Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration

http://www.youtube.com/user/ArchangelTheFallen#p/a/f/1/uZfRaWAtBVg

Youtube's Patiencepoet Calls into The Alex Jones Show - "CPS Exposed"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuYshIhDeVQ&feature=youtube_gdata

How child abuse affects society

How child abuse affects society

by Francis Harris

Of all the ways that child abuse impacts society - from dysfunctional individuals; to families falling apart - it goes without question that child abuse impacts our legislation. As primitive cultures evolve and recognize that the well-being of children is important, they come to create laws concerning children. Above and beyond all the harm that children endure, it is these laws that somehow impact us the most.

How does child abuse impact society?

1. Society creates legislation: As societies develop from primitive cultures to advanced ones concerned about children's welfare we see legislation enforced to protect children. Overtime we have seen Western laws change: they now prohibit children working under the minimum age; restrict the ages they may marry - or have sexual relations; control the hours they can work (and where); demand that they must receive education; prohibit them from voting and so on.

2. Legislation has its backlash on children: Where legislation is created there is always a backlash that impacts (negatively) those it is intended to help. The legislation concerning children has been abused in some places buy malicious individuals who falsely report child abuse and neglect. Often there are no repercussions for these individuals (since the state wants to investigate ANYTHING) although children and their lives can be devastated by unchecked malicious individuals who report falsely; repeatedly and on occasion end up having the child separated from parent, placed in foster care or otherwise permanently traumatized from people abusing the law and deceiving the authorities about the child's real well-being.

3. Legislation is controversial: As soon as we start to lay down the law we bring out the differences of opinion that exist. We often think that we have the "absolute" and ultimate answer to children's welfare - without realising that there are many other valid alternatives. For example, some nations legislate precisely how parents may discipline children. In those nations if a parent smacks a child in discipline the child can be placed in foster care and the parents given a criminal record and sent to prison.The same parent who "hi-5s" a child and impacts them with the same force receives no such criminal record - because apparently it is ok to hit a child with any forced desired in this cultural greeting, but not ok to smack a child in discipline and stop them killing themselves by running into a road.

4. Legislation is not implemented: While societies can have legislation about children's welfare actually implementing this is another matter. The continued existence of child sex abuse and trafficking in Western nations that have strict laws against this is evidence of the fact that laws do not change and eradicate the problems that children face.

5. Legislation does not capture the absolute "best" for children: As late as 1989 the United Nations drew up the Convention on the Rights of a Child. It is an internationally, legally binding document signed by hundreds of nations that outlines the things that children and the rights that they have - from spiritual and religious rights, to the most fundamental right - the right to life itself. This legally binding document is left to individual states to actually implement.



While this apparently leaves scope for different cultural, religious and social customs concerning children (like what age children can marry; and whether they can be aborted) it certainly does not capture some absolute answer to child-rearing.The laws merely reflect one nation's ideas about what might help children. We easily forget that there is no absolute best for children, and assume that the laws of one nation (maybe ours) are the "right" way to help children thrive within those parameters of the United Nations.

The US and some rogue African states have declined to sign this United Nations convention. The US declines since some states still issue the death penalty and technically this can include children. Since America is prepared to put a child on death row it does not feel it can sign up to the legislation that binds the rest of the world. So it honestly wont sign the declaration on the rights of the child as of 2010.

6. Legislation creates unhelpful labels: When society legislates to protect children it automatically creates a situation where some nations label something as abuse that other nations do not. Even a child growing up in one state may be termed "abused" and in another state not. We still have no universal definition of what is child abuse and this discrepancy between states and nations shows how equally healthy children in identical situations can in one place be labeled "abused" and not in another. The child's life is negatively impacted by this label. They are never the same after they have been told they are abused; while a child growing up elsewhere can lead a normal happy life and not have the psychological issues that follow from the state intervening and labeling a child.

7. We become complacent: The legislation about child abuse (that has come into being as society has evolved) often leads to a situation where societies become complacent to the socially accepted abuses that children are subjected to every day. We think we have everything covered, and blinded to our hypocrisy, we allow "abusive" - but accepted - practices to continue: from fast food diets, to advertising aimed at children; from childcare (with all its negative effects), to parents made from multi-paired homosexual liasons that just do not give children the stable nurture of the mother and father parent role model that they need; from abortion, to divorce. We fail to see the harm we still do to children in a myriad of ways.



8. Legislation dis-empowers children: While legislation often has clauses about "taking the child's wishes into consideration" the reality is that legislation is written by adults, for adults, giving adults the ultimate control over a child's life. Unlike any other citizen the child is actually totally powerless to change anything they do not like. The child is forced to remain a second-class citizen, an underdog,who cannot even have any say in the laws that govern them. We like it that way.

Children and young people account for over 40% of the world and would turn the world upside down overnight if we heard their voice. If children were asked whether they wanted mum and dad to stay together or divorce we would not like the answer. If children were asked whether they wanted a childcare centre or a home we would not like the answer. If children were asked whether there should be more recreation parks and child-friendly spaces we would not like the answer. If children were asked whether mummy should kill the babygrowing inside her because it was her right, or not, we would not like the answer.


