see story on Medical Kidnap here
Parents in New York City protest against Child Protection Services “disproportionately targeting poor families in removing children, when often their only crime is being poor.” Story here.
Comments by Terri LaPoint
Investigative Writer, Health Impact News
Parents whose children have been taken from them by Child Protective Services often tell us that the system is backwards. Instead of being presumed innocent until proven guilty, everyone involved with CPS assumes guilt, even in the face of no evidence of guilt. Some jurisdictions are taking this presumption of guilt without evidence a frightening step further: they are using “predictive analytics” to see which parents MIGHT abuse or neglect their children in the future.
In several cases reported to Health Impact News, we have already seen such allegations used against parents. Social workers have literally written in their reports to the courts that a parent has characteristics that might indicate that they may abuse or neglect their child in the future, even though there is no evidence that they have harmed their child in the past.
This is reminiscent of George Orwell’s “thought police” in the dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is inconsistent with one of the foundational principles underlying the U.S. Constitution, that of the presumption of innocence. Some have equated the predictive analysis model with racial profiling, because the algorithms tend to disproportionately target people who are poor or part of a minority group.
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform recently addressed this alarming trend.
New York City bill would be a small step toward curbing computerized racial profiling in child welfare.
by Richard Wexler
Excerpts:
It is the latest fad in child welfare: Use a computer algorithm that supposedly can predict who will abuse a child. The term commonly used in the field is “predictive analytics.” A more accurate term would be “computerized racial profiling.”
The dangers of computerized racial profiling
- ProPublica reports that predictive analytics already has gone terribly wrong in criminal justice, falsely flagging Black defendants as future criminals and underestimating risk if the defendant is white. A new analysis of ProPublica’s data confirmed their findings.
- In child welfare, a New Zealand experiment in predictive analytics touted as a great success wrongly predicted child abuse more than half the time.
- In Los Angeles County, another experiment was hailed as a huge success in spite of a “false positive” rate of more than 95 percent. And that experiment was conducted by the private, for-profit software company that wanted to sell its wares to the county.
- The same company is developing a new approach in Florida. This one targets poor people. It compares birth records to three other databases: child welfare system involvement, public assistance and “mothers who had been involved in the state’s home visiting program.”
So listen-up “at-risk” new mothers: In the world of predictive analytics, the fact that you reached out for help when you needed it and accepted assistance on how to be better parents isn’t a sign of strength – it’s a reason to consider you suspect, and make it more likely that your children will be taken away.
The campaign for predictive analytics is led largely, though not exclusively, by the field’s worst extremists – those who have been most fanatical about advocating a massive increase in the number of children torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care – and also by those most deeply “in denial” when it comes to the problem of racial bias in child welfare.
Some predictive analytics boosters have even argued that:
“prenatal risk assessments could be used to identify children at risk of maltreatment while still in the womb.”
The real potential of this model was aptly summed up by Yung-Mi Lee, a supervising attorney in the Criminal Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services at the hearing on the New York City bill. Said Lee:
At worst, such tools provide a veneer of color- and class-blind objectivity while exacerbating the racial and economic discrimination and other inequalities in law enforcement practices and criminal and civil penalties.
If anything, the problem is worse in child welfare, where the rest of the process – the records and, in most states, even the court hearings, also are secret.
Read the full article at the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog.
Pick up a copy of Bill Wynn: The Second Hundred and all my works here:
By Peter Weiss
link to story on Medical Kidnap here
Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
We have reported for years now that the Child “Protective” Services of state governments are corrupt, and part of a national “child trafficking” system that is a multi-billion dollar industry funded by American taxpayers and employing hundreds of thousands of people to support this industry.
If you are new to this subject and suspect that I am overstating the problem, here are some good places to start to understand what is really happening with child welfare services in this country:
The U.S. Foster Care System: Modern Day Slavery and Child Trafficking
Child Kidnapping and Trafficking: A Lucrative U.S. Business Funded by Taxpayers
From Child Protection to State-sponsored Child Kidnapping: How Did we Get Here?
While it varies from state to state, statistics bear out that very few children are actually removed from their homes due to abuse.
True abuse, a legally defined term, happens in only 10-15% of the cases. And even in those few cases, seldom is abuse determined by law enforcement trained in forensic evidence to determine abuse, as is evidenced by the fact that social workers and judges in family courts rule on cases of abuse while no formal charges are made against the parents.
The vast majority of children are removed from their homes for “neglect,” a much broader term which has no standard legal definition.
It basically means that the government decides who is a good parent and who is not based on their own subjective standards.
The most common area we report on is “medical neglect,” which means a doctor decides what is appropriate treatment for your child, and if you disagree or want to seek a second opinion, you risk losing your children.
The trauma to children from being removed from their homes is both documented by large-scale studies, and proven by the results of what happens to these children as they grow up outside of their homes and become adults.
