A Detroit mother who resisted child welfare attempts to place her teenage daughter on a psychotropic drug that is not approved for children has been found by a jury to have neglected the child. Another story here.
According to reports, the Maryanne Godboldo had removed her daughter from Rispardal under medical supervision, and was proceeding with alternative treatment for the child's medical issues. Ms. Godboldo stated her daughter was suffering severe side effects from the powerful drug.
Michigan child welfare objected, and sent a SWAT team to take custody of the child, then placed her in a residential treatment facility and put her back on the drug.
There is plenty of online commentary and articles about all the wrongs being perpetrated upon this family in the name of protecting the child. Just do a search to read all about the service providers connections to big Pharma, and other conflicts of interest surrounding the administration of child welfare in Wayne County, Michigan. There is also the unfortunate incident of mom facing down the SWAT team when they attempted to seize the child, and mom is facing felony charges.
I see this case as an outstanding example showing that parents are nothing more than breeders for the state, and that despite the clearly established rights of parents to make decisions for their children, that if you make the subjective "wrong" decision, you will lose your child.
According to all accounts, Ms. Godboldo was a conscientious mother, very involved in her daughter's life. Nothing indicated that this child was neglected, she was under a doctor's care. Certainly, Ms. Godboldo is not the kind of parent intended to be rehabilitated with a child welfare intervention. Yet, this Michigan agency expends extensive government resources in their efforts to control this parent's decisions regarding the care and upbringing of her child.
Just another day in child welfare.
ClickonDetroit[dot]com has a video of this child welfare court proceeding.
CBS New reports here
Monday, August 15, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Flash Mobs Prompt Curfews and Invoke Child Welfare
I remember the campaign when I was much younger, at 10 p.m. on television, "Parents, do you know where your children are?" In this child-centric society we don't even dare ask that, until it gets violent.
In a schizophrenic response to unsupervised children causing public mayhem at night, committing assaults and roaming the streets in flash mobs, Philadelphia has instituted a curfew for children under 18, complete with fines and penalties upon the parents and threats of putting the naughty kiddies into foster care.
This response is schizophrenic because parents are afraid to discipline their children for fear of child welfare agencies intruding into the privacy of the family after the brat hotlines his parents for exercising parental responsibility by daring to discipline or correct their child. Now, parents are going to be punished for doing as the child welfare agencies have demanded for decades, not spanking the brats.
Face it, far more children are placed in foster care for purported abuse allegedly arising out of discipline than for not being disciplined. Child welfare agencies have tied mommy and daddy's hands, and now the kids are running amok.
Contrary to popular, bleeding heart liberalism, this issue is much less about poverty or lack of education than it is about the well-intentioned nanny state punishing parents for controlling their kiddies, for instilling a sense of responsibility and a work ethic, for building character, and for punishing bad behavior. Kids are protected by child welfare agencies from having chores, family responsibilities, structure to guide them and are insured parents impose no consequences for wrongdoing.
Now, we are reaping what the child savers have sowed.
Flash mobs of kids who have no sense of right and wrong, only a sense of entitlement. Kids hooked in to social media to coordinate their violence. Kids who have been taught by the schools and the government that the world revolves around them and owes them a living, unfettered happiness and no consequences, complete with child welfare agencies to insure that none of these ideals are infringed by their parents.
This is not to say the all of the parents are blameless. Some of these parents are lousy parents. They don't supervise their kids because they don't want to, because their priorities place these kiddies lower than their own desires.
And haven't we as a society been conditioned to that? Schools are free day care for working parents. Having abdicated responsibility for the care of the kiddies during the day, it's only reasonable to extend that into the night. Or, parents have been convinced by the "experts" of the cop-out fallacy that by the teenage years, a child is going to do what he wants and there is nothing mommy and daddy can do to stop them, we may as well resign ourselves to that fact. As long as the law give parents permission to abdicate their parental duties under threat of a child welfare intervention, you will have kids running amok.
Before social media, it was pretty much one kid and a few friends who ran amok. Social media connected youths are now more powerful, much like collective bargaining, have become a force to be reckoned with. An undisciplined, narcissistic, immature, emotionally charged force, with raging hormones, unreasoned anger, and rebellious of authority. These are the predictable fruits of thirty years of child welfare laws.
Mr. Mayor, unless the legislature ties the hands of child welfare when they intrude into families who are at least trying to control their kiddies, your sanctions against the parents of bratty teens and threats of foster care are futile. Child welfare agencies are far scarier than your puny little sanctions. As for the threats of foster care, any attorney who represents responsible parents who get lassoed into this dragnet can simply argue that the parents are damned if they do discipline and damned if they don't.
