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
FAS can often produce a "child without a conscience". My bet is that this kid is sheer evil--abusing his siblings, destroying property, etc. That Carry_Okie hasn't met this kid because the parents can't bring him to church is quite telling. I have heard of caregivers who would never otherwise hurt a fly resort to chaining FAS kids to bed every night so they can get some sleep; they can be that violent & destructive.
Knowing so little about the situation, I'm not passing judgment, but FAS children make me question my anti-encouraged-sterlization stance. 75-85%+ of all prisoners have FAS.
Was the father asking for your opinion, Rodney? I thought he was pleading for people to support him in his efforts to reunite his family.
"There should be a way to weed out bad CPS workers-as in a profession."
Yeah, my friend was a good one but there are bad ones out there, too. As I mentioned, she was fearless about going into some bad areas of town and would only remove kids when the situation implied an immediate danger. After all, if you go into a home that is filthy, with a single welfare Mom who is high all the time, never feeds the kids or bathes them, just lets them fend for themselves, that's a pretty obvious situation for removing those children. She knew she couldn't save them all but she was able to save some of them.
On the other hand there was a very high-profile situation where a woman spanked her child in a grocery store and someone reported her. Even though the child was in a good family situation, with both parents at home, stable environment, well cared for, etc., and none of the children was being abused, the DFCS case worker considered removing the child from the home. To me that is excessive.
That's just silly. If you post a public plea, you should expect people to comment on it. You keep making points that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. Once again, if you don't want people to comment on your situtation, then don't make your situation public. If you only want people with RAD kids involved with your situation, then only make your plea to those with RAD kids.
Look, your position is this:
1. I have a certain experience with RAD kids.
Therefore: Anyone who claims to have a RAD kid gets my unqualified support in anything that they do.
I think your position is illogical, but it is clear that you are not going to change.
Is it totally unreasonable for the government to interview the child's therapist and other medical professionals treating this child before coming to a conclusion of abuse ?
So you're maintaining that, based on limited information, it is safe to assume that the mere existence of a "whole bunch of crap RAD therapies" would justify taking a child from his home based on the word of a babysitter who never even met the child? In previous posts, you continue to point at the smell of urine in the bedroom as some sort of just cause, yet I'm telling you that RAD (and other behavior challenged children) frequently urinate for manipulation purposes among other things. Again, until you have had one of these kids living in your home, you cannot understand (and, thus, cannot offer any type of educated or valid opinion).
/communication with RK
Which brings me back to my wonderment in post #201 about why the therapist was not permitted to testify and whether the child's pediatrician or other doctors were called to testify.
As Carrie-Okie pointed out, since the proceedings were confidential, we do not know who testified and who was not permitted to testify. That knowledge would be helpful in answering many of the debated questions on this thread.
No, I said no such thing.
In previous posts, you continue to point at the smell of urine in the bedroom as some sort of just cause,
No, I am saying that it is one of a few factors that would lead CPS to have interest. yet I'm telling you that RAD (and other behavior challenged children) frequently urinate for manipulation purposes among other things.
Yes, I know.
Again, until you have had one of these kids living in your home, you cannot understand (and, thus, cannot offer any type of educated or valid opinion).
That's just stupid and illogical. And futher, if it is true, then this fellow should only make his plea for help to people who have had RAD kids live with them.
No, but that is not what has happened here. The government had not come to a conclusion of abuse at all. The Dad, wouldn't let them conduct their standard investigation (which I will admit, is problematic in that CPS often behaves unconstitutionaly).
Once again, people here are confusing "in a court of law" with "on a message board".
My reply is not intended to offend you MM, but it may offend you simply because I intend to be blunt.
Why should we accept your personal testimony over the email sent to Carey, and her personal testimony. Her post has some facts that can be validated with research and has been supported by Sandy, another long established memeber of this board.
Your testimony though has some bais hurdles that need to be overcome. First, you are an atheist, and the majority of home schoolers are Christians. From your bio, it appears that in the past you have been confronted by zealous Christians and are tired of it. I could be wrong about that, but the inference is not a huge leap.
