I resent your attitude toward foster parents. We have foster parents in our church who do God’s work in caring for children in this way. They get infants in the middle of the night whose mothers are in jail for attempting to murder someone, or who have been caught in a drug raid. These people treat these children better than they have ever been treated in their lives. There are a lot of horrible parents around these days, and I would guess that more children are abused by them or other relatives than are abused in foster care.
You are unjust in painting foster parents with such a broad brush.
"The children suffer behind an iron curtain of corrupt secrecy. That curtain was lifted a few years ago, long enough to get a brief but terrifying glimpse of what was being done by people who had placed themselves beyond accountability.
Scores of children were killed, poisoned, beaten, and otherwise abused each year. Child rape was terrifyingly common: The largest group of victims were between 12 and 15 years of age, but thirteen percent of the victims were three years old or younger.
An official investigation of this secretive system was undertaken, but soon foundered over obstructions thrown up by those who had the most to lose if the full truth were revealed. But before the portcullis was slammed shut, the investigator learned that a child being raised in that system was four times more likely to die of criminal violence than a child in the general population.
The obvious course of action would be to mount an armed raid to liberate those children, but whatever necessary means, from the abusive system in which they're being held.
Unfortunately, the entity that would carry out such an operation also presides over the systematic abuse. The findings described above are from an abortive investigation of the Texas Foster Care System conducted by Carole Keeton Strayhorn on behalf of the state Comptroller's office.
http://www.window.state.tx.us/news/60623statement.html
I also want to preface my further comments by acknowledging that CPS is not the same in every state. Some states have a lot more corruption than others. At first I thought that state custody would be a certain disaster for many of these children, but I now realize that I don't know much about Texas.
However, the system that oversees foster care can be prone to corruption because of lack of accountability, with respect to both the decision to remove a child from a home and the oversight of the foster home. If you are in an awful cult, the state can rescue you. If a lazy or corrupt social worker puts you in a bad foster home, there may be no one to rescue you. There is also the muddying effect of federal money serving as incentives to states to maintain children in foster care.
I have read that in at least one state, a child removed from his home on the presumption of abuse is statistically more likely to *die* while in foster care than if he had stayed in the presumably abusive family. In most states, you may have a great chance of getting a good placement, but if you happen not to, you may really be hosed with no way out. I hope that in most states the children are well cared for in foster homes. We loved our foster children and cried when they eventually were moved.