In a schizophrenic response to unsupervised children causing public mayhem at night, committing assaults and roaming the streets in flash mobs, Philadelphia has instituted a curfew for children under 18, complete with fines and penalties upon the parents and threats of putting the naughty kiddies into foster care.
This response is schizophrenic because parents are afraid to discipline their children for fear of child welfare agencies intruding into the privacy of the family after the brat hotlines his parents for exercising parental responsibility by daring to discipline or correct their child. Now, parents are going to be punished for doing as the child welfare agencies have demanded for decades, not spanking the brats.
Face it, far more children are placed in foster care for purported abuse allegedly arising out of discipline than for not being disciplined. Child welfare agencies have tied mommy and daddy's hands, and now the kids are running amok.
Contrary to popular, bleeding heart liberalism, this issue is much less about poverty or lack of education than it is about the well-intentioned nanny state punishing parents for controlling their kiddies, for instilling a sense of responsibility and a work ethic, for building character, and for punishing bad behavior. Kids are protected by child welfare agencies from having chores, family responsibilities, structure to guide them and are insured parents impose no consequences for wrongdoing.
Now, we are reaping what the child savers have sowed.
Flash mobs of kids who have no sense of right and wrong, only a sense of entitlement. Kids hooked in to social media to coordinate their violence. Kids who have been taught by the schools and the government that the world revolves around them and owes them a living, unfettered happiness and no consequences, complete with child welfare agencies to insure that none of these ideals are infringed by their parents.
This is not to say the all of the parents are blameless. Some of these parents are lousy parents. They don't supervise their kids because they don't want to, because their priorities place these kiddies lower than their own desires.
And haven't we as a society been conditioned to that? Schools are free day care for working parents. Having abdicated responsibility for the care of the kiddies during the day, it's only reasonable to extend that into the night. Or, parents have been convinced by the "experts" of the cop-out fallacy that by the teenage years, a child is going to do what he wants and there is nothing mommy and daddy can do to stop them, we may as well resign ourselves to that fact. As long as the law give parents permission to abdicate their parental duties under threat of a child welfare intervention, you will have kids running amok.
Before social media, it was pretty much one kid and a few friends who ran amok. Social media connected youths are now more powerful, much like collective bargaining, have become a force to be reckoned with. An undisciplined, narcissistic, immature, emotionally charged force, with raging hormones, unreasoned anger, and rebellious of authority. These are the predictable fruits of thirty years of child welfare laws.
Mr. Mayor, unless the legislature ties the hands of child welfare when they intrude into families who are at least trying to control their kiddies, your sanctions against the parents of bratty teens and threats of foster care are futile. Child welfare agencies are far scarier than your puny little sanctions. As for the threats of foster care, any attorney who represents responsible parents who get lassoed into this dragnet can simply argue that the parents are damned if they do discipline and damned if they don't.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Social Worker Charged with Faking Records
It is rare we see a criminal prosecution of any child welfare professional for any reason. Kentucky, as every state, has laws against tampering with public records, but no matter how many complaints are made, there is almost never a prosecution. In El Paso County, Colorado, several years ago, we held a press conference and presented the DA with proof of the crimes. She declined to prosecute, referring us to the impotent Citizen's Review Panel.
That's not to say caseworkers conduct themselves with the utmost integrity, because, for whatever reason, they often don't.
The most common complaint by parents who are involved with child welfare agencies is that case workers falsify reports to the court, that the child welfare files are full of false information.
My investigation into the accuracy of child welfare records is consistent with the complaints by parents. The records, for whatever reason, are inaccurate in varying degrees. Okay, fine, the caseworkers are overworked, and they get things wrong. I've seen them mix up facts between cases, surely an honest mistake. I've seen case records from one case misfiled in the record of another case. I've seen case files "disappear" and get lost.
And, as this story so clearly describes, they deliberately falsify records and reports to the court. It is very easy to falsify subjective evidence, like visitation reports or interviews with parents, children and collateral witnesse or in their conversations with service providers. In this kind of "he said, she said" situation, the judges always believe the caseworker.
But I've also seen caseworkers deliberately tamper with objective evidence, including the results of drug tests.
In this instance, as often happens with unscrupulous child welfare caseworkers, they misrepresent the visits they made to the family, or to the child, or discussion they had with service providers, or making referrals.
