We often see trending articles and news stories where hotline reports to child welfare agencies or Amber alerts are used to facilitate the seizure of children from their parents by medical staff. These methods are frequently used by medical personnel when a parent questions God-the-Doctor about diagnosis or treatment for their child. A parent who seeks a second opinion, or decides to choose another treatment provider for their child too frequently becomes the subject of a child abuse or neglect hotline report. These reports often appear to be less focused on the best interests of the child than they are a result of the insult to God-the-Doctor's ego. One only has to watch God-the-Doctor in action on this Fox News video to see that they view themselves as the absolute arbiters over the lives of children, the parents be damned, and even the desires and needs of the children be damned.
Often, the parents feel they must flee the jurisdiction to seek the medical care they believe is best for their child. We see this played out frequently in child cancer cases. Parents who seek less toxic, possibly more effective alternative treatments for their child's cancer diagnosis--often with good result--have their children seized and the toxic treatment forced upon them to the child's detriment. At the very least, the child's quality of life is severely reduced. There is no dispute that some medical treatments are toxic, the results questionable, and even diagnoses are faulty. So careful research and prudent decision making is eminently reasonable. Yet, we are expected to put our full blind faith in God-the-Doctor, because the state has decreed it so, if we hope to keep our children.
This has the predictable effect of making parents hesitant to obtain health care for their
children. When the state becomes involved, the parents are denied all access to their child, denied the right--yes, the right--to make medical decisions for their child based on all relevant information, and risk termination of parental rights, often for no better reason than seeking all available information and proceeding with prudence. Contrary to the reports made by God-the-Doctor, the parents are not medically neglecting their child. They are considering all factors, seeking second opinions, praying, and providing interim support and treatment while they make their decision. Invariably, the child does not die during this process.
But God-the-Doctor makes dire predictions that "the child will die" unless they continue to provide their treatment. Seriously, any one of us could die at any time, and God-the-Doctor's philosophy of saving lives depends on the quantity of lives saved, regardless of the quality of life available to anyone. This smacks of a religion based on the sanctity of life. This is the church of All Life is Sacred, worshiping the spark of life with a complete disregard for the quality of the life their sacrificial child is experiencing. They believe it is more worthy to assault the child's body with dangerous, toxic and painful treatments, deprive the child of the comfort and affection of their parents and siblings during this assault. They compel them to be clinically cared for by strangers as a legitimate substitute for the loving care of their own family, rather than to allow them the dignity and respect to have their family make their medical choices and support them during the process. Children alone, afraid and in pain. . and dying or losing valuable life functions, such as the ability to bear children as adults. This is cruel beyond imagining, children serving as a sacrifice to the church of All Life is Sacred who worships God-the Doctor. Sick.
And even if the parent obtains medical care at another facility, they are punished by being arrested, charged with kidnapping their own child, and having the child seized and placed in state custody. It is well established that children raised in state custody for any amount of time suffer severe problems the rest of their lives.
These reports making the news tend to demonize the parents for daring to question God-the-Doctor, or even demand proof that his predictions and treatment do more good than harm, never mind being infallible. I have seen relatives die from chemotherapy, and other medical treatment, largely because doctors practice disease management using Ouija board science rather than providing sound health care practices. Granted, they are responding to patient demands for a perfect pill to address symptoms because the patient is often willing to accept treatments that usually involve lifestyle changes to correct the source of the problem. Until this dynamic changes on the part of the doctor, the social problems arising out of disease management practices will persist.
The practice of removing children for non-existent medical neglect is institutionalized in our country. It is dangerous to seek medical care for children due to the risk of God-the-Doctor deciding what is best for the child and using state force to compel treatment. Parents need to do their research before taking their child to the doctor, and choose medical providers who do not believe themselves to be God-the-Doctor. They need to know what to expect when seeking medical care for their child and how to mitigate the risk of seizure when taking their child for medical care. Steps to reduce this risk are included in Profane Justice: A Comprehensive Guide to Asserting Your Parental Rights, available on Amazon Kindle.
I have written quite a bit about El Paso County, Colorado Department of Human Services over the years, in part because their practices are so abysmally horrible, and in part because I live there.
So it comes as no surprise that they approved an adoption by the man pictured here. He adopted a teen boy. Nobody saw anything wrong with that. Then he proceeded to abuse and torture the boy.
For over two years.
Unnoticed.
