For historical reasons that may never be absolutely clear, many young people who had thoughts like mine found themselves in the same place at the same time. Together, we invented the student revolutionary movement in 1964. So many of us have had second thoughts about its three major components—politics, promiscuity, and pot—that it is probably important to recall how serious the civil liberties issue was that gave rise to the original Free Speech Movement.

We arrived back on campus for the 1964–65 academic year to a Board of Regents decree that, henceforth, no political activity of any kind was permitted within the university boundaries. No one could distribute literature on behalf of any political cause. No political society or group could hold meetings. No speaker could address any student gathering on a political issue. These prohibitions amounted to a denial of the most basic constitutional freedoms of speech and association to a community of Americans who happened to live or work on the Berkeley campus...

True, I did feel misgivings when the socialist grouplets to which I gravitated spoke of “infiltrating” the Democratic Party and of the “realignment” of liberal politics toward the Marxist Left. But those doubts took many years to mature...
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In that implacably despairing state of mind, I took myself off to Britain, where Harold Wilson’s Labour Party had recently been elected with a tiny Parliamentary majority (which would be vastly increased in the general election of 1966). The possibility of living under European socialism, even of a tenuous kind, seemed too exciting a possibility to miss. ...
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In the 1970s, as I clung to my Marxist convictions, I heard an interview with Sir Keith Joseph, one of the great architects of the Thatcherite revolution. He described the dangers of what he called “the pocket-money society.” If the state provided all of the basic human needs—housing, health care, education, care for the elderly—it left nothing for people to provide for themselves, other than the more trivial recreational things. Their own earnings became like children’s pocket money, to be spent on toys or self-indulgence. The state took all of the significant economic choices of adult life out of their hands, diminishing them as responsible, moral beings. Joseph’s words did not convert me on the spot, but they shook my beliefs to the roots, because they chimed so convincingly with the evidence that I saw around me.
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But what was less explicable than this working-class defeatism was to hear those who regarded themselves as progressive liberals
conniving in it. The Left in Britain then (and scarcely less now) believed deeply that personal ambition was a petit bourgeois vice to be despised. Such left-wing antipathy to supposedly vulgar social striving became particularly vicious during the Thatcher years. The most telling left-liberal character assassinations of Thatcher herself focused on her being a “grocer’s daughter.”

One of my more vivid 1980s recollections is of an upper-class woman, whose family had been colonial officials in Kenya, saying airily, “When I was a child, profit was a dirty word.” This Jane Austenish disdain for the grubby business of trade strongly marked anti-Thatcherite rhetoric. The notion that private prosperity could transform the lives (and self-image) of ordinary people was viewed as faintly obscene. The great social caricature of the 1980s was “Essex Man”: the quintessentially vulgar upstart who had gotten money and property and was now busily spending (and flaunting) it in a myriad of crass ways. Everything about Essex Man, from his brash manners to his cleaned-up Cockney accent, came in for ridicule. His female equivalent—Essex Girl—was the butt of jokes too obscene to be published here. But Essex Men, with their sports cars and brassy wives, were not just thought to be ludicrous. They were a deeply sinister sign of the times: people without breeding and without the proper class connections were getting money and the confidence to spend it where they liked, for the first time in living memory.

Not only did the left-wing intelligentsia dislike uppity lower-middle-class arrivistes: they positively discouraged the most deprived working-class people from rejecting their “roots.” With a sentimental complacency that astonished me, they venerated the very social habits and attitudes that seemed to me so perversely backward. (A whole school of British film and television drama perpetuates the romanticized myth of working-class life—a kind of “noble savage” genre that utterly falsifies the grim repressiveness that this life actually embodies.)

