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Is separating 416 children from their mothers to place them into foster care a good idea - ever? Dr. Phil doesn’t think so. A few quick statistics on the foster care system can erase any notion that these children could have a normal, healthy life once separated from their mothers. Clearly, the polygamy sect puts authorities in a difficult situation. But separating hundreds of children from their mothers and purposefully sending them into a such a potentially turbulent existence - which will likely land the majority of them on the street or in prison - is enough to make any concerned citizen think twice.

King: Let’s turn to the polygamy matter. If the allegations of abuse are true, do you see any problem with all of these children in foster care? Watch Dr. Phil talk with Larry King about the removal of the FLDS children »

McGraw: I see huge problems with it, Larry. Read the rest of this entry »

Updated with another video.

Updated with video.

Tenured University of Michigan classical archeology professor, Christopher Ratte, took his 7-year-old son to a Tigers baseball game at Comerica Park in Detroit, Michigan. He ordered a drink for himself and what he thought was a lemonade for his son. The reality was he had ordered a Mike’s Hard Lemonade, which is an alcoholic drink for his young son. Ratte said that he didn’t even know that there was such a thing as alcoholic lemonade. Check out this photo of a sign of the drinks menu.

A security guard witnessed the boy drinking it and the eventual result was this young boy spending three days and two nights in foster care. Before you jump to conclusions please read the details about this case below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Implicit or explicit in the arguments of greater government intrusion in families is that we can’t trust parents (e.g. the debate over homeschooling in California). Never said but always implicit in those arguments is that government can always be trusted with children without check.

When anyone says that we should abandon the fundamental right of parents in favor of the “best interest of the child” they are saying that parents cannot be trusted and government can.

Those of us that support the parental rights doctrine say that the presumption of trust should be with the parents. As a society we have always presumed that parents love their children and want what is best for them. As Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger said in the Parham v. J.R. (1979) opinion:

The law’s concept of the family rests on a presumption that parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life’s difficult decisions. More important, historically it has recognized that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children.

…

The statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition.

I love that line, “repugnant to American tradition.” Speaking of repugnant to the American tradition, check out this video that highlighs the sad tale of government power intruding into the family: Read the rest of this entry »

The Press-Enterprise has this story about a California family, still reeling from the trauma of separation by state social workers…

Kirk and Leslie Udvardi’s four children were born with serious medical conditions that resulted in more than 400 trips to the hospital. When Leslie grew frustrated at doctors’ failed attempts to diagnose her children, she turned to the internet and the Chiari Institute in Great Neck, N.Y., one of a handful of hospitals in the country that specializes in a medical condition that she feared that her children might have.  Doctors at the Institute have since confirmed that the mother’s suspicions were on-target.

But instead of welcoming this input, doctors reported the Udvardi’s to social services, suspecting that Leslie had Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a mental disorder in which a parent lies about a child’s illness or inflicts injuries to get attention from doctors.  The social workers intervened, taking custody of the children while they were at school and placing them in foster care for six days, until the parents’ case went to trial.

The judge criticized the county’s expert witness and dismissed the county to have the four children permanently removed from their parents’ custody, but the family now faces a new challenge: paying off the $151,000 in legal fees spent fighting off the allegations.  Even worse, legal standards prevent the family from recouping the costs from the social workers who made the initial allegations.

“Our judicial system has become grossly iniquitous,” Leslie writes in an open letter.  “Medical professionals responsible for unbiased and honest evaluations have the power to devastate and destroy families with no legal accountability.”

In the meantime, the family is struggling to find a way to meet the costs.  “We still have the debt and the emotional scars,” eighteen year-old Samuel says. “Maybe, eventually, I will get over it, but it’s going to take some time.”

A mother loses three children to CPS… then loses three more

While it may take weeks, months or years to take someone’s freedom away, on May 16, 2005, it took only 17 minutes to take three children away from their mother.

Vanessa Shanks of Hardin County, Kentucky, is one of the many parents each year who lose their children to the state, often in confidential hearings. Shanks was originally charged with truancy, but social workers later declared her home to be unsafe after they discovered an open bleach bottle on the floor: left out because she had just finished doing the laundry. Apalled by what they had found, Kentucky Child Protective Services moved to terminate Shanks’s parental rights to three of her six children.

