procedures. In civil court “hearsay” is submitted as evidence. C.P.S. relies on this, as they usually have no material evidence to support their false claims. There is no accountability for the caseworkers’ who commit these crimes against our children and their families. State laws provide them with immunity.
Not only are caseworkers’ provided with immunity, so are the judges who allow this to happen. Judges often times silence the family by not allowing the family to state their side, or submit their evidence into the court record. Judges have an obligation to the public to be fair and impartial, but this is not the case in Juvenile and family court. The best comparison to what takes place behind those courtroom doors, is the 1692 “Salem Witch Trials”, but this time they hunting our children.
Families are usually stuck with a county or state paid attorney, who offer no help. Those attorneys try to convince the family to settle with C.P.S. and they rarely ever effectively defend the family. The children are appointed a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL), who is mandated to look out for the children’s best interest. The problem with this system as a whole is that everybody involved with these cases (except the children and their families) are looking to the children to provide them with job security.
The Judges’, attorneys’, Guardian Ad Litems’, C.P.S., therapists, the list could go on and on for the bureaucracy of workers who get paid off of the lives of our children. If there were no children in the system these people would be out of a job. Senator Schaefer, as well as several other well respected individuals in the US, has come to the conclusion that C.P.S. targets low-income families. The reason for this is so that C.P.S. can take these children with little encumbrance from the families. C.P.S. knows that low-income families do not have the resources to hire an attorney to fight the system.
St. Augustine once said that an unjust law is no law at all. What is happening today in American regarding Child Protection Services is by far “unjust”. When will these children and their families receive the justice they so desperately deserve? When will this corruption be brought to an end? One might think that placing children unnecessarily in foster care is the worst part of what C.P.S. does, but it is not the end of the destruction to American Families. Once C.P.S. has held children captive for the max time allotted, they then terminate the parent’s rights permanently. The reason for this is so these children will be “readily” adoptable. This is when the children are the most profitable for C.P.S.
Once C.P.S. can adopt out our children, they receive a $4000 - $8000 cash bonus for each child from our federal government. After they receive these cash bonuses, then C.P.S. will apply for federal “Adoption Subsidies”. Adoption Subsidies are cash payments of $400 - $800 per month on behalf of each child they helped adopt out. C.P.S. can receive these cash payments until the child reaches the age of 21. That’s right folks; our children have a cash value, a bounty if you will, over their heads. No American child or American family is safe from the claws of C.P.S. If your children will help them to increase revenue to help with their budget shortfalls, they will take your children, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. When will someone help these children?
These children have been robbed of their innocents and deprived of the love they desperately need and deserve from their own families. These families’ have been alienated from there children and they have lost their flesh and blood. What is more heartbreaking, the fact that C.P.S. is abolishing families unnecessarily or that nobody is standing up to stop it?
Shauna D. Robinson
Founder of Colorado’s Children
9490 E 106th Avenue
Henderson, CO 80640
Email: coloradoschildren@yahoo.com
Website: http://coloradoschildren.ning.com
Posted by Defeat Dcs at 11:58 AM
Labels: Press Release
http://defeatdcs.blogspot.com/search/label/Press%20Release
This blog is intended to help those having to deal with an evil organization called Children's Services or often referred to as CPS. Far too often they have stolen children without evidence. They care little about fact finding and are an agency that regulates themselves. They are another example of wasteful government. This blog will tell you how you need to battle Children's Services. When all else fails sue, sue, sue!
December 21, 2009
A Press Release From June
One of the goals of Defeat DCS and other advocacy groups is to not only educate those of you who have had your lives destroyed by CPS, but to educate the general public on what we have allowed basically are entire government to become. The following is a press release sent out in June from Colorado. Never have truer words been spoken.
Help Save Our Children
For Immediate Release
June 6th, 2009
Hundreds and Thousands of children all across America are currently being affected by Child Protection Services (C.P.S.). Studies have shown that only 2 out of every 50 children that have been removed from their homes actually “fit” the criteria for a necessary removal (1).
Which means; out of every 100,000 children removed by C.P.S., there is roughly 95,000children who should have never been taken from their rightful families. These children were never physically abused or emotionally abused by their families. These children were never neglected, only unconditionally loved by their families. The Legal Definition for Kidnapping is; “The crime of unlawfully seizing and carrying away a person by force or “fraud”, or seizing and detaining a person against his or her will with an intent to carry that person away at a later time”. If these 95,000 children did not need to be removed, is that not kidnapping?
The United States Government acknowledges that children who are removed from their biological families suffer thereby irreparable, long-term emotion damage (2). According to C.P.S., emotional abuse is child abuse. C.P.S. is fully aware of these consequences, yet they continue to needlessly tear down the emotional well-being of innocent children and their families. New evidence has come to light recently that proves children in foster care are so distraught from being separated from their parents that C.P.S. is now drugging them. C.P.S. currently has approximately 85% of children residing in foster care on psychotropic drugs. Going back to the earlier studies of the 95% of children who are in foster that should not be there, this new study that shows 85% of those children are being drugged. Is C.P.S. drugging these foster children, so that the foster children can be forced into thinking that what C.P.S. has done to them in okay? Whatever their reason is, this new information proves that C.P.S. is willfully and wantonly, destroying these children’s lives! C.P.S. has complete disregard for parental rights, as most of these children are being drugged over the objections of their biological parents.