The left-wing elite castigated teachers for attempting to correct the working-class accents and dialects that help trap children in the limitations of their own backgrounds. Correct grammar and properly pronounced English were, left-wing commentators argued, simply a middle-class dialect, with no claim to inherent superiority over the subliterate speech familiar to working-class children. Therefore, to inflict proper English on children who spoke the systematically ungrammatical dialects of the British proletariat was a form of cultural imperialism. Bourgeois values were the real enemy of working-class self-respect, because they made people who did not subscribe to them feel alienated and insecure. The socialist ideal was not to free people to fulfill their personal potential but to guarantee that no one would ever feel inferior to anyone else in any respect—intellectually, socially, or economically. Marxist veneration of the “working man” meant preserving, as a function of class cohesion, the behavior that I saw as symptomatic of self-loathing.

How had it come to this? Why did liberals who were supposedly advocates of egalitarianism collude in this blatantly repressive aspect of British social and political life? How did they reconcile their commitment to socialism, which I had always understood as being about the liberation of humanity, with a romanticizing of what anyone in his right mind should have seen as a cruelly inadequate and culturally degraded way of life? So much of what passed for left-wing thinking in Britain seemed to be steeped in middle-class guilt and self-hatred.

What decisively transformed my views was my growing understanding of the consequences of the welfare state that Britain had constructed out of a wartime command economy: it both reinforced the fatal passivity of the lower classes and provided a moral justification for the paternalism of the upper classes. The realization was slow but inexorable. It came through concrete example and abstract argument. By the end, it was so blindingly obvious that I wondered how anyone could ever not have seen that the socialist solution—the great, generous dream of perfect fairness—was inevitably destructive of the human spirit.
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This was the reality of the collectivist ethic in which each should be striving for all, not for himself and his own. It amounted to the infantilizing of people, who had come to believe that they could not, positively should not, be making life-determining decisions for themselves, because their choices might deprive someone else

Was left-wing politics anything more than a gloss for envious vengeance on the one hand, and—on the other—a sinister desire to control the lives of others? And, in the end, wasn’t it the achievements and the nobility of individuals, not collectives, that gave the human condition its point?

When educrats talk about CIM standards, they're not talking about the ability to read and write, do math and know facts. The outcomes for the CIM are loaded with sociological "outcomes," many of which follow politically correct thought and behavior guidelines. Students will be assessed on how well they are "quality producers," "self-directed learners," "involved citizens," "constructive thinkers," "effective communicators," "understand diversity," "deliberate on public issues," and a host of vague, relative outcomes.

Private and home schoolers will not be exempt. The educrats are well aware of the massive hemorrhage of students from public to private education; the new system is all-or-nothing and cannot afford to let private and home schoolers jump off. These groups can expect massive legal coercion to conform to the system. Just the fact that a CIM will be required for a job will be the first major threat to begin with.

The bottom line is that the new educational system will resemble nothing of the previous one. It is being called voluntary but is being forced on states by withholding federal funds from those that don't comply. The new standards are anything but academic but are designed to create a compliant work force in a politically correct thinking mold. Since these values will be required and will clearly often be in conflict with the Christian world-view, it is easy to see where the collisions are going to occur.

The entire education agenda consists of an interlocking set of laws, government departments and foundations. When one zooms back and views all the interactive parts as a whole, the future is nothing short of horrifying. The time to become involved is now. If you don't, you were warned.

Licensing of Parents

In addition to the Home Visitation program, which brings the government in control of the child before school age, Goals 2000 is being implemented through parent licensing, parent-teacher compacts, and parental report cards issued by the schools. These programs, under various names, are either in place or being proposed across the nation. Parental Licensing is still a point of controversial discussion, although legislation to pass it into law has been submitted in other states.

The government will determine who may have children and who may not. Jack C. Westman, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin and author of Licensing Parents: Can We Prevent Child Abuse?, explains. “A parent license would place the responsibility on parents to be competent. The burden of proof would be on the parents to demonstrate that they are not abusing and neglecting their children rather than on the state to prove through quasi-legal proceedings that parents are unfit after they have damaged their children.” So, Parents will be in the position of having to disprove a negative, and having to prove that they will not commit future acts.