Protected from scrutiny by DHS. Until the boy took matters into his own hands and ran away to avoid another beating. Way to go, El Paso County. Way to go Colorado. How many children sacrificed on the alter of saving children will it take before you get it through your thick heads that there is a better way to protect children than redistributing them to strangers? Your tests, your inspections, your background checks are failing the children.
How about this. . .The real test would be if those strangers would adopt the kiddies without the adoption subsidy they get. If they don't want the kiddies sans the buck$$$, it should be a big clue. Oh, silly me, I'm not an "expert" on child welfare like you all are.
This man, Jeremiah Lovato, was just sentenced to 119 1/2 years for beating his adoptive son with implements like a meat tenderizer, and for stomping on his testicles, and more. This DHS-approved, artificially created father is pissed that his sentence is so harsh. What a shame he didn't feel any sympathy for the child that was redistributed by DHS and the court into his care as if the child were a puppy. The boy, his adopted son, gets life. . .a life sentence to live with the abuse this man inflicted upon him, and that DHS inflicted upon him, and the the Dependency Court judge inflicted upon him.
The real criminal is the caseworker who approved this monster as being a fit father, and the judge who granted the adoption. And most of all the attorney who was appointed to represent the best interests of this child, the bobble-headed Guardian ad litem who rubber stamped every recommendation the caseworker made instead of conducting his own investigation. Who are they? Why aren't they being held responsible? Oh, right, they have immunity from liability for their bad decisions, their bad practices and their bad judgement. Welcome to the twilight zone.
It didn't take long before the author's long-suffering patience and selfless goodness on behalf of yet another abused child pegged the needle on my should-be-nominated-for-sainthood-NOT meter. Come one. The author writes under a pseudonym. I wouldn't put my real name on this delusional piece of self-stroking egotism, either.
However, the book is not a total loss. To the critical, inquiring mind, it is a treasure brimming with her blissfully-ignorant, unintended expose's of the inside working of child welfare agency practices, the malpractice, the malfeasance, the non-feasance and the just plain dopery, mopery and idiocracy.
I cite as one example: Foster carers taking child's statements about sexual abuse? Without proper training? Without documenting it? Without insuring that the interview techniques are proper? (They weren't). Inappropriate to say the least. Shocking to the astute observer. Damaging in the extreme.
This is not to discount the child's reported experiences, but rather, to expose the admitted failures of the system to protect, and effectively treat the child. It is safe to presume that while this child was being studiously ignored by the agency in her abusive home, they were too busy to rescue her because of all the non-abused children being swept into their nets. This child will never be a functioning, normal adult, if the author is to be believed. That is a tragedy that the author indicates was avoidable, if the system was doing its job. This is a powerful indictment against the wholesale removal of children without proof of serious harm.
The heartless cruelty of this system is well documented. As a foster carer, she boldly exposes her attempts to make the child hate her parents, ignorant of the harm that causes the child's ability to form attachments, and love herself. She sees no wrong in making a child doubt her own identity, her origins, her feelings for her parents (which cannot be denied no matter how sick the parents were), because it is more expedient for the agency to emotionally alienate the child from her parents rather than teach the child to recognize and refuse the sin, without having to hate herself because the sinners were her parents.
It shows the practitioner's systemic denials of the harms caused to the innocent victims by the child saver's well-intentioned <ahem> services, non-services, wrong-services, delayed services, inappropriate services and outright failures to provide services, yet they can pat themselves on the back and walk away bureaucratically secure in a job well done, as the human toll mounts.
I am glad she wrote the book. She had no clue the hero she tried to convince the world she is was more accurately exposed as one of the villains perpetuating the abuse of children under the guise of protecting them.
I aged out of foster care. The day I graduated from high school--with honors--I was booted out onto the street without a dime. I didn't have a driver's license or a car. I didn't have a job.
I went straight back to my father's home. That was June. By November, I had a job, a car and an apartment. I couldn't have done it without the support of my father, and the upbringing of my parents. Before I ever went into foster care they had taught me how to run a household, budget and shop, and take care of myself. I could delay gratification, exercise good judgment, make and achieve goals and I had a good work ethic. I was lucky to have been raised by my parents long enough for them to teach me what I needed to know for life.
My foster care givers taught me nothing, but were happy to exploit my housekeeping and child care skills to their advantage. Imagine this, they got paid to have me live in their home, cook their meals, babysit their children and clean their house. I must point out, this was a good foster home. I could have been placed in worse.