CONCLUSION

In conclusion, child abuse certainly affects the legislation of societies. These laws are always limited; sometimes backlash against children; still need to be implemented to help children; can be controversial; are not universally accepted or agreed upon; do not capture the best practice in child-rearing; force the child to remain firmly under adult control and always give us a false sense of security that we are civilized and have found the best for children.


Learn more about this author, Francis Harris.

http://www.helium.com/items/1881374-child-abuse-society-legislation-laws

Forced adoption is a truly dreadful scandal Social workers are removing children from loving families without proper justification

Forced adoption is a truly dreadful scandal
Social workers are removing children from loving families without proper justification, says Christopher Booker


By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:44PM BST 03 Jul 2010
45 Comments

Ripped from their families: some of the stories should shock the conscience Photo: ALAMY
In recent months, I have been reporting on what is one of the most alarming scandals in Britain today – the secretive system that allows social workers to remove children from loving families without any proper justification, and to send them for adoption or fostering with no apparent concern for their interests.
Four more examples have come to light in the past week. The first came to my attention via Lynn Boleyn, a former councillor from Dudley, who first became concerned about "forced adoption" when she sat on various committees concerned with child care. Last week, she was in court with a mother of five girls, whose family tragedy began when her partner was sentenced to 14 years for abusing the eldest girl, who was sent to live with a relative. Although there was no evidence of their mother harming them in any way, the other four girls were seized by Dudley social services and placed in foster care. Three were kept together, separated from their two-year-old sister whom the council now wants to put out for adoption.

Related Articles
'Climategate', 'Amazongate' - when will the truth be told?
'Secret agenda to score adoptions'
Mother's anger over gay couple's adoption of her children
'Evil destruction' of a happy family
Baby P scandal council still failing, says official report
Lt-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond should not have died
The three girls, aged 11, 10 and 7, are desperately unhappy, constantly asking to be reunited with their mother. But on Friday, a judge said he had no power to stop social services summarily withdrawing them from their local school to be sent to a new home. The 11-year-old was looking forward to being in the school play and the end of term Leavers' Service. She has now been torn away from friends she has known since she was four, the nearest thing to stability left in her life. The children's wishes were not taken into account.
A second case concerns another woman, for 20 years an NHS nurse who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the first Gulf War. Until recently, she was a semi-professional dog breeder, living happily at home with her eight-year-old son (his father having walked out when she was pregnant).
In March, their home was raided by two RSPCA officials and five policemen, complaining she had too many dogs in the house. Her home was untidy because she was clearing an attic, but the seizing of the dogs (breaking the leg of one of them) left it a befouled mess.
Acting on a tip-off from the RSPCA, Leeds social workers then intervened, and expressed surprise that the house was tidier than they expected. Nevertheless, they told the mother to bring her son's clothes to school, from where he was taken into foster care.
After three months, during which he has only been allowed short supervised "contact" with his mother, the boy is miserable, constantly asking when he can return home. His mother has repeatedly had to draw the social workers' attention to various conditions, such as head lice and threadworm, which indicated that he was not being properly cared for. Last week they announced that they were moving him to another foster home.
Although there was no evidence that she was anything other than an admirable mother, apart from the temporary mess made of the house in March, the social workers say her son cannot be allowed home until they have both undergone "psychiatric assessments". These cannot be arranged until October. Nor has the boy yet been given a guardian to represent him, as the law lays down.
My other two cases come from Ian Josephs, the former county councillor and businessman who runs the Forced Adoption website and has helped hundreds of families in a similar plight. When, in January, a couple brought their newborn son to hospital with a fractured arm, Coventry social services were called in on suspicion that the child might have been injured by his parents. After the mother had been arrested, handcuffed and held by the police for nine hours, the couple were terrified that their baby would be taken from them. Although not charged with any offence, they are on police bail, which prevents them from leaving the country.
The child's Irish grandmother took the baby to Ireland, where he is now surrounded by a large, supportive family. Social services are attempting to get an order through the courts for the grandmother to return to England with the baby.
My last case is so shocking that I will return to it in more detail at a later date. It centres on a London couple who, earlier this year, had their six children seized by social workers on what appears to be flimsy hearsay evidence (I have seen the court papers).
The mother was pregnant again. Last month, after the boy was born, three social workers and five policemen entered the hospital ward where she was breastfeeding at 3am, wresting the baby from her by force. They then discovered that they had nowhere to keep him. The boy was put into intensive care, where his mother was taken to breastfeed him for four days, until she was fit to leave the hospital. She saw her baby for the last time two weeks ago.
I will return to this story when I have had some explanation from the council responsible.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7870342/Forced-adoption-is-a-truly-dreadful-scandal.html

WHO AM I?