As one of the most prominent advocates for parental licensing, he adds, “We must create a new paradigm in which parenthood is a privilege.” Most parents feel that being a parent is a privilege, a gift from God that gives our lives meaning and purpose. But, should it be an entitlement given to us by the government? Does this mean that some citizens will be deemed workers, and others breeders? If the government will select who may propagate and who may not, how many steps away are we from mandatory sterilization of those deemed unfit by the government, or those who do not conform to a societal ideal established by the government? Or will we allow “them” to breed to provide children to others?


David Lykken, author of Antisocial Personalities, and a strong advocate of parental licensing, calls for the immediate removal of newborns from unlicensed mothers so that they may be placed directly into foster homes and quickly adopted.

Who will determine who gets the privilege of a license? Will it be used as a perk for those who “go along” and do not resist the socialist regime? Who will make the determination of who may have children and who may not? Will it be done randomly by a computer?
The Illinois legislation established that not having a license would be grounds for the social workers to remove the children. An interesting sidebar is that although parental licensing advocates are adamant about the issue, they do not feel that it is necessary for social workers or foster parents to have licenses.

Parent Training
Paving the way towards parent licensing is the “Parent Training” program, also enacted in 1994, which is already firmly entrenched. In the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1994, local education agencies are required to reserve a percentage of their Title I, section 1118, “Parental Involvement” funds for programs that teach “parenting skills,” not to teens in school, but to parents who have children enrolled in the schools.

Schools are directed to “coordinate and integrate” their parental involvement strategies with programs like the “Parents as Teachers” program that was initiated in Missouri and became mandatory for all Missouri school districts in 1984. The program, which is a “home/school partnership that begins at birth” has spread to 44 states, including Massachusetts. In this mandatory program, parents are “trained” by “parent educator trainers” (PETs - can you stand it!). The program is based on the offensive assumption that all parents are in need of “training” and the majority are “at risk.” Which explains the condescending, overbearing attitude that we see in DSS.

The new curriculum no longer allows students to learn academically, slowly making career choices in their own time. Education is tied directly to jobs. Schools have become factories, busily grinding out worker bees to fulfill a very planned economy. There is no room for the dreamers or the undecided. Career decisions are made for them.

The school buildings are now being re-designated as one-stop social centers where drugs will be dispensed and mental health diagnosed in school-based health care clinics; family planning centers will disperse birth control and abortion counseling; under-school-aged children will attend mandatory day care centers; all under one school house roof. Schools will assume the responsibility of feeding students because they will be in the school building from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. to take part in all of the social services provided there. It's all to be run by the education establishment, regardless of parental wishes.

In the classroom children are subjected to constant evaluation tests, checking, not their academic knowledge, but their values, attitudes and beliefs. Information from such tests is placed in massive data banks, creating personal files that stay with the students for life, affecting their ability to get a job, obtain government services or even vote.

"Life-long learning" programs dictate that the students will have to return again and again to school for the rest of their lives to assure that they maintain the "proper" attitudes and values as drilled into them during their initial school experience. Failure to do so will affect their ability to function in society.

Outside the classroom, families and their homes are under constant surveillance from a barrage of social workers and child protection agencies. Child abuse is the catch-word of the day. Parents are evaluated as to their suitability to oversee their own children. Negative evaluations can result in forcing parents to enter special behavior modification programs to "correct" their attitudes and values. Parents who fail to comply can be found guilty of child abuse and see their children removed from the home.

Vacation in Oregon, lose your kids.

Brian and Ruth were now at the breaking point. They knew the court was scheduled to sever their parental rights next month and they would never see their children again. According to local news reports young Brian, after a supervised visit with his children on Wednesday, August 1st, followed the SCF van that was taking his children back to their foster home. The van driver stopped at a rest area south of Roseburg, Oregon, on I-5. Allegedly, Brian, at gunpoint, rescued his children and drove off with the SCF van and switched vehicles later down the road.

Part 1
They care so damn much in Oregon. An anonymous tipster thot they looked skinny.



[basically this case boils down to some busybody calling 'child and family services' (and what faithful servants they are) because they thot one of these kids was skinny. The father finally has had it with the state's kidnapping of his kids, tells the evil meanies to get out of the car and drives a fourth of a mile to his own vehicle desperate to get out of that insane child stealing State.] Everytime I hear one of those PSA's telling you to rat out a family even if you only have suspicions I want to brick the TV. For the love of God think twice and then think again before you screw a family over like this.

