By Georga Hackworth
Published Nov 07, 2007
Click to contact me
We all hear the horror stories involving Child Protective Services but believe it will never happen to us. Maybe we like to believe that those horror stories are the exception to the rule.
Maybe we like to think that the media is sensationalizing the facts for ratings and profit, after all, that is what the media does. Maybe we think that we are doing everything right and will never have to deal with the system.
The reality is that states and counties receive $30,000 for each child removed from the home and put into the system. Those funds go up to between $40,000 and $150,000 if the child has special needs. If you think that kind of money doesn't breed corruption, think again. In March 2003 the city of San Francisco had 75,000 children in their system. 75,000 children at $30,000 each (that is assuming none of them were handicapped) is $2,250,000,000! Foster families receive between $3,000 and $8300 a year for fostering a child depending on the state. That is a nice little profit being made even after you account for salaries and other overhead. It would be interesting to know where several million dollars each year is going.
The Department of Child Protective Services is a relatively new department of the government. In 1974 the first child abuse case went before the courts. There were no child abuse laws at that time so the case was taken up by the Human Society of the United States. It was after that case that the first child abuse laws were written and the Department of Child Protective Services was put together. It wasn't long before around 500,000 children were placed into the system with nothing in place to either return the children to their parents to find permanent homes for them. I remember attending elementary school with several children who lived in an orphanage where these children were put and forgotten about by the system.
Like most government agencies, CPS has evolved over the years and undergone reform to prevent abuse of the system as well as to make things run smoother and more effectively. However, it seems that the more rules that are put in place the more loopholes there are for corruption.
In 1997 the Adoption and Safe Families Act was put into place by the 105th Congress of the United States. The Adoption and Safe Families Act states:
· Reasonable efforts shall be made to preserve and reunify families unless the parent(s) have committed murder or voluntary manslaughter; aided, abetted, attempted, conspired or solicited to commit murder or voluntary manslaughter; committed a felony assault that resulted in serious bodily injury of the child or another child of the parent; the parental rights of the parent to a sibling have been terminated involuntarily
· If a child is not to be returned to the parents that a permanency hearing will take place within 30 days and that finalization of the placement, either with a legal guardian or by adoption, will be handled in a expeditious fashion as well as the details of how this will be done.
· How much money is to be given by the Federal Government to carry out the bill including incentive payments for the adoption of children in the system.
Yes, incentive payments for the adoption of children in the system. How this works is that a base line number of adoptions has to happen by each state or they risk loosing money. I understand the thought pattern behind the push to adopt out children permanently placed in the system. However, providing monetary incentives opens a lot of doors for the abuse of power. The base line number of adoptions of each state was determined individually. The number of adoptions for the years 1995, 1996 and 1997 were added up and the average taken. Each state was given their number. For each adoption that takes place over that number the state gets $4000. An additional $2000 is given for each special needs child.
Where does all this money go? I wish I had the answer there. Every child that gets put into the system is automatically enrolled in Medicaid. That crosses medical care off the list of what that money pays for. Foster families get a stipend each month for each foster child they take care of to help cover food, clothes and other basic needs. That monthly payment is only a small fraction of that $30,000 given to the state.
From my personal experience I can tell you that none of that money goes into helping the families who have been torn apart. In fact, the social worker that showed up on my door step was driving a BMW. Apparently social workers do get paid that much. So much for horrible hours, horrible pay and it being a thankless job that has a high turn over rate. I will say that being a social worker takes a certain type of person and not everyone is cut out for the job.
Forget wanting to help families. Forget wanting to protect children. Maybe that is why people originally go into social work. To be successful at you have to have a sadistic side of you that enjoys watching people suffer, that way you don't get emotionally attached and you do what you have to do.
Don't believe me? Don't think the system is abused? Consider for a moment that every report that is made to Child Protective Services, regardless of the validity of the claim, has to be investigated or the state risks loosing federal monies that are tied to Social Security. This means that if you get into a fight with your neighbor, your mother-in-law, or a friend they can pick up the phone and call in a false report in retaliation and you will have a social worker show up on your doorstep.
If everything isn't picture perfect when that social worker arrives, a case is formed. It could be anything such as the garbage hasn't been taken out that day, there are dirty dishes in the sink or your kids haven't had a bath yet that day. These people are there to judge your parenting and if they show up on that off day they aren't going to believe you that it's not normally like that.
I have also learned first hand that if someone makes a false call and makes the story outrageous enough that there will be no investigation and your kids will be taken on the spot, and the social worker doesn't have to be professional about it. They are allowed to yell at you, make snap judgments without asking questions, make you stand in the rain for three hours as well as ask questions that are a violation of your personal rights.
The social worker involved in our case also did nothing to help us out. Her idea of help was coming back a week later with a zoning inspector and having the house we were living in condemned making us homeless. This was after she was ordered by the court to return our kids and pay for temporary housing until we could get moved. When we went back to court and she was questioned on this her argument was "We are not in the habit of putting up homeless families."
She violated court order after court order and the judge did not do much about it, beyond not letting her get her way of terminating our parental rights and putting the children in state care. I know that the numbers were adding up in her head. I have seven children. Some of them are considered special needs. If she could get them adopted out there would be a nice bonus of $28,000 minimum.
After a month and a half we did get our kids back, but not after our visitation awarded by the court was blocked for a week and a half, our oldest was put in an unapproved foster home (the woman was licensed to take care of relatives only) and been sexually assaulted and our other children spent just over a month sick because the group home they were put in were very lax about the special diets they had to be on for health reasons.
Nothing was put in place for the emotional and mental well-being of my children. There is no counseling that is automatically given to children in the system to help cope with being separated from their parents. Maybe it is because it is assumed that every child removed from their home and taken away from their parents will be relieved because the state has rules, regulations and procedures in place to prevent errors from happening. Forget that the system is set up with monetary incentives at every corner that those motivated by greed.
Original Article
Money, Child Protective Services, and Greed - Associated Content
Showing posts with label ACS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ACS. Show all posts
Monday, November 19, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Long Term Use of Ritilan and Concerta
Ritalin and Concerta are two of the favorite weapons used to destroy the Natural Elite
(the Brightest and Bravest) of the population: the so-called hyperactive children.
Long term use of Ritalin ineffective and may stunt children's growth
Child Health News Published: Tuesday, 13-Nov-2007
Long term use of Ritalin is ineffective and may stunt children's growth
Child Health News Published: Tuesday, 13-Nov-2007
The study called the 'Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD' has been monitoring the treatment of 600 children across the U.S. since the 1990s; it reveals that drugs such as Ritalin are no more effective than therapy over a three year treatment period.
In 1999, the study concluded that after one year medication worked better than behavioural therapy for ADHD and that finding influenced medical practice on both sides of the Atlantic, and prescription rates multiplied.
Professor William Pelham of the University of Buffalo, the study's co-author, says the beneficial impact of the medications were exaggerated in the first study and the idea that if children were medicated longer they would have better outcomes was not the case.
Professor Pelham says in the long run there are "no beneficial effects" of medication and the impact was instead seemingly negative as the children had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth.
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) in Britain is currently revising the treatment guidelines for ADHD and are devising new strategies which will involve training for parents as well as "behavioral interventions".
Doctors in the UK have warned before about treating children with behavioral problems with powerful anti-psychotic drugs which have dangerous side effects such as, insomnia, dizziness, heart problems, and even death.
In 2006 drugs like Concerta and Ritalin were prescribed to about 55,000 British children, costing the NHS £28m.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. estimates 4.4 million youth ages 4-17 have been diagnosed with ADHD , and in 2003, 2.5 million youth were receiving medication the disorder.
Tranquillizers such as Risperdal and Zyprexa were originally designed for the treatment of psychosis and schizophrenia in adults, are now being used to calm hyperactive children even though they have been linked to several health problems.
Professor Pelham suggests that behavioral therapy and Omega-3 should be the first steps in helping a child with ADHD.
(the Brightest and Bravest) of the population: the so-called hyperactive children.
Long term use of Ritalin ineffective and may stunt children's growth
Child Health News Published: Tuesday, 13-Nov-2007
Long term use of Ritalin is ineffective and may stunt children's growth
Child Health News Published: Tuesday, 13-Nov-2007
The study called the 'Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD' has been monitoring the treatment of 600 children across the U.S. since the 1990s; it reveals that drugs such as Ritalin are no more effective than therapy over a three year treatment period.
In 1999, the study concluded that after one year medication worked better than behavioural therapy for ADHD and that finding influenced medical practice on both sides of the Atlantic, and prescription rates multiplied.
Professor William Pelham of the University of Buffalo, the study's co-author, says the beneficial impact of the medications were exaggerated in the first study and the idea that if children were medicated longer they would have better outcomes was not the case.
Professor Pelham says in the long run there are "no beneficial effects" of medication and the impact was instead seemingly negative as the children had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth.
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) in Britain is currently revising the treatment guidelines for ADHD and are devising new strategies which will involve training for parents as well as "behavioral interventions".
Doctors in the UK have warned before about treating children with behavioral problems with powerful anti-psychotic drugs which have dangerous side effects such as, insomnia, dizziness, heart problems, and even death.
In 2006 drugs like Concerta and Ritalin were prescribed to about 55,000 British children, costing the NHS £28m.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. estimates 4.4 million youth ages 4-17 have been diagnosed with ADHD , and in 2003, 2.5 million youth were receiving medication the disorder.
Tranquillizers such as Risperdal and Zyprexa were originally designed for the treatment of psychosis and schizophrenia in adults, are now being used to calm hyperactive children even though they have been linked to several health problems.
Professor Pelham suggests that behavioral therapy and Omega-3 should be the first steps in helping a child with ADHD.
Friday, November 16, 2007
High on life: the biggest health care fraud in history?
As a new study suggests treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with drugs can do more harm than good, one lifelong 'sufferer' questions whether the condition even exists.
It was probably nailing my teacher’s coat to the desk while he was still wearing it that did it. That and glueing his packet of peanuts to the classroom ceiling, at a precisely-calculated five millimetres beyond his furthest reach.
It was the climax of what I – and most of my pre-teen classmates – considered a sustained comedy campaign, a bit of light-hearted high-jinx designed to redress the teacher-student balance of power. It wasn’t my first and nor would it be my last, even though this particular incident triggered a catastrophic sense of humour failure in said faculty member, who mysteriously vanished overnight.
Had I been born a decade or so later, I doubt I’d be writing this today. Rather than spending almost 20 years inventing new ways to terrorise a succession of teachers, lecturers and employers – fuelling other forms of creativity, including writing, in the process – I’d have been given a massive dose of Ritalin and left in a corner to rot.
Ancient roots
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), described by Hippocrates as early as 493BC, is billed by the modern medical fraternity as a neurological disorder usually characterised – especially in children – by inattentiveness, restlessness, forgetfulness and hyperactivity. Genetic in nature, it affects around five per cent of the world’s population and is often treated with a combination of medications, behaviour modification, lifestyle changes and counselling.
