CPS: A FINANCIAL EMPIRE

Sunday Reading: The Money Behind State Adoptions


POLITICS

Adoption Bonuses: The Money Behind the Madness...DSS and affiliates rewarded for breaking up families
By Nev Moore

Massachusetts News

Child "protection" is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12 billion a year on it.

The money goes to tens of thousands of a) state employees, b) collateral professionals, such as lawyers, court personnel, court investigators, evaluators and guardians, judges, and c) DSS contracted vendors such as counselors, therapists, more "evaluators" , junk psychologists, residential facilities, foster parents, adoptive parents, MSPCC, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, YMCA, etc. This newspaper is not big enough to list all of the people in this state who have a job, draw a paycheck, or make their profits off the kids in DSS custody.

In this article I explain the financial infrastructure that provides the motivation for DSS to take people’s children – and not give them back.

In 1974 Walter Mondale promoted the Child Abuse and Prevention Act which began feeding massive amounts of federal funding to states to set up programs to combat child abuse and neglect. From that came Child "Protective" Services, as we know it today. After the bill passed, Mondale himself expressed concerns that it could be misused. He worried that it could lead states to create a "business" in dealing with children.

Then in 1997 President Clinton passed the "Adoption and Safe Families Act." The public relations campaign promoted it as a way to help abused and neglected children who languished in foster care for years, often being shuffled among dozens of foster homes, never having a real home and family. In a press release from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services dated November 24, 1999, it refers to "President Clinton’s initiative to double by 2002 the number of children in foster care who are adopted or otherwise permanently placed."

It all sounded so heartwarming. We, the American public, are so easily led. We love to buy stereotypes; we just eat them up, no questions asked. But, my mother, bless her heart, taught me from the time I was young to "consider the source." In the stereotype that we’ve been sold about kids in foster care, we picture a forlorn, hollow-eyed child, thin and pale, looking up at us beseechingly through a dirt streaked face. Unconsciously, we pull up old pictures from Life magazine of children in Appalachia in the 1930s. We think of orphans and children abandoned by parents who look like Manson family members. We play a nostalgic movie in our heads of the little fellow shyly walking across an emerald green, manicured lawn to meet Ward and June Cleaver, his new adoptive parents, who lead him into their lovely suburban home. We imagine the little tyke’s eyes growing as big as saucers as the Cleavers show him his very own room, full of toys and sports gear. And we just feel so gosh darn good about ourselves.

Now it’s time to wake up to the reality of the adoption business.

Very few children who are being used to supply the adoption market are hollow-eyed tykes from Appalachia. Very few are crack babies from the projects. [Oh… you thought those were the children they were saving? Think again]. When you are marketing a product you have to provide a desirable product that sells. In the adoption business that would be nice kids with reasonably good genetics who clean up good. An interesting point is that the Cape Cod & Islands office leads the state in terms of processing kids into the system and having them adopted out. More than the inner city areas, the projects, Mission Hill, Brockton, Lynn, etc. Interesting…

With the implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, President Clinton tried to make himself look like a humanitarian who is responsible for saving the abused and neglected children. The drive of this initiative is to offer cash "bonuses" to states for every child they have adopted out of foster care, with the goal of doubling their adoptions by 2002, and sustaining that for each subsequent year. They actually call them "adoption incentive bonuses," to promote the adoption of children.


Where to Find the Children

A whole new industry was put into motion. A sweet marketing scheme that even Bill Gates could envy. Now, if you have a basket of apples, and people start giving you $100 per apple, what are you going to do? Make sure that you have an unlimited supply of apples, right?

The United States Department of Health & Human Services administers Child Protective Services. To accompany the ASF Act, the President requested, by executive memorandum, an initiative entitled Adoption 2002, to be implemented and managed by Health & Human Services. The initiative not only gives the cash adoption bonuses to the states, it also provides cash adoption subsidies to adoptive parents until the children turn eighteen.

Everybody makes money. If anyone really believes that these people are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, then I’ve got some bad news for you. The fact that this program is run by HHS, ordered from the very top, explains why the citizens who are victims of DSS get no response from their legislators. It explains why no one in the Administration cares about the abuse and fatalities of children in the "care" of DSS, and no one wants to hear about the broken arms, verbal abuse, or rapes. They are just business casualties. It explains why the legislators I’ve talked to for the past three years look at me with pity. Because I’m preaching to the already damned.

The legislators have forgotten who funds their paychecks and who they need to account to, as has the Governor. Because it isn’t the President. It’s us.


How DSS Is Helped

The way that the adoption bonuses work is that each state is given a baseline number of expected adoptions based on population.

For every child that DSS can get adopted, there is a bonus of $4,000 to $6,000.

But that is just the starting figure in a complex mathematical formula in which each bonus is multiplied by the percentage that the state has managed to exceed its baseline adoption number. The states must maintain this increase in each successive year. [Like compound interest.] The bill reads: "$4,000 to $6,000 will be multiplied by the amount (if any) by which the number of foster child adoptions in the State exceeds the base number of foster child adoptions for the State for the fiscal year." In the "technical assistance" section of the bill it states that, "the Secretary [of HHS] may, directly or through grants or contracts, provide technical assistance to assist states and local communities to reach their targets for increased numbers of adoptions for children in foster care." The technical assistance is to support "the goal of encouraging more adoptions out of the foster care system; the development of best practice guidelines for expediting the termination of parental rights; the development of special units and expertise in moving children toward adoption as a permanent goal; models to encourage the fast tracking of children who have not attained 1 year of age into pre-adoptive placements; and the development of programs that place children into pre-adoptive placements without waiting for termination of parental rights."

In the November press release from HHS it continues, " HHS awarded the first ever adoption bonuses to States for increases in the adoption of children from the public foster care system." Some of the other incentives offered are "innovative grants" to reduce barriers to adoption [i.e., parents], more State support for adoptive families, making adoption affordable for families by providing cash subsides and tax credits.

A report from a private think tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis, reads: "The way the federal government reimburses States rewards a growth in the size of the program instead of the effective care of children." Another incentive being promoted is the use of the Internet to make adoption easier. Clinton directed HHS to develop an Internet site to "link children in foster care with adoptive families." So we will be able to window shop for children on a government web site. If you don’t find anything you like there, you can surf on over to the "Adopt Shoppe."

If you prefer to actually be able to kick tires instead of just looking at pictures you could attend one of DSS’s quaint "Adoption Fairs," where live children are put on display and you can walk around and browse. Like a flea market to sell kids. If one of them begs you to take him home you can always say, "Sorry. Just looking." The incentives for government child snatching are so good that I’m surprised we don’t have government agents breaking down people’s doors and just shooting the parents in the heads and grabbing the kids. But then, if you need more apples you don’t chop down your apple trees.


Benefits for Foster Parents

That covers the goodies the State gets. Now let’s have a look at how the Cleavers make out financially after the adoption is finalized.

After the adoption is finalized, the State and federal subsidies continue. The adoptive parents may collect cash subsidies until the child is 18. If the child stays in school, subsidies continue to the age of 22. There are State funded subsidies as well as federal funds through the Title IV-E section of the Social Security Act. The daily rate for State funds is the same as the foster care payments, which range from $410-$486 per month per child. Unless the child can be designated "special needs," which of course, they all can.

According to the NAATRIN State Subsidy profile from DSS, "special needs" may be defined as: "Physical disability, mental disability, emotional disturbance; a significant emotional tie with the foster parents where the child has resided with the foster parents for one or more years and separation would adversely affect the child’s development if not adopted by them." [But their significant emotional ties with their parents, since birth, never enter the equation.]

Additional "special needs" designations are: a child twelve years of age or older; racial or ethnic factors; child having siblings or half-siblings. In their report on the State of the Children, Boston’s Institute for Children says: "In part because the States can garner extra federal funds for special needs children the designation has been broadened so far as to become meaningless. " "Special needs" children may also get an additional Social Security check.

The adoptive parents also receive Medicaid for the child, a clothing allowance and reimbursement for adoption costs such as adoption fees, court and attorney fees, cost of adoption home study, and "reasonable costs of food and lodging for the child and adoptive parents when necessary to complete the adoption process." Under Title XX of the Social Security Act adoptive parents are also entitled to post adoption services "that may be helpful in keeping the family intact," including "daycare, specialized daycare, respite care, in-house support services such as housekeeping, and personal care, counseling, and other child welfare services". [Wow! Everything short of being knighted by the Queen!]