Part 2

"Did anybody tell you to say (your father) pointed the gun, sweetie?" I asked. "Yes," came the diminutive response from the adorable little girl clutching her rag doll rabbit. "Who, sweetheart? Who told you to say that?" "He did," said Bethany, pointing directly at Deputy District Attorney Rick Wesenberg. The gasps from the courtroom audience brought a moment of suspense singularly lacking in the proceedings until that moment.

"Did that man (delivering as much accusation as I could load into that phrase as I waggled a finger at the profusely-sweating Wesenberg) also tell you to say your mommy was wearing a wig, Sweetie?" "Yes." "Do you know what a wig is, sweetheart?" "No."

[and with that coached testimony the state saddled a small girl with a future of knowing she sent her parents to jail for decades - B]

Part 3

Oregon statute that says you can't be charged with kidnapping your own kids.

But, he stubbornly refuses to abandon the charges of kidnapping the SCF workers. Brian told one worker to stand aside and the other to "get out of the car." That's it. Kidnapping, according to the DDA. Never mind the Oregon Supreme Court, which has said that such incidental interference with another's liberty while committing another crime is NOT kidnapping.

The Unauthorized Use charge seems likely to stick, but the DDA wants to stretch Brian's driving the state car 1/4 mile to where his own was parked into felony Robbery. Again, the Oregon Supremes have proclaimed that robbery requires an intent to permanently deprive another of the article stolen, so robbery seems an exagerration, at best.

"No Hugs...No Kisses...No Kidding. My mommy and daddy vacationed in Oregon and now all I have is this lousy t-shirt." The back says, "In Control We Freak...Visit Oregon...Lose Your Kids...Go To Jail...State vs. Brian and Ruth Christine...April 30, 2002...www.pclu.org."

Part 4

A system manned by good people, but which produces results that would never have been desired by anybody involved.

I think that the theme of unintended consequences may well apply well beyond the Christines' case, however. In a real sense, I think that is what the whole legal system has become, if not America altogether. Bad things happening to good people as a result of a system that has just gotten out of hand.
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held in isolation and on suicide watch. They have lost everything....everything. Until yesterday, at least they still had each other. This verdict, however, is a state-mandated divorce, since she will be deported once released from prison and Brian will never be allowed a passport or entry to England (generally, no great loss, but that's where the three oldest Christine girls are, after all).

Don't Waive Your Right to a Trial

Parents do not have Constitutional Rights in the Juvenile Court. There is no right to due process or other protections, except at trial (adjudication). This is because the presiding Judge in the Juvenile court is supposed to make decisions in the best interests of the child as he/she interprets that to be. For over 40 years, no form of due process was required in the juvenile courts; attorneys weren't even allowed.

In 1996, the Supreme Court ruled that some due process was required in the juvenile court, but not all Constitutional protections.

...the purpose of the court's decision is not to require in the juvenile process all of the constitutional rights now mandatory in the criminal or even administrative process, but rather simply to require in adjudicatory hearings those rights required by the notions of fundamental fairness and due process under the fourteenth amendment.
— Kent v United States 383 U.S. 541, 562 (1966)

Thus, the only time parents have any due process rights is at the adjudication.

Adjudication is referred to as a trial, due process hearing, fact-finding hearing, jurisdictional hearing, etc. in various states. Going under different names makes it difficult for parents to determine which hearing is the adjudicatory hearing.

Whatever the state chooses to call it, it's the hearing where the state would present evidence and witnesses to prove their claim that you abused or neglected your child and you would present evidence and witnesses to the contrary. You can also cross-examine the state’s witnesses. This is the only time the state is required to prove their case and the only time the parents may present evidence in their defense.

It's also the first time you can appeal to a higher court. Even if the juvenile court finds against you, you can appeal to the state court of appeals. The appellate court is bound by due process of law and appellate court judges are commanded to look to the law and interpret it exactly as written.

