What Are We Doing To Our Children?
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/54843
Victoria Hardy
March 10, 2008
What are we doing to our children? Typically I jump from subject to
subject, circling the tapestry attempting to see the bigger picture, but
a few weeks ago I wrote an article,
Is Ritual Child Abuse Just a Hoax?,
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/52590
and naively, I have been surprised by some of the responses it has
generated. The idea that adults could join together to harm children and
use them solely as objects is something most do not wish to even
consider. And I understand that the words ritual abuse are startling to
our senses, so I began following just the threads of child abuse and
have been surprised at how systematic it is in our culture.
As I sought to uncover the long arms of childhood victimization, I
noticed a consistent disregard for children and a tendency to treat them
more as objects, than humans, not just in the sordid world of human
trafficking, but throughout institutions that house troubled, abused or
unruly children. In the news articles I´m about to share, there were
often repeated complaints by children that were ignored, shuffled under
and quickly forgotten, while the abuses continued on, unchecked. Our
children have become prey for the profiteers, not just the pedophiles
and child pornographers, but businesses, corporations and social
agencies designed to "help" kids.
In 2002, a child abuse scandal rocked Portugal and has yet to be
resolved as 10 people were indicted on charges of sexually abusing
minors, rape and organizing a pedophile ring. The children abused were
housed in state run homes and orphanages and those indicted included a
famous media personality, a former employment minister and a former
South African ambassador.
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/21/childprotection.uk
In Britain, officials are excavating a basement under a former care
home, which is now a youth hostel, seeking as many as 7 bodies of
children.
Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/25/njersey125.xml
The remains of one skeleton has been found and detectives believe they
are looking at one of the worst child abuse scandals ever at a British
institution. A covert investigation began in 2006 when former residents
contacted police and complained of the abuse they suffered as children
in Haut de la Garenne (which translates into rabbit warren) care home.
Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper said the allegations range from "from
pretty severe physical and mental abuse right through to the most
serious sexual crimes that you can imagine."
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/jersey/7127467.stm
In 2006, a sex scandal hit the Texas Youth Commission, which houses
troubled youth, aged 10 to 21, across the state. Yet again, complaints
were made for years by both the staff and the inmates, but the
complaints were not investigated and the alleged perpetrators were
promoted. In 2005, the Texas Rangers began looking into the allegations,
but it was still 2 years before the case received any national
attention. Since 2000, 90 employees and contractors at TYC facilities
have been disciplined or fired for sexual misconduct with inmates.
Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/021807dntextycsex.1bd0f05.html
In 2004, it came to light that children residing in privately owned
psychiatric centers in Ohio suffered molestation by workers, broken
bones, overcrowded and filthy conditions, were denied food and given
alcohol and drugs. The children involved were abuse victims, anorexic
girls, teen sex offenders and suicidal kids and were considered mentally
ill. Parents complained of overuse of drugs like Haldol and Thorazine
and children as young as eight were on as many as 6 psychotropic drugs
at one time, most not approved for children. At one center six workers
were indicted on 110 charges ranging from corruption of a minor to rape.
Cincinnati Enquirer
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/03/21/mentalhealth/loc_mentalday2.html
These cases are really just the tip of the iceberg, the ones that have
eventually been brought into light, and we would be fooling ourselves to
think these are isolated events. In researching these articles I´ve
pondered how someone could derive pleasure or accept money for hurting a
child and I´ve been startled by the darkness that resides in certain
human beings. It seems children have just become numbers on a graph,
easily manipulated to reap in more profits and housing children has
become a huge money making endeavor.
In 1997, the Clinton administration passed the Adoption and Safe
Families Act and it was marketed as a feel good solution to limit the
time children spent in foster care. Department of Health and Human
Services Previous to this legislation the focus was on "reasonable
attempts" to unite children with their biological families, but with the
introduction of ASFA, we in America, understood that the priority had
changed to promoting the welfare of the children. What most didn´t
understand was that with the new legislation, states would receive big
bonuses for adopting out children. And parents would be given only 15
months, before their children are adopted out to strangers, to prove to
the court (not a jury, but a judge) that they deserve to raise their own
kids.
In the new and improved system of protecting our children, profits
increased dramatically and lots of folks began making money. The amount
of money at the original signing of this law was $20 million in bonuses
to the state for adoption of foster-care children, $5 million for health
care of adopted kids with special needs, $11 million in subsidies for
special-needs children and the family-preservation program was
reauthorized with an additional $65 million and added adoption services
to its mandate.
About
http://pregnancy.about.com/library/weekly/aa111797.htm
So once "protective" services are involved the money making clock starts
ticking and then the priority is not in uniting families, there is no
bonus for that, but in making sure those children get through the system
quickly and get placed into new families. Now if these children all came
from terribly abusive families, I would agree that the system works, but
it doesn´t take long on the Internet to find out how families and
children are suffering over this law. We must remember this is a
business and businesses don´t make money without a product and in this
case, the product is children.
Massachusetts News
http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/2000/5_May/mayds4.htm
In 2001, there were over half a million children in foster care and in
the 1990s, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services confirmed
that they removed approximately 1000 kids a month from their homes.
According to Denise Kane, Inspector General of the Illinois DCFS, "The
majority of parents who come before our court love their children and
their children look to them with love and seek the attention and
nurturing of their parents."
