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
"If they had taken one of my kids, though, you can bet your bippy I'd have put the second one into hiding!"
Which, ironically, would be iron-clad cause for termination of your parental rights, because flight always has and always will demonstrate guilty intent.
You weren't supposed to notice that.
If you continue to read the thread you will see that I am just about the only person who did research on it.
"Good" being the operative word here. I know that homeschoolers are in the line of fire in California and in some other states as well, and perhaps it is standard procedure in some areas to use CPS as a back door avenue of attack on homeschooling, an attitude that could understandably make homeschooling parents very defensive. The government doesn't like people it can't track easily. Neither does private enterprise, for that matter.
There is a lot of variation in method and procedure from state to state as far as CPS goes. I have had to work with them in several states, and am sometimes amazed at the variance. Speaking for the laws here though, and as someone who is in the role of having to make decisions about removing children from their homes, I can tell you that I personally NEVER make that determination lightly, and do whatever possible to avoid it. The most common practice, if the family is discovered to have real issues with making their chidren a priority and providing a safe environment for them, is to open a PS case and try and help the family (usually a single mother) to deal with the problem that had CPS called in the first place. If a family consistently refuses to deal with these matters, then it is possible that the children would be removed.
Most often when children are removed from a home, we are not dealing with "good" parents, in the traditional sense of the word. Our typical client is a single mother, often with serious alcohol or drug abuse problems, typically not working and often knowingly exposing their children to sex offenders. These are people who leave their children with anyone...or with no one at all, or those who allow their children to be subjected to serious physical abuse at the hands of the "boyfriend" or mate of the week, and then refuse to protect the child even after less restrictive intervention is attempted. And with few exceptions, when a child is removed from the home, it is always the goal to reunite the family as quickly as possible.
A note about homeschooling and CPS: there is home schooling, and there is "home avoiding schooling." The former involves loving and committed parents who are trying to provide the best education possible for their children and maintain their own God-given authority over what their children are exposed to. The latter is the family that uses "homeschooling" as a means of continuing in an irresponsible lifestyle and there is very little intentional education occurring. As long as they register their kids as homeschoolers they can let them lay up in bed all day and no one will be any the wiser....and they have the added benefit of knowing that their children won't be going off to school and exposing family secrets (like the meth lab in the shed or the 7 year olds "relationship" with her "uncle" who is paying the bills) to prying eyes.
Add in the drug abusing birth mother and read more on RAD than the little you've quoted - many, many factors can lead to RAD. A child failing to form trusting bonds in the first two years of life can come from many things. Chronic ear infections and multiple invasive medical procedures can also lead to RAD. Essentially, when an infant cries, it is "asking" for help - if that help does not come or cannot be given (i.e., a drug addicted infant that cannot be helped during withdrawal or other pains which cannot be addressed), the child will cease to trust that their needs can be met. Add in the 'rejection' by the birth mother and you've got a prime candidate for RAD. There is NOTHING a loving, nurturing parent (adoptive or otherwise) can do if RAD is formed based on unmet needs that are beyond a parent's control. No matter how much cuddling, loving or nurturing they give, it won't be enough to conquer the programming the child received when forming it's initial ability to trust that it's needs would be met.
Funny aside, many of the RAD sites point out that parents often feel tremendously guilty and are most often the target of finger pointing when the reality is that very little responsibility for the disorder falls on the parent's shoulders.
Yes, it's amazing what assumptions can be made when presuming guilt before innocence, eh?
Yes, you researched attachment therapies, but what about the factors supporting the RAD diagnoses? Where did you list the many facets of the disorder and their causes? Where was the child's behavior and the difficulties within the family discussed? I saw 'research' (one person's opinion repeated by you) saying that the extreme therapies can be harmful, but I didn't see anything saying why parents would resort to such 'extremes'.
This is truly a case of you needing to walk a mile in their shoes before passing judgement.
Children do get abused. How can a social worker tell without contacting the family? Georgia law requires an investigation (too many Georgia children die this way).
No, it is a case of someobody making a public appeal for help, and the public going by what little information is available. The reality is that it is perfectly reasonable to raise the issue that an extraordinarily rare disease, with a high degree of quack treatments, coupled with a CPS investigation, might suggest that a quack treatment is going on. I didn't pass judgement on anyone. You are the one who is using emotion due to your own experiences rather than logic.
This is a message board, not a court of law. And nobody is presuming guilt, we are just not presuming innocence either.
Wow, I've read that exact sentence written by abortion advocates to argue with pro-lifers.
I've been through an investigation which was ruled unfounded (ex-husband of a good friend). I was very upset because I'm a private person and had to answer questions about my family. That being said, I was a teacher. I have seen abused kids more times than you can imagine. There has to be a child protection agency. Too many kids are injured/die at the hands of their parents. It happens. The CPS worker who interviewed me acted very professionally. She had a job to do; an allegation was made. Georgia law required the subsequent investigation. Why make her job more difficult by assuming the worst? CPS workers are not monsters. There should be a way to weed out bad CPS workers-as in a profession.
So?
Saying that you need to walk a mile in their shoes is my way of saying that you cannot begin the process of "going by what little information is available" until you fully understand life with a special needs child, be it RAD, ADD, ADHD, ODD, CD or any of the other behavior disorders. This is not me being "emotional" - it is me giving the benefit of the doubt in having read more on the disorder than just the "quackery" aspect to which you appear to have fully pledged yourself.
LIVE with a child who has one of the above disorders and THEN debunk their therapies as crap. Go on - I dare you :-)
If it the case that the public shouldn't take an opinion, then people shouldn't appeal to the general public to have an opinion.
1. All of your point have absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue at hand i.e. whether or not CPS is persecuting these people. And besides, one doesn't have to live with an RAD kid to know that there are a whole bunch of crap RAD therapies any more than I can know that beating kids with a belt is not an effective form of discipline without ever having done it myself.
Try homeschooling, and you will understand. Homeschool families regularly have CPS called by relatives and school districts because they disagree with their education decision. CPS doesn't like homeschooling either, so they come in predisposed to find something.
CPS has a tendency to grab kids to punish parents for decisions CPS doesn't like: owning guns, homeschooling, being a little too "republican."
Here in Houston they have even been so bold as to refuse court orders to return children to parents.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.