The American Bar Association has compiled this research and made it available for attorneys:
Trauma Caused by Separation of Children from Parents: A Tool to Help Lawyers
Children are seriously harmed when they are separated from their parents. There has been quite a bit of research that proves that harm and outlines the specific ways that children are harmed.
This tool is designed to help lawyers use that research in their advocacy.
Whether you are a child welfare lawyer who wants to encourage a court to balance the harm of removing a child with the risk of abuse or neglect that the child faces by remaining in the home, a delinquency lawyer who wants to encourage a placement that preserves a child’s relationship with their family, or an immigration lawyer who wants to emphasize the damage done when a child is separated from his or her parents, this information is laid out in a way that allows you to easily use the research.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This memorandum provides a summary of the extensive research detailing the grave consequences that result when a child is separated from his or her parent(s).
Part II sets forth talking points for use by trial and appellate lawyers during oral argument. These talking points distill the key themes and conclusions of the clinical and legal research set out in the balance of this memorandum.
Part III begins with a review of the clinical literature concerning the well-documented psychological and physical effects of removal generally. These resources find that the negative effects of removal often far outweigh the harm allegedly inflicted on the child by his or her parent.
Part III next reviews relevant case law and legal journal articles applying these clinical findings in cases involving removal or attempted removal. Because one of the original driving forces behind development of this memorandum was the federal government’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border, the cases summarized in this memorandum generally concern challenges to that policy. The courts rely heavily on literature from the scientific and medical communities describing the negative effects of parent-child separation.
Part IV reviews literature discussing the effects of placement into foster care, which concludes that those effects are negative and substantial. The memorandum then reviews literature that may serve as a resource for parents facing a removal or who have already lost their children. Some of this literature provides guidance on healthy and effective parenting strategies; other literature addresses the potential benefits of post-removal visitation, mental health counseling, and other social services. Though not particularly useful for a memorandum of law in opposition to a removal petition, these resources may be helpful in counseling the client on practical actions he or she might take to protect the relationship with his or her child.
Part V reviews literature regarding the physical effects of “toxic stress,” which is prevalent among children who are removed from the parental home.
Finally, Part VI of the memorandum provides a listing of available additional resources assessing the effects of removal, including studies on the outcomes for children removed from the parental home and the long-term effects of the trauma that results from removal. (Source.)
Pick up a copy of Bill Wynn: The Second Hundred and all my works here:
By Peter Weiss
complete story with links and all references here
Adoption: It is about the Money!
By Steven R. Isham M.A., L.B.S.W.
Special to Health Impact News
Child ‘protection’ is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12 billion a year on it.
A recent CDC study, The Economic Burden of Child Maltreatment in the United States and Implications for Prevention, found the total lifetime estimated financial costs associated with just one year of cases associated with child protection services is approximately $124 billion. [1]
Arizona Leads the Nation in Children Removed from Homes and Sent to Foster Care and Adoption
The State of Arizona has increased the percentage of kids in out-of-home placement by almost 50% between 9/30/2007 and 9/30/2012. That is 20% higher than the next closest state, Oregon, who increased only 20% in those five years. Nationwide 41 states actually lowered the percentage of children in out-of-home placements. Arizona has recently passed the mark of more than 16,000 children in out-of-home placements and is still increasing this trend. [2]
Why would Arizona be continuing to take more children than ever before and adopt out so many of these children to other families? Is it about the money?
Certainly, “yes”, the state government and the state economy needs every business opportunity it can achieve, and the taking of children by the state and adopting these children to others is a financial windfall for the State of Arizona, the state budget and the economy. It is easily a billion dollar business, and growing every day in Arizona.
According to Wall St., Arizona is the 45th worst run state in the nation, has a poverty rate of 18.6%, the 9th highest in the nation, and a 2013 unemployment rate of 8.0%, 12th highest in the country. [3]
So why does Arizona lead the nation in percentage of children removed from their parents’ homes?
- Money: Federal Financial Incentives for taking and keeping children. ($72,000.00 Base)
- Adoption Bonuses: $4,000.00 to $6,000.00+ per each time [4]
- Adoption Subsidies: Even after adoption is completed until 22 years of age
- Physicians: Completing research or hiding medical malpractice mistakes
- Hospitals: Completing research or hiding medical malpractice mistakes
- Pharmaceutical Companies: Endless pool of test subjects
- Employment: Hundreds if not thousands of jobs depend on the state taking these children, especially since they are already built into the state budget now.
Are Arizona Children Entering Foster Care and Adoption Moving on to Better Lives?
So after millions of dollars in services, thousands of employees from hundreds of businesses, both state and federal, including in-state and out-of-state experts, are the children being protected ending up in safe and secure environments? Are the children being treated better or worse in state custody?
A reasonable taxpayer would assume that children are going from a bad environment to a good environment, a sick environment to a healing environment. We would assume they are going to a new environment totally void of any more suffering or trauma, safe from abuse or neglect of any kind, right?