The subsidy profile actually states that it does not include money to remodel the home to accommodate the child. But, as subsidies can be negotiated, remodeling could possibly be accomplished under the "innovative incentives to remove barriers to adoption" section. The subsidy regulations read that "adoption assistance is based solely on the needs of the child without regard to the income of the family." What an interesting government policy when compared to the welfare program that the same child’s mother may have been on before losing her children, and in which she may not own anything, must prove that she has no money in the bank; no boats, real estate, stocks or bonds; and cannot even own a car that is safe to drive worth over $1000. This is all so she can collect $539 per month for herself and two children. The foster parent who gets her children gets $820 plus. We spit on the mother on welfare as a parasite who is bleeding the taxpayers, yet we hold the foster and adoptive parents [who are bleeding ten times as much from the taxpayers] up as saints. The adoptive and foster parents aren’t subjected to psychological evaluations, ink blot tests, MMPI’s, drug & alcohol evaluations, or urine screens as the parents are.

Adoption subsidies may be negotiated on a case by case basis. [Anyone ever tried to "negotiate" with the Welfare Department?] There are many e-mail lists and books published to teach adoptive parents how to negotiate to maximize their subsidies. As one pro writes on an e-mail list: "We receive a subsidy for our kids of $1,900 per month plus another $500 from the State of Florida. We are trying to adopt three more teens and we will get subsidies for them, too. It sure helps out with the bills."

I can’t help but wonder why we don’t give this same level of support to the children’s parents in the first place? According to Cornell University, about 68% of all child protective cases "do not involve child maltreatment. " The largest percentage of CPS/DSS cases are for "deprivation of necessities" due to poverty. So, if the natural parents were given the incredible incentives and services listed above that are provided to the adoptive parents, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the causes for removing children in the first place would be eliminated? How many less children would enter foster care in the first place? The child protective budget would be reduced from $12 billion to around $4 billion. Granted, tens of thousands of social workers, administrators, lawyers, juvenile court personnel, therapists, and foster parents would be out of business, but we would have safe, healthy, intact families, which are the foundation of any society.

That’s just a fantasy, of course. The reality is that maybe we will see Kathleen Crowley’s children on the government home-shopping- for-children web site and some one out there can buy them.

Posted by State Senator Pam Roach
 
 
This blogs author Denise Dopkins says "Thank you Mrs. Roach for providing the above article. How abundantly truthful it really is! The Foster Adopt industry continues to thrive due to the fact that DCFS/CPS continues to be allowed to destroy innocent loving families simply in order to receive funding. The funding that pays foster parents and adoptive parents alike. The funding also continues to go to CPS contracted providers (therapists, doctors, visitation monitors, lawyers, commissioners, judges, social workers and the list goes on and on."

Just another child protection racket (scheme)

The following article was authored by Pam Roach and can be located on her own blog as well. Just click on her name above and it will take you to her blog. Lots of wonderful and eye opening information there too.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011


CPS: Escapes Budget Cuts

Citing the need to protect children, Gov. Gregoire recently told the press that CPS would not take budget cuts. I am the first to agree that not enough is being done to protect children. Just read the headlines to see how many cases are gone neglected by the department. (CPS) But, on the other end of the spectrum, children are being taken without cause. No budget cuts means the system of taking children for adoption will continue, unabated, during the budget shortage. Here is a grandma comment just posted. This story is one repeated often.

Loving Grandma Writes:
"The job of the CPS worker is to build the most damning report she can to justify the removal of the children. I have read the report on my son and his wife, who were not allowed to bring their newborn home from the hospital because of the alleged possibility of neglect. The descriptions in the CPS report bear only a vague resemblance to my real-life son and daughter-in-law. The report paints such a misleading picture of the situation that it would be no help to Senator Roach or to anyone who wanted to know the true story."


Senator Pam Roach states the following:

"Today in Olympia I received two calls from CPS involved families. All were pleading for help from a government that has lied to take children. I am sure there are some cases where the department is correct in their actions....I wonder if Secretary Denise Revels Robinson has gotten the "taking rate" down like she said she would."

"Session starts Janurary 10th. I will be ready."

How to deal with CPS invasion of your family

November 8, 2010
Authored by Linda Martin



CPS Problems? Here Are 7 Ways to Fight CPS…

If you’re appalled by the actions of CPS, here are some ideas for correcting the injustices:


1. Write a letter to each and every member of your county board of supervisors detailing actions that show illegal activities or injustice on the part of local caseworkers. Suggest that they cut the CPS budget if caseworkers are taking children who shouldn’t be separated from their parents. Suggest that these illegal and unjust activities could cause the county to have to deal with expensive lawsuits. Follow this up by regularly attending meetings of the county board of supervisors and by getting up to share during community participation time; use your three minutes to tell people what’s going on.

2. Write a letter to your state legislators (don’t bother with the federal legislators – they’re usually worthless and corrupt unless they’re Ron Paul or someone exactly like him.) Go for the state level legislators. Tell them that child welfare is mismanaged in your county. Then follow up by going to the capitol to try to have a face to face encounter with these legislators. Take with you a gift-offering of a folder you’ve prepared with lots of information about how corrupt and evil CPS is. Tell them you support the State Sovereignty Movement and that federal child welfare laws are a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Tenth Amendment.

3. Study your state’s social services regulations. You should be able to find a copy at your local county law library. Ask the librarian there for help finding them. If you have an open CPS case take notes on every regulation that’s being violated by your caseworker. Get photocopies of the regulations that are violated. Next, review your court order to see what orders may be violated by the caseworker. If you find discrepancies you can file for a state administrative hearing.

4. Does your county have a Grand Jury? If so, write them a letter, not about your personal case so much as about the problems of CPS injustice in general. Ask them to investigate CPS in your county.

5. If you haven’t already, write a Legal Declaration to clarify each point of malfeasance by caseworkers and others involved in your case. As when writing any letter or legal document, NEVER include any self-incriminating type of statement. Give this to your attorney. If he won’t see you in person, mail it to him and request (1) a response, and (2) that it be presented to the judge for the next hearing.

6. If your caseworker’s report to the court contains inaccurate statements, misrepresentations, or lies, create a legal document called “Objections and Corrections to the Report of the Social Worker” and as with the Legal Declaration, send it to your lawyer to be presented to the court.


Links to legal documents samples are here: Legal Document and Information Library.

7. If your caseworker is violating your court order or state social service regulations, treating you disrespectfully, or in any other way doing something you believe is wrong, write a letter to the county personnel department with a detailed complaint about the person. This will probably keep the caseworker from ever getting a promotion in that county. He or she might also get demoted, or fired.


I hope you find some solutions that will work for you.

cps child protective services social workers

Filed under: http://www.fightcps.com/

Senator Nancy Schaefer's death

Thursday, May 20, 2010


Child Exploitation (Nancy Shaefer) Found Killed in Home


Joined: 12 Aug 2008

Posts: 1118 Posted: Tue May 18, 2010 8:28 am Post subject: Child Exploitation Investigator Found Killed in Home


http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/child_exploitation_investigato.html
Child Exploitation Investigator Found Killed in Home



By Victor Thorn

Child trafficking, pedophile rings, sexual exploitation, teenage pornography and even organ harvesting: These types of crimes make Washington politicians recoil in horror. But when these terrible acts involve some of their own, it also drives the elites to silence those who attempt to expose their dirty deeds.

Nancy Schaefer served two terms as a Georgia state senator, in addition to being a highly respected family rights advocate, founder of the Eagle Forum and Sunday school teacher. Mrs. Schaefer spoke out against abortion and sought legislation to display the Ten Commandments in public buildings.

On March 26, a sleeping Mrs. Schaefer was found shot to death from behind in her bed, along with her husband, who also perished after receiving a gunshot wound to the chest.

Local authorities immediately ruled it a “murder-suicide” instigated by her husband of 52 years, but there is much more to the story than law enforcement is telling. Initially, Georgia’s Bureau of Investigation claimed the couple formed a death pact due to poor health and financial woes.

However, family members fervently disagreed with these attempts to create a motive by floating fabricated stories. Neither of the deceased had a terminal illness, their bank accounts were sound, and, as committed Christians, they opposed suicide.

During an April 22 interview with this writer, Ohio radio talk show host Paul Drockton presented a shocking alternative to the official version.

“I heard from a couple of different sources that Mrs. Schaefer was working on a documentary, and intended to go public by exposing a high-level pedophilia ring,” said Drockton.

When asked if people would be familiar with the politicians named, Drockton replied in the affirmative, although he wouldn’t divulge their identities. This writer assumed they were nationally known figures.

Drockton added, “Mrs. Schaefer was extremely nervous about being assassinated. On a recent trip to Washington, she booked three rooms at her hotel—one on each side of her own, for security purposes. Mrs. Schaefer also started using disposable cell phones because she felt her lines were being tapped.”

