Posted on 10/17/2005 12:14:30 PM PDT by Carry_Okie
Interested Parents,
Tuesday, October 18th at the Biltmore Hotel & Conference Center – 7:00 – 8:30pm, we are holding a meeting to inform, educate, and rally the public around the egregious abuse of power by the Santa Clara Social Services, Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) – Child Protective Services (CPS) as they attempt to rip my family, and many others apart. The Biltmore is located just south of Montague Expressway, east of highway 101 at 2151 Laurelwood Rd, Santa.
At issue are three key points that will be of interest to you as a parent:
Because we are home schoolers, we initially consulted the HSLDA who advised us not to allow CPS into our home or to interview our children unsupervised. We were further advised to seek the services of a local attorney to ensure that our rights as parents were not violated as we work to clear our names related to the allegations of child abuse, which we did.
The DFCS, as a result of our refusal to allow them to interrogate our young children without supervision, together with the fact that we home school and therefore they are unable to gain access to our children without our permission (as is commonly done when children attend school outside of the home), went to court and swore out a Protective Custody Warrant to force themselves into our home, to have their way with our children, and to remove my oldest son into their protective custody. Today, my wife and children are in hiding to protect our family, in a location not even know to me, while I have been engaged in a very distressing and disruptive court battle in an effort to have the Protective Custody Warrant quashed, a request that was denied last Friday.
To date, no one at DFCS has been interested in understanding our unique parenting needs, the resources we have used and the third parties who can speak to quality of our parenting, and love that we have for of all of our children. Their action, based on our stance of “tell us what you are concerned about so we can give you reasonable access to our family to resolve them”, has been to take the child and ask questions later. They have leveraged the courts in this effort.
Since DFCS has no interest, nor apparent requirements to ascertain the facts before they have ripped our family apart, we’ve decided to share them with you. Perhaps when you speak out someone in the agency will finally listen to how they are about to destroy yet another family in an effort to “protect” a child that does not need protection and initiate policy based changes. This is why I urge you to come out Tuesday evening! This is a completely free event paid for out of my paycheck.
Thank you for your support,
Mark I. Johnson
I can't see how having my ears connected while in the waiting room of a courthouse constitutes a crime but I guess I'll have to cross that bridge if it comes.
Why do you say that? Why do so many FReepers insist on assuming that their opponents in an article have some sort of evil intention?
Oh I see, sorry for the miscommunication.
Let me ask you this, do you have children?
Yup.
Would you let CPS into your home at anytime?
Meaning whenever they want, or would I ever let them in? There are situations in which I would let them in.
Would you sign a waiver stating that you will allow them to enter/search your home at any time of their chosing just for the privilege of them exonerating you of allegations of child abuse from an ex-spouse or baby sitter?
Nope.
This is EXACTLY what I had to go through when I dealt with them.
I don't doubt you. They are often terrible, terrible people, with no respect for the rights of others.
Interesting choices you get with these people. All you appologizers on this board, I pray a member of your family isn't falsely accused of child abuse. Because, when it happens, I guarantee your attitude toward them will change 180 degrees from where you are today.
Beleive me, I believe all the horror stories about them. The problem is this: The system exists the way it does. The law exists the way it does. Thus, in analyzing a one-off case, one must recognize the way that the cards are stacked. Acting guilty is not generally the best idea. Plus, FR has a long history of supporting child abusers who turned out to be just plain child abusers.
Look, this Mr. Johnson might be totally innocent. But we don't know, and there are a bunch of indications that perhaps he is not.
All the energy and dark warnings indicating that the diagnosis is inherently associated with maltreatment.
Why do so many FReepers insist on assuming that their opponents in an article have some sort of evil intention?
Why do so many FReepers insist on assuming that the parent is a likely abuser when the accuser has never seen the child?
This is not a court of law, it is a message board. People can talk about cases all they want. All we have to go on is what little info is posted. What little info is posted points to quackery.
"Why do so many FReepers insist on assuming that the parent is a likely abuser when the accuser has never seen the child?"
"The wicked flee when no one pursues" -- Proverbs 28:1
And by the way, I would suggest to Mr. Johnson, if he wants public support, that he explain what techniques he used and what the "discrepency in furniture" was. If he had a link to a therapist that clearly explained the technique, I am sure that more people would take his side. The reality is though, that RAD is often mis-diagnosed, and often leads to quackery in its treatment.
This is "civil law," as if the County were acting on behalf of a minor because they have no other representative. It therefore carries NONE of the Constitutional protections for parents that are afforded common criminals.