Wrong!
Some of these children have suffered more trauma by being taken by CPS than they ever suffered in their own homes. Being taken from your own home and placed in another home with strangers while often not having any clue why, is extremely traumatizing. The impact is just like that of an illegal kidnapping; but in these cases the kidnapping is totally legal.
Or, imagine being told that your mother tried to harm you when in fact nothing ever happened. Purely speculative areas that are not researched but are based on diagnoses like Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy (MSBP) and others are often made up signs and symptoms to qualify the child for a disability that can receive massive amounts of federal funding.
Nationwide, Statistics Show Children Entering Foster Homes Suffer More AFTER They Leave Their Families
According to Cornell University, about 68% of all child protective cases “do not involve child maltreatment.” [4]
According to the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) in Washington, the calculated average is for every 1 abused child removed from an abusive home, there are 17 children removed from loving non-offending homes nationwide. [5]
Take a look at statistics of children who are removed from their families by CPS:
Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the United States. These numbers come from The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) in Washington D. C. [5]
Children in CPS custody:
- Physical Abuse (160)
- Sexual Abuse (112)
- Neglect (410)
- Medical Neglect (14)
- Fatalities (6.4)
Children in Parent Custody:
- Physical Abuse (59)
- Sexual Abuse (13)
- Neglect (241)
- Medical Neglect (12)
- Fatalities (1.5)
A child in CPS custody is:
- Almost three times more likely to be physically abused in CPS custody than at home
- Over eight times more likely to be sexually abused in CPS custody than at home
- Almost two times as likely to be neglected in CPS custody than at home
- Almost equally likely to be medically neglected (How can that be in CPS custody?)
- Almost five times more likely to die in CPS custody than at home
More Children in the Adoption System = More Money for the State
Financial Opportunities for the State of Arizona and Economic Growth; Stability
One local hospital in Arizona was billing the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (Medicaid) over one million dollars a year on one child, but then the same physicians/hospitals were testifying in “kiddie court” there was nothing wrong with the child. The Mom must have done something? The true medical condition of the child was never given to the judge!
How do Child Protection Services Pick which Children to Take?
Poverty
Poverty is the single best predictor of child abuse and neglect. According to one frequently cited federal study, children in families earning below $15,000 a year are 22 times as likely to be considered maltreated as kids in families with incomes above $30,000. These numbers are readily available through documents CPS Investigators have about AHCCCS (Medicaid) [7] It is also well known that these parents cannot afford private attorneys to represent them and fight to get their children back. They must rely on court-appointed attorneys who are generally quick to encourage them to settle with the State, and lose all custody of their children.
Research
There seems to be a trend in this area as certain Arizona hospitals have relationships with pharmaceutical companies and there seems to be a parallel between CPS reports, the genetics of the child, the medical conditions of the child, Arizona elected officials, and the research of the pharmaceutical company. The numbers are difficult to find, but apparently some parents have found their children in those research studies.
Medical Malpractice
There are several cases where there is no evidence whatsoever of any neglect, physical, emotional, or sexual abuse and CPS is called by the physician or hospital involved. In many of these cases there is specific evidence and expert testimony, from nationally recognized experts, of medical mistakes or care below the community standards. Interestingly, CPS has never done an investigation of many of these cases and yet severs the rights of the parent as quickly as possible. “Bazinga” the medical malpractice disappears, saving hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements, legal fees, and increased liability insurance costs.
Federal Government Incentives
The United States Federal Government, through an array of laws and grants, provides billions of dollars in incentives to states to take children from their parents. Arizona takes more percentage wise than any other state.
Adoptions
People who do not have children and want children create a market for children. Where is there an endless availability of children? Child Protective Services! The younger and healthier the child the more adoptable that child will be. Younger and healthier children are significantly more adoptable. A reasonable person might conclude the demand is so high that there could possibly be a connection between this demand and the increase in the taking of children before they ever leave the hospital.
The Funds?
It is easier to build a round pizza puzzle with 1,000 pieces, than find the exact money a state gets per child from the moment CPS takes that child and then from month to month. The amount most consistently quoted and spoken about is $6,000.00 per month.
“For instance, in the case of foster care, the present reimbursement to state and local government for each child taken into foster care is approximately $6000/month. Yet the foster care provider (the foster parent) receives only somewhere around $600/month. Allowing about the same for administrative costs, each child in foster care is worth about $5000/month; that’s pure profit on the bottom line!” [8]
On October 11, 2014, Arizona Central reported the following:
“Arizona had the second-largest increase in the nation over the decade, adding 7,296 children to Texas’ 8,294 (which has 4x the population of Arizona). There were 15,751 foster kids in Arizona at the end of March, according to the latest numbers from the state.” (Data given on March 2013) [9]
Assuming these numbers are correct, and the accepted dollar amount is correct:
The Arizona State child welfare and adoption services would have generated for Arizona approximately 94.5 million dollars a month or 1.134 billion dollars a year.