In hindsight, these concerns most certainly appear justified. Over the past few years, Mrs. Schaefer engaged in a high-profile campaign against Georgia’s Child Protective Services (CPS). During an April 14, 2009, presentation, Mrs. Schaefer called CPS “a protected empire built on taking children and separating families. It is one of the most evil and corrupt branches of government in America.”

She also accused them of “legally kidnapping” the children of poor families who couldn’t afford attorneys in order to fill bureaucratic quotas under Bill Clinton’s Adoption and Safe Families Act.

Mrs. Schaefer provided the grisly details. “Cash bonuses are paid to the state for every child that is adopted out of foster care. Oftentimes, the amount is $4,000 to $6,000, with an extra $2,000 for special-needs children.”

Mrs. Schaefer continued: “To make more money, they need more merchandise; and children equal merchandise. They also need a large selection of children for potential adoptions so that buyers have more to choose from.”

CPS therefore acts as a facilitator, using the court system to snatch children from their parents, then feeding them into foster care for eventual adoption. Mrs. Schaefer cited numerous dangers to this corrupt arrangement. A 1998 study by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect stated that six times more youths die in foster care than in the general public. They are also more prone to sexual molestation by pedophiles in the foster care system. Many children simply disappear.

Considering the monetary incentives surrounding a business of trafficking in children by converting them into cash, did CPS open the floodgates to even more widespread wrong doing—one that resembled the notorious “Franklin Affair”?

Did powerful politicians operating a high-level child pedophilia ring clean house to prevent Mrs. Schaefer’s film from seeing the light of day?

Online commentator Steven Erickson offered this response on April 2, noting that Mrs. Schaefer attended a special hearing in the Netherlands.

“Nancy was recently the victim of murder,” wrote Erickson. “Her husband is said to have been the killer in a murder-suicide. Some may think it is a murder-for-hire, paid for by police or insiders in Georgia government allegedly involved in official kidnapping for federal tax dollars. Are children being trafficked for white slavery, sex exploitation, for bogus adoption, and to give political insiders six-figure salaries paid for with taxes? Are the police in some states involved in drug dealing, prostitution, racketeering, obstruction of justice, murder, rape, extortion and other crimes? Are American courts a scam? Nancy was pretty high profile, making serious allegations, and she ends up dead. Do the math.”

The broader question remains: Did corruption end at the Georgia state level, or were Mrs. Schaefer’s sights set even higher?

During her Netherlands World Congress of Families speech last year, Mrs. Schaefer specifically described U.S. government involvement in human trafficking.

Considering the huge amounts of bloodstained dollars at stake, not to mention the lengthy prison sentences awaiting each guilty party, it’s clear she may have been a prime target for retaliation.

Washington politicians have long concealed a cesspool of child “call boys.” A few names that come to mind include Paul Bonacci, who was kidnapped and sold as a sex slave; Barney Frank’s homosexual lover, who operated a prostitution service, Larry King of the Franklin Cover-Up; and Jeff Gannon, a planted White House “reporter” who operated a homosexual escort service. Then, of course, The Washington Times ran the following headline on June 29, 1989: “Homosexual Prostitution Inquiry Ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush.”

Former Nebraska state patrolman Gary Caradori, during an investigation of the Franklin Cover-Up case, was murdered on June 11, 1990, after having his airplane sabotaged. Mrs. Schaefer seems to have suffered the same fate, except her cowardly killers used a bullet in her back to ensure her silence.

http://www.ajc.com/news/what-really-took-2-430563.html

What really took 2 lives in Schaefer case? The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


8:32 a.m. Sunday, April 4, 2010
By Mark Davis
mrdavis@ajc.com


TOCCOA — It is a mystery that may never get a satisfactory answer.

It will be discussed a while longer at kitchen tables, in chat rooms and other places where people ask questions. The names of the dead will resurface when cops discuss cases that stick with them. The funeral programs will be tucked away for someone else to find.

And when they turn up, so will the old questions. What happened? Why did he kill his wife of 52 years? What did the notes say?


Here’s what police say:

On March 26, Bruce Schaefer, 74, a longtime Atlanta stockbroker who’d retired to his boyhood mountain haunts, shot his sleeping wife, Nancy Schaefer, 73, a former state senator and a conservative political activist. Then he turned the .38-caliber handgun on himself.

The Schaefers were dead when their daughter found them in the bedroom of their Habersham County home. Investigators discovered a suicide note, as well as notes to each of the couple’s five children.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the case, is emphatic.

“This is as clear-cut a case of murder-suicide as you’ll see,” said spokesman John Bankhead. The state agency will close out its investigation after doing a few more interviews and running some toxicology tests — standard procedure in death cases, said Bankhead.


So case closed — or nearly.

And yet, people talk. They talk about a twosome that was rarely apart, about a woman who achieved renown for her unapologetic stands against abortion and overzealous child protective services. They talk about her husband, who tried, but never managed, to ignore his wife’s critics as effectively as she.

People talk, and they wonder.



A conservative voice

Nancy Schaefer was a multitasker before the term was coined. Married and living in Buckhead, she was busy with five children. But activism tugged.

In 1985, she organized an Atlanta rally for constitutional liberties. A year later, she created the nonprofit Family Concerns Inc., a foundation that champions display of the Ten Commandments, fights abortion and opposes what it considers overly aggressive child-custody agencies.

In 1988, she worked for Jack Kemp’s failed bid for the GOP presidential nomination. In subsequent years, she ran, unsuccessfully, for mayor of Atlanta and lieutenant governor and governor of Georgia.

Those campaigns raised her profile as a conservative capable of an elegant reply. In 2002, she was a regular in “Woman to Woman,” a weekly feature representing views from the left and right in the Sunday Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Bruce retired in 1996. Like so many other well-heeled Atlantans, he and his wife left Georgia’s capital for the mountains. There, her political tenacity paid off.

In 2004, Nancy Schaefer won the first of two elections to the state Senate. In 2008, she lost to Jim Butterworth, who holds that seat now. In between, she remained active in other causes. She represented the Southern Baptist Convention at United Nations conferences. She started more nonprofit organizations and became a trustee at Toccoa Falls College. She sang in the choir at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Toccoa. She made devoted friends, and some bitter enemies.

Bruce? He was her amiable shadow. Photos depict a tall man with an athlete’s build — he played football at Clemson, then served in the Army — with a smile nearly as big as he.

“You hardly ever saw one without the other,” said Robert “Buster” Smith, whom Bruce often visited when Nancy came to town from their Clarkesville home to get her hair done.

A Toccoa native, Smith saw Bruce Schaefer on the last Tuesday of his life when he stopped by Smith’s furniture store. “He seemed like his old self,” said Smith. “I have a hard time believing it happened like it happened.”


‘Life happened’

The Schaefers lived in The Orchard, a gated country club community about 15 miles northwest of Toccoa in Habersham County. It’s located off a twisty road where ancient wooden barns silver in the sun.

Their home served as headquarters for some of Nancy’s activities. There she wrote frequent online articles on topics as diverse as the Obama administration’s health care program to the possible biblical significance of solar eclipses. Her last, decrying implanting microchips in humans, appeared Feb. 17.

Cleaning out the house won’t be easy for the Schaefers’ children, said Habersham Sheriff Joey Terrell, whose officers were first on the scene after the shootings. “There’s a house that’s full of stuff to take care of,” he said.

Full of memories, too.

“They were a part of life,” said Terrell, “and life happened to them.”

Mourners, memories

Ushers counted more than 800 people at the couple’s funeral service Wednesday afternoon. Mourners filled Ebenezer Baptist’s sanctuary, two choir rooms and an adjacent building. Thirty state senators came on a chartered bus from Atlanta.

They watched a slide show of family photos that highlighted happy times: Bruce in his Army uniform; Bruce and Nancy swirling across a dance floor; children; grandchildren. The images bestowed on her a calm dignity that comes from decades of living; he got a little wider, his hair a little whiter, but the smile remained the same.

The Rev. Andy Childs urged people to focus on how the Schaefers lived, not how they died.

“The tragedy of the last several days ... does not erase the testimony of their lives,” he said.

Charlie Wysong, a family friend, drove three hours from Chattanooga to attend the 70-minute service. “When I heard about it, I couldn’t believe it at first,” he said. “I said, ‘How out of character.’”

The news also brought the business of state lawmaking to a temporary stop.

“It’s just a terrible tragedy,” said Rep. Rick Austin, a Republican from Demorest. “I don’t think anybody will ever really understand what happened.”

Not what it seems?