This is egregiously harmful to parents and children, because these records follow the parents AND THE CHILDREN for the rest of their lives, wherever they go. Any child welfare agency in any state has access to these records. And because there is absolutely no provision under any state law whereby errors in these records can be corrected. In fact, in many states, the parents suffer retribution when they try to have the errors corrected, up to and including termination of parental rights.
But there is more involved with falsifying records. When caseworkers falsify that the child was in danger in the home, fraud against the federal government comes into play under Title IV E of the Social Security Act. This is presented to the court, which is perjury. This is much bigger than tampering with public records.
Hats off to Kentucky. I've seen plenty of bad child welfare practices in Kentucky, hopefully they won't back out of this prosecution. Hopefully, this is only the beginning of reigning in these abuses.
That's not to say caseworkers conduct themselves with the utmost integrity, because, for whatever reason, they often don't.
The most common complaint by parents who are involved with child welfare agencies is that case workers falsify reports to the court, that the child welfare files are full of false information.
My investigation into the accuracy of child welfare records is consistent with the complaints by parents. The records, for whatever reason, are inaccurate in varying degrees. Okay, fine, the caseworkers are overworked, and they get things wrong. I've seen them mix up facts between cases, surely an honest mistake. I've seen case records from one case misfiled in the record of another case. I've seen case files "disappear" and get lost.
And, as this story so clearly describes, they deliberately falsify records and reports to the court. It is very easy to falsify subjective evidence, like visitation reports or interviews with parents, children and collateral witnesse or in their conversations with service providers. In this kind of "he said, she said" situation, the judges always believe the caseworker.
But I've also seen caseworkers deliberately tamper with objective evidence, including the results of drug tests.
In this instance, as often happens with unscrupulous child welfare caseworkers, they misrepresent the visits they made to the family, or to the child, or discussion they had with service providers, or making referrals.
This is egregiously harmful to parents and children, because these records follow the parents AND THE CHILDREN for the rest of their lives, wherever they go. Any child welfare agency in any state has access to these records. And because there is absolutely no provision under any state law whereby errors in these records can be corrected. In fact, in many states, the parents suffer retribution when they try to have the errors corrected, up to and including termination of parental rights.
But there is more involved with falsifying records. When caseworkers falsify that the child was in danger in the home, fraud against the federal government comes into play under Title IV E of the Social Security Act. This is presented to the court, which is perjury. This is much bigger than tampering with public records.
Hats off to Kentucky. I've seen plenty of bad child welfare practices in Kentucky, hopefully they won't back out of this prosecution. Hopefully, this is only the beginning of reigning in these abuses.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Adoptive Parents. . .and Another Missing Adopted Child
Kansas. Again.
Kansas SRS terminated parental rights to the biological parents of a certain child and created a legal orphan. Then allowed these people to adopt him, and paid them a monthly stipend to be his parents. I wonder if family poverty played into Kansas SRS's reasons to seek termination of parental rights?
Doug and Valerie Herrman. Parents-for-Pay.
These parents collected that money for over ten years for a child that had gone ??? . . . missing. In fact, he's still missing. They never reported that he was missing. Yet, these are state-approved parents! They passed a background check, they passed the interview and home study. They are licensed to be parents based on the discretion, judgement and recommendation of a child welfare worker, indeed an entire child welfare team. Yet, nobody got an ooky feeling about them.
So much for the state's seal of approval.
They got caught, and were convicted of fraud. For taking the money for an adopted child they no longer had, but the state believed they had. The boy, Adam, has been missing since 1999.
This raises an issue that most people are not aware of. Who cares about what happens to child after parental rights are terminated?
The biological parents care, but they are barred by law from seeing, contacting or even knowing about their child. The rest of the people who purport to care a just government bureaucrats doing a job. The child is a case file, not a person. Evidently, not one of these sterling professionals cared enough to see if the child was even there. Alive. Well. Safe.
Why should they care? If it turns out he's not alive, well or safe, it reflects badly on the agency and the caseworker. here is too much risk to their credibility, their job, their funding if they check on these kids in adoptive parent-for-paty homes.
The child can be "disappeared" and nobody will even question where the child is. They'll just keep paying out the subsidies to the adoptive parents-for-pay.
Meanwhile, a living, breathing person, a vulnerable child who was protected by the agency is missing. Where do these kids go? What happens to them?