In 1999, a study in the US concluded that, after a period of 12 months, medication was more effective in the treatment of ADHD than behavioural therapy. In the years since, prescriptions in the UK have tripled. Around 500,000 children in Britain are currently believed to have ADHD. Of those, 55,000 are on medication, at an annual cost to the NHS of roughly £28m.
Recent revelation
But new research – by the authors of the original study – suggests drugs don’t work in the long-term and, alarmingly, their impact may actually be negative. Take 14-year-old Craig Buxton, whose family kept a video diary of his behaviour. The footage, which was screened on Panorama, shows in shocking detail his night terrors, explosive tantrums and relentless acts of aggression. At one point, Craig breaks down and cries: “Why am I like this, mum? I don’t want to feel like this, I don’t want to be like this. Help me.” He has been taking ADHD medication for a decade.
Critics are now questioning whether this so-called chronic developmental disorder is really a disorder at all. Dr Fred Baughman, a child neurologist on the other side of the Atlantic, has spent his professional life examining hundreds of children supposedly suffering from ADHD – and has found nothing abnormal or diseased about them. Nor has he found any hard evidence to suggest ADHD is actually a disease, or that it needs any treatment other than willpower, love and support. As he puts it, “it is the biggest health care fraud in history.”
An expert opines
Speaking to MSN UK News, Dr Baughman said: “I have discovered and described real diseases and, having examined hundreds said to have this ‘disorder’ or ‘disease’, I have Fred Baughman found nothing wrong, abnormal or diseased about them. I have also found no proof in the medical scientific literature of the world that ADHD is an objective, demonstrable abnormality, disease or disorder. It is the biggest health care fraud in history.
“The bigger-than-ADHD picture is that they – psychiatry in collusion with Big Pharma – have pledged to call all emotional and behavioural, psychological or mental symptoms ‘diseases’ due to chemical imbalances of the brain, needing not willpower, not love, support or adaptability, but ‘chemical balancers’ – in other words, pills.”
Cash cow
A conspiracy theory? Perhaps. But when drug-making leviathans in the US (the pursuit-of-superficial-perfection capital of the world) have dedicated ADHD sales forces, you can’t help but wonder who’s really creating the demand. One thing is beyond question: there is an awful lot of money to be made selling drugs – and not just the illegal ones. In the current climate of offspring-as-accessories, any quick-fix for children perceived as less than perfect is unlikely to gather any dust on the shelves.
There are, of course, some children who genuinely need pharmaceutical intervention. However, more often than not, this so-called disorder is really the result of combining excessively spirited children with criminally sub-standard parenting skills – quite the Molotov cocktail. In cases where a child becomes disruptive due to lack of parental care, affection or stimulation, the impairment belongs not to the child, but to the surrounding adults.
Simply semantics
Let’s take another look at those symptoms listed earlier: inattentiveness, restlessness, forgetfulness and hyperactivity. In non-medical speak: fidgeting, forgetting things, talking excessively, running around a lot and being easily distracted. What child isn’t? The problem here is one of perspective. I was thrilled to be alive and found my teachers’ monotonous tones, disinterest in their subject and failure to challenge me a total turn-off. They, in turn, found me disruptive (which I was: it helped relieve the brain-putrefying boredom).
But the real concern isn’t the noisy kids vaulting over furniture and terrorising their teachers (within reason), it’s the quiet children who are completely incapable of engaging with the people around them: the silent insular ones, who go unnoticed by society until they massacre their school mates.
If I ever have children (which I won’t), and they turn out to be unusually spirited (which they would), I like to think I’d turn not to pharmaceutical drug barons, but to Hippocrates, who described people exhibiting ADHD-type behaviour as “restless souls” with a simple “overbalance of fire over water.” The physician-scientist’s remedy for this overbalance? “Barley rather than wheat bread, fish rather than meat, water drinks, and many natural and diverse physical activities.' Beats being doped up to the eyeballs any day.
An opinion piece by Laura J Snook, MSN UK News Editor November 13, 2007
It was probably nailing my teacher’s coat to the desk while he was still wearing it that did it. That and glueing his packet of peanuts to the classroom ceiling, at a precisely-calculated five millimetres beyond his furthest reach.
It was the climax of what I – and most of my pre-teen classmates – considered a sustained comedy campaign, a bit of light-hearted high-jinx designed to redress the teacher-student balance of power. It wasn’t my first and nor would it be my last, even though this particular incident triggered a catastrophic sense of humour failure in said faculty member, who mysteriously vanished overnight.
Had I been born a decade or so later, I doubt I’d be writing this today. Rather than spending almost 20 years inventing new ways to terrorise a succession of teachers, lecturers and employers – fuelling other forms of creativity, including writing, in the process – I’d have been given a massive dose of Ritalin and left in a corner to rot.
Ancient roots
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), described by Hippocrates as early as 493BC, is billed by the modern medical fraternity as a neurological disorder usually characterised – especially in children – by inattentiveness, restlessness, forgetfulness and hyperactivity. Genetic in nature, it affects around five per cent of the world’s population and is often treated with a combination of medications, behaviour modification, lifestyle changes and counselling.
In 1999, a study in the US concluded that, after a period of 12 months, medication was more effective in the treatment of ADHD than behavioural therapy. In the years since, prescriptions in the UK have tripled. Around 500,000 children in Britain are currently believed to have ADHD. Of those, 55,000 are on medication, at an annual cost to the NHS of roughly £28m.
Recent revelation
But new research – by the authors of the original study – suggests drugs don’t work in the long-term and, alarmingly, their impact may actually be negative. Take 14-year-old Craig Buxton, whose family kept a video diary of his behaviour. The footage, which was screened on Panorama, shows in shocking detail his night terrors, explosive tantrums and relentless acts of aggression. At one point, Craig breaks down and cries: “Why am I like this, mum? I don’t want to feel like this, I don’t want to be like this. Help me.” He has been taking ADHD medication for a decade.
Critics are now questioning whether this so-called chronic developmental disorder is really a disorder at all. Dr Fred Baughman, a child neurologist on the other side of the Atlantic, has spent his professional life examining hundreds of children supposedly suffering from ADHD – and has found nothing abnormal or diseased about them. Nor has he found any hard evidence to suggest ADHD is actually a disease, or that it needs any treatment other than willpower, love and support. As he puts it, “it is the biggest health care fraud in history.”
An expert opines
Speaking to MSN UK News, Dr Baughman said: “I have discovered and described real diseases and, having examined hundreds said to have this ‘disorder’ or ‘disease’, I have Fred Baughman found nothing wrong, abnormal or diseased about them. I have also found no proof in the medical scientific literature of the world that ADHD is an objective, demonstrable abnormality, disease or disorder. It is the biggest health care fraud in history.
“The bigger-than-ADHD picture is that they – psychiatry in collusion with Big Pharma – have pledged to call all emotional and behavioural, psychological or mental symptoms ‘diseases’ due to chemical imbalances of the brain, needing not willpower, not love, support or adaptability, but ‘chemical balancers’ – in other words, pills.”
Cash cow
A conspiracy theory? Perhaps. But when drug-making leviathans in the US (the pursuit-of-superficial-perfection capital of the world) have dedicated ADHD sales forces, you can’t help but wonder who’s really creating the demand. One thing is beyond question: there is an awful lot of money to be made selling drugs – and not just the illegal ones. In the current climate of offspring-as-accessories, any quick-fix for children perceived as less than perfect is unlikely to gather any dust on the shelves.
There are, of course, some children who genuinely need pharmaceutical intervention. However, more often than not, this so-called disorder is really the result of combining excessively spirited children with criminally sub-standard parenting skills – quite the Molotov cocktail. In cases where a child becomes disruptive due to lack of parental care, affection or stimulation, the impairment belongs not to the child, but to the surrounding adults.
Simply semantics
Let’s take another look at those symptoms listed earlier: inattentiveness, restlessness, forgetfulness and hyperactivity. In non-medical speak: fidgeting, forgetting things, talking excessively, running around a lot and being easily distracted. What child isn’t? The problem here is one of perspective. I was thrilled to be alive and found my teachers’ monotonous tones, disinterest in their subject and failure to challenge me a total turn-off. They, in turn, found me disruptive (which I was: it helped relieve the brain-putrefying boredom).
But the real concern isn’t the noisy kids vaulting over furniture and terrorising their teachers (within reason), it’s the quiet children who are completely incapable of engaging with the people around them: the silent insular ones, who go unnoticed by society until they massacre their school mates.
If I ever have children (which I won’t), and they turn out to be unusually spirited (which they would), I like to think I’d turn not to pharmaceutical drug barons, but to Hippocrates, who described people exhibiting ADHD-type behaviour as “restless souls” with a simple “overbalance of fire over water.” The physician-scientist’s remedy for this overbalance? “Barley rather than wheat bread, fish rather than meat, water drinks, and many natural and diverse physical activities.' Beats being doped up to the eyeballs any day.
An opinion piece by Laura J Snook, MSN UK News Editor November 13, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
This is Child Protection?
Though states' "child protective services" intervene readily in family situations, using as a guideline for intervention whether a child "is at risk of maltreatment," even after 40 percent of allegations of child abuse are initially screened out, a further 66 percent of the remaining allegations of child abuse are found to be unsubstantiated. (This number includes the cases labeled on the chart as "Alternative Response Nonvictim," where no investigation of the reported child abuse was undertaken, yet it was determined that there was no abuse.)
By Gregory A. Hession, J.D.
The New American magazine, July 23, 2007http://thenewamerican.com/node/4632
Imagine your terror and panic: you are awakened by an armed SWAT team in the middle of the night, demanding to be let into your home to take your children away. The grim-faced agents show you no warrant, no court order, and no mercy. They give you no reason for their presence, other than having received an unspecified report about child abuse. They bark commands and menace you and your children with their weapons. The children are taken out of your home screaming, shoved into cars, and whisked away into the night.
This is not a Soviet-era movie script, but a reality in thousands of homes in the United States every year, courtesy of state child protective services agencies.
The least reported and understood social crisis of our time is the vast new police state run by these state social services agencies, which are generically referred to as “child protective services,” or CPS. The states have different names for them, such as Department of Social Services or Department of Children and Families, but they are all operating under a federal mandate. Whatever they are called, our next generation of children may never recover from their predatory intrusions into families.
Some may dismiss these concerns as hyperbole, but the numbers are appalling. In 2005 alone, over 3.3 million reports involving six million children were made to state child-abuse hot lines, the vast majority of which eventually proved to be untrue. Over 500,000 children currently are in foster care. Another 300,000 or so are forcibly removed from their homes by the system every year. Tens of billions of dollars are expended every year on the care of these children, and on the juvenile court systems which enable it, along with costs of therapy, drugs, lawyers, and related services.
This system is relatively new. In response to professional agitation to “do something” about the problem of child abuse, Congress set forth standards for state child protection agencies in 1974, in the Child Abuse Protection and Treatment Act, also called the Mondale Act for its senatorial sponsor. If a state conformed their system to the federal mandate, it could get generous reimbursement from the feds. The states immediately complied, and modern child protection was born.
The system does not work, and never has. Thirty years, hundreds of billions of dollars, and millions of ruined families later, the problem of abuse is little improved.
