Posted on 06/18/2002 7:15:19 AM PDT by Reaganwuzthebest
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A woman whose son was erroneously removed by Child Protective Services has filed a civil lawsuit against Sacramento County demanding social workers be barred from taking children from their parents unless they have proof the children are in imminent danger.
Repercussions from the family's case, which was the subject of a separate appeals court decision last year, have prompted the county to re-examine its definition of child abuse and have fanned the debate about a parent's right to spank.
Tricia McLinden's 12-year-old son was placed in protective custody in September 1999, and spent nearly two years living in a series of foster and group homes before a state appellate court threw out the case and ordered the boy returned home.
McLinden's civil lawsuit, filed in Sacramento Superior Court last month, alleges CPS violated her constitutional rights to be free from governmental interference and the unreasonable seizure of her child. It seeks unspecified monetary damages.
The boy was returned home in May 2001, after the state's 3rd District appellate court ruled his mother's attempts to discipline him by spanking him with a belt and confining him to his room did not constitute abuse.
At the time, social workers were asking that McLinden's parental rights be severed permanently.
"We don't sue social workers for making mistakes," said McLinden's attorney, Donnie R. Cox of Oceanside. "What this case is about is making a mistake and then continuing the process when (social workers) knew they should send the kid home."
CPS officials acknowledged that a heavy volume of new cases in 1999, coupled with a critical shortage of social workers, might have hastened the decision to remove the boy and could have resulted in a cursory investigation.
Even so, the director of the county's Department of Health and Human Services, Jim Hunt, said the agency's actions had withstood review by a juvenile court referee and later by a juvenile court judge.
He said the appellate ruling helps clarify how far parents can go in disciplining their children. Using it as a guideline, CPS will reconsider its spanking policy, said Hunt, who first became aware of the unpublished ruling last week.
Until now, Hunt said, CPS considered a permissible spanking one in which a parent struck a child's bottom with an open hand. Using a belt or a switch or producing visible injuries was considered abuse worthy of CPS intervention, though not necessarily removal.
The boy was placed in foster care after telling school officials that his mother beat him, and showing his principal a faded 1-by-3-inch purple bruise on his lower back, according to court records.
McLinden's son told the social worker that his mother often hit him with a belt and locked him in his bedroom for hours at a time. The social worker decided the boy was at imminent risk of harm and placed him in protective custody.
Though some of her son's claims are in dispute, McLinden readily acknowledged she had spanked him with a belt and locked him in his room to control his behavior. She described her son as an angry, aggressive child who hurt other children, assaulted a teacher, stole her money, forged her checks to buy junk food and forged school progress reports.
McLinden's civil suit claims social workers denied her federal right to due process by supporting their case with deliberately fabricated charges, namely that her son could not leave his room to use the bathroom and was not allowed to have friends.
Cox said that because child welfare cases are held to a lesser standard of proof than criminal cases, social workers often don't do as thorough a job investigating cases as their counterparts in law enforcement.
McLinden's suit also claims the county deliberately excluded information from her case that would have provided context for the discipline, specifically that she had sought advice from school officials and tried other methods before resorting to corporal punishment.
Her case in many ways illustrates the conflicting views in America's ongoing debate about corporal punishment. As evidenced by various court rulings in her case, the issue is far from settled at the judicial level, leaving parents and social workers without clear guidelines.
The appellate court overturned both the decisions of a juvenile court referee and a juvenile court judge, quoting state law that specifies "reasonable, age-appropriate spanking ... in the absence of serious physical injury" is not abuse.
Armed with the ruling, McLinden filed a claim against Sacramento County in October, a required step before filing a lawsuit. The claim was denied.
Now, McLinden is seeking a court injunction against CPS removals of children in similar cases. Her claim alleges county authorities routinely act "with deliberate indifference to their duties and obligations" to fully investigate child abuse claims.
County officials say that isn't true.
"The requested injunctive relief doesn't sound much different from what the law is," Hunt said. "And we follow the law."
Exactly. We should imprison them for 25 to life instead. What is the penalty for kidnapping and false imprisonment, anyway?
The existance of these people in a supposedly free society is a cruel joke. They should all suffer the consequences of their actions.
There comes a time in a child's life when a swat on the "bumper" will go very far in teaching the child the difference between right and wrong. The last time my 12 year old needed a spanking was during preschool. She swiftly received one and the behavior problem has been nonexistent since. Some children don't respond as readily as mine, but it takes consistency on the parents part.
That's probably true, but the problem is that the CPS is a gov. bureaucracy that smashes people's rights and parental authority indescriminately. It has the potential to cause great damamge, and let's face it alot of the people in those agencies get a power rush forcing people to jump through hoops.
I'm not saying these agencies are unnecessary, but the scandals they create in every major city are legion. They need to be on a very short leash. And God help anyone that winds up in their net.
Apparently, the Court of Appeals disagrees with you, Mr. Hunt.
You are right if the total environment surrounding the kid is taken into context. Is the mother or father hitting him or her all over the body with a belt, or just on the behind? Is the house dirty, or the parents neglectful? Is there a pattern of abuse and punishment with no justification for it? Or was this mother just disciplining her son because he deserved it?
A complete investigation would have turned up the answers to those questions and then the logical conclusion reached should have been what the state appellate court ruled- this mother was not acting irresponsibly.
She has a good case, and will probably receive some compensation for having her son removed unjustifiably for two years.
It's not the government's children! They have no authority to remove a child from parental custody.
The ONLY time a child should not be removed from their parent's custody, is if the parents are in prison. I'll say it again. The ONLY time a child should not be removed from their parent's custody, is if the parents are in prison.
Think about that for a minute. If the parents are NOT in prison, that, by definition, means that the parents HAVE NOT BEEN CONVICTED OF A CRIME. If the parents HAVE NOT BEEN CONVICTED OF ANYTHING, then what right does the state have to punish the parents by the termination of parental rights?? If the social services (SS - good name for them) has evidence of a real crime, then arrest the parents, and get a CONVICTION. Then you can take the children, if both natural parents have been convicted, and no other natural relatives exist.
No arrest = no evidence = no interference with parental rights.
My grandmother used to have a hickory tree in the backyard. When one the grandkids did something egreciously wrong she simply pulled a switch off the tree and swatted the offender on the back of the legs. Naturally the switching left a whelp, but it went away after a while, and the bad behavior went away much faster. To be honest, she really didn't have to switch anyone very often since we all knew the sting of the switch and obeyed accordingly. For most of my childhood all she needed to do at the sign of misbahevior was point to the tree. Rather effective IMO.
In many cases, it isn't only "parents' rights" — it's freedom of religion. Anyone who believes the Bible believes in corporal punishment as a virtual requirement for loving parents, not a mere option.
What you said!!
CPS is an absymal joke! The more children they 'remove' from their homes, the bigger their budgets get. There are entirely too many instances of children who were only being properly disciplined being taking away from loving parents. From what I read in this story, this young man had been in trouble at school before this incident and then tried to get back at his mother when she finally cracked down on him. Maybe she should have stared teaching him right from wrong when he was younger instead of waiting until he started stealing, etc. before trying to reign him in.
Spare the rod and spoil the child...now where have I heard that????
Sorry, but that argument doesn't fly. The presence of guns, knives, household chemicals, razors, nearby traffic... added to parental actions taken out of context, overzealous CPS agents, abusers of the system, and/or unethical CPS agents... can quickly make EVERY home a "potentially dangerous environment".
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