Second, your personal testimony versus my personal testimony. I also worked for a local public library, but not for anywhere near as many hours as you. The reason I limited my tenure is that I found almost to the librarian, most were pro-public school. So zealous were they in fact that they were angered by home schoolers.
I suspect this anger, from the older librarians was from the idea that when they started at the library, schools were decent and now pride prevents them from admitting they were wrong in their near fanatic support of public school, even though schools have now deteriorated to daytime juvenile detention centers.
The horrible accounts of the CPS taking children from law-abiding parents, mostly home schoolers are nothing new. Well over twenty years, socialist zealots who hate home schooling have filled the ranks of the CPS and have taken chidren and kept them from the parents for several years.
"FAS can often produce a "child without a conscience". My bet is that this kid is sheer evil--abusing his siblings, destroying property, etc. That Carry_Okie hasn't met this kid because the parents can't bring him to church is quite telling. I have heard of caregivers who would never otherwise hurt a fly resort to chaining FAS kids to bed every night so they can get some sleep; they can be that violent & destructive.
"
That's possible, but we don't have enough information to make that assumption. We do know that the kid is supposed to have RAD. Since none of us are there, we can't decide what the best course is in this case.
I'm just concerned about the possibility that some of the more, shall I say, unorthodox therapies are being used here. If that is the case, then CPS has a legitimate reason to thoroughly investigate.
Perhaps we'll learn more. Perhaps not.
There are two likely scenarios: 1. CPS is running roughshod on these people, or 2. The therapist has questionable practices. Finding out who the therapist is would very quickly resolve much of the questions here.
That said, I know nothing about Santa Clara County. I suspect that the judges are quite different from the mainly conservative family judges where I live who are fairly strict about removals.
Do you not know that if CPS came to your house and kidnapped or attempted to kidnap your children I would be right there defending you? Naive? Maybe.
But I happen to like the "innocent until proven guilty" thingy in our Constitution. That is NOT what happens when CPS is called. It's a witch hunt, plain and simple. It is an abused agency most often used by feminists and leftists to suit their agenda.
State Sponsored Terrorism
http://www.fightcps.com">Fight CPS
http://groups.msn.com/FightCPS
http://fightcps.blogspot.com/
http://www.angelfire.com/ny3/emap/fight/cps.html
http://reliableanswers.com/cps/
Look, I agree with you 100%. I would support any and all changes to CPS to make them conform to the constiution. However, meanwhile that is not going to prevent me from discussing whether or not there might be something to CPS's case when there are a few troubling signs despite the fact that we only have one side of the story.
Is this true? I've been a member of HSLDA for around 14 years and always thought it covered the complete cost of a trial. Thankfully, I've never had to find out.
Take notice! This will be placed in your records. It will not be tolerated!
Now, go back and insert the word "some" before FR and I'll drop the complaint. ;^)
I'm not endorsing the abusive tactics that are often used by CPS agencies, and I agree that these cases should be handled as crminal cases. Police should be in charge of any removal of children from their homes, and social workers should just be along to help. BUT family and friends need someone to call when they think they see a need for intervention, because family and frineds are no more entitled to grab children from their parents than are misguided social workers.
Some abusive parents are violent, and may react to an attempted intervention by family or neighbors by either assaulting the person who tried to intervene, or by stepping up the abuse of the child (and sometime the mother as well). Which is another reason why police, and not just social workers, should be in charge of intervention actions. After a parent has been charged, and been through a court proceeding, THEN it can be appropriate to have some court-imposed requirement that the family or parent submit to some social worker-only involvement.
Removal of the child can't always wait for a court proceeding. Too often, the child is dead before criminal charges can be brought. If police learn that a parent is taking a child to a "therapist" who is "prescribing" dangerous pseudo-treatments, and can provide a judge with evidence of that much, then the state should be able to intervene. I do think, however, that when the state is removing a child from a home, there should be an option for the whole family to move into a supervised residential facility, until the parents are tried, and either cleared or convicted. It would be much less traumatizing to children and parents, while still enabling the state to protect the child from serious harm.
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