In almost all cases, children are traumatized by their experiences in state custody. A large number of the children taken into captivity never return — many are adopted out to other families, killed, injured, or caused permanent psychological harm. Parents are rarely helped, even when they need some improvement.
Can this happen in America? It can, and it does. What follows is a brief tour through the seamy underbelly of the CPS system. That these agencies engage in such despicable behavior is often not believed by anyone who has not been directly affected by it. CPS structures and systems resemble those used by totalitarian regimes.
The Snitch Network
The entry point of most children into the child protection system is through a government-mandated “snitch network” consisting of 50-odd professions that are required by law to report any suspected child abuse or neglect to a state “hot line.” Teachers, police, therapists, doctors, nurses, even clergy, must report to CPS, under threat of prosecution. In addition, CPS propaganda has convinced many neighbors and friends and personal enemies to make such reports.
Once a report is made, the CPS agency has to decide whether it is credible, and if so, what to do about it. Of about 3.3 million calls to state hot lines in 2005, about 40 percent were screened out before going any further. For the remaining calls, the agency had to decide whether it was an emergency, or could be administratively investigated in due course.
Why are so many reports of child abuse being generated? A large contributing factor is that the legal definitions of abuse and neglect are so elastic as to encompass virtually any parental behavior, from spanking their children to letting them eat too much “fast food.” Also, supply sometimes creates its own demand, since an army of professionals has arisen to service the industry, and must be kept well fed.
In response to child-abuse emergencies, real or imagined, the agency usually sends CPS agents and police to a home. The police pry the children’s little fingers off their mother, with everyone screaming hysterically during the “pull,” as they call it.
In other cases, children are snatched from school or from buses after school, without notice to parents frantically waiting at bus stops. Often they are taken late on a Friday afternoon, so parents cannot challenge the action in court over the weekend, and so that the children can be held incommunicado and given medications — drugged — during that time. The goal is to soften the kids up to make “disclosures” about parental abuse in order to allow CPS to get a court order for custody. Sometimes CPS agents go to court to get an order before taking the children, but when they do so, it is almost always done in secret in a closed courtroom, without the parents or attorneys present.
Unfortunately, CPS often gets it wrong both ways — genuine abuse is often missed or ignored, while most of what is reported as abuse or neglect does not rise to any reasonable level of seriousness. (See chart Top of page.)
Into the Belly of the Beast
After the snitch network does its part to get the children into the CPS pipeline, the cases either go into an elaborate administrative process, or to a so-called “shelter” court hearing, held within a few days in order to determine whether the removal of the children from the home was proper. At that court hearing, usually conducted in secret without the press or public allowed, the court will appoint separate lawyers for the mother, the father, and the children. Many of these hearings are conducted so quickly that parents do not have time to prepare a defense, and the lawyers often cut corners by telling their clients to just agree to keep the children in custody until a trial, which could be a year or more away. Only later do the parents find out that they had agreed that their children needed state protection and had waived any possibility of getting them back quickly, or even at all.
The cases that do not go to court are shunted into a surreal, nightmarish administrative system, and the children are often allowed to stay at home or with relatives while the bureaucrats dither.
A social worker will eventually make up a document called a “case plan” or “service plan,” in which the alleged failings of the parents are summarized. The case plan includes a set of tasks and social services intended to “fix” the parent, much like one might repair an appliance. In order to get the children back home if they were taken, or to foreshorten an administrative case, the parents must do all the activities mandated on the plan, such as going to parenting classes, meeting with a social worker, going to substance-abuse treatment, or getting psychological evaluations.
Social workers, often severely maladjusted and working out their own tortured past vicariously through their clients, frequently treat the parents with whom they work as property, ordering them around at whim. They set up services to be done during work hours, causing people to lose jobs and placing the family in financial distress. They can order that a man suspected of spanking his children must leave the home, putting additional emotional and financial burdens on a family.
As with most government programs, there are unintended consequences that no one considered when putting the scheme together. Since social workers are so easily duped, divorcing spouses have made extensive use of CPS reports as a weapon in family court. Want to get custody fast? Just call CPS and accuse the other spouse of abuse. CPS will also do the bidding of schools that have trouble handling difficult children, and will threaten parents who do not want to drug their children with ADHD chemicals.
When children are placed in foster care, the agency usually treats them with mercenary callousness. Social workers and foster parents do things to children that if done by parents would likely have triggered removal of the child. Children are routinely kept out of school for weeks, are denied needed medical care, and are even abused physically and sexually. Children with asthma are often placed with heavy smokers, and children with speech impediments are often placed with immigrants who struggle with English. Almost all children are heavily drugged, with up to six powerful mind-bending medications, in order to ensure their docility.
Even in little ways, the system continually shows contempt for its captives. Social workers leave a home without putting the children in car seats, cancel visits with the parents if they have better things to do, or place the children in homes far from the parents in order to make it harder to have visits. The grinding banality of socialist-spawned child care is soulless, loveless, and arbitrary.
Abuse committed against a child while in foster care is supposed to be investigated by a special outside unit, similar to an internal-affairs division in a police department. However, mindful of potential lawsuits if abuse were discovered, the investigators usually don’t find any. Statistics reported to the government about abuse in foster care are low because the agency gets to do its own investigations. In my experience representing parents, most of whose children have been actually abused in foster care, the CPS usually sweeps the allegations under the rug and fails to stop the abuse.
Your Day in Court
Juvenile or family court is where the fate of millions of children is decided. Not many years ago, these courts were a sleepy sinecure for a few political hacks. Now, with the child-abuse industrial complex in overdrive feeding them, juvenile courts have come into vogue. Crowds of sad-faced parents shuffle around the court’s waiting areas, lining the halls. Lawyers, forgetting the indescribable pain that their clients are enduring, openly laugh and gossip with CPS attorneys and therapists.
At court hearings, the parents usually cannot speak, and the children’s wishes are almost never heard or considered. Hearings often last only a few minutes, or even seconds. The traditional rules of evidence and notions of due process are rarely observed in these special courts, which are neither criminal nor civil. Hearsay on top of hearsay, sometimes three or four layers deep, is often admitted into evidence, which would never be allowed in any traditional court.
The burden of proof for taking children away from parents on a temporary basis is merely to show by a “preponderance of evidence” that the child was abused, which is a weak and ill-defined standard. By contrast, the state has to prove guilt in a speeding ticket case beyond a reasonable doubt. A final termination of parental rights requires that the state prove unfitness by “clear and convincing evidence,” still well short of the quantum of proof required to prove jaywalking.
Most juvenile cases end with a judgment against the parents, allowing CPS to keep the children until they are 18, or to farm them out for adoption. The home team — that is, the CPS prosecutor and social workers — are in front of the judge every day. The process becomes a choreographed dance, like a Mozart-era minuet, with all the players moving in lockstep and the outcome often determined before the first witness is called.
By looking at the numbers, one would conclude that there is an epidemic of child abuse in America. However, the evidence shows that there is actually an epidemic of hysteria about child abuse, because most of the official complaints are either false or greatly exaggerated. It is a squalid business. Big “non-profit” companies have arisen to service the insatiable demand for warehousing children and providing therapy, education, and other services. Special needs children can sometimes fetch thousands of dollars per week for these sub-contractors from the state and the feds, which make millionaires out of the subcontractors owners and officers.
Tens of thousands of parents have their parental rights terminated every year, and their children taken for adoption to other persons or families. In 2005 alone, 67,000 children were removed for adoption. Another 110,000 were waiting for adoptive homes. Each of these children has been through a painful removal from parents, a lengthy court process, numerous foster homes, large amounts of drugs and therapy, and sometimes years of waiting.The Adoption and Safe Families Act, passed by Congress in 1997, sets out adoption quotas for the states, with money bonuses for exceeding them, and even larger bonuses for processing a larger number of “special needs” children. Thus, adoption becomes the goal for many children who should not be taken from families in the first place. For CPS, it becomes just a commercial sales transaction: meet the quota, collect the cash.
Some parents do abuse children, and states have comprehensive criminal laws to deal with those cases. Most persons would likely disagree with CPS in how it defines abuse or neglect. Families are attacked for home-schooling or spanking their children, for not overseeing all play activities, or for when a child has an accident. Sometimes a child’s illness, poverty, or parents who are going through a time of conflict will trigger CPS involvement. There is also a palpable animus against families who are religious, or who do not like state interference. Only a very small percentage of the 3.3 million reported cases annually prove to be genuine abuse, and the system does a bad job of sorting them out.
There are reasons why the system does a bad job. Colleges churn out hordes of 23-year-old social-work graduates, childless and clueless, who are sent into homes to make life-changing decisions. Their formal education is grounded in doctrinaire Marxism and feminism, and they believe in their viscera that the state should communally raise children.
Another disincentive to changing the system is the fact that social workers are given legal immunity for almost any discretionary decision no matter what harm results to the children. Social workers exercise virtually unlimited power over families, with little accountability to anyone for overreaching or even for egregious offenses.
Federal reimbursement is the locomotive that drives the child-protection business. Regardless of what families actually need, CPS determines where to place its resources based on what returns the most reimbursement. The vast percentage of federal reimbursement (90 percent) comes from taking children into custody, while only a tiny fraction (10 percent) is available to help intact families. In other words, taking children pays, helping families costs.
The game of cadging federal CPS dollars has become so intense that states often hire multi-million dollar consultants to assist them in maximizing federal reimbursement for the children they take. For instance, Massachusetts hired the now-defunct Arthur Anderson Consulting, at an estimated fee of about $8.6 million, to structure the state program to take advantage of as many federal reimbursement categories as possible.
What Can Be Done?
Is the system really as corrupt, incompetent, destructive, and ineffective as this article portrays it? No, it’s actually far worse — if you ask a parent whose children have been victimized by it! The public perception is that CPS is doing a tough job, and standing against child abuse. However, any family caught in its web would testify to a completely different reality. When I take on a new case and forewarn a family about CPS dirty tricks, they usually think I am exaggerating. Surely it can’t be that bad. However, after the first court hearing, or if their children are removed, those families uniformly confirm that I didn’t tell them the half of it.
What should be done to address the problem of child abuse and the problem of abuse by the system of parents and children? It won’t be easy because CPS policies and actions are based on a deeply flawed world view. Moreover, the agencies are run by inept and agenda-driven managers and social workers, and are enabled by a dysfunctional legal system.Real reform would cut at the very heart of the premise of child protection — that the state is a better parent, a legal doctrine called parens patriae in Latin. Some fixes are obvious — end federal standards for and funding of state child protection agencies, set objective standards for child abuse, require traditional due process in juvenile courts that are open to the public, and eliminate immunity for social-worker malfeasance.
Millions of children are imperiled by this imperious, abusive CPS system, which works quietly without much public scrutiny. Change will likely come only when its cruelties have been exposed, and the public reaffirms that raising children is the responsibility of families, not the state.
Posted by -
Robert Littlejohn
National Co-Director
United Family Rights Association
Friday, October 12, 2007
State’s Child Protection Agencies Collude with Judges to Defraud Federal Government
This was originally published in 2002, By Nev Moore
Sad part- is it still holds true!
