A Denver Papa John's delivery driver smelled marijuana at a home where he made a delivery. So what does he do? He calls the police, reports the odor, and states there was child in the home. The police raid the home, naturally.
Denver Post reports that the Papa John's customer is an authorized medical marijuana user. I remind the reader that medical marijuana use is legal in Colorado. Additionally, most jurisdictions do not recognize that adult drug use automatically constitutes child abuse or neglect. . .there must be proof of harm to the child before state intervention is justified.
Papa John's reportedly stands behind their employee's actions.
Puh-leese. I say Papa John's needs to train it's employees about the presumption of innocence, and about the penalties for making a false report of child abuse, and about the effects of removing a child from the family home when the child is not in legitimate danger.
After all, that's what this was. . .a false report of child abuse. And Papa John's supports that.
So, how does this employee know what marijuana smells like. . .has he/she inhaled?
Starting with New York City, where a woman used aliases to adopt a dozen legal orphans, and proceeded to abuse them for years, unreported. One child is even missing and presumed dead, yet she collected funds for this missing child for years. She's telling all, laying the blame on the agencies. The kiddies are unable to function after years of her abuse, and are suing the agencies.
In another story, we have a toddler escaping from the foster home, unnoticed, and drowning. Authorities deem it to be a tragic accident. Funny, when kids get out of their biological parent's home, it's neglect, and all the surviving kiddies are seized to protect them from improper supervision, and are denied the comfort of their parents during their grief for their lost sibling.
In New Jersey, a physician -- one of those trusted mandated reporters -- stabbed her adopted daughter over a hundred times for a childhood infraction.
In Denver, an adopted child is brutally abused and malnourished by this couple. The caregiver was frustrated with the child, "Marquez admitted she does feel overwhelmed with caring for the girl because she often cries for her mother. She said the 6-year-old girl, who should be completing first grade, wasn't going to school because she wasn't toilet trained."
Yes. these children want their parents, which makes it very difficult when someone else is charged with caring for them.
That the normal solutions aren't working for many foster children and legal orphans is so obvious, that any agency's failure to recognize it and alter their practices to cater to the child's best interests shows that they are not fulfilling their mandate to act in the best interests of the children. Their jobs don't suffer for that failure, the courts don't suffer for that failure, the attorneys representing the parties don't suffer for that failure. The children suffer, grievously.
I have interviewed many caseworkers over the years. I always ask some of the same questions. One of these questions is, "Do you make your recommendations based on the best interests of children in general, or on the best interests of each individual child." Every single one has responded that it is too much work, too involved to make recommendations based on the best interests of each individual child, that they are acting according to the best interests of children in general.
Which is a major reason why children are harmed more than they are helped by child welfare intervention.
There are better solutions that can be implemented in the current child welfare scheme. But they require more effort on the part of case workers. They cost less, and they have better outcomes, but they are just too darned labor intensive. Which is why so many children are simply warehoused in foster care and redistributed to state-approved parents, who are left to deal with children who want their real mommy and daddy and never stop wanting them.
This is never going to change, no matter how hard the child welfare professionals try to make it change.
I tell the parents I work with that there are certain practices and inequities in the child welfare system that are not going to change, and they must learn to work within those parameters, because we cannot change them. Working within the system's flaws is more productive and successful than fighting the system. The state has deep pockets, unlimited resources and unassailable credibility. No one can defeat that and it is foolish to try.
But child welfare professionals also have certain obstacles presented by the inherent nature of childhood attachments to their parents, and no matter how hard they try, they cannot overcome those bonds. Yet they foolishly continue to try.
I had one case where a six year-old little girl was refusing to bond with the foster care giver, so the agency (Greely County, Colorado) and psychologist attempted to force the child to bond by regressing her to infancy.
They put her into diapers, fed her only bottled milk, forced her to crawl on her hands and knees and wouldn't let her walk or talk, except to call the foster caregiver "mommy." They forced the child to engage in eye contact with the care giver. They traumatized the child, and the child never bonded with the care giver.
This child had been removed from a mother who had had abdominal surgery and whose request for respite care during her recovery was denied by the Greeley agency. Mom was on pain killer, and fell asleep. The child got into her purse and took some Tylenol. Mom rushed the child to the emergency room. The child's stomach was never purged by the staff, but they reported mom to child welfare.
Children want their mommy and daddy. You can't change that. It's about time child welfare agencies conceded to that fact and changed their practices to work within those parameters. Until they do, the kiddies will always defeat their agenda and undermine any positive outcomes simply by doing what comes most naturally to them. . .loving mommy and daddy.
According to wxyz[dot]com, a judge has dismissed the charges against Maryanne Godboldo arising out of her standoff with police when they arrived with child welfare and a S.W.A.T. team to take her child into custody.
The reason cited was that the removal order was illegal. And it was, according to Federal law and state law.
Like that's a surprise? This is a typical shortcut taken by child welfare agencies nationwide, one that is easily proven and challenged by competent counsel for the parents and children. However, finding a courageous and competent attorney to challenge this kind of legal shortcut is virtually impossible, and the practice continues, unchallenged, in dependency court.
Hyper-vigilant child welfare agencies, their counsel and judges purposely err, citing that it is necessary to err on the side of the child rather than striving not to err. The practice of ignoring constitutional and procedural protections associated with child welfare seizures is institutionalized nationwide, all in the name of protecting children.
And, it would seem most people don't have a problem with this kind of rights violations. After all, we need to protect the kiddies from their abusive parents, even if we have to do violence to the constitution in the process, don't we?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Puh-leese. I say Papa John's needs to train it's employees about the presumption of innocence, and about the penalties for making a false report of child abuse, and about the effects of removing a child from the family home when the child is not in legitimate danger.