The juvenile court judge is only commanded to act in the best interests of the child, regardless of what the law may say. They are given very liberal discretion to loosely interpret the law or even ignore it if they believe it to be in the child's best interests. Thus, it's in your best interests to get into the appellate court at the earliest possible point.

Because the adjudication is the only time the state is required to prove their case and the only time parents have due process rights, state agents make extreme efforts to get the parents to "stipulate" or "waive" the adjudication.

The stipulations can be worded in such a way that it doesn't sound like you've abused your child. For example, it might say that your child was injured and the injury was non-accidental but it doesn't say that you did it.

A stipulation might say the child has a medical condition and the parents are unable to manage it. This means neglect, the parents can’t or won’t meet their child’s needs. Wording doesn't matter.
***********Signing any stipulation, regardless of wording is an admission that you are guilty of abuse or neglect and as such the state was justified in removing your child.***********

The state only has the power to intervene when parents have abused or neglected their child or there is a substantial risk that they will abuse or neglect their child. They don’t have the power to intervene when children are sick or have a medical condition unless the parents are neglecting the child by failing to provide adequate care. Therefore, when you stipulate (which means to agree), you are saying the state was correct to intervene, which is admitting abuse or neglect.

The agency will often resort to extreme measures, such as withholding visitation to extract a stipulation from parents. Some examples:

In our community CPS takes the position that a parent must acknowledge both the abuse of their children and take responsibility for the abuse before the parent can have unsupervised visits with their children.
— Bart Rubin, PhD

… the child protection community is virtually united behind the concept that the parent must acknowledge responsibility for the abuse and must clarify that abuse with the child before visitation or contact can be re-established.
— Frampton Durban, Jr, Chief Legal Counsel, Charleston County DSS, Charleston, SC

Do not succumb to these terrorist tactics! It's better to forego visitation for a short time while you make your case in court, than to lose your child forever in a termination of parental rights proceeding (under federal law, states must petition for termination of your parental rights at 15 months regardless of the progress you've made).

The best way to get your child home permanently is by requiring the state to prove their allegations against you in a court of law. If they fail to prove the allegations, the case is closed. The state is very aware of this fact, which is why they work so hard to get parents to waive their right to a trial.

From the Chief Legal Counsel above:

… therapeutic denial reduction work and eventual clarification counseling is far more effective in reducing risk than litigation.
— Frampton Durban, Jr, Chief Legal Counsel, Charleston County DSS, Charleston, SC

In other words, it’s easier to withhold visitation and coerce parents into signing a stipulation than to proceed with litigation. The state knows they stand a good chance of losing at trial by failing to prove conclusively that you are guilty of the allegations.

If you sign a stipulation, you're waiving all your due process rights and can never again argue that you didn't abuse or neglect your child. This is perhaps the most important suggestion in this Guide!

The debate over whether a parent must acknowledge responsibility for child maltreatment is not a new one. It rages in my jurisdiction as well as most with which I am familiar. Here, however, the child protection community is virtually united behind the concept that the parent must acknowledge responsibility for the abuse and must clarify that abuse with the child before visitation or contact can be re-established.

Frampton Durban, Jr.
Chief Legal Counsel
Charleston County DSS
Charleston, SC

Betty Stenzel

March 13, 2003 - Betty, whose children were taken by the state without even charging her with a crime, finally after all these years got to meet her children.

See, Betty spent the last several years of her life working hard to pay $400 a month in child support. Yet still Oregon's SCF never allowed Betty to be with her children she loved. She fought like crazy to see her kids and have them be with her.....But SCF only wanted Betty's money.

SHE finally won....Betty's kids got to see her today.... in a coffin...at her funeral.

It seems Oregon CPS finally decided it would be OK for the kids to have a supervised visit.

• He yelled at them, told them he was safe in this home and wanted to stay.
  
• He demanded his rights.
  
• He told them he knew they wanted to take him away and give him more pills so he wouldn’t have his say in court on Monday.
  
• He cried, begged and pleaded saying he was having a birthday party on Sunday.
  
• He said every time he finds some happiness, they come and take him.
  