1974 Walter Mondale initiated CAPTA (the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act), the legislation that began feeding federal funding into the state’s child welfare agencies. With remarkable foresight Mondale expressed concerns that the legislation could lead to systemic abuse in that the state agencies might over-process children into the system unnecessarily to keep, and increase, the flow of federal dollars.
Shortly after CAPTA was enacted there was a dramatic increase in the number of children in foster care, peaking at around 500,000 during the mid-70’s. George Miller, the Chairman of the federal Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, initiated an intensive investigation of the nation’s foster care system after the effects of CAPTA started to become apparent by the soaring numbers of children who were being placed in foster care.
An official at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare admitted to Miller that the government had no idea where many of the nation’s 500,000 foster children where living, what services they were receiving, if any, or if any efforts were being made to reunite them with their families.
To address the obvious free-for-all snatching of children that CAPTA had stimulated, the Committee crafted new federal legislation with the intent of creating accountability and clearer guidelines for the states child welfare agencies. During the crafting of P.L. 96-272 Chairman Miller’s concern was that the federal government was footing the bill for warehousing children in institutions and inappropriate settings without accountability.
In 1980 the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act PL 96-272 was enacted. The act included provisions that "reasonable efforts" be made to prevent children from being unnecessarily removed from their homes and placed in foster care.
Although CPS has always tried to buffalo the media and the public that they are involved with families due to some sort of horrific child abuse or neglect, there has never been any debate among national policy makers, researchers, and federal agencies that the vast majority of CPS cases are due to poverty or frivolous/social reasons and do not contain elements of real child abuse.
If the cases did actually involve acts of abuse they would be criminal, identified and investigated by law enforcement, rather than social workers, and prosecuted as such. PL 96-272 came into effect partly because Congress determined that a large number of children were being unnecessarily removed from their homes, and, once removed, they were lost in the limbo of foster care for years, many until they just grew too old, when they were then put on the streets at the age of 18.
The Child Welfare League of America testified before a senate subcommittee: "In fact, there were many instances then, as now, of children being removed unnecessarily from their families. It is important to recognize that children are almost always traumatized by removal from their own families." So, accountability from each states child protection agency was also written in.
To receive the federal money the states would have to submit an annual report to the federal government, known as an AFCARS report, that specifically accounts for each child in state "care." ACLU Children’s Rights Project attorney, Marcia Robinson Lowry, explained in her testimony to Congress: "As a condition of federal funding, states must have a reasonable information system to identify children in federally-funded state custody."
These requirements were implemented in 1980. Up until 1999 some states were still not filing their federally required AFCARS report to the federal government. According to Jeffrey Locke, former Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, the excuse to the legislature was that they "couldn’t figure out how to work their computer system."
When I called Senator Therese Murray in 1998 to ask how many children had died in foster care in Massachusetts, her aide replied: "We don’t have those statistics." At that time Senator Murray was the Senate Chair of the Committee on Health & Elderly Affairs, and therefore responsible to oversee the collection and filing of AFCARS data.
The "reasonable efforts" requirements were designed to address these issues by requiring the states child welfare agencies to have specific investigation and assessment policies to minimize frivolous removals, to provide "services" to address and ameliorate conditions that were detrimental to the child’s well-being, to place children with relatives when removal from the home was absolutely necessary, and to make efforts to reunite families in a timely fashion.
Methods to audit and track compliance with federal requirements were also built in. The states were to establish "citizen review panels" comprised of a specifically designated representation of the population which would include not only members of collateral professional communities involved in child protection, but "parents, foster parents, and former foster children."
Each state was to have at least three citizen review panels. The panels would essentially act as a standing jury of peers and would review CPS cases. Twenty years after PL 96-272 went into effect the citizen review panels have never been established in most states.
Another means of creating accountability was to have the federal authority, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, conduct compliance audits, which are known as Section 427 reviews. The method of enforcement that Congress devised to ensure that the states followed the federal law was to provide incentive funds to the states that documented their compliance with the federal regulations.
The states would self-certify compliance, but could be subjected to "periodic" 427 reviews by the Dept. of Health & Human Services. Were the states to find themselves in noncompliance they would simply return the incentive funds.
It would seem that providing cash to agencies that are allowed to self-document compliance is a somewhat less than intelligent system. It would be interesting to track down exactly how much money the states child "protective" agencies have returned to the government because they found themselves in noncompliance Gee, maybe this is rocket science.
Like CAPTA, PL 96-272 could only have worked if the federal government demanded compliance and meticulous accountability, and then imposed sanctions for noncompliance.
Even better – criminal charges for racketeering for intentional fraud. Mark Soler, director of the National Youth law Center in California explained:
"The Department of Health & Human Services has failed to promulgate meaningful regulations to implement the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. It has applied even the minimal federal regulations that were developed in an inconsistent and arbitrary manner, and only token implementation of the laws protecting children."
Even when HHS finds overwhelming evidence of lack of compliance during 427 reviews, no sanctions are imposed and they continue to keep the fed $$$ pouring in – in violation of their own regulations. Not so much as a slap on the hand or even token admonishment.
Certainly explains how CPS developed their arrogance and contempt for any authority – because there is none.
Their confidence that they are free from the feds insisting on compliance with the law is well illustrated by the foster care numbers which increased dramatically after CAPTA began feeding federal dollars into the states child protection agencies, then dropped equally dramatically after the enactment of P.L.96-272, which was supposed to create more specific federal regulation and accountability.
However, once the state agencies saw that the federal government was not enforcing compliance, the foster care numbers soared once again.
Michael Petit, Deputy Director of the Child Welfare League of America, stated in his testimony before Congress: "A 427 is a meaningless process for most of the states. It represents no kind of sanctions to the states whatsoever for noncompliance" Marcia Robinson Lowry told Congress: "States are passing HHS audits with systems in which no reasonable person could consider that children are being well treated. It is virtually impossible to fail a 427 audit."
The initial concept of "reasonable efforts" was the only conclusion that any rational person could come to: rather than disrupt children’s lives, and traumatize them, by seizing them from non-abusive situations and placing them with strangers (who are often no better, and sometimes far worse), assist families in overcoming their obstacles and problems by providing support and services.
The idea never worked though because it has always been more profitable to too many to remove children rather than keep them at home.
Rather than offer support and simple, practical services to families, CPS forged contracts with vendors. Now private businesses, under the guise of "service providers", could mushroom into existence knowing that their sugar daddy, CPS, would provide a never-ending flow of coerced clients.
The market potential is unlimited – potentially every mother, father, grandparent, and child in the country.
Rather than offering practical, meaningful services that are germane to the families circumstances, CPS clients are ordered to engage in "services" with CPS-contracted vendors; special interest groups who are dependent on CPS for their income and profit by maintaining the levels of children in foster care, and whose interests are protected by a bureaucracy intent on securing it’s own survival and protecting unlimited growth.
The extent to which CPS is allowed to continue to operate while being so far out of compliance with the existing state and federal laws is mind boggling.
It would be a challenge to find any other agency in our country's history that operated in such gross and blatant violation of the law with absolutely no intervention from the administration.
Tens of millions of tax dollars are being squandered on a system that is destroying families and causing lifelong emotional ruin to children – and those are the lucky ones who live through it.
The most egregious area of outright criminal fraud is CPS’s practice of filing their federally required documentation of compliance in secrecy through the courts.
The federal foster care reimbursements are channeled through the Title IV-E section of the Social Security Act. Each state's child welfare agency enters into a contract with the federal government, which is referred to as their Title IV-E state plan.
It is this contract that spells out the responsibilities that CPS must, by law, comply with in order to receive their federal funding. To document compliance with the fed regs, CPS must file a form through the courts in each individual case.
In Massachusetts these forms are referred to as a "29-C." 42 U.S. Code, ss 672 reads:
"These requirements are not mere formalities. The Finance Committee of Congress, in preparing its summary for final passage of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, PL 96-272, stated; " The Committee is aware of allegations that the judicial determination requirement (sic: that a judge makes a determination that a child needs to be removed from the home) can become a mere pro forma exercise in paper shuffling to obtain federal funding.
While this could occur in some instances, the Committee is unwilling to accept as a general proposition that the judiciaries of the States would so lightly treat a responsibility placed upon them by federal statute for the protection of children."
1980 U.S. Code Cong. and Admin. News: "A judicial determination of those efforts (reasonable efforts, as defined in the Act) serves to closely examine, in the case of each individual child, whether reasonable efforts were made to keep the family intact."
In accordance with the federal requirements the Massachusetts legislature enacted G.L. c.119 Ss 29b, which requires all judges to certify that the Department of Social Services met the obligation grounded in the federal statute of making reasonable efforts to protect the child short of removing him or her from the parents, and, if the child was removed, making it possible for the child to return home in a timely manner.
Rather than "closely examining", in Massachusetts this grave responsibility is carried out by judges by rubber stamping stacks of 29c forms that simply contain three "yes" or "no" check boxes.
In many instances making three check marks is even too much work for Massachusetts judges and they rubber stamp the forms while leaving them blank – never mind actually verifying that the "reasonable efforts" were made.
In return for these forms DSS receives it’s federal money. The three questions are:
1. Continuation in the home is contrary to the well being of the child?
2. Reasonable efforts have been made prior to the placement of the child to prevent or eliminate the need for removal of the child from his/her home?
3. Reasonable efforts have been made to make it possible for the child to return to his parent/guardian?
I discussed this issue a few years ago with Veronica Melendez at the Children’s Bureau (the federal authority). She told me that the federal government was under the impression that all parties were present in the court room at the time of the filing of the 29c’s, so that the parents attorneys had the opportunity to object, rebut, or verify the "reasonable efforts."
In reality, no one sees the federal forms except the judges and a representative of DSS’s main legal department. Attorneys ask us how we ever "got our hands on" the 29c forms, as we have never yet met an attorney who has seen the forms, let alone have been notified of the filing hearing.
We even have forms on which the "no" boxes were checked, yet the children were still removed from their homes and federal funds collected for them.
By seizing children illegally in violation of the Title IV-E requirements, then filing false documents in secrecy through the courts to obtain federal funding, CPS is defrauding the federal government with intent.
CPS should be subject to investigation and prosecution by the U.S. Attorneys Office.
They should be held liable for the restitution of all illegally obtained funds, and prosecuted for perjury obstruction of justice, and the fraudulent collection of federal funds under the False Statements and Accountability Act of 1996, PL 104-292 110 stat 3459, 42 U.S.C.S. 670-679a; PL 96-272; C.F.R. part 1356; and Title IV-E.
I have discussed this issue with the Inspector Generals Office and they felt it could possible be prosecuted under RICO, yet they have also failed to act, possibly because it isn’t just CPS/DSS who is committing federal fraud, but also the judges who are signing the documents.
In 1988 George Miller, the original architect of PL 96-272, and Chairman of the congressionally appointed Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, recognized the fraud being committed in the name of child "protection", and stated:
"What has been demonstrated here is that you have a system that is simply in contempt.
This system has been sued and sued and orders have been issued and they just continue on their merry way.
And HHS just continues to look the other way.