It is actually simpler to make a child without parents disappear than an adopted child. But we are seeing a rash of stories being published where children have gone missing from adoptive parents-for-pay and never been missed. I want the reader to consider what happens to the legal orphans who have nobody to report them missing.
All a caseworker has to do is appear at the door of the foster care giver and say the child is being moved. The child then is not placed with another foster family, but transferred to someone else. Someone who isn't interested in raising this child, but who has another use in mind for this child.
I have received calls from people who have seen airplane loads of legal orphans being flown overseas. The adults accompanying these children have reportedly identified them as children in the custody of child welfare. These informers risked a lot to tell me, and were threatened with their lives for their disclosures, some even disappeared. Why are American children being shipped overseas by the planeload on flights that are listed in the flight records as being empty ferry flights intended to transfer an airplane from one location to another?
Isn't it convenient that there isn't even a record of the legal orphans leaving the country or traveling on commercial aircraft? The flight is "officially" empty. And isn't it more convenient that nobody who cares can even report the child as missing? The people who care, parents and family, are cut off and never know what happens to their child once parental rights are terminated. The only people who know are those transferring the children, and the airline employees who see what is going on but are warned to be silent.
Are American child being adopted in other countries? Perhaps. That would be the best scenario.
But my investigation into these events indicates something far more sinister. One of the known destinations is the Middle East. Among the known reasons is that these children are being used for domestic labor, sex, and body parts.
My investigation also reveals that the appropriate government agencies know about this practice.
It seems that legal orphans, damaged children, are not important enough to warrant protection from the child welfare agencies by the Federal government or the state government.
That seems to be a contradiction. And an abomination.
Kansas SRS terminated parental rights to the biological parents of a certain child and created a legal orphan. Then allowed these people to adopt him, and paid them a monthly stipend to be his parents. I wonder if family poverty played into Kansas SRS's reasons to seek termination of parental rights?
Doug and Valerie Herrman. Parents-for-Pay.
So much for the state's seal of approval.
They got caught, and were convicted of fraud. For taking the money for an adopted child they no longer had, but the state believed they had. The boy, Adam, has been missing since 1999.
This raises an issue that most people are not aware of. Who cares about what happens to child after parental rights are terminated?
The biological parents care, but they are barred by law from seeing, contacting or even knowing about their child. The rest of the people who purport to care a just government bureaucrats doing a job. The child is a case file, not a person. Evidently, not one of these sterling professionals cared enough to see if the child was even there. Alive. Well. Safe.
Why should they care? If it turns out he's not alive, well or safe, it reflects badly on the agency and the caseworker. here is too much risk to their credibility, their job, their funding if they check on these kids in adoptive parent-for-paty homes.
The child can be "disappeared" and nobody will even question where the child is. They'll just keep paying out the subsidies to the adoptive parents-for-pay.
Meanwhile, a living, breathing person, a vulnerable child who was protected by the agency is missing. Where do these kids go? What happens to them?
It is actually simpler to make a child without parents disappear than an adopted child. But we are seeing a rash of stories being published where children have gone missing from adoptive parents-for-pay and never been missed. I want the reader to consider what happens to the legal orphans who have nobody to report them missing.
All a caseworker has to do is appear at the door of the foster care giver and say the child is being moved. The child then is not placed with another foster family, but transferred to someone else. Someone who isn't interested in raising this child, but who has another use in mind for this child.
I have received calls from people who have seen airplane loads of legal orphans being flown overseas. The adults accompanying these children have reportedly identified them as children in the custody of child welfare. These informers risked a lot to tell me, and were threatened with their lives for their disclosures, some even disappeared. Why are American children being shipped overseas by the planeload on flights that are listed in the flight records as being empty ferry flights intended to transfer an airplane from one location to another?
Isn't it convenient that there isn't even a record of the legal orphans leaving the country or traveling on commercial aircraft? The flight is "officially" empty. And isn't it more convenient that nobody who cares can even report the child as missing? The people who care, parents and family, are cut off and never know what happens to their child once parental rights are terminated. The only people who know are those transferring the children, and the airline employees who see what is going on but are warned to be silent.
Are American child being adopted in other countries? Perhaps. That would be the best scenario.
But my investigation into these events indicates something far more sinister. One of the known destinations is the Middle East. Among the known reasons is that these children are being used for domestic labor, sex, and body parts.
My investigation also reveals that the appropriate government agencies know about this practice.
It seems that legal orphans, damaged children, are not important enough to warrant protection from the child welfare agencies by the Federal government or the state government.
That seems to be a contradiction. And an abomination.
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