C.P.S is a government agency, created with the sole purpose of “protecting” the best interest of our children. The facts show that C.P.S. does protect approximately 5% of those 100,000 children, but what about the remaining 95% of those children’s lives that they destroy? It appears that C.P.S. is causing more harm than good.
So why do they continue to remove children that do not need to be removed? C.P.S. is a business that depends on the lives of children to increase their revenue. They benefit financially through federal funds like Title IV-E, Title IV-B, “Adoption Incentive Bonuses, as well as Adoption Subsidies. C.P.S. has now become an “empire” built on taking children and separating families.
In 2008, Former US Senator Nancy Shaefer updated her scathing report regarding the corruption within Child Protection Services. Senator Schaefer has personally worked with hundreds and hundreds of families, throughout the United States, who are desperate to remove their children from the “clutches” of C.P.S. She witnessed that C.P.S. caseworkers’ are often guilty of fraud. Caseworkers’ are known to fabricate evidence, commit perjury, as well as intentionally mislead the court in order to substantiate their false allegations of child abuse and/or neglect.
The majority of parents’, who are accused, are never charged with any crime. The reason for this is so that C.P.S. can keep child abuse and/or neglect in civil court. There are different rules for civil procedures. In civil court “hearsay” is submitted as evidence. C.P.S. relies on this, as they usually have no material evidence to support their false claims. There is no accountability for the caseworkers’ who commit these crimes against our children and their families. State laws provide them with immunity.
Not only are caseworkers’ provided with immunity, so are the judges who allow this to happen. Judges often times silence the family by not allowing the family to state their side, or submit their evidence into the court record. Judges have an obligation to the public to be fair and impartial, but this is not the case in Juvenile and family court. The best comparison to what takes place behind those courtroom doors, is the 1692 “Salem Witch Trials”, but this time they hunting our children.
Families are usually stuck with a county or state paid attorney, who offer no help. Those attorneys try to convince the family to settle with C.P.S. and they rarely ever effectively defend the family. The children are appointed a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL), who is mandated to look out for the children’s best interest. The problem with this system as a whole is that everybody involved with these cases (except the children and their families) are looking to the children to provide them with job security.
The Judges’, attorneys’, Guardian Ad Litems’, C.P.S., therapists, the list could go on and on for the bureaucracy of workers who get paid off of the lives of our children. If there were no children in the system these people would be out of a job. Senator Schaefer, as well as several other well respected individuals in the US, has come to the conclusion that C.P.S. targets low-income families. The reason for this is so that C.P.S. can take these children with little encumbrance from the families. C.P.S. knows that low-income families do not have the resources to hire an attorney to fight the system.
St. Augustine once said that an unjust law is no law at all. What is happening today in American regarding Child Protection Services is by far “unjust”. When will these children and their families receive the justice they so desperately deserve? When will this corruption be brought to an end? One might think that placing children unnecessarily in foster care is the worst part of what C.P.S. does, but it is not the end of the destruction to American Families. Once C.P.S. has held children captive for the max time allotted, they then terminate the parent’s rights permanently. The reason for this is so these children will be “readily” adoptable. This is when the children are the most profitable for C.P.S.
Once C.P.S. can adopt out our children, they receive a $4000 - $8000 cash bonus for each child from our federal government. After they receive these cash bonuses, then C.P.S. will apply for federal “Adoption Subsidies”. Adoption Subsidies are cash payments of $400 - $800 per month on behalf of each child they helped adopt out. C.P.S. can receive these cash payments until the child reaches the age of 21. That’s right folks; our children have a cash value, a bounty if you will, over their heads. No American child or American family is safe from the claws of C.P.S. If your children will help them to increase revenue to help with their budget shortfalls, they will take your children, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. When will someone help these children?
These children have been robbed of their innocents and deprived of the love they desperately need and deserve from their own families. These families’ have been alienated from there children and they have lost their flesh and blood. What is more heartbreaking, the fact that C.P.S. is abolishing families unnecessarily or that nobody is standing up to stop it?
Shauna D. Robinson
Founder of Colorado’s Children
9490 E 106th Avenue
Henderson, CO 80640
Email: coloradoschildren@yahoo.com
Website: http://coloradoschildren.ning.com
Posted by Defeat Dcs at 11:58 AM
Labels: Press Release
Selling Children in America
Conchita Sarnoff.Posted: December 21, 2009 06:39 PM Selling Children in America
What's Your Reaction Child trafficking is a serious business. The latest 2008 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report confirms that trafficking of children has become a $67 billion annual worldwide business larger than Nike, Starbucks and Google combined
After weapons and drugs, children have become the third most important commodity to organized crime syndicates the world over, led by the Mexican cartels and closely followed in net annual revenues by the Russian and Ukrainian organized crime mafia.