I take exception to the popular myth that children suffer untold damage caused by abuse at the hands of their parents, a myth which is perpetrated by this publication. I was exposed to abuse in my family home, at least what is considered abuse by today's standards. Having been there and done that, I can firmly assert that the bond of love between me and my parents went extremely far to mitigate any long-term damage that might have occurred by virtue of purported abusive parenting practices. I suffer more trauma decades later from the emotional abuses I endured for the year I spent in my good foster home than from the more severe purported abuses at the hands of my parents during my entire childhood.
Getting past that myth, the findings about the exploitation of children in foster care by their protectors is extremely enlightening. The lengths to which the child welfare professionals will go to line their own pockets at the expense of the children they protect is astonishing to the uninitiated and makes this report a valuable resource to the child welfare practitioner.
This report focuses heavily on social security issues, but it also provides tidbits about other ways that children are exploited before being discarded.
And they are discarded. In Wichita, Kansas, children who age out of foster care are routinely driven by the caseworker to the local homeless shelter and dropped off without a dime. If they are lucky, they haven't been fingered for crimes committed by others in the foster home, as happened to K.C. in Pennsylvania.
After being removed from the family home on false accusations, and being set up for termination of parental rights, then being vindictively removed from an excellent foster home where the foster parent actually advocated for him and worked with the parents, K.C. was placed in a group home and put on chemical restraints. When he aged out he was charged with sexually assaulting another foster child. He was summarily dumped into jail upon aging out of foster care. He had been told his parents didn't want him, despite the fact that they were begging the agency to tell them where he was once he turned eighteen. His father had died shortly before his mother found him. His trauma from this brand of child protection is incalculable, and permanent.
He is a throw-away person, primarily because the people who would have loved him enough to protect him were legally removed from his life. Not having that connection makes these children extremely vulnerable to the worst kinds of exploitation. These are the ones who are, for example, patsies, taking the fall for someone else's crime--often a foster care provider or friend who did the dirty deed--and they don't even know they can defend themselves, much less how to defend themselves. The justice system doesn't care who did it, they just want a conviction--the easiest conviction they can obtain. These children have absolutely no support network, no skills, poor education, and nobody who even cares what happens to them. They are alienated and isolated and targeted, and completely unable to protect themselves from any kind of exploitation that befalls them.
Attempts by foster children who age out to reunite with their real parents are thwarted by the agencies. They tell them the parents died, or don't want them, or anything else to deny these children any method to learn the other side of the story about what happened or reconnect with the parents they love and restore their support network.
Why? Why is it so important that so many facts about these cases remains secret? That these discarded children are denied the information they need to reconnect with their real parents? Think about it. Decide for yourself what purpose this kind of secrecy serves.
I want to provide a perspective on foster care that many readers aren't aware of. That of a foster child.
So many people claim to speak for these children, and to act in the best interests of these children, but they don't have a clue what the child would say, or what would be best for that individual child.
Most of the child welfare professionals don't make their recommendations or take their actions based on what is best for each individual child. They are acting based on what is generically best for children. I know this because I ask every single one I encounter, "Do you make your recommendations and conduct your practice based on each individual child's needs or based on what's best for children in general?" They respond, "It is too complicated to know what each child needs, I base my recommendations and practice on what's best for children in general." Reading their reports and recommendations, that was obvious to me, but I wanted them to admit it. And they do, unaware of the indictment that this admission implies.
This is significant because children are not automatons, or cut from the same cloth. They are individuals, each with their own needs and dreams and desires. To treat them with a cookie cutter approach does violence to the child, the rights of the child and the family, and destroys the statutory mandates governing child welfare.
I was a foster child. Based on my experience, and my discussions with other foster children, I have concluded that the child in foster care is not the real child. All anyone sees is a role the child is playing. It is too dangerous for a foster child to be himself in a stranger's home. A foster child must adapt to the stranger's home, and suppress important parts of himself in order to protect himself. He will say and do whatever pleases the authority figures who have control over his life to stay safe. He'll even deny abuse in the foster home if he thinks disclosing it is too dangerous. Interestingly, he will tell his parents during visits, expecting them to protect him. Instead, the visits will be cut off, because the caseworker will claim the parents are discussing in appropriate topics with the child.
Child welfare professionals are in denial about this chameleon foster child. They take the chameleon as the real child, which results in disaster for the child.