You have a system that is not only out of control, it’s illegal at this point.
What you are really engaged in is state sponsored child abuse."
Original Article - Commentary - SierraTimes.com
Sad part- is it still holds true!
1974 Walter Mondale initiated CAPTA (the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act), the legislation that began feeding federal funding into the state’s child welfare agencies. With remarkable foresight Mondale expressed concerns that the legislation could lead to systemic abuse in that the state agencies might over-process children into the system unnecessarily to keep, and increase, the flow of federal dollars.
Shortly after CAPTA was enacted there was a dramatic increase in the number of children in foster care, peaking at around 500,000 during the mid-70’s. George Miller, the Chairman of the federal Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, initiated an intensive investigation of the nation’s foster care system after the effects of CAPTA started to become apparent by the soaring numbers of children who were being placed in foster care.
An official at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare admitted to Miller that the government had no idea where many of the nation’s 500,000 foster children where living, what services they were receiving, if any, or if any efforts were being made to reunite them with their families.
To address the obvious free-for-all snatching of children that CAPTA had stimulated, the Committee crafted new federal legislation with the intent of creating accountability and clearer guidelines for the states child welfare agencies. During the crafting of P.L. 96-272 Chairman Miller’s concern was that the federal government was footing the bill for warehousing children in institutions and inappropriate settings without accountability.
In 1980 the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act PL 96-272 was enacted. The act included provisions that "reasonable efforts" be made to prevent children from being unnecessarily removed from their homes and placed in foster care.
Although CPS has always tried to buffalo the media and the public that they are involved with families due to some sort of horrific child abuse or neglect, there has never been any debate among national policy makers, researchers, and federal agencies that the vast majority of CPS cases are due to poverty or frivolous/social reasons and do not contain elements of real child abuse.
If the cases did actually involve acts of abuse they would be criminal, identified and investigated by law enforcement, rather than social workers, and prosecuted as such. PL 96-272 came into effect partly because Congress determined that a large number of children were being unnecessarily removed from their homes, and, once removed, they were lost in the limbo of foster care for years, many until they just grew too old, when they were then put on the streets at the age of 18.
The Child Welfare League of America testified before a senate subcommittee: "In fact, there were many instances then, as now, of children being removed unnecessarily from their families. It is important to recognize that children are almost always traumatized by removal from their own families." So, accountability from each states child protection agency was also written in.
To receive the federal money the states would have to submit an annual report to the federal government, known as an AFCARS report, that specifically accounts for each child in state "care." ACLU Children’s Rights Project attorney, Marcia Robinson Lowry, explained in her testimony to Congress: "As a condition of federal funding, states must have a reasonable information system to identify children in federally-funded state custody."
These requirements were implemented in 1980. Up until 1999 some states were still not filing their federally required AFCARS report to the federal government. According to Jeffrey Locke, former Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, the excuse to the legislature was that they "couldn’t figure out how to work their computer system."
When I called Senator Therese Murray in 1998 to ask how many children had died in foster care in Massachusetts, her aide replied: "We don’t have those statistics." At that time Senator Murray was the Senate Chair of the Committee on Health & Elderly Affairs, and therefore responsible to oversee the collection and filing of AFCARS data.
The "reasonable efforts" requirements were designed to address these issues by requiring the states child welfare agencies to have specific investigation and assessment policies to minimize frivolous removals, to provide "services" to address and ameliorate conditions that were detrimental to the child’s well-being, to place children with relatives when removal from the home was absolutely necessary, and to make efforts to reunite families in a timely fashion.
Methods to audit and track compliance with federal requirements were also built in. The states were to establish "citizen review panels" comprised of a specifically designated representation of the population which would include not only members of collateral professional communities involved in child protection, but "parents, foster parents, and former foster children."
Each state was to have at least three citizen review panels. The panels would essentially act as a standing jury of peers and would review CPS cases. Twenty years after PL 96-272 went into effect the citizen review panels have never been established in most states.
Another means of creating accountability was to have the federal authority, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, conduct compliance audits, which are known as Section 427 reviews. The method of enforcement that Congress devised to ensure that the states followed the federal law was to provide incentive funds to the states that documented their compliance with the federal regulations.
The states would self-certify compliance, but could be subjected to "periodic" 427 reviews by the Dept. of Health & Human Services. Were the states to find themselves in noncompliance they would simply return the incentive funds.
It would seem that providing cash to agencies that are allowed to self-document compliance is a somewhat less than intelligent system. It would be interesting to track down exactly how much money the states child "protective" agencies have returned to the government because they found themselves in noncompliance Gee, maybe this is rocket science.
Like CAPTA, PL 96-272 could only have worked if the federal government demanded compliance and meticulous accountability, and then imposed sanctions for noncompliance.
Even better – criminal charges for racketeering for intentional fraud. Mark Soler, director of the National Youth law Center in California explained:
"The Department of Health & Human Services has failed to promulgate meaningful regulations to implement the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. It has applied even the minimal federal regulations that were developed in an inconsistent and arbitrary manner, and only token implementation of the laws protecting children."
Even when HHS finds overwhelming evidence of lack of compliance during 427 reviews, no sanctions are imposed and they continue to keep the fed $$$ pouring in – in violation of their own regulations. Not so much as a slap on the hand or even token admonishment.
Certainly explains how CPS developed their arrogance and contempt for any authority – because there is none.
Their confidence that they are free from the feds insisting on compliance with the law is well illustrated by the foster care numbers which increased dramatically after CAPTA began feeding federal dollars into the states child protection agencies, then dropped equally dramatically after the enactment of P.L.96-272, which was supposed to create more specific federal regulation and accountability.
However, once the state agencies saw that the federal government was not enforcing compliance, the foster care numbers soared once again.
Michael Petit, Deputy Director of the Child Welfare League of America, stated in his testimony before Congress: "A 427 is a meaningless process for most of the states. It represents no kind of sanctions to the states whatsoever for noncompliance" Marcia Robinson Lowry told Congress: "States are passing HHS audits with systems in which no reasonable person could consider that children are being well treated. It is virtually impossible to fail a 427 audit."
The initial concept of "reasonable efforts" was the only conclusion that any rational person could come to: rather than disrupt children’s lives, and traumatize them, by seizing them from non-abusive situations and placing them with strangers (who are often no better, and sometimes far worse), assist families in overcoming their obstacles and problems by providing support and services.
The idea never worked though because it has always been more profitable to too many to remove children rather than keep them at home.
Rather than offer support and simple, practical services to families, CPS forged contracts with vendors. Now private businesses, under the guise of "service providers", could mushroom into existence knowing that their sugar daddy, CPS, would provide a never-ending flow of coerced clients.
The market potential is unlimited – potentially every mother, father, grandparent, and child in the country.
Rather than offering practical, meaningful services that are germane to the families circumstances, CPS clients are ordered to engage in "services" with CPS-contracted vendors; special interest groups who are dependent on CPS for their income and profit by maintaining the levels of children in foster care, and whose interests are protected by a bureaucracy intent on securing it’s own survival and protecting unlimited growth.
The extent to which CPS is allowed to continue to operate while being so far out of compliance with the existing state and federal laws is mind boggling.
It would be a challenge to find any other agency in our country's history that operated in such gross and blatant violation of the law with absolutely no intervention from the administration.
Tens of millions of tax dollars are being squandered on a system that is destroying families and causing lifelong emotional ruin to children – and those are the lucky ones who live through it.
The most egregious area of outright criminal fraud is CPS’s practice of filing their federally required documentation of compliance in secrecy through the courts.
The federal foster care reimbursements are channeled through the Title IV-E section of the Social Security Act. Each state's child welfare agency enters into a contract with the federal government, which is referred to as their Title IV-E state plan.
It is this contract that spells out the responsibilities that CPS must, by law, comply with in order to receive their federal funding. To document compliance with the fed regs, CPS must file a form through the courts in each individual case.
In Massachusetts these forms are referred to as a "29-C." 42 U.S. Code, ss 672 reads:
"These requirements are not mere formalities. The Finance Committee of Congress, in preparing its summary for final passage of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, PL 96-272, stated; " The Committee is aware of allegations that the judicial determination requirement (sic: that a judge makes a determination that a child needs to be removed from the home) can become a mere pro forma exercise in paper shuffling to obtain federal funding.
While this could occur in some instances, the Committee is unwilling to accept as a general proposition that the judiciaries of the States would so lightly treat a responsibility placed upon them by federal statute for the protection of children."
1980 U.S. Code Cong. and Admin. News: "A judicial determination of those efforts (reasonable efforts, as defined in the Act) serves to closely examine, in the case of each individual child, whether reasonable efforts were made to keep the family intact."
In accordance with the federal requirements the Massachusetts legislature enacted G.L. c.119 Ss 29b, which requires all judges to certify that the Department of Social Services met the obligation grounded in the federal statute of making reasonable efforts to protect the child short of removing him or her from the parents, and, if the child was removed, making it possible for the child to return home in a timely manner.
Rather than "closely examining", in Massachusetts this grave responsibility is carried out by judges by rubber stamping stacks of 29c forms that simply contain three "yes" or "no" check boxes.
In many instances making three check marks is even too much work for Massachusetts judges and they rubber stamp the forms while leaving them blank – never mind actually verifying that the "reasonable efforts" were made.
In return for these forms DSS receives it’s federal money. The three questions are:
1. Continuation in the home is contrary to the well being of the child?
2. Reasonable efforts have been made prior to the placement of the child to prevent or eliminate the need for removal of the child from his/her home?
3. Reasonable efforts have been made to make it possible for the child to return to his parent/guardian?
I discussed this issue a few years ago with Veronica Melendez at the Children’s Bureau (the federal authority). She told me that the federal government was under the impression that all parties were present in the court room at the time of the filing of the 29c’s, so that the parents attorneys had the opportunity to object, rebut, or verify the "reasonable efforts."
In reality, no one sees the federal forms except the judges and a representative of DSS’s main legal department. Attorneys ask us how we ever "got our hands on" the 29c forms, as we have never yet met an attorney who has seen the forms, let alone have been notified of the filing hearing.
We even have forms on which the "no" boxes were checked, yet the children were still removed from their homes and federal funds collected for them.
By seizing children illegally in violation of the Title IV-E requirements, then filing false documents in secrecy through the courts to obtain federal funding, CPS is defrauding the federal government with intent.
CPS should be subject to investigation and prosecution by the U.S. Attorneys Office.
They should be held liable for the restitution of all illegally obtained funds, and prosecuted for perjury obstruction of justice, and the fraudulent collection of federal funds under the False Statements and Accountability Act of 1996, PL 104-292 110 stat 3459, 42 U.S.C.S. 670-679a; PL 96-272; C.F.R. part 1356; and Title IV-E.
I have discussed this issue with the Inspector Generals Office and they felt it could possible be prosecuted under RICO, yet they have also failed to act, possibly because it isn’t just CPS/DSS who is committing federal fraud, but also the judges who are signing the documents.
In 1988 George Miller, the original architect of PL 96-272, and Chairman of the congressionally appointed Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, recognized the fraud being committed in the name of child "protection", and stated:
"What has been demonstrated here is that you have a system that is simply in contempt.