That doesn’t stop people from trying. Rev. Childs, speaking during the funeral service, mentioned Bruce taking medication. Others talk about possible financial misfortune.

Conspiracy-mongers have been busy, too. The Schaefers, they suggest, paid the price for their conservative convictions and were silenced by shadowy forces. Whoever shot Nancy, they maintain, also shot Bruce.

Web sites buzz with comments about a reputed cover-up. A Facebook page, “We Demand An Extensive Investigation On The Death of Senator Nancy Schaefer,” had 988 fans Thursday afternoon. Friday morning, it had 1,116.

The people who may have the best idea of what happened, the couple’s children, are remaining quiet. Police won’t say much, either.

So people wonder, and talk. Mysteries with no satisfactory answers, like empty rooms, attract odd things.

Washington Families United organization

The person speaking in the following post is this blog's author Denise Dopkins. It speaks of my personal experience with Washington Families United and Elaine Wolcott.

There was a time when I took a very negative view of Washington Families United. I was upset with the organization and its Presidents/leaders because they seemingly would not help me to resolve my issues with CPS and family court. I was attacked by CPS, as are so many thousands of others nationwide. I also lost my parental rights and relationship with my little boy due to false and flimsy allegations, which the courts rubber stamped. Sadly, this is an epidemic issue all over the United States of America.

I have since learned and have been willing to understand that NOBODY can stop the horrific doings of the so called child protective system by themselves. Even with people in political positions and the many organizations that work tirelessly to curtail the illegalities of CPS and 'family courts'... change is extremely slow in happening. Thankfully, with the assistance of Washington Families United, as well as many other people, some cases have been victorious and the families reunited. However, this is a rare happening, I believe due to the fact that there are so many thousands of families attacked and because State agents are seemingly accountable to no other authority or department. They do not fear punishment for their perjury and fraudulent ways, so they continue on in the illegal actions they commit. Laws that are already in place are violated every day by State agent, CPS contracted service providers, lawyers, doctors, Guardian ad litems etc. Even foster care providers participate in the illegal, cruel and unjust actions involved in the CPS and family court arena. I am speaking of the foster-adopt industry, where foster care providers look to the State as a less expensive or free ticket to adopting children, especially babies. That is where the majority of children in state care go.

In short, my point in composing this document is to explain my reasoning for removing the post containing some correspondence between a Washington Families United member and myself. The email correspondence I posted was unnecessary and inappropriate for this forum. It was derived from a misunderstanding I had regarding the motive of WFU.  I publicly apologize to Elaine Wolcott for accusing her of not intending to help CPS victims. Truth be known-- she is not able to assist every person that comes to her for help because she is only one person. I simply misunderstood her intentions due to my own refusal to hear what she really stated to me.

Corrupt Government

BELIEFS V FACTS ON CHILD PROTECTION


HOW THE GOVERNMENT IS USING SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION IN POOR COMMUNITIES


By Jan Smith

Words. It is all about words that create images and emotions to provoke some type of response leading to action. Advertisers use underhanded and enticing strategies continuously in the marketplace manipulating the consumer into believing that the presented offerings are a “must have.” Once purchased, the consumer may very quickly realize that what they bought and what was advertised are two different things. In sales, the enticement is often referred to as a carrot and the same principle is applied with convincing the general public that the current child protection system is in the “best interest” of the children. The carrot is supposed child safety using images of suffering children eliciting fear and the natural need to protect them from harm. Is the system set up protecting or exploiting children and now that 30 years have gone by since CAPTA, what are the results? In order to understand what we are experiencing now, it is critical to know what was happening that created this trend. Many factors enter into the picture including and not limited to government research into mind control and social construction theories. Psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers, historians, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies all participated in discussions and experiments regarding individual and community control during the time that child protection federal public policy was being requested.

As early as the 50s, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company began handing out LSD like it was candy to unsuspecting victims to determine its ability to get information out of resistant people and whether it was reliable in mind control. Many doctors were guilty of putting implants in their client’s brains attempting to manipulate emotions then tracking them unbeknownst to them. Nobody was immune to that era’s determination to commit human rights violations to include military personnel, children, and mentally handicapped people.

Yale and Harvard doctors participated and set up top secret mind control experimental stations of all types and varieties at the request of government paid for with tax dollars. It was in this spirit and social climate at Yale that the child protection federal public policy was developed then implemented across the nation without public input. Three scholars from Yale, Goldstein, Solnit and Freud, wrote a book, “Beyond the Best Interest of the Child” that is the bible of family dependency court to this day. The book encourages fast, reckless and uninformed removal and adoption out of children. The authors further suggest that judges should have no human sensitivities to the victims they may create and to plow forth ignoring any and all objections. Horrified, parents and extended families finding their children removed and adopted out needlessly, discover deaf ears in every direction. Let the philosophy taught in the pages of that book be the reason. All court related persons are taught to kick family to the curb and treat them accordingly.

The book, which was bought into wholesale by the legal and legislative communities, then formed the basis for court room and agency development. Legal minds worked overtime constructing specialized courts that violate every Constitutional principle. Again, using the emotional imaging of children, the educated public along with legislators ignored the dangerous ideas brought forth believing that the only way to protect children was by committing rights violations of parents and families.

Social constructionists including the authors of Beyond the Best Interest of the Child, began to introduce the idea that children aren’t really bonded with family through genetics and can be bonded to anyone. They taught that the younger the child, the greater the success with stranger placement. The authors encouraged the removal of babies then adopting them out quickly without due process to facilitate bonding with strangers instead of prolonged litigation.

During the time all this was going on, the United States was also working with the United Nations to develop international policy on children’s rights. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child treaty was written with the US being primarily responsible for the contents. The treaty gives children all kinds of rights over and above parents and attempts to ensure their protection through government control. This is interesting, because at the same time the US was writing the treaty, indigenous Native American children were being removed from tribes, put in boarding homes, raped, sodomized, tortured and killed at the hands of our government. Fifty percent died from starvation and disease because of neglect. This went on to 1984.

Just recently, Florida had to enact a law that makes experimental drug use on foster children illegal. This is now 2010. Why, one might ask, is it necessary to have a law like this? Don’t fundamental human rights suggest that those ethics should already be in place? As child after child has died at the hands of pharmaceutical companies without consequence, our nation continues its propaganda that children are best protected by government control and intervention. A popular quote is that “nothing changes if nothing changes.” Simple, yet seems to apply here. The same issues of human rights violations from the 50s are still alive today.

Children are not faring better in foster care and it is unclear how most are doing in adoptive homes. The vast majority are dropping out of school and winding up in prisons. Thirty percent plus were abused in foster care. Many ended up bounced from foster home to foster home and developed serious attachment problems. Drug and alcohol issues abound with this group along with severe mental health issues. And the idea that they are no longer connected to their bio families? Try telling that to the thousands who seek each other out after the inflicted state holocaust once an adult and fall into each other's arms in tears.

Nobody really knows how children are doing in adoptive homes because the states are keeping it a secret. If an adoptive parent abuses, kills or rapes a child, it goes under “parent” in the statistics column. Adoptive parents are also backed up in courts trying to give the kids back to the states. This is not common knowledge either. I bet the violated parents or grandparents would take them.

People believe that if they call the CPS phone number on a family, then the child will be safe. Is this true or not? Most who pick up that phone believe something they have not researched. So, where does this information about child safety come from? The same people who write public policy while funding human rights violations.

The propaganda is on the radio and TV. It is distributed at the doctor’s offices and on billboards. It is offered as the only solution. Mandated reporting is everywhere and in everything the general public is required to participate in by government decree. Child care centers, dental offices, sporting events and local business, all sport sad faces of children needing help and assistance because of their atrocious poverty ridden parents who are half killing them.

Is that the truth? Only a small percentage of removed children are removed because of actual abuse. The rest are removed due to neglect with most of the evidence unsubstantiated. What does that mean? That the vast majority of children removed have no proof of abuse or neglect. Let that sink in.

Why are they focusing on parents in poverty? Are they really worse parents than those of higher incomes? The social constructionists focus on the poor who blame the poor for societal decay. The poor families pay few taxes, often use the welfare system, and tend to have educational differences that manifest itself through lineage. In public hearings before the legislators, child and family savers abound declaring Utopian ideals and ways to provide handouts or interfere in parenting rights. While people in poverty spend little time worrying about the upper classes, the upper classes avoid their own issues and problems by finger pointing to low income while targeting ways to “fix” them.

Keep in mind that the sociopaths creating wars, violating human rights, drugging people, going to countries for underage sex, and using the vulnerable for any manner of experiments all come from higher education and financial strata. There is a reason why we have the food and drug administration and it is not to protect the country from the toxic poor, but from those who would kill us all without conscience.