He cannot discern when they are lying to him, he just wants to make them happy so he can go home. That's what they promised him. He doesn't realize saying and doing what they want is most likely to prevent his reunification. Even if he acts out, he will acquiesce to the reasons his court-appointed therapist or caseworker suggests, grasping at any straw to win his way home.
But a child cannot maintain this masquerade forever. Once in a forever home, his misery at losing his parents must emerge. He feels abandoned by his parents, yet he still needs them and wants them. His new forever parents contribute to his agony, by badmouthing his parents and punishing him for loving them, needing them, wanting them. They try to control his feelings and this thoughts, based on the delusion that this is supposed to be a fairy tale. This child should be grateful to them for rescuing him and making him part of their family. But he's not, and that is intolerable. He gets hateful, and they don't know why. I know why.
I hated every attempt by my foster care givers to make me be someone I wasn't. I hated their constant badmouthing my father, and making me feel inferior because I continued to love him and need him. I hated their demands that were strange and uncomfortable. I hated the complete, forced isolation from my family. I had to endure their attempts to control me in silence. It's no wonder some children respond with passive aggressive tendencies and refusals to bond. Who wants to be forced to bond with someone who doesn't even understand your needs and cares more about their hurt adult feelings than your broken child's heart?
The experts' professional belief that you can control anyone's emotions and feelings, or use force to change some else's emotions and feelings, especially a child's, is insane. Yet, the entire child welfare industry is based on this premise, and applies it punitively to anyone who resists being controlled in this manner or forced to feel what the experts think is best. This practice results in an insulting and degrading violation of personal boundaries, involving coercion, emotional manipulation, denial of individuality and self-determination, and the wholesale use of controlling techniques far more abusive than most parents are alleged to have perpetrated upon their children which the state cited as warranting their removal from the family home. It is a graphic illustration as to how pervasively erroneous the practices perpetrated by experts in the name of protecting children really are.
Termination of parental rights (TPR) is not proving to be compassionate nor a worthy solution for the best interests of children, neither is expedited permanency. Since children's attachment are demonstrably not as malleable as the experts want us to believe, TPR should be reserved for the most egregious cases of abuse, never for neglect. When TPR and adoption must be employed, there should still be a mechanism for the child to validly own his feelings and needs for his real parents, and see them under safe conditions throughout his life. This is the only way to protect the child's emotional health into adulthood. That would be in the best interests of children in general, and individual children.
Florida's child welfare agency, DCF, is not unique in losing children or placing the legal orphans they created in abusive "forever families."
In this case, two states are involved, Wisconsin, who removed the children from their parents and placed them with these state-approved parents, and Texas, where the parents lived.
Yes, Virginia, once a child is a legal orphan, they can be sent anywhere, even overseas, at the discretion of the child welfare agency. The beauty of this arrangement--for the agency at any rate--is the fact that there is nobody left who has standing or even knowledge to question where these children have been redistributed or if they are being mistreated. . .or killed. If they die, their real families never even get notified, can never attend the funeral, or visit their grave, assuming they even get a grave.
Most of these parents eagerly await the day their children turn eighteen and seek them out. Some never move, some have made the kiddie's bedrooms into shrines. Virtually all maintain a presence on the Internet, seeking and searching, and often finding their children featured on some adoption web site. Often, once their parental rights have been terminated, it turns out their children are not adoptable, and are then marketed by the child welfare agency like puppies in the pet store window. When they read about their children, they learn how damaged the children have become since being taken from their home, and many agonize over their impotence to help their own children.
Yet another set of state-approved adoptive parents have been arrested for viciously mistreating these children who were placed with them for protection.
I have extensive experience in Wisconsin. They have a history of removing children too quickly, and refusing to return them without justifiable cause, often to satisfy vindictive motives. I have documented on video, their propensity to tamper with photographic evidence and suborn perjury in their efforts to protect children.
Texas is no model of best practices, either. It was several years ago that the state auditor revealed a shocking report on the placement of Texas foster children in a camp setting, without adequate toilet facilities or shelter from the weather. Where older children preyed and perpetrated on younger children, and where the staff was indifferent at best and abusive at worst. Texas is a hotbed of horror stories.
Both states rank in the top ten worst states for child welfare practices.
Few of these accounts reach the public. Most are covered up by the agency and the courts, often citing confidentiality to protect their malpractice from public scrutiny. Contrary to the prevailing propaganda, this type of conduct is not the exception. Spend a day searching for foster parent and adoptive parent groups online and you will see graphic discussion of the situations these children are forced to endure at the hands of these state-approved care givers.