A Video Portrayal of Adoption

Fathers back bill on rights of parents

Fathers back bill on rights of parents
Say judges must consider joint physical custody

Brian Ayers of Brookfield wants to have more time with his 14-month-old son. (Nancy Palmieri for The Boston Globe)
By Brian MacQuarrie
Globe Staff / July 5, 2010
E-mail|Print|Reprints|Comments (30) Text size – +
Brian Ayers of Brookfield, a part-time police officer who juggles two jobs, is the proud father of a 14-month-old son. He gazes lovingly at a photograph of himself with his son, talks excitedly about their recent trip to a hot-air balloon festival, and says he wants to build the same kind of close relationship he enjoys with his father.


Tweet 3 people Tweeted this
Yahoo! BuzzShareThis
But Ayers, whose former girlfriend discovered she was pregnant after they broke up, does not share joint physical custody of his only child. And this status, he argues, is one of many examples of how fathers in Massachusetts face discriminatory obstacles in custody decisions.

“I was very upset,’’ said Ayers, 30. “I thought, in this country, you wouldn’t have to necessarily fight to spend time with your own child.’’

That struggle, according to fathers’ rights groups, is a product of a Massachusetts probate system that they say tilts physical custody of children to the mothers. As a result, they are championing a pending House bill that would begin each custody case with a presumption that fathers and mothers are entitled to equal amounts of time with their children. “What we have right now is essentially a maternal veto’’ over joint physical custody, said Ned Holstein, executive director of Fathers & Families, a national advocacy group based in Massachusetts. “We don’t understand why mom should have a veto over what is in the best interests of children.’’

James Edwards, a family-law attorney who represents the mother of Ayers’s child, said the custody settlement signed by both parents is relatively generous in the parenting time granted to the father. Ayers cares for his son every other weekend and has other sleepovers and meals built into the agreement.

But to Ayers, who said he could not afford to go to trial to seek equal time with his son, such a right should be the norm unless evidence shows otherwise.

The fathers’ rights movement has made its way into the 2010 election, as three candidates for the Governor’s Council, which votes on judicial nominations, are members of The Fatherhood Coalition of Massachusetts.

Joe Ureneck of Dorchester, one of the candidates, said fathers’ rights is the “underlying foundation’’ of his candidacy.

“Generally, you have men who have a very hard time in the courts, who want to be involved in their children’s lives, and have a hard time in playing the role of the father,’’ Ureneck said.

However, organizations that deal with women’s and children’s issues say there is no such thing as a maternal veto. And if the bill became law, officials in these groups argue, judicial discretion would suffer, less attention would be paid to the specifics of each divorce, and children might be subjected to more acrimony.
“If the world were a perfect place where everybody was just able to get along and put their differences aside, we might have a different lens on this,’’ said Nancy Allen Scannell, director of policy and planning for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which opposes the bill. “But we all know the reality of what happens.’’


Tweet 3 people Tweeted this
Yahoo! BuzzShareThis
Scannell said the process already prefers joint physical custody. But circumstances in divorces often make strictly equal parenting difficult because of financial or logistical problems.

“The MSPCC’s position is that we emphasize a look at families from an individualized perspective,’’ Scannell said.

Groups from both sides of the issue could not point to a statewide study on custody decisions, but a 1999 doctoral thesis by Joseph McNabb, the president of Laboure College in Dorchester, found that joint physical custody was awarded at Worcester Probate and Family Court only 8 percent of the time in 501 cases in 1993. Mothers obtained sole physical custody 83.2 percent of the time, and fathers received sole physical custody in 8.8 percent of the cases, according to the study.

The bill is opposed by the Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization for Women. “I think it’s an unnecessary step,’’ said Christina Knowles, state director of NOW. “I think judges explain their decisions anyway. It seems redundant.’’

Thomas Barbar, cochairman of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s family law section council, said custody cases are often so thorny and nuanced that judges, with the help of mediators and the attorneys, usually take considerable time to decide.

“What I’ve noticed,’’ Barbar said, “is the court tries to make sure that the kids are spending time with each parent and nobody is being prejudiced. They try not to make decisions rashly.’’

But in Holstein’s view, judicial perspective would be enhanced by the shared parenting bill. Under its terms, judges would be required to explain their decisions in writing if they deny joint physical custody.

The bill, filed in 2008 by Representative Colleen Garry of Dracut, is being considered by the joint Judiciary Committee. A committee aide said the panel has a July 13 deadline to take action on the bill, but an extension might be requested.

Ayers said he became active in the fathers’ rights movement when a lawyer told him he would need a minimum of $15,000 in legal fees to seek joint physical custody in court.

“In the probate court, you’re guilty of being a deadbeat dad the minute you walk through the door,’’ he said. Ayers, who said he pays $320 a week in child support and lives in his parents’ basement, added that he has a clean criminal record and has never been the subject of a restraining order.

But in this case, Edwards said, the mother’s argument for sole physical custody was aided by the child’s status as a newborn, her occupation as a nurse, and third-shift work that enabled her to care for the baby during the day. Ayers, however, insisted he has been treated unfairly.

“I’ve got to keep doing the right thing,’’ Ayers said. “And the right thing is to take care of my son, and to keep fighting for what’s right.’’

Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@globe.com.

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/07/05/fathers_back_bill_on_rights_of_parents/