This system has been sued and sued and orders have been issued and they just continue on their merry way.
And HHS just continues to look the other way.
You have a system that is not only out of control, it’s illegal at this point.
What you are really engaged in is state sponsored child abuse."
Original Article - Commentary - SierraTimes.com
Thursday, October 11, 2007
America held hostage by the Judicial System
If a top lawyer says the system is broken and needs to be fixed. That says it all. Dr. Richard Cordero is part of a growing number of Americans fed up with the way our American Judicial System is operating and is taking action to reform it.
Please see - The Stark Raving Viking
For full story and U-Tube Video on this subject
Please see - The Stark Raving Viking
For full story and U-Tube Video on this subject
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Custody Battles A Special Kind Of HELL!
I found this amazing article this morning on custody battles..
I was not able to copy and paste [probably for reasons of "stealing" the work of the author].
I have no desire to claim anyones work as mine, proven by always adding the original link to my blogs, however this time I was not able to copy the article here.
THIS IS A MUST READ..
The original article can be found at the link below..
A few excerpts from the original blog are ..
"NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO DO THESE ABUSIVE THINGS TO INNOCENT CHIDREN"!
The author also states..
"In a situation like divorce, you have to chose to take the high road 100% of the time. If both parents did that, things would be simple and easy. But there is often one party that refuses to behave in an acceptable manner. Sometimes one party believes their needs trump everyone else's needs. To these people I say - karma is going to get you eventually. Trust me on that. I've seen it happen".
This person's blog is a must read..here it is again..
A few thoughts of my own,
I pray my children see more and more of these articles, and figure out for themselves that they are being abused by the parent that is claiming to be "protecting them".
Once they figure it out I also pray- they come back into my life-
They need to know-
(1) I understand why they acted like they did to me.
[They had no choice]
(2) I am not angry for the things they have said or done to me.
[They had no choice]
(3) Everything that was done is already forgiven, I do love them unconditionally, and always will.
[They had no choice]
(4) There is always a place for them in my/our home and in my/our heart, and when they figure this out and want to get away from the emotional abuse they are living in, all they have to do is say so!
Allan and I are mature adults, we both understand the whys of what I have lived through for the last six years, and we both agree, when they are ready THE DOOR IS ALWAYS OPEN!
My only goal in life is to have all of my babies- all five of them-at the Christmass dinner table with me before I die.
I wish they could all be at the dinner table every night with me, but that's not doable, two of them are living on their own already, and one has a wife that I adore- the other has a live in girlfriend that I would love to meet!
The offer is out there, anyone reading this that knows my children, please pass this on to them.
I do understand [THEY HAD NO CHOICE] !!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Were all screwed- Wake up America!
I've waited with baited breath hoping one of these newspapers would pick up on my lawsuit against the city for destroying my families lives. So far Ehh nothing- There was a family court story that showed what's going on in the paper the other day; but I think they were forced to pull the story.
God forbid the public gets to see the practices destroying families by our courts.
Then this morning I read this [below] I'm so disgusted you have no idea- this crap gets printed and stories about our future generations being destroyed by this wonderful system, get protected from appearing in print were all *F%$%ED! What a shame!
This is apparently what they want you to read -
NY Woman Sues Apple For $1M Over iPhone Price Cut
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A New York woman is so angry at Apple for lopping $200 off the price of the iPhone that she's filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages.
The Queens woman claims the company violated price discrimination laws when it slashed the price of the 8-gigabyte iPhone from $599 to $399 within two months of its June debut.
According to the lawsuit, the price reduction injured early purchasers because they cannot resell the product for the same profit as those who bought the cell phone following the price cut.
While they'll "protect" you from reading this-
MEDIA RELEASE:
CONTACT: Louise Uccio
PHONE: (917) 806-8301
FAX: (914) 965-3823
Email: HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com
CONTACT: Louise Uccio
PHONE: (917) 806-8301
FAX: (914) 965-3823
Email: HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE :
MOTHER EXONERATED:
MOTHER EXONERATED:
SUES ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN’S SERVICES
FOR MALICIOUS PROSECUTION, AND NEGLIGENT MISREPRESENTATION
September 28, 2007
New York, Ms. Louise Uccio via her civil rights attorney has filed a lawsuit in The Supreme Court in the State of New York after the devastating affect of a false 2001 “Substantiated” Child Protective Services case against her. Defendants named in the lawsuit include: The case-worker, Noreen Boffa and various “John and Jane Does” unknown officers in the Administration for Child Protective Services, as well as the City of New York.
Ms. Uccio, a loving and devoted mother, and her children’s lives have been irreversibly destroyed over the last six years. She was accused and falsely found guilty of being a drug addict who attempted suicide. Ms. Uccio is alleging that her estranged abusive husband’s relentless pursuit to destroy her for leaving the marriage was the basis of four investigations by The Administration for Children’s Services in N.Y. and Division of Youth and Family Services in N.J. In 2001; leading to this lawsuit.
Ms. Uccio has been kept from her children for years with no visitation, no phone contact, and no access to medical or school records. Her estranged husband has successfully managed to alienate the children from her and erase her from their lives. This loving mother who diligently took care of her children according to her daughters pediatric cardiologist [Dr Putman] has lost six precious years from her children’s lives, during which time two of her children have aged out of the system.
Ms. Uccio has no history of drug abuse, as proven in the original documentation that was used to over turn this case, which was available and should have cleared her from the beginning had this case ever been properly investigated.
She was falsely accused, and maliciously prosecuted while she was able to prove her innocence from the start. She feels the case was able to be substantiated as a combined result of her civility, and respect for "authority", as well as her naive innocence and not knowing her constitutional rights.
Although the false “substantiated” case was over turned on July 12, 2006, Not only have Ms. Uccio and her children not been reunited there has been no visitation to date.
# # #
If you would like more information about this lawsuit or to schedule an interview with Louise Uccio please call (917) 806-8301 or contact her @ HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com
[End]
What happened to this- was it pulled the day after it was printed? Cant find it anywhere-
Mom’s Custody Petitions Were Too Late, the State Courts Said
14-Year Legal Battle Ends With Moot Issues And Ripe Sorrow
By Elizabeth Stull
Brooklyn Daily Eagle NEW YORK —
A mother's 14-year battle to keep her two children ended earlier this month when the state's highest court rejected her request for review in a one-sentence ruling.
The state Court of Appeals found that the underlying custody issues in the case of Renzulli v. McElrath were moot.
Her youngest child turns 21 next month, but the issues are still raw for the Staten Island mom who lost her kids, apparently because of an omission in her divorce papers. She still becomes teary and distraught when telling the story, as she remembers the day five years ago when she almost regained custody of her teenage daughter.
"It's kind of an anniversary," Nora Renzulli told a reporter yesterday. "Rosh Hashanah is always a hard time for me."
Renzulli secured a divorce from her absentee husband in state Supreme Court in September 1996, which identified her as the custodial parent of her two children. In January 1997, the judicial hearing officer (Royal S. Radin) issued an eight-page opinion reiterating that she had custody. But six months later, in June 1997, Renzulli signed an amended supplemental divorce judgment that had no custody provision, although the father was ordered to pay child support. Instead of filing a motion to add the crucial assignment of custody, Renzulli fired her lawyer. The children were ages 10 and 12.
Making the Case in Family CourtA year and a half later, in February 1999, the children were still living with their mother in the family home when their father, Ronald Renzulli, now living in Yardley, Pennsylvania, filed an action for custody in Staten Island family court. Nora Renzulli moved to dismiss, claiming that the case should be heard by the state Supreme Court that issued the divorce judgment.
Family Court Judge Terrence McElrath rejected her motion, because the family court has concurrent jurisdiction in custody matters. Both the state Supreme Court and the Appellate Division agreed with him.
In August 1999 Renzulli, an attorney who works for the state, tried to represent herself in family court against Norman Rosen, a veteran clubhouse attorney with a bull-dog reputation. In spite of her legal training, Renzulli felt outgunned.
Rosen drafted an order granting temporary custody to the father and argued that because the state Supreme Court did not decide the issue, the family court could make an initial custody decision without considering whether there had been any material change of circumstances.
The children, now 12 and 14, were spending the summer with their father in Pennsylvania. After they testified at a fact-finding hearing, Judge McElrath granted the father temporary custody. An outside observer later suggested that the children's father was a more lenient parent than their mother. The appellate court denied a stay and the children remained in Pennsylvania where, Renzulli claims, their father was poisoning them against her through "parental alienation."
Although she claims she was owed several years' worth of child support by her ex-husband, Judge McElrath's order required Renzulli to pay him child support.
"McElrath ripped off Nora," said attorney Peter Lomtevas, who represents her on a financing matter related to the sale of the marital home. Lomtevas said he wished he had represented her 10 years ago. "I might have had some impact" on the custody matter, he said.
Procedural Mis-stepsRenzulli appealed to the state court, again claiming the family court did not have jurisdiction and that custody should be decided by the state Supreme Court. In June 2000, acting state Supreme Court Justice Joseph Maltese wrote that McElrath should have given her custody — but Maltese did not have the authority to revise another trial court judge's decision. The appellate court affirmed.
"Rather than dwell on the omission of the requisite form language awarding custody in the judgments, this court acknowledges the substance of the written decision of JHO Radin," Maltese wrote in June 2000. "For this court to find otherwise is to negate the reality of a prior judicial decision of this court and the history of how this family lived. There is absolutely no testimony in the record or any other evidence that the parties or the Supreme Court changed or abandoned the award of custody to the mother expressed in JHO Radin's decision."
A month later, Justice Maltese amended the original divorce judgment to show that the mother had had custody prior to Judge McElrath's ruling. (By this time Judge Radin, who originally handled the divorce, had died.) In his second ruling on the matter, Maltese suggested that the children's father intentionally avoided the state court because he knew he could not win there.
"Had the father petitioned the Supreme Court for custody this court would have dealt with this as a 'change of custody' matter, notwithstanding the lack of a decretal paragraph awarding custody in the divorce judgment. Perhaps that is why the father went to Family Court with the knowledge that the custody award was never inserted into the divorce judgment. Therefore, he would be able to convince a Family Court judge (as he did) that this was an initial application for custody. Accordingly, prospectively the standard in any application for custody in any court of competent jurisdiction should be a change of custody standard."
Maltese noted that in the 1999 Family Court proceeding, law guardian Richard Katz stated that, "Judge Radin clearly awarded custody to the mother on September 18, 1996 and reiterated this on January 31, 1997." Katz also stated that he would have "'no objection to a carefully worded nunc pro tunc [retroactive] order which indicates that Judge Radin's previously award of custody of the children,'" Maltese wrote.
In October 2000 Judge McElrath issued a final order of custody to the father. Renzulli's appeals were dismissed in August 2001 for failure to prosecute. (In other words, she failed to appear in court or answer papers; the court did not rule on the merits of the case.)