The Department of Defense is in the news after being exposed for 250 of their employees downloading and purchasing child porn. Only a few were investigated and convicted. The rest were ignored. How many of these people have children and was CPS called? Not likely any, because those in government positions only want to fix the poor. Looking at themselves is not part of social constructionist agenda.

Countless children are now being removed because of a husband or boyfriend who hits or abuses the mom. This is getting translated as somehow being the mom’s fault. The children get removed and adopted out. If a husband or boyfriend abuses a child when the mom is not home, the blame is also getting placed on the mother. Where are the women’s rights groups on this?

What is the government reasoning? Experts (oh boy!) are saying that children who witness domestic violence are more likely to grow up abusers and that the experience rewires their brain. And they know this how? From all the chips they are implanting without permission? Is this brain rewiring theory or fact? If fact, what means of testing this theory are they using?

Any experience that creates a paradigm shift in a person’s thinking may very well cause some brain chemistry changes to go with it. Graduating from high school, changing careers, joining the military, moving from one school to another might all qualify as brain changing activities. DV would certainly qualify as an incident or series of incidents that would affect a child’s perception. What does brain rewiring mean exactly? They don’t explain that part because they don’t know, yet they are using this as a primary weapon against the family. This is one of hundreds of obscure, unfounded reasoning excuses used to remove and adopt out children.

I had a discussion with a family therapist sent out to work with a family member. I asked her about whether they believe a child can be put down and allowed to cry for any length of time. She responded by saying that she believes that it does not harm a child to let them cry if they have been well attended to. She said that a child is taught that they are not the center of the universe and will seek more independence. She also reported that it is healthy lung development. The therapist then reported that there is division on this theory and that at least half of all other family therapists believe that a child should never be put down if they are crying but held continually. The problem is, whatever the therapist believes who is assigned to the family, that family better take on those values or get crucified in court.

Then there is the problem of observed visitations. One therapist may insist that you get down on the floor and play games with the children. Another may say if you do that you are immature. Some might say it is Ok to speak baby talk, others may say it impedes child verbal development. If a parent puts a child in time out, that may be abusive to that therapist. If a parent doesn’t put a child in timeout this may mean the parent can’t set boundaries to another. The question is this….if they don’t know how to raise children then how are they supposed to teach someone else?

If a judge orders a psychological evaluation and it is paid by the department, is the evaluator unbiased? Not from the evaluations I have seen. Mistakes abound and things get twisted in favor of the prosecution. A person can go to four different evaluators and end up with four different diagnosis even with the same information.

While the US is leaning towards the use of pseudo science psychology to base their decisions on, Israel gives the evaluators absolute power and authority and won’t do anything without an evaluation as it pertains to families. The UK has similar strategies. This is how powerful globally these associations have become, yet they can’t agree on even the simplest and most important of tasks.

What do social engineers and constructionists hope to accomplish? They want to increase the education of the children and the employability in more areas. They want to decrease religious ideology with more government dependency and values. They want fewer problems in the courts and more control on the streets. Because they have put our country in debt, they need the next generation’s taxes. Corporations want to pay lower wages while squeezing out small and medium business. Higher ups are embarrassed at low education scores and want those increased so the US looks better. More liberal special interest groups want to adopt children and take them from families and the legal system just wants federal dollars with little resistance from families when they adopt out their children to strangers. They want us all drugged, used for their purposes, controlled in every respect and don’t want our opinion about any of their behaviors. But most importantly, they want to make all the decisions regarding poor people’s children and will destroy any parent that objects while the wealthy continue to be pedophiles, rapists, murderers, embezzlers, sociopaths, drug addicts and alcoholics, perpetrators, predators of all types, and war mongers.

They accomplish all of this through constantly maintaining propaganda and reaffirming those ideals at every turn, while those who are not researching the truth become their parrots and supporters. The United States, who once was more non-authoritarian, has sustained successful social engineering in child protection advertising with the vast majority believing all the lies told, as the children and families suffer under tyranny and loss of rights. As philosophers and historians argue amongst themselves regarding control and management of the populace, one thing is clear and has been since time began. It is the poor who pays at the hands of the arrogant learned time and again.

Sorry, Martin Luther King. Your dream will not be realized any time soon.

'Family' courts ignore child dependency laws

THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO BE A PARENT

For the complete U.S. Constitution Click Here



On this page you will find the real law, which family courts ignore every day for their own convenience and personal agenda. Know your rights and fight for them!! If you do not you have no one to blame but yourself. This requires much work and study and attorney's will generally not help you here for fear of upsetting judges but your children are worth this effort as it is scientifically proven that children do ENORMOUSLY better in virtually all ways when they have equal access to both parents in a shared parenting relationship.



The rights of parents to the care, custody and nurture of their children is of such character that it cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions, and such right is a fundamental right protected by this amendment (First) and Amendments 5, 9, and 14. Doe v. Irwin, 441 F Supp 1247; U.S. D.C. of Michigan, (1985).



The several states has no greater power to restrain individual freedoms protected by the First Amendment than does the Congress of the United States. Wallace v. Jaffree, 105 S Ct 2479; 472 US 38, (1985).



Loss of First Amendment Freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury. Though First Amendment rights are not absolute, they may be curtailed only by interests of vital importance, the burden of proving which rests on their government. Elrod v. Burns, 96 S Ct 2673; 427 US 347, (1976).



Law and court procedures that are "fair on their faces" but administered "with an evil eye or a heavy hand" was discriminatory and violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 US 356, (1886).



Even when blood relationships are strained, parents retain vital interest in preventing irretrievable destruction of their family life; if anything, persons faced with forced dissolution of their parental rights have more critical need for procedural protections than do those resisting state intervention into ongoing family affairs. Santosky v. Kramer, 102 S Ct 1388; 455 US 745, (1982).



Parents have a fundamental constitutionally protected interest in continuity of legal bond with their children. Matter of Delaney, 617 P 2d 886, Oklahoma (1980). .



The liberty interest of the family encompasses an interest in retaining custody of one's children and, thus, a state may not interfere with a parent's custodial rights absent due process protections. Langton v. Maloney, 527 F Supp 538, D.C. Conn. (1981).



Parent's right to custody of child is a right encompassed within protection of this amendment which may not be interfered with under guise of protecting public interest by legislative action which is arbitrary or without reasonable relation to some purpose within competency of state to effect. Reynold v. Baby Fold, Inc., 369 NE 2d 858; 68 Ill 2d 419, appeal dismissed 98 S Ct 1598, 435 US 963, IL, (1977).



Parent's interest in custody of her children is a liberty interest which has received considerable constitutional protection; a parent who is deprived of custody of his or her child, even though temporarily, suffers thereby grievous loss and such loss deserves extensive due process protection. In the Interest of Cooper, 621 P 2d 437; 5 Kansas App Div 2d 584, (1980).



The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that severance in the parent-child relationship caused by the state occur only with rigorous protections for individual liberty interests at stake. Bell v.City of Milwaukee, 746 F 2d 1205; US Ct App 7th Cir WI, (1984).



Father enjoys the right to associate with his children which is guaranteed by this amendment (First) as incorporated in Amendment 14, or which is embodied in`the concept of "liberty" as that word is used in the Due Process`Clause of`the 14th Amendment and Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Mabra v. Schmidt, 356 F Supp 620; DC, WI (1973).



The United States Supreme Court noted that a parent's right to "the companionship, care, custody and management of his or her children" is an interest "far more precious" than any property right. May v. Anderson, 345 US 528, 533; 73 S Ct 840,843,(1952).



A parent's right to care and companionship of his or her children are so fundamental, as to be guaranteed protection under the First, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. In re: J.S.and C.,324 A 2d 90; supra 129 NJ Super, at 489.



The Court stressed, "the parent-child relationship is an important interest that undeniably



Warrants deference and, absent a powerful countervailing interest, protection." A parent's interest in the companionship, care, custody and management of his or her children rises to a constitutionally secured right, given the centrality of family life as the focus for personal meaning and responsibility. Stanley v. Illinois, 405 US 645, 651; 92 S Ct 1208,(1972).



Parent's rights have been recognized as being "essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free man." Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 or 426 US 390 ; 43 S Ct 625, (1923).



The U.S. Supreme Court implied that "a(once) married father who is separated or divorced from a mother and is no longer living with his child" could not constitutionally be treated differently from a currently married father living with his child. Quilloin v. Walcott, 98 S Ct 549; 434 US 246, 255-56, (1978).