Conclusion: American Families Under Attack in Government-Sponsored Children for Profit Adoption Practices
Most American’s find it nearly impossible to believe that our own Government, both state and federal, would allow some scheme this obscene to be perpetrated against the American family unit and our precious children. And yet, there is so much evidence that something perverse is happening that it begs for an independent audit by the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the United States Department of Justice.
A few questions that I believe should be addressed during both investigations:
- How much combined funding is each state getting for each child?
- What is the amount of Medicaid fraud by state in relation to these children?
- How do race, poverty, medical research, medical malpractice, federal government incentives, and adoptions impact the number of children taken by each state?
- Why have the states or federal government not researched if the current system even works to do anything but pay for itself?
- How many children in the Foster Care system, as it currently exists, end up with criminal records, prison sentences, post-traumatic stress disorder from Foster Care, and suicide attempts and deaths?
About the Author
Steven R. Isham has educated, advocated, and fought for children and families since 1975, going on 40 years. His experience spans education, special education, school administration, behavioral health, juvenile justice, developmental disabilities, curriculum development, coaching, author of a book on Child and Family Advocacy and service to others throughout his career.
Pick up a copy of Bill Wynn: The Second Hundred and all my works here:
By Peter Weiss
Massachusetts State Auditor Finds Widespread Rape and Sexual Abuse in Foster Care but DCF Officials Won’t Report It (part 3)
Find this report in its entirety here: from Medical Kidnap
by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News
Evidence of Abuse in Foster Care Ignored, or Worse
Usually, when the real parents point out the injuries to social workers, their concerns are brushed aside or swept under the rug. The children are silenced, told by social workers not to say anything to their parents. It is extremely rare that anything is done about the abuse.
In one of the most extreme cases, when a biological mother recognized signs that her daughter was being abused and molested in foster care, social workers brought her concerns to the judge, accusing the mother of making it up and “sabotaging” the placement of her child. That was actually used as grounds to terminate her parental rights.
However, the mother was right. The foster “father” currently sits in prison for being part of a pedophile pornography ring. He was using the children for sex trafficking. See:
When the children come home, they often tell their parents horror stories – abuse from which their loving family was rendered powerless to protect them. Most former foster children have nightmares and night terrors after they come home, and they often have fears they didn’t have before. Some have PTSD.
As we have reported many times, children in foster care are at least 6 times more likely to be abused, molested, raped, or killed in foster care than they are in their own homes, even if their own homes were troubled. See:
Foster Care Children are Worse Off than Children in Troubled Homes – The Child Trafficking Business
Foster Children Funneled into Sex Trafficking
There is evidence that Child Protective Services funnels some foster children into the child sex trafficking trade. According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, over 1000 registered sex offenders were on the list of state-approved foster care providers and facilities, in Los Angeles County alone.
Many sources cite that at least half of sex trafficking victims come from foster care, and some cite figures that are as high as 90%.
See:
Child Sex Trafficking through Child “Protection” Services Exposed – Kidnapping Children for Sex
Massachusetts Governor Refuses to Acknowledge Problem or Enforce Accountability – Adds More Money to DCF Budget Instead
Since the auditor’s scathing report was released, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has pushed back. Mass Live reports the governor’s response that the audit was “irresponsible” and that it went back to a time period before he took office.
According to WBZ 4 in Boston, he has addressed the well-publicized short-comings of DCF by throwing another $100 million at the problem, hiring almost 400 new social workers, and changing some policies.
A massive influx of more money and social workers will never fix the problems of Child Protective Services. All that does is ensure that MORE children will be funneled into the terribly-broken system.
Auditor Suzanne Bump responded to the governor’s defense by pointing out that no one has been held accountable for the failures of the system. Even if the cases involved in the audit happened before the governor took office, his administration has not dealt with those who should have been held accountable.
“Those kids were victimized and nobody paid a price,” Bump told WBZ’s Ryan Kath. “That’s not serving children well. It’s not serving the agency well. And it’s not serving the public well.”
Governor Baker is no newcomer to the problems with DCF. He has a long involvement with the agency dating back more than 25 years. He was appointed in 1991 as Undersecretary of Health and Human Services, of which DCF is a part. In 1992, he was promoted to the head of the agency.
Abusers in Foster Care Going Unpunished – Change Desperately Needed to Protect Children
Suzanne Bump’s audit has revealed what parents involved in the system already know – that children in the system are being hurt in foster care and nothing is being done about it.
Those who fail to address the abuse of children in state care must be held accountable, and the abusers, who are committing crimes against children, must face consequences.
A simple way of protecting many of these children would be to simply not place them into the system in the first place. The approach of taking children “just in case” and sorting it out later during long, drawn out battles in family and juvenile court must end.