Desperate MeasuresA year later, in the summer of 2002, Renzulli's children were ages 15 and 18. She still hoped to bring her daughter home to New York for her last few years of high school. By July 2002 acting state Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Sunshine had been sent to Richmond County to work through the backlog of matrimonial cases. Renzulli had a new lawyer, Alison Aplin. But Justice Sunshine declined to give Renzulli any additional visitation with her 15-year-old daughter and put the matter over for a date in mid-September — two weeks after the school year began.
In August 2002 Renzulli received news that her ex-husband's cantankerous attorney had died. Rosen's death apparently gave Renzulli new hope. She tried to contact her own lawyer, who was away on vacation.
Frantic to bring her daughter back to New York before school began, Renzulli went to court without her lawyer on Friday, Sept. 6, 2002. A friend and colleague, who was also a lawyer, went with her. That afternoon they pleaded with a judge who was sitting in for Judge Sunshine during Rosh Hashanah.
The ex parte judge signed Renzulli's custody order and said that if the father was served by that Sunday, Sept. 8, the daughter could begin the school year at a private academy in New York on the following Monday. During her scheduled weekend visit, Renzulli brought her daughter back to Staten Island and told her that she could stay for the school year.
Six days later, on Sept. 11, 2002, the parties appeared before Justice Sunshine. He roundly rebuked Renzulli for appearing in court without her lawyer, misleading the ex parte judge and reporting the history of her court proceedings "in a manner which at the very least lacks clarity and at worst is deceptive." The judge proceeded to review the procedural history of the custody proceedings in the case, noting that he himself had denied the mother's application for custody in July 2002.
"It also appears that plaintiff with this second Order to Show Cause is trying to re-litigate the Family Court Order of nearly two years ago on constitutional grounds," Sunshine continued. "That order is the last order of custody and as such, that order is a valid order.
"Any subsequent application for this relief must be in proper form by the attorney of record and address the basis that this court would have to grant such relief based upon constitutional grounds in a post-judgment matrimonial proceeding nearly two years after the Family Court decision where the appeal to the Appellate Division had been dismissed for failure to prosecute," the judge concluded. He admonished Renzulli that she could not appeal a family court decision in the state Supreme Court.
Sunshine's scathing decision was published in the New York Law Journal later that month. Renzulli believes he intentionally blackballed her career by mentioning that she is an attorney and worked in the office for Mental Hygiene and Legal Services. She claims she was nearly fired and has been passed over for promotions. In February 2006 Renzulli went to the Richmond District Attorney, who has not responded to her complaints.
Back Where She StartedOn Sept. 11, 2007, five years to the day after the hearing before Justice Sunshine, the state Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York, declined to review Renzulli's case because the underlying issues are moot. Her daughter turns 21 in October.
Renzulli's most recent attorney on the custody matter, Alison Aplin, did not return calls requesting a comment for this article. Mr. Renzulli could not be reached, either.
Although the Renzulli case was extremely unusual, family courts in New York State are known to be overcrowded and overburdened. Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye has sought to consolidate the state's byzantine system of trial courts to reduce the areas of overlapping, concurrent jurisdiction.
"There should be only one court that deals with family matters, so that unscrupulous litigants can't play games and pretend that something didn't happen in one court and get a do-over in the other court," Nora Renzulli said.
Mom's Custody Petitions Were Too Late, the State Courts Said
Brooklyn Daily Eagle - Brooklyn,NY,USA... a stay and the children remained in Pennsylvania where, Renzulli claims, their father was poisoning them against her through "parental alienation. ...See all stories on this topic
Be don't worry they'll keep feeding you shit like this-
Spears Temporarily Loses Custody Of Children
LOS ANGELES -- Britney Spears has temporarily lost custody of her two sons.
Superior Court Judge Scott M. Gordon ruled that her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, will take custody of 2-year-old Sean Preston and 1-year-old Jayden James.
Wednesday "until further order of the court."
Last month, Gordon ordered Spears to undergo random drug and alcohol testing twice a week, after saying that she engaged in "habitual, frequent and continuous use of controlled substances and alcohol."
The judge also has ordered both Spears and Federline to refrain from drinking and using drugs around their two young sons.
They're also forbidden from drinking or doing drugs 12 hours before either one cares for the children.
Spears, 25, filed for divorce from Federline, 29, last November after two years of marriage. The divorce became finalized in July with a joint custody agreement. Federline has since been seeking greater custody of the children.
Spears Temporarily Loses Custody Of ChildrenA judge has ruled that Britney Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, will take custody of 2-year-old Sean Preston and 1-year-old Jayden James.
MORE DETAILS:
http://www.wnbc.com/tu/5si22roVk.html
Although in this [Britney] case I think they did the right thing [She needs to calm the hell down] most of us are being denied our civil rights without reason-
Wake up america- the family is being destroyed worse than ever and the why's and how's of it all are being carefully protected -when you find yourself in the position of feeling like your in the Twilight Zone- and you've come to understand why I have this blog-
Join us in the fight- Sign up for our class action lawsuit - get involved- and be part of the solution -
Indiana Civil Rights Council (Class-Actions!)
FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (© ) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Mother Exonerated
MEDIA RELEASE:
CONTACT: Louise Uccio
PHONE: (917) 651-6974
FAX: (347) 497-5507
Email: HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE :
MOTHER EXONERATED:
SUES ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN’S SERVICES
FOR MALICIOUS PROSECUTION, AND NEGLIGENT MISREPRESENTATION
September 28, 2007
New York, Ms. Louise Uccio via her civil rights attorney has filed a lawsuit in The Supreme Court in the State of New York after the devastating affect of a false 2001 “Substantiated” Child Protective Services case against her. Defendants named in the lawsuit include: The case-worker, Noreen Boffa and various “John and Jane Does” unknown officers in the Administration for Child Protective Services, as well as the City of New York.
Ms. Uccio, a loving and devoted mother, and her children’s lives have been irreversibly destroyed over the last six years. She was accused and falsely found guilty of being a drug addict who attempted suicide. Ms. Uccio is alleging that her estranged abusive husband’s relentless pursuit to destroy her for leaving the marriage was the basis of four investigations by The Administration for Children’s Services in N.Y. and Division of Youth and Family Services in N.J. In 2001; leading to this lawsuit.
Ms. Uccio has been kept from her children for years with no visitation, no phone contact, and no access to medical or school records. Her estranged husband has successfully managed to alienate the children from her and erase her from their lives. This loving mother who diligently took care of her children according to her daughters pediatric cardiologist [Dr Putman] has lost six precious years from her children’s lives, during which time two of her children have aged out of the system.
Ms. Uccio has no history of drug abuse, as proven in the original documentation that was used to over turn this case, which was available and should have cleared her from the beginning had this case ever been properly investigated.
She was falsely accused, and maliciously prosecuted while she was able to prove her innocence from the start. She feels the case was able to be substantiated as a combined result of her civility, and respect for "authority", as well as her naive innocence and not knowing her constitutional rights.
Although the false “substantiated” case was over turned on July 12, 2006, Not only have Ms. Uccio and her children not been reunited there has been no visitation to date.
# # #
If you would like more information about this lawsuit or to schedule an interview with Louise Uccio please call (917) 651-6974 or contact her @ HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com
[End]
CONTACT: Louise Uccio
PHONE: (917) 651-6974
FAX: (347) 497-5507
Email: HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE :
MOTHER EXONERATED:
SUES ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN’S SERVICES
FOR MALICIOUS PROSECUTION, AND NEGLIGENT MISREPRESENTATION
September 28, 2007
New York, Ms. Louise Uccio via her civil rights attorney has filed a lawsuit in The Supreme Court in the State of New York after the devastating affect of a false 2001 “Substantiated” Child Protective Services case against her. Defendants named in the lawsuit include: The case-worker, Noreen Boffa and various “John and Jane Does” unknown officers in the Administration for Child Protective Services, as well as the City of New York.
Ms. Uccio, a loving and devoted mother, and her children’s lives have been irreversibly destroyed over the last six years. She was accused and falsely found guilty of being a drug addict who attempted suicide. Ms. Uccio is alleging that her estranged abusive husband’s relentless pursuit to destroy her for leaving the marriage was the basis of four investigations by The Administration for Children’s Services in N.Y. and Division of Youth and Family Services in N.J. In 2001; leading to this lawsuit.
Ms. Uccio has been kept from her children for years with no visitation, no phone contact, and no access to medical or school records. Her estranged husband has successfully managed to alienate the children from her and erase her from their lives. This loving mother who diligently took care of her children according to her daughters pediatric cardiologist [Dr Putman] has lost six precious years from her children’s lives, during which time two of her children have aged out of the system.
Ms. Uccio has no history of drug abuse, as proven in the original documentation that was used to over turn this case, which was available and should have cleared her from the beginning had this case ever been properly investigated.
She was falsely accused, and maliciously prosecuted while she was able to prove her innocence from the start. She feels the case was able to be substantiated as a combined result of her civility, and respect for "authority", as well as her naive innocence and not knowing her constitutional rights.
Although the false “substantiated” case was over turned on July 12, 2006, Not only have Ms. Uccio and her children not been reunited there has been no visitation to date.
# # #
If you would like more information about this lawsuit or to schedule an interview with Louise Uccio please call (917) 651-6974 or contact her @ HaveUmistakenMe@aol.com
[End]
Monday, September 24, 2007
When Ties to a Parent Are Cut by the Other
THIS is a nice moment in Joe Rabiega’s life. At 31, he has a good job as a research coordinator for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is happily married and feels blessed that his wife of five years, Tiffany, is pregnant with their first child.
His hope is to give that child a happier upbringing than the one he had. Mr. Rabiega’s parents divorced when he was 8, and though they were supposed to share custody, he said, his father, a truck driver with a drinking problem, did everything possible to turn him against his mother and eventually kept him from seeing her.
“He bullied my mother into giving up custody,” Mr. Rabiega said. When he was still allowed to visit his mother, he’d have to stay by the phone to take a call from his father at 4 every afternoon and 8 each evening. He said his father trained him to spy on his mother’s socializing and spending habits.
“His ability to manipulate her was so lopsided, it never got to the point where a court heard it,” he said in a phone interview. “His threats of violence made it clear she’d never get me.”
For several years, he said, until his late teens, he didn’t see his mother and believed everything his father said about her. “He took me to the police station and told them my mother abandoned me, even though it was completely not true,” Mr. Rabiega said. “He had the entire neighborhood convinced that my mother no longer wanted me.
“He had me convinced without him, I had nobody,” Mr. Rabiega said. “When he’d been drinking, he’d get out his gun and threaten to kill himself if I left him.”
It wasn’t until Mr. Rabiega was an adult that he began to see his mother in a different light, he said. “She was a seamstress in a garment factory who didn’t graduate from high school. She was weak, no one to guide her, no money, no education, no resources to fight for me.” At one point, he said, she attempted suicide.
Mr. Rabiega is one of 40 research subjects in a new book by Amy J. L. Baker, about parents who turn a child against the other parent, “Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome.” Dr. Baker, the research director of the Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection at the New York Foundling, does not identify the subjects by their real names, but Mr. Rabiega (called Jonah in the book) agreed to let his name be used for this column. “If this can help people, it’s worth it,” he said. “I really compare what I went through to people who are kidnapped and brainwashed.”