The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (California) held that the parent-child relationship is a constitutionally protected liberty interest. (See; Declaration of Independence --life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution -- No state can deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law nor deny any person the equal protection of the laws.) Kelson v. Springfield, 767 F 2d 651; US Ct App 9th Cir, (1985).



The parent-child relationship is a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Bell v. City of Milwaukee, 746 f 2d 1205, 1242-45; US Ct App 7th Cir WI, (1985).



No bond is more precious and none should be more zealously protected by the law as the bond between parent and child." Carson v. Elrod, 411 F Supp 645, 649; DC E.D. VA (1976).



A parent's right to the preservation of his relationship with his child derives from the fact that the parent's achievement of a rich and rewarding life is likely to depend significantly on his ability



To participate in the rearing of his children. A child's corresponding right to protection from interference in the relationship derives from the psychic importance to him of being raised by a loving, responsible, reliable adult. Franz v. U.S., 707 F 2d 582, 595-599; US Ct App (1983).



A parent's right to the custody of his or her children is an element of "liberty" guaranteed by the 5th Amendment and the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Matter of Gentry, 369 NW 2d 889, MI App Div (1983).



Reality of private biases and possible injury they might inflict were impermissible considerations



under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Palmore v.Sidoti, 104 S Ct 1879; 466 US 429.



Legislative classifications which distributes benefits and burdens on the basis of gender carry the inherent risk of reinforcing stereotypes about the proper place of women and their need for special protection; thus, even statutes purportedly designed to compensate for and ameliorate the effects of past discrimination against women must be carefully tailored. the state cannot be permitted to classify on the basis of sex. Orr v. Orr, 99 S Ct 1102; 4340 US 268 , (1979).



The United States Supreme Court held that the "old notion" that "generally it is the man's primary responsibility to provide a home and its essentials" can no longer justify a statute that discriminates on the basis of gender. No longer is the female destined solely for the home and the rearing of the family, and only the male for the marketplace and the world of ideas. Stanton v. Stanton, 421 US 7, 10; 95 S Ct 1373, 1376, (1975).



Judges must maintain a high standard of judicial performance with particular emphasis upon Conducting litigation with scrupulous fairness and impartiality. 28 USCA § 2411;



Pfizer v. Lord, 456 F 2d 532; cert denied 92 S Ct 2411; US Ct App MN, (1972).



State Judges, as well as federal, have the responsibility to respect and protect persons from violations of federal constitutional rights. Gross v.State of Illinois, 312 F 2d 257; (1963).



The Constitution also protects "the individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters." Federal Courts (and State Courts), under Griswold can protect, under the "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" phrase of the Declaration of Independence, the right of a man to enjoy the mutual care, company, love and affection of his children, and this cannot be taken away from him without due process of law. There is a family right to privacy which the state cannot invade or it becomes actionable for civil rights damages. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 US 479, (1965).



The right of a parent not to be deprived of parental rights without a showing of fitness, abandonment or substantial neglect is so fundamental and basic as to rank among the rights contained in this Amendment (Ninth) and Utah's Constitution, Article 1 § 1. In re U.P., 648 P 2d 1364;Utah, (1982).



The rights of parents to parent-child relationships are recognized and upheld. Fantony v. Fantony, 122 A 2d 593, (1956); Brennan v.Brennan, 454 A 2d 901, (1982).



State's power to legislate, adjudicate and administer all aspects of family law, including determinations of custodial; and visitation rights, is subject to scrutiny by federal judiciary within reach of due process and/or equal protection clauses of 14th Amendment...Fourteenth Amendment applied to states through specific rights contained in the first eight amendments of the Constitution which declares fundamental personal rights...Fourteenth Amendment encompasses and applied to states those preexisting fundamental rights recognized by the Ninth



Amendment. The Ninth Amendment acknowledged the prior existence of fundamental rights with it: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The United States Supreme Court in a long line of decisions, has recognized that matters involving marriage, procreation, and the parent-child relationship are among those fundamental "liberty" interests protected by the Constitution. Thus, the decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113; 93 S Ct 705; 35 L Ed 2d 147, (1973), was recently described by the Supreme Court as founded on the "Constitutional underpinning of ... a recognition that the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment includes not only the freedoms explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but also a



freedom of personal choice in certain matters of marriage and family life." The non-custodial divorced parent has no way to implement the constitutionally protected right to maintain a parental relationship with his child except through visitation. To acknowledge the protected status of the relationship as the majority does, and yet deny protection under Title 42 USC § 1983, to visitation, which is the exclusive means of effecting that right, is to negate the right completely. Wise v. Bravo, 666 F 2d 1328, (1981).



From: petes farms

Date: Wed Jul 13, 2005 7:07 pm

Subject: An "On Topic" story from Pete. petesfarms

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THE CONSTITUTIONALLY SECURED RIGHT TO BE A PARENT



www.connecticutDCFwatch.com http://www.dadsnow.org/legal/custcit2.pdf



http://www.winchildcustody.com/paternity/_disc107/0000043d.htm



http://www.wvve.org/issues/quotations.html



http://www.fathersforlife.org/families/sprmcrt.htm



http://www.gigglesandfrog.com/CaseLaws.html



http://www.ncfc.net/ja-cite1.txt



http://www.extralove.com/flasupreme.html



http://www.ancpr.org/caselaw.htm



[URLs and Hyperlinks added, and some citations corrected by Mark R. Ferran BSEE scl JD mcl http://www.billstclair.com/ferran



The liberty interest of the family encompasses an interest in retaining custody of one's children and, thus, a state may not interfere with a parent's custodial rights absent due process protections. Langton v. Maloney, 527 F Supp 538, D.C. Conn. (1981).



The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that severance in the parent-child relationship caused by the state occur only with rigorous protections for individual liberty interests at stake. Bell v. City of Milwaukee, 746 F 2d 1205; US Ct App 7th Cir WI, (1984).



Parent's rights have been recognized as being "essential to the orderly! pursuit of happiness by free man." Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390; 43 S Ct 625 (1923). The U.S. Supreme Court implied that "a (once) married father who is separated or divorced from a mother and is no longer living with his child" could not constitutionally be treated differently from a currently married father living with his child. Quilloin v. Walcott, 98 S Ct 549; 434 US 246, 255-56, (1978). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (California) held that the parent-child relationship is a constitutionally protected liberty interest. (See; Declaration of Independence --life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution -- No state can deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law nor deny any person the equal protection of the laws.) Kelson v. Springfield, 767 F 2d 651; US Ct App 9th ! Cir, (1985).



The parent-child relationship is a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Bell v. City of Milwaukee, 746 f 2d 1205, 1242-45; US Ct App 7th Cir WI, (1985). No bond is more precious and none should be more zealously protected by the law as the bond between parent and child." Carson v. Elrod, 411 F Supp 645, 649; DC E.D. VA (1976). A parent's right to the preservation of his relationship with his child derives from the fact that the parent's achievement of a rich and rewarding life is likely to depend significantly on his ability to participate in the rearing of his children. A child's corresponding right to protection from interference in the relationship derives from the psychic importance to him of being raised by a loving, responsible, reliable adult. Franz v. U.S., 707 F 2d 582, 595-599; US Ct App (1983). A parent's right to the custody of his or her children is an element of "liberty" guaranteed by the 5th Amendment and t! he 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Matter of Gentry, 369 NW 2d 889, MI App Div (1983). Reality of private biases and possible injury they might inflict were impermissible considerations under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Palmore v. Sidoti, ; 466 US 429, 104 S Ct 1879 (1984). Legislative classifications which distributes benefits and burdens on the basis of gender carry the inherent risk of reinforcing stereotypes about the proper place of women and their need for special protection; thus, even statutes purportedly designed to compensate for and ameliorate the effects of past discrimination against women must be carefully tailored. the state cannot be permitted to classify on the basis of sex. Orr v. Orr, 440 US 268, 99 S Ct 1102 (1979). The United States Supreme Court held that the "old notion" that "generally it ! is the man's primary responsibility to provide a home and its essentials" can no longer justify a statute that discriminates on the basis of gender.