• He said he wanted to go home and he intends to tell the judge and they couldn’t stop him.
  

• That is really sick that you would even ask me to do that which you know I consider the most reprehensible of actions.
  
  
• How can anyone think a complaint against you would be handled the same as a DCFS anonymous complaint against anyone else?
  
  
• The most innocent interpretation for your complete obliviousness to the problems in the system is that you are too close and can't see the forest for the trees.
  
  
• The examples to prove my point are beyond counting but that won't stop me from trying.
  
  
• I am not an idiot. I scored 99 percentile on most categories of most tests I have ever taken and will happily match you in any test of intelligence.
  
  
• If I have a problem with state sanctioned kidnapping it is not without due cause. It is an emotional issue and just because you can point to horror stories on the one side, that does not excuse you from addressing the horror stories on the other side of the ledger.

But the most wrenching loss of all came when Amy was 12. Her social worker believed it would be in her best interest to live in a home with girls her own age. For the first time in her life, she and her sister were separated.

It was devastating for both of them. Amy's self-esteem plummeted because so much of it revolved around her ability to take care of her younger sibling. Anne, too, was destroyed by the move for she no longer had the only constant in her life. Her sister, in addition to being her best friend, had also been her consistent source of advice and approval.

Anne was later adopted by her foster parents and moved with them to another State. The sisters lost touch with each other. They also lost their ability to trust and to form lasting relationships when they became adults.

At 35, Amy says, "I will never forget the day I had to leave my sister. We were both crying, and I felt like the world was a terrible and hostile place. As the months went by, I could feel myself close up. The more I thought about what had happened to me, the more angry and bitter I became. If the social worker who was supposed to be concerned for me had the power to take away my sister, I could never trust anyone again."

Today, Amy and Anne are in contact with each other. They see each other from time to time, but they do not have the close relationship that they might have had they not been separated. Amy lives alone, insists she will never marry, and prefers living a solitary existence where no one can hurt her. Anne has been divorced twice and says that intimate relationships are impossible for her to manage. When someone gets too close, she unconsciously sabotages the relationship.

I got sent to a place called E.O.A.M.T.C (Eastern Oregon Adolescent Treatment Center). I saw a lot of things I don’t want to talk about. Some pretty morbid things. Most of all though the people in that center. I’m not going to name any names. These people thought that. Well you see they would take normal NORMAL teenagers into this treatment center and try to convince them that they had some kind of mental illness. Most of them didn’t have a mental illness at all.
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I still have scars from being restrained on that floor.
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I never like to talk to those people because they thought they had everything figured out. Some of them were so strongly into believing the state it would make you sick. This is where they dreamed up I was PTSD and they said my step dad made me that way. This is bogus crap. He never did anything bad to me and they made up this crap and got him in bad trouble with the SCF and made him sick. He lost his businesses and almost died. Even after all that, he wasn’t mad at me and he took me back in and is trying to get me job skills and a GED. The state didn’t do anything but screw me up and keep me on bad drugs to keep me screwed up.
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Every time something was to go wrong in the foster home I was always told to keep my mouth shut, it’s always a “BIG SECRET”. What they’re really telling you is keep your mouth shut so we don’t get in trouble. To tell you the truth the people that I met in these foster homes. I don’t ever EVER want to see them again.

Oh another thing in the article in the newspaper they called me a monster. They’re the monsters they’re the people destroying citizens families.
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When I was getting beat up in these foster homes (GETTING BRUISES) I was always told to shut up.

Oh, when I was in treatment at EOAMTC the staff their put a lot of things in there documents that where not even true. They just had to keep making up stories to keep you in their custody. Also when I was when I was in this treatment center they kept switching my meds like crazy. Like I was a physco or something. I learned a lot about these meds when I was going there. First of all!!

*Zoloft- Makes you violent.

*Wellbutrin- Gives you a major boost in your sex drive.

*Depkote- Makes you where you Cannot sleep, you see hallucinations.

*Desepramin- You cannot sleep, and you hear things.