A NIGHTMARE IN SEVENTEEN MINUTES

The state accused Shanks of educational and medical neglect. The evidence? The social worker testified that Shank’s eleven year-old child had a kindergarten reading-level, and that some of the children had missed days at school, though no records or testimony from the school was produced. The evidence for “medical neglect” was equally spurious: the social worker testified that one of the three children, who had been diagnosed with spina bifida, had missed some doctor’s appointments.

But this scanty evidence was more than enough for the family court judge, who ruled after only seventeen-minutes that the children should be placed in the custody of the state.

“I didn’t see my children for 11 months. It is the hardest thing you can go through,” said Shanks. “It’s like someone close to you just dies, like you don’t have a part of you anymore.”

CPS RETALIATES

When Shanks decided to appeal the decision, the unthinkable happened: CPS came after her again, this time removing her other three children, as well as fourteen children from her extended family.

“The first thing they came to us and said was, ‘Well, you started an appeal,’” Shanks said. “Nothing else.”

Shanks turned to local attorney Bob Bishop for help, who said he couldn’t believe what he saw when he took Shanks’s case. “There has to be something, some evidence of wrongdoing that has placed a child in danger or has hurt the child, and a pattern of conduct not due to poverty alone,” said Bishop.

In response, CPS removed Bishop’s adopted daughter from his home. “They said if you don’t cooperate with us, we’re going to take all of your children away, and we’re going to charge you with emotional abuse,” said Jennifer Bishop, the attorney’s wife.

SAD REALITY

In 2006, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled that the judge made a mistake in removing Shanks’s three children, unanimously ruling that the state had acted in haste and offered no proof of abuse or neglect. But reunions like this are rare: terminations of parental rights have been upheld in the majority of such cases before the court over the past 10 years.

Shortly after Shanks’s children were restored, the director of Kentucky CPS said that the state would review the way parental rights are terminated. Yet earlier this month, a report issued by the state inspector general found that some social workers have been accused of “suspicious conduct” by fellow social workers, including lost records and conflicts-of-interest in termination proceedings.

FIGHTING FOR PARENTAL RIGHTS

Vanessa Shanks’s story highlights the dangers that parents face when the state steps in and takes the role of the parent. It can take years to bring a shattered family back together, but it only takes seventeen minutes to tear one apart.

Please join with us by encouraging your friends to get involved in the battle to protect parental rights. Please forward this email to your friends, and encourage them to join the campaign today at http://www.parentalrights.org/petition.

To see the full report on Vanessa Shanks’ story, see this report done by Channel 32 News, Louisville, Kentucky: http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/true-stories/parenting-while-poor-you-might-lose-your-kids

SOURCES

Target 32: Kentucky’s Child Protection System Investigated
http://www.wlky.com/target32/9478131/detail.html

Target 32 Investigates: Child Protective Services
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21760886/

If this doesn’t make your blood boil nothing will. A mom lost one of her kids because she was poor. When she appealed, CPS retaliated by taking her other kids and then briefly removing children from her extended family! When she finally got a lawyer they took the lawyer’s kids too! Should the government be restricted to recognizing the fundamental rights of parents? Or should we just allow the government to determine what is in the “best interest of the child”? Watch the video and then encourage your friends to sign the Parental Rights Amendment petition:

Indiana Mother Accused of Child Abuse for Taking her Daughter to the ER

It started as a precautionary visit to the ER after an accident on the soccer field.

When Marilyn Brown decided to take her fifteen year-old daughter, Margrette, to the emergency room two weeks ago, she didn’t think she was doing anything extraordinary. Margrette had been hurt in a collision during a soccer game, which left a mark above her eye. The athletic trainer on the field didn’t think the injury was too bad, but Marilyn decided to take her daughter to the ER at Methodist Hospital - just in case.

When they arrived, staff members at the Indianapolis hospital told Marilyn that the wait time would be about two hours. The mother and daughter waited for over four hours, with no one able to tell them how much longer it would be before they could be seen.

ACCUSED OF . . . CHILD ABUSE?