A 2009 State Department Report confirmed that the United States is now the #1 destination country in the world for trafficked children. The reasons are clear: money and a high demand for underage children to be used for prostitution on "the streets" and online pornography.
Unfortunately, most members of Congress, state and local officials aren't aware of this. I recently met with U.S. Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who is a renowned workhorse in Congress, to interview her on the severity of the epidemic; she was shocked at the prevalence and the numbers.
According to the same State Department report, child trafficking is a global epidemic with tentacles that touch every nation at every level from state-run orphanages right up the latter to the most lucrative global industries including reputable modeling agencies.
Other recent government reports confirm that the fiscal aspect of the child trafficking -- that is the supply and demand structure of the global economy -- is such that the risk-reward ratio makes it both highly lucrative as well as nearly impossible to combat, much less eradicate.
Child trafficking in the 21st Century is a nondiscriminatory business: race, age, sex and socioeconomic status make no difference to the trader. The challenge: lack of awareness, resources and little if any law enforcement training. Local and State police who usually are first in line of command to bring the victims into custody are unaware that a T-Visa exists for the eligible trafficked children.
During a conversation with a former government official who wishes to remain anonymous, the Immigration, Customs Enforcement (ICE) budget, during the Bush administration used towards eradicating child trafficking was a mere $5 million out of a total budget of $800 million. Something is wrong with this picture. Still today, three hundred times more money is spent fighting drug trafficking than child trafficking. So how do we solve this?
In my opinion: Our local and state officials need to rethink strategy, reallocate the budgets and train the ``foot soldiers.'' In the meantime, as my friend and former Customs Enforcement Director coined, organize a "zero tolerance" grassroots campaign in every State by appointing local citizens to manage the small groups of community activists and spread the word to raise awareness across their neighborhoods. Over time and with a clear goal in sight these small community groups will grow into a nationwide initiative much like "Mothers against Drunk Drivers".
We owe it to our children and our country to protect innocent life; and in following the footsteps of that once heroic Anglican clergyman, John Newton, composer of the most famous folk hymn "Amazing Grace" the world's enslaved children will finally become "Free at Last".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/conchita-s-sarnoff/selling-children-in-ameri_b_399974.html
What's Your Reaction Child trafficking is a serious business. The latest 2008 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report confirms that trafficking of children has become a $67 billion annual worldwide business larger than Nike, Starbucks and Google combined
After weapons and drugs, children have become the third most important commodity to organized crime syndicates the world over, led by the Mexican cartels and closely followed in net annual revenues by the Russian and Ukrainian organized crime mafia.
A 2009 State Department Report confirmed that the United States is now the #1 destination country in the world for trafficked children. The reasons are clear: money and a high demand for underage children to be used for prostitution on "the streets" and online pornography.
Unfortunately, most members of Congress, state and local officials aren't aware of this. I recently met with U.S. Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who is a renowned workhorse in Congress, to interview her on the severity of the epidemic; she was shocked at the prevalence and the numbers.
According to the same State Department report, child trafficking is a global epidemic with tentacles that touch every nation at every level from state-run orphanages right up the latter to the most lucrative global industries including reputable modeling agencies.
Other recent government reports confirm that the fiscal aspect of the child trafficking -- that is the supply and demand structure of the global economy -- is such that the risk-reward ratio makes it both highly lucrative as well as nearly impossible to combat, much less eradicate.
Child trafficking in the 21st Century is a nondiscriminatory business: race, age, sex and socioeconomic status make no difference to the trader. The challenge: lack of awareness, resources and little if any law enforcement training. Local and State police who usually are first in line of command to bring the victims into custody are unaware that a T-Visa exists for the eligible trafficked children.
During a conversation with a former government official who wishes to remain anonymous, the Immigration, Customs Enforcement (ICE) budget, during the Bush administration used towards eradicating child trafficking was a mere $5 million out of a total budget of $800 million. Something is wrong with this picture. Still today, three hundred times more money is spent fighting drug trafficking than child trafficking. So how do we solve this?
In my opinion: Our local and state officials need to rethink strategy, reallocate the budgets and train the ``foot soldiers.'' In the meantime, as my friend and former Customs Enforcement Director coined, organize a "zero tolerance" grassroots campaign in every State by appointing local citizens to manage the small groups of community activists and spread the word to raise awareness across their neighborhoods. Over time and with a clear goal in sight these small community groups will grow into a nationwide initiative much like "Mothers against Drunk Drivers".
We owe it to our children and our country to protect innocent life; and in following the footsteps of that once heroic Anglican clergyman, John Newton, composer of the most famous folk hymn "Amazing Grace" the world's enslaved children will finally become "Free at Last".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/conchita-s-sarnoff/selling-children-in-ameri_b_399974.html
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