Many, more than half and possibly as many as 3/4 of the children placed into state care, are suffering abuse at the hands of the very system charged with protecting them.
All of them suffer from the trauma of being separated from their families.
Children are better off without this kind of “protection.” Those children who are truly abused at home often are the very ones left in their homes, due to not being “adoptable.” Child abuse is a crime, and must be treated as such.
Child “Protection” System is Really Child ADOPTION System
The public believes it is the “Child Protective System,” designed to protect abused children.
What most do not realize is that it has become the “Child ADOPTION System,” with the ultimate goal of maximizing federal funds. Therefore, the children who are truly in need of protection are not protected, because they are seen by those in the system as damaged goods who are unadoptable.
(end of report)
Pick up a copy of Bill Wynn: The Second Hundred and all my works here:
By Peter Weiss
Massachusetts State Auditor Finds Widespread Rape and Sexual Abuse in Foster Care but DCF Officials Won’t Report It (part 2)
Find this report in its entirety here: from Medical Kidnap
by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News
Sexual Abuse and Trafficking in Foster Care is Common Today – Children Suffer far Worse in Foster Care Than in Their “Troubled” Homes
Tragically, this has been the experience of far too many families. In my research for the Medical Kidnap division of Health Impact News over the past 3 years, I have personally spoken with hundreds of families, including many of the older children and teens who were either returned home or aged out of the system.
In only one of the stories that I have covered were the children sexually abused or molested in their own homes before Child Protective Services got involved under the guise of “protecting” them. In that case, the family reported the rape to police, but police didn’t do anything about it until social services kidnapped the resulting baby from the young mother in the hospital and the story went viral. The family was not responsible for the rape. (Story here.)
However, I estimate that about 75% of the older children and teens that have contacted us were molested or sexually assaulted in foster care, and many of the younger children have been abused as well.
Most of these incidents were reported by the children to the social workers, yet in almost none of the cases did it go beyond that.
Law enforcement was not notified. No reports were filed.
In most cases, the children remained in that dangerous setting even after they reported the abuse. Many times, it was not until much later that the parents learned of the abuse.
The true abusers in the foster homes and group homes got away with it.
Most of the time, we have not reported the sexual abuse. The families prefer to keep it out of the media, understandably. However, among the cases we are familiar with:
- An elementary-aged little girl was raped by the “Christian” foster father. When she reported it to the social workers, she was moved to another foster home. It was never reported to authorities. The foster family continued to be foster parents for many years within the same county where social workers were aware of the rape, and they continued to be involved in children’s ministry at their church.
- A teenage boy was raped by a man in the neighborhood. There were tattoos and identifying features that would have helped police identify his rapist, had the social worker simply bothered to inform the police. She didn’t. And he remained in that foster home.
- A teenager was sexually trafficked by those who were caring for her. It was never reported. Her mother suspected something, but her daughter wouldn’t talk about it. Her fears were confirmed a couple of years later when she finally got some documents in which social services checked the box – “Human Trafficking” on a form listing what the child had been involved in.
- A teenager was gang raped by the foster’s nephew and several of his friends. When the social worker found out, she simply transferred the girl to another facility. The crime was never reported.
- Parents discovered their little boys (really young) who had been returned home performing oral sex on each other. The behavior had to have been learned in foster care. No abuse in foster care had been reported to any authorities.
The audit by the Massachusetts state auditor uncovered many similar stories. In addition, Bump’s office found many other kinds of abuse that DCF failed to report. According to CBS 4 in Boston:
The Department of Children and Families did not know about 260 serious injuries to kids under the agency’s care, including gunshot wounds, burns, broken bones and head contusions.
This is consistent with our findings at Health Impact News, where numerous parents have sent photos documenting injuries to their children that happened in foster care.
These injuries far exceed any that the children ever sustained in their own homes before being removed from their families “in the best interest of the child.”
See:
The U.S. Foster Care System: Modern Day Slavery and Child Trafficking
(to be continued)
Pick up a copy of Bill Wynn: The Second Hundred and all my works here:
By Peter Weiss
Massachusetts State Auditor Finds Widespread Rape and Sexual Abuse in Foster Care but DCF Officials Won’t Report It (part 1)
Find this report in its entirety here: from Medical Kidnap
by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News
The theoretical function of Child Protective Services is to “protect” children from harm, removing them from their homes when they are being hurt. A deep-seated value of Western culture is that we need to protect children from abuse, and the public has overwhelmingly supported the use of tax dollars going to help the children who are being abused.
But what happens when the very agency charged with protecting children is, in reality, leading to or ignoring the physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and even deaths of the children in their care? Is anyone held accountable?
Where do their victims turn when social workers assigned to protect them turn a deaf ear and a blind eye?
Hundreds of parents who have spoken with Health Impact News about their child or children being taken from them have asked how they can lose their child though they have done nothing wrong, while at the same time the social workers routinely ignore the abuse of their children in foster care.