In 1995, in Los Angeles County, California, 26,947 children entered
foster care. Testifying before a Congressional subcommittee hearing in
1993, Department Head Peter Digre admitted to legislators that half of
the children in the system were there due to poverty, not abuse or
neglect. Trevor Grant, former Director of Social Services of the New
York City Child Welfare Administration, has said that close to 85% of
cases labeled as neglect are actually poverty cases.
Lifting The Veil
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/foster02.htm
And once many of these kids are taken away from their homes and placed
into state care, their chances of abuse increase. During a two-year
period, one foster child died every 7 and ½ weeks in the state of
Arizona. In a one-year period at least 8 children died in foster care in
Massachusetts. And in New York, a 7-year-old girl was raped repeatedly
in institutional care, yet the caseworker deemed the allegations
unfounded, despite the testimony of credible witnesses, including staff
members.
Institute for Psychological Therapies
http://www.ipt-forensics.com/journal/volume10/j10_10_8.htm
According to Massachusetts Attorney Gregory A. Hession, once protective
services knock on your door, the nightmare begins and he has created a
website to assist parents with dealing with what he describes as the
illegal kidnapping of children. Included on his site is a list of 17
dirty tricks protection services use to remove and keep children from
their families. Dirty trick #3, "DSS agents will abuse and traumatize
your children themselves." He goes on to describe the trauma a child
feels being pulled from a parent´s arms, taken away and grilled over and
over about their home life by strangers. Dirty trick #10, "If DSS takes
your children, they will keep them a year, and try to adopt them out -
They earn up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year per child
taken, and keep a lot of cronies in work." Mr. Hession explains this
period of captivity as a lease, followed by the sale (adoption) after 15
months and that a new federal law has been put into place establishing
adoption quotas for each state. A couple other tricks he mentions are
refusing to place children with relatives and making parents wait a full
year before allowing their case to be heard by a judge.
Mass Outrage
http://www.massoutrage.com/dssdirtytricks.htm#Back
The conspiracy theorists tell us that powers greater than us are seeking
to destroy the family and it appears, yet again, they are correct. Dr.
Mary Jo Bane, Clinton's Assistant Secretary of Administration for
Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services,
has been quoted as having said, "If we want to talk about equality of
opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised in
families means there's no equality . . . In order to raise children with
equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise
them." With very little effort on the Internet one can find stories of
broken and exhausted parents who have nearly lost hope of seeing their
children again for offenses like refusing to put a child on Ritalin or
having a "messy" home or experiencing stress in a family or typical
childhood accidents that led to ER visits. And once protective services
have you in their sight, tighten your seat belt; it´s going to be a
bumpy ride.
So it seems we have created a system in our country that takes children
from homes, abuse or not, substantiated or not and places them in
government subsidized homes and institutions under the guise of
protection. There they keep them for a year with very limited contact
with their families, not just the alleged offenders, but siblings,
grandparents, aunts and uncles. And while they are held in state
"protection" their chances of abuse, physical, sexual, mental and
emotional increases by about 25 percent according to statistics of
states that have reported. And while these children are held, lots of
people are making money, lawyers, court personnel, court investigators,
evaluators and guardians, counselors, therapists, psychologists,
residential facilities, foster parents, adoptive parents and believe it
or not, the list continues.
We hear a lot in the media of the deaths of children not under state
protection. We hear about the awful parents who injure or kill and we
thank God for the protection services, but we rarely hear of the
tragedies that happen under state care. Part of the problem lies in
confidentiality laws and according to former Juvenile Court Justice,
Judy Sheindlin (yes, Judge Judy), "The only people being protected here
are caseworkers and other officials, who regularly hide behind a wall of
secrecy." The system is based on money, big money and steady employment
for many people, so the broken bones, rapes and deaths of the kids often
go unheard.
Now before my email box fills with folks telling me about wonderful
foster parents and social workers, let me clarify, I do not believe that
all are bad, I know there are good ones, but many of those end up
leaving the system, exhausted, disillusioned and frustrated. I also
understand that some children are being seriously abused and need to be
removed from abusive parents. What I am suggesting, however, is that the
system is flawed and taking time to check the links I have provided,
it´s clear that many who work in the system agree and feel it needs to
be reformed, at least and at most, torn down and rebuilt.
Children are not products and should not be bought, sold and managed
like inanimate objects. And really, when we think about the numbers and
consider the abuses, what are we doing to the next generations? How are
these kids supposed to move into the world and become high achievers?
How will these children adjust to the adult world without a cloud of
victim hood perpetually following them? Thankfully, some will survive
and shine in life, but that is only due to the amazing power of the
human spirit. Over and over through researching this subject I saw
children left in abusive parental homes while under state protection and
others taken from families and moved into abusive government subsidized
homes, so I´m asking, what are we doing to our children?
CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CONSTITUTIONALLY
GUARANTEED LIBERTIES & CIVIL RIGHTS ON A DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER
AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAMS....
CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.
every parent should read the free handbook from
connecticut dcf watch..
http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com
Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS
*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*
Physical Abuse CPS/Foster care 160, biological Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS/Foster care 112, biological Parents 13
Neglect CPS/Foster care 410, biological Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS/Foster care 14 biological Parents 12
Fatalities CPS/Foster care 6.4, biological Parents 1.5
Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.
CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...
BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...
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