Replies

"Someone I know knows this family personally and they say Johnson is a stand up family man. This is REALLY FRIGHTENING!!!!!!!!!!"

I'm sure it is. However, CPS is not always wrong in their assessment of situations. They are, sometimes, but sometimes, they save kids who are in danger.

And third-party reports of someone's character are not always valid assessments.

I used to work in a public library as a volunteer. My job was to shelve books and occasionally help kids find materials they needed for school projects. I put in over 2000 hours doing this over about five years.

There were a few households who home-schooled their kids. A couple of those simply dumped the kids off at the library in the morning and retrieved them in the afternoon. Most of the kids were OK, and spent the time reading and doing assignments from their parents.

But...there was this girl...about 12 years old. She always sat at the farthest table and didn't do hardly anything at all while she was there. And she was there almost every day from opening time to about 5PM when her step-father picked her up.

She never smiled. She never said a word. She didn't read any of the books. Everyone who worked there tried to befriend this kid, just with smiles and a nice hello, or maybe a recommendation of a book to look at. She always just shook her head violently when someone tried to engage her.

After a couple of months, the head librarian of the branch tried to talk to the girl's step-father, just to describe her concern. The step-father threatened to sue her if she ever bothered his daughter again. I was there, and heard him yelling at her, and stepped up to provide a male presence. He backed off.

Still, he kept dropping her off at the library. The librarian finally contacted the CPS about her concerns about this sad kid. They came to the library and interviewed her, then did further investigation.

Turned out that the step-father was sexually abusing the girl, and physically abusing her mother into silence. The "home-schooling" was nothing but a ruse. It turned out that she couldn't read a word, and that he had been having sex with her since she was 6 years old. He's in prison now. The girl killed herself when she was 16.

He was a deacon of the local Methodist church. Everyone thought he was a strong family man. Guess not.

This is why I do not automatically take sides in such cases. I've seen the other side of the coin. There's absolutely nothing wrong with home-schooling. There are those, however, who use the pretense of home-schooling for other reasons. It happens.

There's a quote in this email that bothers me:

"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."

When the family did this, they pretty much established a legal presumption of guilt, and they are going to have one hell of a time keeping their children under any circumstances.

There are people who abuse homeschooling. Some people abuse firearms ownership; others operate businesses in an unethical manner. Both the mainstream and alternate media are abused to unjustly slander individuals or willfully misrepresent facts. Some clergy engage in sexual or financial misconduct. The difference between the homeschoolers (or parents generally) and the other groups of people is that in the case of homeschooler or parent, an agency of the state (generally called CPS) can preemptively take custody of the children alleged to have been victimized without the protections of habeas corpus or due process. The gun owner, businessman, member of the media, or clergyman do not lose their property or livelihood, much less their liberty, without a civil or criminal trial.

Parents should receive equal protection of the law as do other classes of people. The CPS agencies should not be able to take children without a court order, and then only after a court of general jurisdiction (and not a so-called family court) has determined that there is immediate danger to the life of the children. (A room smelling of urine hardly qualifies as such.) There should be no anonymous accusers. In all cases, there should be a swift trial, with the defendant afforded adequate legal representation. Additionally, if the parents defeat CPS, the state should reimburse the defendants for court costs at market rates. (I believe this should be the case not only for child custody trials, but all civil and criminal trials. This would be a great way to limit abuses by prosecutors, police, and government agencies. At present, only the wealthy have a level playing field in the courts of this nation.)

The right of the individual to be safe from unwarranted government intrusion in his personal and business matters is fundamental to our form of government. The last century witnessed an enormous erosion of this right. The trend must be reversed.

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.