On December 7, 2017, Massachusetts State Auditor Suzanne Bump released an appalling audit of her state’s Child Protective Services, the Department of Children and Families (DCF). (See text of audit here.)
The audit, which covered 2014 and 2015, found that there were many instances where children in state care, whether in foster homes or group homes or other facilities under DCF care, were abused physically or sexually, but DCF failed to report the incidents to the proper authorities.
In the week following the release of the audit, many news outlets, both mainstream and alternative, have carried the story, and the ensuing political battle between Bump’s office and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker.
Conservative Review journalist Rob Eno references Michelle Malkin Investigates‘ coverage of the Medical Kidnapping of Justina Pelletier and compares it to the audit:
This new report raises serious questions on the motivations and ability of government agencies in general to protect children. Instead of kidnapping children for disagreements over medical treatment, these government child welfare agencies should focus on their core mission.
DCF – Sexual Abuse By Fosters Happening but “Not Serious”
The Ad Council tells us, “You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent,” in their campaign to entice more people to become foster parents. The audit report in Massachusetts reveals that this statement is sometimes taken to the extreme with regards to even the most flawed of foster parents, while children can be removed from their parents for sometimes the slightest of imperfections by the real parents.
Some of the grounds that have been used by Child Protective Services to take children include disagreeing with a doctor, refusing vaccines, having dirty dishes in the sink or laundry on the floor in the laundry room, having a child that was “too short,” getting the electricity turned off for a day, getting a 2nd medical opinion, parents having a verbal disagreement with each other, being a foster child themselves, or having a home birth. The lists of allegations are often filled with made-up stories or minor incidents twisted into something much more serious than they were.
Yet, when it comes to children who are abused by the fosters that are paid by taxpayers to care for the children who are being “protected” from their “dangerous” parents, that abuse isn’t considered worthy to report.
DCF officials told Auditor Suzanne Bump that they don’t see sexual abuse as a serious enough problem that they need to report it. According to Western Mass News,
The problem: “Sexual abuse to children is not considered to be a critical incident because DCF, in their own words, did not consider sexual abuse to cause serious bodily harm or extreme physical pain. I can’t comprehend that response,” Bump added. Bump’s office found 118 incidents of sexual abuse of a child in DCF care that were not reported to the office of the child advocate. She said that reporting these incidents hinders the protection of children.
When Terri LaPoint and Kristi Devine met with Auditor Suzanne Bump in October to discuss the need to audit DCF, her office was already in the process of doing so. We discussed many issues involved with medical kidnapping and DCF corruption.
(to be continued)
Pick up a copy of Bill Wynn: The Second Hundred and all my works here:
By Peter Weiss
Philadelphia City Councilman Endures Threats To Expose Corruption in CPS and Child Sexual Abuse
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
Earlier this year (2019) we reported that while Phoenix, Arizona has had the dubious distinction of being the #1 city in the U.S. for taking children away from their parents and placing them into state-funded foster care, that according to statistics published by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR), Philadelphia has now overtaken Phoenix as the top city in the U.S. having the highest percentage of the children being removed from homes and put into foster care. See:
Earlier this month (May, 2019), Philadelphia City Councilman David Oh presented testimony before the Philadelphia City Council regarding abuses in the state-run child protection services (DHS – Department of Human Services), and how they were continually breaking state law, while not admitting to any wrong-doing.
In fact, the councilman claimed that DHS “routinely and intentionally” violates state law.
“There is something wrong with DHS. The biggest problem I have with DHS, is that DHS tell us that there is absolutely nothing wrong with them.”
He claims to be representing over 50 “not-at-fault” mothers who all have solid evidence of wrongdoing, and have approached other elected officials many times over the course of years, with no results. He states that they were:
- …never accused of doing anything wrong. They were never accused of being abusive or negligent.
- It was determined by DHS that the allegations were unfounded. Yet, they have been denied their children for years.
- Their children are being placed in multiple foster care situations where they are abused, they have run away, they’re depressed, they’re medicated, they’re sexually violated.
And it continues.
He goes on to explain that most of these mothers comply with everything DHS asks them to do to get their children back, and yet in most cases their children are adopted out.
During his testimony, Councilman David Oh states that “In the course of pursuing this…..”
And he then pauses for about 5 seconds, very obviously carefully considering just what exactly he wants to say next:
“There have been threats made, threats intimated, that there will be retaliation, that there will be political consequences – all types of threats.
And I wonder why? Why is that, when all we are doing is our duty to provide an oversight to an administrative agency that is responsible for protecting children.
Why the threat, why the problems?”
Child Sex Trafficking in Philadelphia?
Councilman Oh then concludes with some “horrendous” things he has seen reported to him.
- That a 5-year-old child provided a medical report, corroborated by her ten-year-old brother, of two years of rape.
- And DHS determined that the case was unfounded.
- There’s no police investigation.