These children resist bonding with strangers, and refuse to stop loving or needing their real parents. This is actually a very healthy emotional state for a child. . .unless you have made him a legal orphan. Often, the process of making the child a legal orphan requires a therapist to diagnose the child as not having a bond with their parents, a finding that is often consistent with what the caseworker demanded, but inconsistent with the actual emotional attachment maintained by the child. When this child is placed for adoption, this healthy attachment to his real parents must be purged, regardless of the harm to the child.
Most state-approved forever families cannot tolerate such emotional defiance as the child's attachment to his parents. The children MUST bond with these strangers and the real parents must be eliminated from the child's heart and mind.
In response to this malpractice by the experts, other experts have a developed complete pseudo-science on how to break the child's bonds with his real parents and purportedly transfer that bond to the state-approved adoptive parents known as attachment therapy. These techniques are universally harmful, even fatal. . .remember the deadly rebirthing therapy that killed ten-year-old Candace Newmaker in Evergreen, Colorado in 2000? They are based on the false premise that the child's attachment issues stem from the abuse he suffered in his home.
The experts are in complete denial that children have a bond with their own parents, need theirown parents, no matter if the parents have abused or neglected them (which abuse or neglect is so subjective that often something claimed to be abuse, isn't). Regardless, the child inately loves and needs his mommy and daddy. The fact that they are imperfect isn't going to change that need, and removing them from the child's world, then attempting to use control and force to compel the child to no longer love or need his mommy and daddy is a recipe to destroy that child forever.
Which is why it becomes so important to keep the children in the family home with appropriate services if necessary. I seriously doubt these kids were abused or neglected by their biological parents to the extent they were abused by their state-approved, adoptive "forever family." This tragedy could have been prevented, if Wisconsin had complied with their statutory mandates.
Did I say there was no recourse when child welfare agencies and caseworkers do wrong? Here is a graphic example of caseworker immunity, where nobody wins but the caseworker.
Did I say in a prior post that this wrongdoing and abuse was institutionalized?
So many times there was the opportunity to do the right thing, and they never took that opportunity. No wonder they don't like their secrets being exposed.
At least their jobs are safe. Even if the kiddies aren't.
"JEFFERSON COUNTY (Colorado) - A couple accused of beating and starving a 6-year-old adoptive son was formally charged on Thursday morning." See article.
This child was adopted through Jefferson County Social Services when he was two. At that time, the article describes he was of above average height and weight. Four years later, he had lost weight, suffered bruising all over his body and his brain was bloody and swelling.
Arnolds took custody of the boy on a foster-to-adopt program when he was two and a half years old. That adoption was completed in 2006, . . .
I have seen Jefferson County Social Services in action. In my experience, their decisions are not based on the best interests of the child. They are petty, abusive and incompetent. They take children from imperfect homes and give them to dangerous homes. Nice work, JeffCo. They trained, supervised and licensed these superior parents. They approved of them. They preferred them over the child's real mommy and daddy. It seems their judgement was somewhat impaired.
Nobody will be held accountable for this dreadful outcome. No caseworker will be investigated or sanctioned for her deplorable misuse of her discretion. The agency will not come under any scrutiny. As one caseworker stated the typical attitude with a shrug of her shoulders, "These things happen." Gee, it's a real shame some of us can't be so blase' about this kind of outcome.
The child's biological parents will never know what happened to the child that Jefferson County found or manufactured some reason not to reunify with his parents. Perhaps their case plan wasn't really designed to correct the issues that brought this family under their scrutiny. Perhaps they didn't provide the proper services, or timely services. Perhaps the parents never had a chance. Who knows? It's all water under the bridge. But what if we could know? What if Jefferson County was just too eager to remove this marketable child rather than provide appropriate, compassionate in-home services to keep him with his mommy and daddy? Wouldn't that make this tragedy more deplorable?
We'll never know what happened to cause this child to be declared a legal orphan and redistributed to better parents by the infallible state. All we do know is that this child abuse statistic will be reported as physical abuse by a parent. Not adoptive parent. Parent. The state will not distinguish abuse committed by biological parents as opposed to artificial parents-for-pay. It's all one and the same to the government. If the child dies, his biological parents will never be told where his grave is.