The state didn’t put me on these medications to help me. They put me on them to DESTROY me. The state never helped me. They just always made it worse for me. When I got back to my mom and step dad, we quit the medicine. I have been of the drugs know for over 2 months and I am thinking lots better. And staying out of trouble.

I learned a lot of things from being in foster homes. The main thing though was when I got out. To STAY as far away from the state as I can from now on.

New Jersey agrees to create independent panel to oversee its Division of Youth and Family Services as part of sweeping settlement to lawsuit that accused state of endangering lives of its foster children; researchers hired by Children's Rights, which brought suit, were given access to state files during discovery proceedings, and they reported that one in 10 children in foster care were abused and one in 5 did not receive proper services for their medical needs

Single parents work outside of the home, leaving their children unattended or with "inappropriate care takers" (neighbors, older siblings, grandparents, relatives) causing environmental and emotional neglect of the child. Single working parents are unable to clean their homes "appropriately" and leave their homes cluttered, disorganized, and untidy (i.e. beds unmade, dirty clothes on floors or hampers, dirty dishes in the sink from breakfast, unswept or unvacuumed floors and carpets, etc.) which the family must return to in the afternoon or evening that is classified as environmental neglect.

Basically, single parents tend more to their needs (i.e. working outside of the home) that to the needs of their children which is classified as emotional and environmental neglect.

Ironically, FIA complies a list of single parent households from the Friend of the Court, sends prevention workers to the homes of such families and initially offers the families free, voluntary services through their prevention program. Such services include free parenting classes, free nutrition programs, free household budgeting programs, free employment training programs, and WIC.

The social workers in these programs compile information on the family and home for FIA. Basically, when you allow these workers to enter your lives and your home, you are allowing FIA to build a PS (Protective Services) record against you for child neglect which leads to further child protective proceedings in the Probate/Family Court which will ultimately result in the removal of your children and the children being placed in foster care. These workers are not hired to help you, they are hired to make a case of child neglect against you.

Why are families being targeted by FIA. Most people have the misconception that concerned citizens report child neglect and abuse. This is untrue! A small percentage of my cases involve reports of neglect and abuse from neighbors, family members, friends and school officials. In fact, the majority of my cases involved the family receiving some form of voluntary services from FIA, such as the free programs listed above. In the majority of cases, school officials, such as teachers and counselors, never suspected child abuse or neglect in the families that were prosecuted. Moreover, in most cases the family physicians never suspected child abuse or neglect in the families prosecuted. Families are targeted because FIA must justify its need for State and Federal grants to keep its workers employed.
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During 1996, Clare County removed 50% of the children in the county for neglect and abuse in the home. It is very hard to comprehend that 50% of the parents in Clare County are neglecting and abusing their children. Clare County is a "demonstration county" that is a pilot county for The Binsfield Laws supported by Federal Grants. These programs involve privatizing the foster care system. The foster care program hires private industry to service the foster care needs of the county children removed from the home.
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How does the system work? FIA initially offers families free, voluntary services through prevention services to the families on the FOC (Friend of the Court files, AFDC files, Employment Security Commission files, Social Security files, etc.) such as free parenting classes, free nutrition programs, free homemaker services, free budgeting classes, free employment training programs, etc. The prevention worker works closely with the family to coordinate these free services by meeting with the family in their home on a regular basis, once or twice per week. While working with the family, the worker identifies problems areas that put the children at risk for abuse and neglect so as to qualify the family for these free services, such as poor parenting skills, homemaker skills, budgeting skills, and employment seeking skills.

The flip side of this arrangement is that the worker is building a case of neglect and abuse against the parents. Most problems identified are lack of bonding with the children and nurturing due to the parents' participation in these free programs. Basically, the parents are putting their needs before the children's needs by focusing on their problems as identified in their participation in these programs. Furthermore, workers in these programs work in tandem with FIA to identify other risk factors such as poor parenting skills, why else would a parent take a free parenting class if they themselves have admitted to having poor parenting skills. Voluntarily entering into these programs is an actual admission to poor parenting, nutrition, homemaker, budgeting, or employment seeking skills that put the child at risk for neglect and abuse that lay the foundation for child protective proceedings in the Probate/Family Court.