No longer is the female destined solely for the home and the rearing of the family, and only the male for the marketplace and the world of ideas. Stanton v. Stanton, 421 US 7, 10; 95 S Ct 1373, 1376, (1975). Judges must maintain a high standard of judicial performance with particular emphasis upon conducting litigation with scrupulous fairness and impartiality. 28 USCA § 2411; Pfizer v. Lord, 456 F 2d 532; cert denied 92 S Ct 2411; US Ct App MN, (1972). State Judges, as well as federal, have the responsibility to respect and protect persons from violations of federal constitutional rights. Gross v. State of Illinois, 312 F 2d 257; (1963). The Constitution also protects "the individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters." Federal Courts (and State Courts), under Griswold can protect, under the "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" phrase of the Declaration of Independence, the right of a man to enjoy the mutual care, company, love and affection of his children, and this cannot be taken away from him without due process of law. There is a family right to privacy which the state cannot invade or it becomes actionable for civil rights damages. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 US 479, (1965). The right of a parent not to be deprived of parental rights without a showing of fitness, abandonment or substantial neglect is so fundamental and basic as to rank among the rights contained in this Amendment (Ninth) and Utah's Constitution, Article 1 § 1. In re U.P., 648 P 2d 1364; Utah, (1982). The rights of parents to parent-child relationships are recognized and upheld. Fantony v. Fantony, 122 A 2d 593, (1956); Brennan v. Brennan, 454 A 2d 901, (1982). State's power to legislate, adjudicate and administer all aspects of family law, including determinations of custodial; and visitation rights, is subject to scrutiny by federal judiciary within reach of due process and/or equal protection clauses of 14th Amendment...Fourteenth Amendment applied to states through specific rights contained in the first eight amendments of the Constitution which declares fundamental personal rights...Fourteenth Amendment encompasses and applied to states those preexisting fundamental rights recognized by the Ninth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment acknowledged the prior existence of fundamental rights with it: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The United States Supreme Court in a long line of decisions, has recognized that matters involving marriage, procreation, and the parent-child relationship are among those fundamental "liberty" interests protected by the Constitution. Thus, the decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113; 93 S Ct 705; 35 L Ed 2d 147, (1973), was recently described by the Supreme Court as founded on the "Constitutional underpinning of ... a recognition that the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment includes not only the freedoms explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but also a freedom of personal choice in certain matters of marriage and family life."



The non-custodial divorced parent has no way to implement the constitutionally protected right to maintain a parental relationship with his child except through visitation. To acknowledge the protected status of the relationship as the majority does, and yet deny protection under Title 42 USC § 1983, to visitation, which is the exclusive means of effecting that right, is to negate the right completely. Wise v. Bravo, 666 F 2d 1328, (1981).



I learned a lot a little too late-Do not learn as I did, take care & beware-FTG The sun shineth upon the dunghill, and is not corrupted. We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them."

Due Process Case Law

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO BE A PARENT CASE LAWS


Doe et al, v. Heck et al (7th Cir. Ct. App. 2003)

The practice of "no prior consent" interview of a child, will ordinarily constitute a "clear violation" of the constitutional rights of parents under the 4th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The investigative interview of a child constitutes a "search and seizure" and, when conducted on private property without "consent, a warrant, probable cause, or exigent circumstances (imminent danger)," such an interview is an unreasonable search and seizure in violation of the rights of the parent, child, and, possibly of the private property.



Griswold v. Connecticut

The Constitution also protects "the individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters" Federal Courts (and State Courts), under Griswold can protect, under the "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" phrase of the Declaration of Independence, the right of a man to enjoy the mutual care, company, love and affection of his children, and this cannot be taken away from him without due process of law. There is a family right to privacy, which the state cannot invade or it becomes actionable for civil rights damages. 381 US 479, (1965)



In the Interest of Cooper (Kansas 1980)

Parent's interest in custody of their children is a liberty interest which has received considerable constitutional protection; a parent who is deprived of custody of his or her child, even though temporarily, suffers thereby grievous loss and such loss deserves extensive due process protection.



Santosky v. Kramer (102 S. Ct. 1388 1982)

Even when blood relationships are strained, parents retain vital interest in preventing irretrievable destruction of their family life; if anything, persons faced with forced dissolution of their parental rights have more critical need for procedural protections than do those resisting state intervention into ongoing family affairs. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that clear and convincing evidence rather than a mere preponderance were needed to terminate parental rights. 455 US 745 (1982)



DUE PROCESS CASE LAWS

Brokaw v. Mercer County (7th Cir. 2000)

Children have a Constitutional right to live with their parents without government interference. Child's four month separation from his parents could be challenged under substantive due process. Sham procedures don't constitute true procedural due process. -- Just the highlights



Quilloin v. Walcott (1978)

A due-process violation occurs when a state-required breakup of a natural family is founded solely on a "best interests" analysis that is not supported by the requisite proof of parental unfitness. 434 U.S. 246, 255 (1978)



GENERAL FAMILY RIGHTS CASE LAWS


Cassady v. Tackett

Coercive or intimidating behavior supports a reasonable belief that compliance is compelled.



Florida v. Bostick (S. Ct. 1991)

"Consent" that is the product of official intimidation or harassment is not consent at all. Citizens do not forfeit their constitutional rights when they are coerced to comply with a request that they would prefer to refuse.



K.H. through Murphy v. Morgan (7th Cir. 1990)

State employee who withhold a child from their family may infringe on the family's liberty of familial association. Social workers could not deliberately remove children from their parents and place them with foster caregivers when the officials reasonably should have known such an action would cause harm to the child's mental or physical health.



North Hudson DYFS v. Koehler Family (2001)

The court explained "absent some tangible evidence of abuse or neglect, the Courts do not authorize fishing expeditions into citizens' houses. Mere parroting of the phrase "best interest of the child" without supporting facts and a legal basis is insufficient to support a Court order based on reasonableness or any other ground."



JUDGES & PROSECUTORS - ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY CASE LAWS

Forrester v. White (S. Ct. 1988)

Holding that judges do not have absolute immunity when acting in an administrative capacity. -- Just the highlights



Joseph v. Patterson (6th Cir. 1986)

Prosecutor was not entitled to absolute immunity where it is alleged that he supervised and participated in an unconstitutional police interrogation.



Kalina v. Fletcher (S. Ct. 1997)

A prosecutor is not entitled to absolute immunity for allegedly false statements of fact made in an affidavit supporting an application for a warrant.



QUALIFIED IMMUNITY CASE LAWS

“I WAS ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS”

Good v. Daupin County Social Services (3rd Cir. 1989)

Defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity for conducting a warrantless search of home during a child abuse investigation where exigent circumstances were not present. Court held that a search warrant or exigent circumstances, such as a need to protect a child against imminent danger of serious bodily injury, was necessary for an entry without consent, and an anonymous tip was insufficient to establish special exigency. 891 F.2d 1087



Grossman v. City of Portland (9th Cir. 1994)

Individuals aren't immune for the results of their official conduct simply because they were enforcing policies or orders. Where a statute authorizes official conduct which is patently violative of fundamental constitutional principles, an officer who enforces that statute is not entitled to qualified immunity.



Hafer v. Melo (S. Ct. 1991)

Social workers (and other government employees) may be sued for deprivation of civil rights under 42 USC 1983 if they are named in their 'official and individual capacity. -- Just the highlights



Walsh v. Erie County Department of Job and Family Services

Child protection social workers claimed they were immune from liability in a civil violation (4th Amendment) suit, claiming qualified immunity because "they had not had training in Fourth Amendment law." They felt they couldn't be sued for their mistake, because they thought they were not binded by the Fourth Amendment. The court disagreed ruling "That subjective basis for their ignorance about and actions in violation of the Fourth Amendment does not relieve them of the consequences of that ignorance and those actions." and denied their immunity. 3:01-cv-7588.



Aponte Matos v. Toledo Davilla (1st Cir. 1998)

An officer who obtains a warrant through material false statements which result in an unconstitutional seizure may be held liable personally for his actions under section 1983.

False statements made to obtain a warrant, when the false statements were necessary to the finding of probable cause on which the warrant was based, violates the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. The warrant clause contemplates the warrant applicant to be truthful: "no warrant shall issue, but on probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation." Deliberate falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth violates the warrant clause. When a warrant application is materially false or made in reckless disregard for the truth, the warrant becomes invalid and will have been obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment's warrant clause. A search must not exceed the scope of the search authorized in a warrant. By limiting the authorization to search to the specific areas and things for which there is probable cause to search, the Fourth Amendment particularity requirement ensures that the search will be carefully tailored to its justifications, and will not take on the character of the wide-ranging exploratory searches the Framers of the Constitution intended to prohibit. There is a requirement that the police identify themselves to the subject of a search, absent exigent circumstances. Failure to knock and announce forms part of the reasonableness or not inquiry under the Fourth Amendment.



Brokaw v. Mercer County (7th Cir. 2000)

Child removals are "seizures" under the Fourth Amendment. Seizure is unconstitutional without court order or exigent circumstances. Court order obtained based on knowingly false information violates fourth amendment. -- Just the highlights.



