[abb]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/5811766.html

The state’s red-headed stepchild

By RICK CASEY

They’re the abused stepchild of state government, given too little food and too much work and yelled at mercilessly when, in their fatigue and malnourished condition, they make a mistake.

When Child Protective Services makes a mistake, to be sure, it can have terrible consequences. Children mistakenly left in abusive homes are sometimes killed. Children mistakenly taken from their parents are scarred.

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5811827.html

Critics say CPS failed to foresee nuances
Agency faulted in taking routine route on FLDS

By JANET ELLIOTT

AUSTIN — In the early days of the state’s raid on a West Texas polygamist sect’s compound, child welfare officials insisted that they were going by the book in removing children from a potentially dangerous living situation.

Only the numbers made the case unusual, representatives for Child Protective Services repeatedly insisted.

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[Diamond]

AUSTIN — In the early days of the state’s raid on a West Texas polygamist sect’s compound, child welfare officials insisted that they were going by the book in removing children from a potentially dangerous living situation.

Only the numbers made the case unusual, representatives for Child Protective Services repeatedly insisted.

</CYA> That stretches credulity beyond the breaking point. They know the law backwards and forwards. This is their business. If they really were that stupid and incompetent they should all be immediately fired.

The law says there has to be an imminent threat to the physical safety of each child taken. The CPS had to know that it would be impossible for it to meet it's evidentiary burden of proof with respect to each child taken. They knew or should have known that they were taking the most drastic action possible even though other, less severe, legal alternatives were readily and obviously available to them. They knew or should have known the absolutely devastating impact that separation from parents and siblings has on young children, and yet they did it anyway, with clinical indifference to the suffering they needlessly inflicted on these HUNDREDS of young children.

It wasn't done "by the book" and they know it.

Cordially,