Most people would agree that one parent has the power to turn a child against the other parent; however, classifying the behavior as a mental health syndrome, as Dr. Baker does, has met with considerable criticism in the past. “It’s been a very controversial area,” said Dr. Baker, 48, who lives in Teaneck, N.J., and has a doctorate in psychology from Teachers College at Columbia.
Dr. Baker’s book is written in an academic style and sticks closely to the stories of the 40 adult subjects, ages 19 to 67, who describe being wrongfully manipulated by a parent. It is an attempt to take the sensationalism out of the subject. Accusations of such manipulation have been an issue during high-profile celebrity custody battles, like the ones involving Woody Allen and Mia Farrow and Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.
There is none of that in Dr. Baker’s book, which includes a seven-page bibliography of scholarly research. Instead, she tells the stories of ordinary people like Mr. Rabiega, struggling into their adult years with the damage they describe from having been manipulated into hating a parent. While most research has focused on children, Dr. Baker looks at these children once they’ve become adults. A key question she set out to answer: Do any of these kids grow up and figure it out? “That I can answer yes,” she said. “I can’t say how prevalent it is, but I have found lots of people.”
Some of what she found undercut earlier research. When therapists first described the behavior in the 1980s, they talked about it as manipulation by mothers to punish fathers. This drew criticism from some women’s groups, who dismissed the syndrome as something concocted by lawyers for abusive fathers trying to improve their custody chances.
Dr. Baker said her research — both for the book and with several hundred subjects over the last five years — indicates a mother or father is equally likely to do the manipulating. It is “truly 50-50,” she said.
Other patterns emerged from her 40 subjects: 75 percent were the products of divorce, and 58 percent were divorced themselves; 70 percent suffered depression; 35 percent developed problems with drugs or alcohol. And perhaps the saddest: Half of the 28 who had children said they were estranged from their own children.
Dr. Baker believes the behavior is prevalent enough to qualify as a syndrome in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of the American Psychiatric Association. While that’s not going to happen soon — the manual won’t be revised again until 2012 — she hopes her research might cause social workers and therapists who investigate custody cases to be more aware. “If you believe it’s possible for a child to be brainwashed by one parent, the job of a custody evaluator is a lot harder,” she said.
The challenges in such cases can be daunting. How do you know if the scorned parent is being unfairly victimized or if that parent is abusive and deserves to be scorned? “It’s a lot of investigating, and there’s no one definitive tool,” Dr. Baker said.
Some of that investigative muscle is missing from her own research. Dr. Baker did not interview parents for their version of events, nor did she cite independent sources like court records that could corroborate the stories. “I did what I could,” she said. “This is just one study. It’s a very new field and there’s little research. The point is to give voice to these people who have not been heard.”
It is also hard to get people to talk publicly about family dysfunction. Mr. Rabiega was willing to speak partly because both his parents are dead.
He said that when he was in his 20s, he again developed a relationship with his mother, but that his father’s “brainwashing” had been so strong, he couldn’t entirely overcome it. “It was hard for me to fully love my mom,” he said. “If she needed me to do something or needed money, I didn’t want to and I’d get angry. My father implanted a disgust and disdain in me for my mother that wouldn’t go away and tainted our relationship.”
Ten years of therapy helped, he said, as did his wife and finding religion. “It helped when I reconnected with my mom, she held nothing against me,” he said. “She reiterated it was my father’s fault, and I had no choice.”
“Unfortunately,” he said, “I realized a lot after my mother died.”
E-mail: parenting@nytimes.com
Suicide rates as a public relations tool
FYIAlison Bass hits the bull's eye in an Op Ed column in The Boston Globe (below) by exposing corporate psychiatry's manipulation of suicide rates asa public relations tool!
Similarly, an Op Ed in The New York Times by Christopher Lane (below), aprofessor of English at Northwestern, the author of the forthcoming"Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness," skewers psychiatrists whoare pathologizing normal children's behavior in order to medicate them. "Itmay seem baffling, even bizarre, that ordinary shyness could assume thedimension of a mental disease. But if a youngster is reserved, the odds arehigh that a psychiatrist will diagnose social anxiety disorder and recommendtreatment."
In an effort to answer the question, "How much credence should we give thediagnosis?"He notes that the revised third edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual(1987), psychiatry's "bible" for diagnosing mental illness, "expanded thelist of symptoms by adding anticipated concern about saying the wrong thing,a trait known to just about everyone on the planet. The diagnostic bar wasset so low that even a preschooler could trip over it." See industry'spervasive influence in what's included in the DSM.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/04/leading-american-psychiatrist-calls-dsm.html
As any scientist (or educated layperson) knows, trends in suicide rates,like any epidemiological data, have to be looked at over the long termbecause a one-year variation in rates could be a statistical artifact, ormean something else entirely.
Industry's dilemma: the overwhelming validated scientific evidence fromcontrolled trials confirms an INCREASED RISK of suicidal behavior inchildren and young adults who are prescribed SSRI antidepressants. Tocounteract the scientific evidence, drug companies hire influentialacademics to manufacture alarming 'findings' to support increased use ofthese drugs.
Such is the case with a much publicized report published in September 2007,the official journal of the American Psychiatric Association (AJP). Theauthors claimed a causal link between a one year increased suicide rate andclaimed reduced prescription rates. These commercially driven unsupportableclaims are an example of junk science. However, major newspapersuncritically reported the unsubstantiated 'alarming study findings' thatsuicides among young people were on the rise because of a precipitous dropin the use of antidepressants.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/09/more-on-supposed-youth-suicide-rate.html
Alison Bass asks two questions that reporters suffering from shyness areafraid to ask:
1. "Why are some in the psychiatric community, despite lack of evidence,working to convince the American public that the FDA may have erred inputting the most serious kind of warning possible on the use of [SSRIantidepressants] in young people?"
Answer: The alarmist call by such 'pillars of the psychiatric community' asDr. David Shaffer and Dr. J. John Mann of Columbia University, to rescindBlack Box suicide warnings on antidepressant drug labels, may be viewed asprotecting their investment in the antidepressant drug business. Both Dr.Shaffer and Dr. Mann--and an army of other academics who, like them, are 'onthe take'--can be counted upon by drug manufacturers to ring the fire alarmdespite the lack of evidence of any fire.
In fact, Bass, points out, the authors of the AJP study overlooked the factthat prescription rates did not drop in the year when suicide rates amongyouth increased, (2003-2004). Since suicide rates for 2005 are not yetavailable from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is noevidence of a connection between variations in youth suicide rates andantidepressant prescription usage.
Question 2: "Who stands to benefit from the latest alarm about an apparentupturn in youth suicide rates?"
Answer: The sharp drop in the sale of SSRIs since 2004 has put a big dent intheir manufacturers' bottom line. These companies have an enormous stake inreversing the current FDA warnings. That might explain why Pfizer (the makerof Zoloft) contributed $30,000 to cover the cost of collecting data for theAmerican Journal of Psychiatry study, which was also funded by the NationalInstitute of Mental Health.
"It's also worth noting that the two lead authors of the paper havedisclosed financial conflicts of interest: Columbia professor of psychiatryDr. John Mann has been a paid consultant to at least two SSRI makers, Pfizerand GlaxoSmithKline (the maker of Paxil), and Robert Gibbons has served asan expert witness for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (the maker of Effexor, anotherSSRI)."
Contact:
Vera Hassner Sharav 212-595-8974
veracare@ahrp.org
By Alison Bass September 24, 2007
EARLIER THIS MONTH, major newspapers reported the alarming news thatsuicides among young people were on the rise because of a precipitous dropin the use of antidepressants. This news was based on a study in theSeptember issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, which concluded thatphysicians had been scared away from prescribing antidepressants because ofthe Food and Drug Administration's decision in October 2004 to put black boxwarnings on the pediatric use of these drugs. The FDA mandated the warningsafter finding an increased risk in suicidal thoughts and behaviors amongadolescents taking antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, andCelexa.
In the wake of the study, several psychiatrists called for the black boxwarnings to be retracted. "It's time for the agency's warnings to bemodified," opined Dr. David Schaffer, chief of child and adolescentpsychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.
News sources have since exposed a big hole in the journal's argument.Several experts quoted in The New York Times and The Boston Globe pointedout that while there was indeed an upturn in suicide rates among youths (anincrease of 14 percent, or a total of 252 more deaths among youths under 19between 2003 and 2004), the number of prescriptions for antidepressants inthe same age group remained basically unchanged between 2003 and 2004.
According to data presented in the American Journal of Psychiatry study,prescription rates for minors did not drop sharply until a year later(between 2004 and 2005). Since suicide rates for 2005 are not yet availablefrom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no evidence ofa connection between variations in youth suicide rates and antidepressantprescription usage. Furthermore, experts say that trends in suicide rates,like any epidemiological data, have to be looked at over the long term and aone-year variation in rates could be a statistical artifact, or meansomething else entirely.
So what's going on here? Why are some in the psychiatric community, despitelack of evidence, working to convince the American public that the FDA mayhave erred in putting the most serious kind of warning possible on the useof these drugs in young people? In May, the FDA, after finding the sameincreased risk of suicidal behaviors among young adults taking the class ofantidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs),extended the black box warnings to young adults.
There is no doubt that many psychiatrists believe that antidepressants,particularly SSRIs like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and Celexa, are helpful intreating depression in adults and adolescents. They have seen how thesedrugs have lifted the fog of despair from people with depression.
But there is another factor to consider: Who stands to benefit from thelatest alarm about an apparent upturn in youth suicide rates? The sharp dropin the sale of SSRIs since 2004 has put a big dent in their manufacturers'bottom line. These companies have an enormous stake in reversing the currentFDA warnings. That might explain why Pfizer (the maker of Zoloft)contributed $30,000 to cover the cost of collecting data for the AmericanJournal of Psychiatry study, which was also funded by the National Instituteof Mental Health. It's also worth noting that the two lead authors of thepaper have disclosed financial conflicts of interest: Columbia professor ofpsychiatry Dr. John Mann has been a paid consultant to at least two SSRImakers, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (the maker of Paxil), and Robert Gibbonshas served as an expert witness for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (the maker ofEffexor, another SSRI).
This isn't the first time that suicide rates have been trotted out as apublic relations weapon. Proponents of psychotropic drugs have long arguedthat suicide rates among adults and children fell after the SSRIs wereintroduced in the United States. However, an examination of long-term trendsin suicide rates indicate that suicides were declining here and in othercountries well before SSRIs such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were widelyprescribed, says Julie Zito, associate professor of pharmacy and psychiatryat the University of Maryland. Zito says there are other plausible reasonsfor the decline in suicide rates over the last two decades, including a morestable economy, better access to mental healthcare, and gun control.
So until new evidence emerges showing, unequivocally, a rising rate ofsuicides among our youths and a link between those rates and reducedantidepressant usage, it would be wise to treat the latest salvo with ahealthy dose of skepticism.
Alison Bass is a former medical writer for the Globe and author of theupcoming book "Side Effects: A Best-selling Drug on Trial."
C Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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