Her daughter was exhausted so Marilyn decided to take her home and see her own doctor in the morning. She couldn’t believe what happened next. Hospital officials informed Marilyn that if she removed her child from the ER, the staff would report her to Child Protective Services for suspected child abuse. Read the rest of this entry »

When Doug and Sally Stansfield took their eight-month old son Gabriel to Morristown Memorial Hospital, they thought their son was only being treated for a bowel obstruction. Instead, they found themselves under an intense investigation by social services.

Little Gabriel was born with spina bifida, a birth defect that results in an incomplete closure of the spinal column. According to the Spina Bifida Association, spina bifida is the most frequently occurring permanently disabling birth defect, affecting approximately one out of every 1,000 newborns in the United States. There are more than 70,000 people in the United States who are living with this birth defect.

Gabriel had been previously evaluated and treated for spina bifida by a doctor at Morristown Memorial Hospital. The family also continued treatment as prescribed by their family pediatrician, with no complications. But in the midst of their most recent visit to the hospital with Gabriel, Doug and Sally were shocked to learn that an allegation of child abuse or neglect had been filed against them. Read the rest of this entry »

When Doug and Sally Stansfield took their eight-month old son Gabriel to Morristown Memorial Hospital, they thought their son was only being treated for a bowel obstruction. Instead, they found themselves under an intense investigation by social services.

Little Gabriel was born with spina bifida, a birth defect that results in an incomplete closure of the spinal column. According to the Spina Bifida Association, spina bifida is the most frequently occurring permanently disabling birth defect, affecting approximately one out of every 1,000 newborns in the United States. There are more than 70,000 people in the United States who are living with this birth defect.

Gabriel had been previously evaluated and treated for spina bifida by a doctor at Morristown Memorial Hospital. The family also continued treatment as prescribed by their family pediatrician, with no complications. But in the midst of their most recent visit to the hospital with Gabriel, Doug and Sally were shocked to learn that an allegation of child abuse or neglect had been filed against them.

A FRIGHTFUL HOME VISIT

Hospital officials informed the parents of the complaint as a way of explaining why they were refusing to release Gabriel to his parents after his visit. Shortly thereafter, a social worker and uniformed police officers appeared on the family’s doorstep, demanding admittance to interview Gabriel’s six siblings about the condition of their baby brother–without the presence of their parents.

The Stansfields refused, pointing out Gabriel had been treated for his bowel obstruction, was in good health, and was ready to be discharged from the hospital. When the social worker persisted, the parents agreed to allow their children to be interviewed, as long as their lawyer could be present and would have the authority to stop the interview. The social workers eventually backed down from this heavy-handed demand.

PRISONER OF THE STATE

After the social worker and police had left, the Stansfields called the hospital and were told that the staff had been informed of the situation. Hospital officials warned the couple that social services was planning to stop them from bringing Gabriel home, even though he was being discharged.

The Stansfields immediately directed the hospital to prevent the physician they suspected of generating the complaint from giving Gabriel any further treatment. Instead, they were informed that their parental rights had been terminated. The Stansfields went straight to the hospital, accompanied by their attorney, and asked to see the court order terminating their parental rights. The hospital had no court order, but did have a state social services form that allows children to be evaluated for three days. Even though they did not have the proper court order, the hospital consistently refused to release Gabriel to his parents.

HOMECOMING

Last Thursday, the Stansfields finally brought eight-month old Gabriel home, after a four-hour conference with social workers. The father, Doug, was overjoyed at the return of his son, but also expressed anger and frustration at the actions of social services in this case. “A doctor that doesn’t know my family at all and has never met them or been to my house can make one phone call which will cause this much harassment,” he told WorldNetDaily. Such a case “is outrageous and shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”

WHO DECIDES?

While the information and opinions expressed by physicians certainly help parents decide how best to treat their child, the role of primary decision-maker should be lodged first and foremost in the parent. Unfortunately, the Stansfields’ situation highlights a growing tendency among government and social service officials to second-guess the decisions that parents make for their children, and even to substitute their own judgments for those of the parents.

Action is needed if we are to protect the right of parents to make decisions concerning the upbringing and medical treatment of their children. Join with us by encouraging your friends to get involved in the battle to protect parental rights. Forward this email to your friends, and encourage them to join the campaign today and sign the petition at www.parentalrights.org/petition.

SOURCES

Baby Ordered Held by Social Services Returned to Family
www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58197

Spina Bifida Association
www.sbaa.org