- That person, the rapist, is on the street.
- But DHS came into the grandmother’s home and took the third child without a court order. And that’s on video tape.
- No court order. They handed a piece of paper, and when it was opened after taking the child, in front of a police lieutenant and six police officers, that piece of paper was NOT a court order.
- Now the judge, receiving a document from DHS, signed an order that the grandmother is to have no interaction with her three grandchildren.
- And now, they have brought allegations against the grandmother, as being mentally ill.
Councilman Oh concludes by saying: “DHS cannot investigate itself.”
Pick up a copy of Bill Wynn: The Second Hundred and all my works here:
By Peter Weiss
Police Investigate Murder of Former Arkansas Senator Linda Collins-Smith – Frequent Critic of CPS Corruption
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
from: Medical Kidnap
Former Arkansas Senator Linda Collins-Smith was found dead in her home last week, and local media sources are reporting that her death is being investigated as a homicide.
Collins-Smith was a frequent critic of government corruption, but who the attacker was and what the possible motive might have been are not being reported, and the public may never know, as Third Judicial District Judge Harold Erwin has ordered that documents and evidence obtained by the police during this investigation are to be sealed.
[Collins-Smith’s former press secretary Ken] Yang says that her death is being investigated as a murder. Yang also tells KATV content partner, KAIT8 that Collins-Smith was found shot in her home.
According to Yang, neighbors had reportedly heard gunshots a day or two before Collins-Smith was discovered today. Her body was reportedly found wrapped in some sort of blanket.
Was Linda Collins-Smith Investigating the Link Between Child Protective Services (CPS) and Child Trafficking That Led to Her Murder?
There is a lot of speculation about how Linda Collins-Smith’s criticisms of government corruption might have led to her murder, such as a possible investigation looking into a link between the seizure of children by CPS services (Arkansas Child Services Division of The Arkansas Department of Human Services) and child trafficking.
But so far, this appears to be only speculation, as Health Impact News has not found any evidence linking Collins-Smith to such an investigation, and as we mentioned above, the Judge has ordered all evidence uncovered by the police sealed.
We do know that Collins-Smith, during her tenure as a State Senator, did participate in hearings investigating CPS, as is evidenced from [a] video recording from 2016 where she questions the “disappearance” of certain emails that may have been covering up corruption.
Some have produced what appears to be a screen shot of her Facebook Page, with what is reported to be her last Facebook Post before her death.
She is allegedly sharing the Brandy Murrah story of the falsified lab tests that were allegedly used to take children into state custody falsely. (See: Alabama Lab Owner Arrested for Falsifying Results of Drug Tests Used to Medically Kidnap Children.)
She appears to be critical of Arkansas CPS (DHS in Arkansas) and judges who rule on child custody cases.
But that post does not appear on her Facebook page today, and we cannot verify if it is authentic or not.
Those most vocal critics concerning her death appear to be former constituents of hers, who claim she was one of the few in the Arkansas government that parents could go to for help on child custody issues.
One of those former constituents from Arkansas, Michaele Walker, took to Facebook Live to address Collins-Smith’s death.
Walker claims to have worked with Collins-Smith on CPS corruption cases linked to child trafficking nationwide, and that there is allegedly a current 2-year investigation pending looking for over $50 million in missing government funds.
What We do Know About Linda Collins-Smith
Based on published reports and public records, this is what we do know about former Arkansas Senator Susan Collins-Smith.
Collins-Smith served one term in Arkansas House of Representatives, District 80, from 2011 to 2013. She was elected as a Democrat, but switched parties in August 2011.
In 2014, she was elected to the Arkansas State Senate, District 19.
Collins-Smith lost to James Sturch in the Republican Party primary for the 19th district in Arkansas in May 2018 by fewer than 600 votes.
Politically, Collins-Smith described herself as: “Christian Conservative; Pro-Life, Business, Family, Guns, Veterans, Better Education & Patriot. Love God, Family and Country!”
She openly supported President Donald Trump and many of his policies.
She was married to Circuit Judge Philip Smith and the two reportedly went through a bitter divorce that was finalized in 2018.
As a result of testimony given during the divorce proceedings, Philip Smith was reprimanded by the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, and agreed to not serve again as a judge in the future.
The reprimand states that he: .. made improper use of court premises, or other resources to engage in extrajudicial activities that did not concern the law, the legal system, or the administration of justice.
What those “activities” were is not specified.
Child Sex-Trafficking Through Foster Care is a Known Problem – Is this What Happens to People Who Want to Expose It?
While we may not know the truth as to why Linda Collins-Smith was murdered, and may never know, she would not be the first State Senator to have a murder linked to allegations of investigating child trafficking.
Similar allegations have been made in the past regarding former Georiga Senator Nancy Schaefer. (See: Senator Nancy Schaefer: Did her Fight Against CPS Child Kidnapping Cause her Murder?)