The problem is that the agent is backed up with police power. They thus gain powers they rightly should not have and lack respect for the parents' rights that they should have. The proceedings are held in secret, which allows for all sorts of abuse of evidentiary standards and judicial discretion.
It's hardly law at all as our founders understood it. You can thank Walter Mondale for that evil piece of legislation.
Look, this Mr. Johnson might be totally innocent. But we don't know, and there are a bunch of indications that perhaps he is not.
Mr. Johnson acted as HSLDA counsel advised him, attorneys with deep familiarity in such cases and no history of defending abusers.
I have no problem with that. If he wants general public support, he should be willing to provide a compelling case. My choice to back him is based in the support from his home school group, those who know him in our congregation, and my own experiences with the juvenile "justice" system as a child.
It's not usually abusers who have the guts to adopt a fetal alchohol and cocaine baby, (an assertion which of course I can't prove). It's not usually abusers who adopt at all.
The primary reason for the Sixth Amendment is that government officials have been know to abuse The People. In other words, can't be trusted to be honest and conduct of high integrity.
Government has only the power to crack down on criminals. When it doesn't have enough criminals it creates them. Bureaucrats and their automatons need "successful" case files to justify their paychecks
Me, I wimped out and signed the documents and gave them free access to my home. I could not afford an attorney to deal with them, but more importantly, my health and well-being coudn't survice openning another front in the child custody battle. It's utter crap that I had to waive my constitutionally protected rights just to stop government from destroying my family.
How about we unfund these unconstitutional Federally mandated organizations and go back to letting local law enforcement deal with these problems? They'll be a lot less homeschoolers and law-abiding citizens being shaken down and harrassed by government. In many counties, these agencies exist to serve the whim and will of divorce attorneys. This "for the children" notion is utter B.S.
Look, this Mr. Johnson might be totally innocent. But we don't know, and there are a bunch of indications that perhaps he is not.
What indications? All we know is a teenage girl alleged the abuse and the police found nothing. Did I miss something else?
am freeping from my phone now so excuse terseness and grammer. I have no doubt that evén if the worst of what I posted is true that he only has the best of intentions.
If a parent is guilty of a crime, charge them as such and let it play out in court.
In almost every CPS case I've read about they are on a witch hunt to declare people guilty until they people THEMSELVES prove themselves innocent. It is a mockery of our justice system. It's disgusting.
We don't even have kids yet, but I've had enough dealings with CPS in my family that I've told my husband when we do [have kids] if CPS shows up and he lets them in without seeing a search warrant, I'll kill him ;)
Homeschoolers are a definite target because the kids aren't going to the liberal indoctrination camps throughout the country. Homeschoolers, being majority Christian, therefore are targeted for wanting to have a choice the government doesn't like to allow!
"CPS has to follow the laws, but they often coerce people to let them in voluntarily by bringing the police with them to the house. Often times they intimidate the poor, uneducated people with the police and they LIE to them saying they are there to "help" the children."
You realize that you are using the liberal ideology that poor people are too stupid to manage their own affairs, right?
A babysitter that was in the house one time smelled urine and saw inconsistencies. in the boy's room. Inconsistencies could be anything. Perhaps the room was spotless yet the smell of urine was inconsistent with that.
There are an awful lot of busy-body do-gooders that do more harm than good. Many of them wield government power.
BINGO!
"Who should save the children? Now we are requesting the state to "save" them? How about family? Friends?
"If a parent is guilty of a crime, charge them as such and let it play out in court."
The problem is that, if that is the sole criterion you use, your evidence of a crime will frequently be one very dead child. Charging the parent does not bring the child back to life in such cases.
Here's a modest proposal: if that be your stance, then let's put some affirmative duty on all parties who you think SHOULD act to save the child. If a child dies because of parental abuse, then let's shoot the parent(s) immediately after the verdict is read by the jury. If another adult knows about said abuse and does nothing to stop it, shoot that adult as well. Forget about appeals, just pop everyone involved (or who refused to get involved) right there in the courtroom, and bill their families for the cost of the ammunition.
"In almost every CPS case I've _read_ about they are on a witch hunt to declare people guilty until they people THEMSELVES prove themselves innocent. It is a mockery of our justice system. It's disgusting."
I have been knowledgeable of several CPS cases over the years. The parents of the child always tell a tale of woe and of being picked on by those mean, nasty CPS thugs. In the vast majority of these cases, there is, to steal Paul Harvey's notorious line, "the rest of the story," and it's not a good one.
"So much speculation emanating from so little preliminary facts."
And the father of the child is being extremely reticent with those facts.
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