Calabretta v. Floyd (9th Cir. 1999) Warrant-less Search

There is no exception to the warrant requirement for social workers in the context of a child abuse investigation. A social worker may not force their way into a home without a search warrant in absence of an emergency. Police officers and social workers are not immune for coercing or forcing entry into a person's home to investigate suspected child abuse, interrogation of a child, and strip search of a child, without a search warrant or special exigency.. -- Just the highlights. 189 F. 3d 808.





California v. Hobari D. (1991)

For purposes of the Fourth Amendment, a "seizure" of a person is a situation in which a reasonable person would feel that he is not free to leave, and also either actually yields to a show of authority from police or social workers or is physically touched by police. Persons may not be "seized" without a court order or being placed under arrest. 499 U.S. 621



Griffin v. Wisconsin (483 U.S. 868 - 1987)

The United States Supreme Court has held that courts may not use a different standard other than probable cause for the issuance of such orders. If a court issues a warrant based on an uncorroborated anonymous tip, the warrant will not survive a judicial challenge in the higher courts. Anonymous tips are never probable cause.



Walsh v. Erie County Department of Job and Family Services

Child protection workers are subject to the 4th and 14th Amendment in the context of an investigation of alleged abuse or neglect as are all "government officials". The court ruled "despite the defendant's (child protection worker) exaggerated view of their powers, the Fourth Amendment applies to them, as it does to all other officers and agents of the state whose request to enter, however benign or well-intentioned, are met by a closed door." "The Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures applies whenever an investigator, be it a police officer, a DCFS employee, or any other agent of the state, responds to an alleged instance of child abuse, neglect, or dependency". 3:01-cv-7588.



Yabarra v. Illinois (1979)

Where the standard for a seizure or search is probable cause, then there must be particularized information with respect to a specific person. This requirement cannot be undercut or avoided simply by pointing to the fact that coincidentally there exists probable cause to arrest or to search or to seizure another person or to search a place where the person may happen to be. 44 U.S. 85

Susan Dreyfus To Fire Washington State Liars?

The following article is authored by Washington State Senator Pam Roach and can be located on her blog at: pamroachreport.blogspot.com

Monday, May 24, 2010

SUSAN DREYFUS TO FIRE LIARS?

I believe that anyone lying in a court room to steal a child should be fired for lying to the court. No coddling. You lie then you should be fired. That, by the way, is exactly what DSHS Secretary Susan Dreyfus said she would do to liars in her system......................(seeing is believing).

With the Willard Case I personally sat down with both Sec. Dreyfus and Director Denise Revels-Robinson. In fact, with Denise, her own division director lied to me about the contents of an in home study for the Willards with Denise present. It was shown to be a lie in the meeting!!! Denise turned to the woman and was not too happy. But, what happened after the meeting? Anything?

The Willard Case is coming to an expensive and "fingers-crossed" happy ending. Much damage has been done to the family and little girl. But, things are looking very good.

The department never backed down. They wanted the girl for someone else. In this case as in the Stuth Case, it was a judge who made the difference.

Integrity is something that is quite elusive within the department. I am told there is a letter coming to me regarding the Willard Case and "Lilly." I want to see what has happened to Myron who lied by saying the Willard's stole a computer. I want to see what happened to the person who wrote in the second in home study that Mrs. Willard had breast cancer and that she was on dialysis.

What happens to liars in the system, Susan and Denise? Anything? Because if nothing happens the message clearly being sent is that it is OK to lie to the court and the people of the state. If nothing happens the stealing just continues. I am betting nothing happens. After all...only a few can afford lawyers. Right? The odds are in favor of the state.

Posted by State Senator Pam Roach at 7:46 PM

DSHS Lives Up to Low Expectations

The following article is authored by Washington State Senator Pam Roach from her own blog:  pamroachreport.blogspot.com

Thursday, August 28, 2008


DSHS Lives Up to Low Expectations

I received a call a few days ago from a wonderful young man: former Marine, dual languages, UW grad this summer, and my '08 session intern. I have always been so proud of him and excited for his future. He was going into military intelligence to live the CIA, "I'll take the risk for my country," type of life.

After clearing the significant security checks and while getting ready to pack, he and his wife got the word that there was a reversal. He had been declined. The reason? He married a Russian woman (now a US citizen) and a background check of her relatives still in Russia found someone in a high governmental position.

I used this story today when I was trying to make a point to high ranking DSHS officials and two attorneys from the attorney general's office. There needs to be a "fail safe" point where they admit that they have made a mistake. In this case they have a foster adopt woman who was not vetted, not disqualified, and is now being shielded by state bureaucrats each making more than $100,000 a year for their "work."

"The government must have standards," I said, "especially when lives are concerned."

And, there needs to be "deal breaker" triggers when we place a child in a bad foster adopt home.

YOU BE THE JUDGE. ASSUME ALL OF THE FOLLOWING LISTED TRAITS OF THE FOSTER ADOPT MOTHER ARE TRUE (THEY WERE UNDISPUTED IN THE MEETING) AND YOU DECIDE IF THIS IS WHERE YOU WOULD PLACE A CHILD FOR ADOPTION:

Foster Adopt Single (Divorced) 44 year old Woman...

NO JOB....The law states that you can NOT be a foster parent if you do not have a job. DSHS has refused to even answer the question. Why? Why won't they say she has a job? Because....they know she does not have a job.

Keeps the 3 year old in back-to-back daycare (Childhaven is not open long enough so the little girl is bussed to yet another facility.) The child is picked up by a bus in the morning and 12 hours later is deposited back to the house to eat and sleep.

Tiny girl goes to daycare with "significant black eye" which goes unreported by the foster adopt woman...(she is "mandated by law" to report)

Tells DSHS there is no man in the home...but there is...and...when a process server went to her door a man answered and told the server that she didn't live there (lies?)

Has a current restraining order ('08) out for a former lover with a gun...a man she had while still married

Failure to "parent"...child is educationally impaired...does not know the alphabet nor can she count to 20

Already has an adopted infant from DSHS (Attention Taxpayers...you are paying for all this daycare while she eats Bon Bons)

IS THIS THE PROFILE FOR AN ADOPTIVE PARENT? In Washington State...Yes. It is.

DSHS has no standards for where they place children. They have no conscience when leaving a child in harms way (black eyes and guns). They are completely out of touch with the thinking of "normal" people and they really are not accountable to anyone so make no one accountable to them. The ones at the top do not discipline poor performance of DSHS employees or contracted agencies and pass off decision making to those lower on the totem pole.

Our meeting took place in the downstairs conference room in my senate office building. The #2 people in both DSHS and the attorney general's offices were there. A representative of the governor was there. A couple high level AG and DSHS staffers were there. A couple of senate staffers, a private investigator and I were there.

DSHS refuses to release the study on the black eye. They have had it for a month and say they are still redacting names. Now... Think Mike Meyers and Dr. Evil...."REALLY!?"

Posted by State Senator Pam Roach at 10:13 PM

Accountability for dishonest state agents?

The following article is authored by Washington State Senator Pam Roach. It is from her own blog:  pamroachreport.blogspot.com

Susan Dreyfus To Fire Liars?


I believe that anyone lying in a court room to steal a child should be fired for lying to the court. No coddling. You lie then you should be fired. That, by the way, is exactly what DSHS Secretary Susan Dreyfus said she would do to liars in her system......................(seeing is believing).

With the Willard Case I personally sat down with both Sec. Dreyfus and Director Denise Revels-Robinson. In fact, with Denise, her own division director lied to me about the contents of an in home study for the Willards with Denise present. It was shown to be a lie in the meeting!!! Denise turned to the woman and was not too happy. But, what happened after the meeting? Anything?

The Willard Case is coming to an expensive and "fingers-crossed" happy ending. Much damage has been done to the family and little girl. But, things are looking very good.

The department never backed down. They wanted the girl for someone else. In this case as in the Stuth Case, it was a judge who made the difference.

Integrity is something that is quite elusive within the department. I am told there is a letter coming to me regarding the Willard Case and "Lilly." I want to see what has happened to Myron who lied by saying the Willard's stole a computer. I want to see what happened to the person who wrote in the second in home study that Mrs. Willard had breast cancer and that she was on dialysis.

What happens to liars in the system, Susan and Denise? Anything? Because if nothing happens the message clearly being sent is that it is OK to lie to the court and the people of the state. If nothing happens the stealing just continues. I am betting nothing happens. After all...only a few can afford lawyers. Right? The odds are in favor of the state.

Posted by State Senator Pam Roach at 7:46 PM 0 comments