We'll never know if adoptive homes are safer for children than imperfect biological homes as long as the reports do not distinguish between biological parents and adoptive parents. The only indication we have are these news articles that keep popping up in every community, showing that too many children are abused or killed by these state-approved parents.
I periodically get mail from foster care givers. They have their own groups online and every now and then one of them will find my letter to foster children on my web site and go into various iterations of tizzies. They'll tell all their foster friends on the groups and they will all contact me to tell me of their outrage, secure that they know more than I know about these children. Like the most recent email eruption I've been receiving from foster care givers. Like Laurel Haper here: Greetings,
I have read the letter you wrote here http://www.profane-justice.org/html/foster_child.html . Are you saying that every foster child is in a bad foster care environment, and that every foster child is better off with their family of origin? Are you also saying that every foster child is able to reason through their situation and make the best decision? I am just wondering; I have worked with foster children, and have learned some important things about them.
Thanks, Laurel Harper
Dear Laurel
I am saying that no matter how good the foster home is, the stranger foster care environment is bad for a child.
Let me ask you, when these children come into your home, do you make that home environment conform to what that child is comfortable and familiar with, or do you make that traumatized child conform to your rules, your culture, your religion, your eating habits, your schedule, your scent, your parenting style?
In any objective analysis of this child, is it fair to say that this child must deny his own identity, his culture, his persona, his needs, his schedule, his expressions of his love for his parents, his needs and wants to make your job as a parent-for-pay easier for you? Or do you make wholesale changes in your household to accommodate this child's comfort level? If you are honest, you make this traumatized child adapt to your household. I am saying the law says every foster child is better off with their family of origin. Studies have consistently proven that it is better for the child that the family is provided with appropriate services and supervision while the child remains in the family home. However, I do acknowledge that warehousing children in stranger's homes is much less labor intensive for the case worker than providing appropriate services and supervision in the family home. I am saying that every foster child is emotionally attached to their parents, and despite what any well-intentioned meddler-in-denial thinks is best for that child, interfering with that attachment is the primary cause of "troubled children," "acting out," and reactive attachment disorder. And from Mickey, whose apparent intellectual and grammatical limitations obviously reduce her occupational options to performing janitorial services or being a parent-for-pay:
Hi Suzanne,
to be completely honest I take great offense to the letter on your web site. As a foster parent we have had many troubled children in our lives, to this date I don't think there has been one that the parents didn't deserve to have their children removed from the home. Children are a gift from God and should be treated as such. To tell them that all foster parents, case workers, judges, etc are terrible peoples trying to keep them from their mom and dad is an utter [sic] lie. It appears you had a rough time of it when you were a child and I am very sorry you had to suffer through that. No child deserves to be mistreated. I'll close this out now but before I go, I will say that we have adopted two of our little darlings, one full blown meth baby and the other an alcohol and marijuana baby, they are almost 3 years old now and we love them with all our heart. Instead of telling the kids how awful the system is, we tell them of the great love of our savior Jesus
Christ. It is truly amazing how sharing Jesus with these children lifts them up.
Mickey
Dear Mickey Actually, I didn't have it rough in my foster home. It was one of the better ones. Despite that, I consider my placement in stranger foster care one of the most traumatic events in my childhood. What you don't understand is that foster children must be chameleons in order to feel safe. They conform. Of course sharing Jesus with them lifts them up, because if it didn't, you would disapprove. They already know you disapprove of their tears, of their missing their parents. You disapprove of their parents. You disapprove of everything important in their entire world. You have no idea how stressful that is to a child in a strange place, deprived of the only things he loves and knows. You are the authority figure, and you have turned their world upside down when you tell them their parents aren't worthy of their love. I'm sure you never used those words, but that's what they hear when you say, "Your parents love you but they aren't good parents and can't keep you safe like we can." You don't see the real child. You see the facade that the foster children wear in self-defense. They can only take so much conflict, and since their entire existence is now in conflict with their understanding of their world, their family and their identity, they do what they can to minimize it. They conform by submerging who they are. This can never be healthy for a child. No wonder every parent who is reunited with their children says they aren't the same children they were before they were taken. No wonder, years after reunification with their families, former foster children run screaming to hide in a closet when someone knocks at the door. Mickey, removing a child is not supposed to punish parents for being imperfect, so asserting that they "deserve" to have their children removed is inconsistent with the intent of the law. And whether the parents "deserve" it or not, do the children deserve what they get?