What we do know is that the vast majority of children who are sexually trafficked today come from the nation’s Child Protection Services agencies and Foster Care, and that this child sex trafficking business is reported to be larger than the illegal drugs and illegal gun trades.
Pick up a copy of Bill Wynn: The Second Hundred: Bill Wynn: The Second Hundred
and
also By Peter Weiss
Turn left! Not left, right! Not right! I said turn left. Don’t you know the difference between left and right? What kind of parent are you? How can you be a parent?
In a nutshell, this is how Child Protective Services (CPS) workers treat you and make you feel once they are in your life.
Rule Number One: Never let them in your life.
If you’ve read the Nancy Schaefer piece, which is the headline piece for this material, you can see that messing with Child Protective Services is dangerous even for a prominent politician. At best, CPS is a benevolent broker of children that fashions itself as a champion of children who need protection. At worst, and this is the case much, much more than as a do-gooder, it is a for-profit dealer in human flesh whose tentacles reach into the darkest worlds of child prostitution and child slave trade.
Like every large government agency, CPS was begun with earnest humanitarian intent but has morphed into a money-hungry viper intent upon only one thing: its own survival at any cost. This is, by the way, Social Darwinism.
Testimonial:
We broke Rule Number One. It happened in New Jersey and the Agency was DYFS, the Division of Youth and Family Services. Toward the end of our struggles with DYFS they changed their name to the Division of Child Protection and Permanency. That is issue for a different discussion. Painfully noticeable in the name change, however, is the elimination of any pretext of working with families. We can’t underscore enough the enormity of the significance of such a change in focus and scope.
I tried to turn left. I really did. But I told you to turn right. No, you told me to turn left. Are you telling me that I don’t know which way I told you to turn? (Implication: how dare you correct me? How dare you argue with me?) Okay, I’ll turn right. But I told you to turn left.
This was pretty much the demeanor of every DYFS visit once they were in our lives. The caseworker would go through our house as if it were public domain. One time she found a yogurt that had expired the day before and accused us of feeding our kids expired and no-good food. She suggested that we could go to the grocery store together (of course not her, but one of the DYFS aides) so she could show us how to read the expiration dates and pick the freshest food. That one of us had three advanced degrees including a Doctorate was of no import. In fact it was a negative because the caseworker was self-conscious about her own lack of education.
Another time, the driver, the same aide who was to take us shopping, commented to her that our child’s clothes were too small. In fact the foster mother had dressed our child that day in the second-hand stuff she always put our child in. The result of this comment was the caseworker’s demand that we go clothes shopping with—you guessed it—the aide, not the caseworker herself, so we could learn what sizes our child wore. We actually agreed to this but insisted that the caseworker take us since we wanted to please her and wanted to make sure what we bought fit correctly. Of course the shopping trip never materialized. But the judge would read in her case log that we refused to go shopping to learn how to dress our child.
–Anonymous
Sound familiar? Ring a bell? CPS workers are known for making parents second guess whether it is time to take a breath. That is how devastating their criticisms and recriminations, their antagonistic, demeaning, belittling manners, are. Their goal is to make your head spin so that in the end they are sure to have justification for keeping your children once they’ve seized them. They want to keep your children for profit, nothing more.
Rule Number One: Never let them in your life.
Pick up a copy of my published works here:
By Peter Weiss
and
Fiction Outtakes: The Second Hundred coming next week on Amazon
continued…
EXHIBIT B
Failure of DFCS to remove six desperate children
A brief report regarding six children that Habersham County DFCS director failed to remove as disclosed to Senator Nancy Schaefer by Sheriff Deray Fincher of Habersham County.
Sheriff Deray Fincher, Chief of Police Don Ford and Chief Investigator Lt. Greg Bowen called me to meet with them immediately, which I did on Tuesday, October 16, 2007. Sheriff Fincher, after contacting the Director of Habersham County DFCS several times to remove six children from being horribly abused, finally had to get a court order to remove the children himself with the help of two police officers.
The children, four boys and two girls, were not just being abused; they were being tortured by a monster father.
The six children and a live-in girl friend were terrified of this man, the abuser. The children never slept in a bed, but always on the floor. The place where they lived was unfit for human habitation.
The father on one occasion hit one of the boys across his head with a bat and cut the boy’s head open. The father then proceeded to hold the boy down and sew up the child’s head with a needle and red thread. However, even with beatings and burnings, this is only a fraction of what the father did to these children and to the live-in girlfriend.
Sheriff Fincher has pictures of the abuse and condition of one of the boys and at the writing of this report, he has the father in jail in Habersham County.
It should be noted that when the DFCS director found out that Sheriff Fincher was going to remove the children, she called the father and warned him to flee.
This is not the only time this DFCS director failed to remove a child when she needed to do so.
(See Exhibit A)
The egregious acts and abhorrent behavior of officials who are supposed to protect children can no longer be tolerated.
[End of report]