The Courts believe that the FIA workers are the professionals and take their word as gold. The parents cannot defend against FIA. The testimony and statements mean nothing in the Probate/Family Court. In fact the Court can issue an emergency pick up order for the children based on only FIA's statements in an ex-parte hearing conduct by the judge and the FIA worker.

The parents are not present during these hearings. The Court will issue an ex-parte emergency order allowing the FIA work to enter the home or child's school to remove the child from the parents custody. The parents do get a hearing approximately two weeks later after the removal of the child but FIA is only required to prove that probable cause exists that the children are at risk of neglect and abuse if they remain in the home.

Approximately 90 days later the parents may have a trial to determine whether by a preponderance of the evidence that the children are at risk to abuse or neglect if they are returned to the home. Most parents plea to abuse or neglect upon FIA's promise that if the parents plea and engage in services they will get their children back sooner. Most parents plea to charges that they have a temper, they have beaten their children by merely spanking them, they have failed to provide the child with medical attention when they had cold symptoms, or they are unable to provide for the basic needs of the child because they are temporarily unemployed. The Court then takes jurisdiction over the children, places them in foster care and orders the parents to follow the Parent/Agency Agreement to be drafted by FIA. FIA then engages in a lengthy and vague process of ordering the parents to engage in specific services, such as individual counseling, parenting classes again, anger management classes and counseling, psychological evaluations, drug and alcohol testing, classes and counseling, etc. Once parents complete these services, FIA informs the parents, usually during a court proceeding that they have not dealt with the proper issues in these programs that initially led to the removal of the children or the parents have not satisfactorily completed the programs because they will not or are not mentally able to comprehend their actions and the affect of their actions that have harmed their children. It is a no-win situation. FIA is in complete control of the interpretation of whether the parents have successfully completed the Parent/Agency Agreement.

Furthermore, if the parents elect to participate in FIA's services with their hired agencies, then the parents never successfully complete the Parent/Agency Agreement. These agencies are FIA's hired hands that build a case against the parents. If the parents elect to engage in services provided by professionals of their choice or referred by their HMO or other health care providers, then the parents must pay enormous amount of money for these services and for these professionals to come to court on their behalf to testify. More importantly, the Court views parents hired witnesses as hired hands and discounts any testimony given by these professionals as being adversarial, unbelievable and hired hands of the parents. FIA and some of the Court have gone as far as accusing the parents of failing to comply with the Parent/Agency Agreement by engaging their own professionals for service which has been deemed grounds for termination of parental rights. It is a no win situation that fails to focus on the best interest of the child.

Many parents have similar stories of emotionally draining encounters with the DCFS. Steven Ash, (not his real name) an indulged 14-year-old, sassed his mother in a moment of disrespect. The boy's comments caused his father to raise his hand and warn: "You better watch your language or I'll cuff you on the side of the head." The boy accepted the challenge, so the father kept his promise and cuffed him, more in fun than anger. He then gave the boy a helping boot in the rear and told him to mow the lawn. In seconds, the incident was over and forgotten. But a neighbor who had spied the raised hand and heard the father's threatening tone dutifully reported the matter to DCFS. The next day, the boy was yanked out of school and interrogated for three hours by DCFS officials who threatened to place the boy in a foster home. Steven's mother, who had to be sent to bed with a sedative that night, said she had never been so distressed in her life. "These people from DCFS have no idea how they disrupt people's lives," she says. [They do. They just don't care. -RT]

UPDATE: A domestic-relations judge who asks that I not use his name emails:

Tell me about it. The words "due process of law" are wholly unknown to vast portions of the (administrative) child support network. I'm surprised it hasn't been hugely publicized so far, and it's not going to get better. Here in Ohio, the legislature's attempt to enact a "paternity fraud" law is getting a hostile reception from the courts.

He's right -- and, indeed, the entire child-welfare bureaucracy seems actively hostile to due process considerations. - instapundit 8:46 AM 2/3/04