A mother of two young girls in Arizona breaks a gag order issued by the court, in the hope that people will come forward and help her and her two daughters, whom she claims are suffering in state custody. She has now been threatened with arrest for breaking her gag order. And this all began simply because she saw her daughters suffering with medical treatment, and wanted to seek a second doctor's opinion.
Imagine - a teenager taken away from his family because his mother wanted a second opinion on his medical condition and suffering, being put into a foster care home in a rough neighborhood of Chicago and being threatened on the streets with guns, finally being able to return to his home town only to be told weeks later that he has to go back to Chicago, and armed security guards making sure he gets into an ambulance to go back, while the hospital drugs him with a sedative, and then being forced to wear a security bracelet preventing him from leaving the hospital, denying him visitors, and also denying his right to choose the attorney he wants to represent him at 17 years old. Sound like an action thriller movie? Actually, it is a living nightmare for one family in Chicago, and they need your help.
We have reported on many families' stories of medical kidnappings here on MedicalKidnap.com. For every story we tell, there are probably 10 more we cannot get to. In almost all of these cases there is massive abuse of power exerted by medical doctors, CPS social workers, and family court judges. But this story from Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) shows a new level of alleged corruption: CPS caseworkers and a family court judge actually withholding evidence from medical personnel that would have shown their seizure of a child was not justified. Instead, they allegedly relied on a non-medical professional, a CPS caseworker, to take children away from their family based on their own unprofessional medical opinions, ignoring doctor's advice to the contrary, and even allegedly suppressing that evidence in court. HSLDA attorneys are fighting back.
"Surprise (Ariz.) police came in, (DCS) came in and told my wife she was going to prison," the boy's father told KTAR News on Monday. "They just started threatening her -- basically trying to force a confession of something that didn't happen." The family's attorney, Alane Roby, believes the case was grossly mishandled. According to Roby, the Department of Child Safety has not much different than the original state agency entrusted to protect Arizona's children. "Case workers are overworked, underpaid, there's no accountability. The case workers are generally very young, inexperienced and don't understand the ramifications of the decisions they make. Children are ripped from their homes, placed in foster care even when family members are available to care for them and often," Roby said. "The scariest thing in the world is that this could be happening to anyone and they'd be going through the same thing," Roby said.
Crystal Bentley, 23, entered the Texas foster care system when she was 2 and wouldn’t leave it until she aged out at 18. In the intervening years, as she was shuffled from place to place, she was repeatedly beaten and sexually abused — sometimes by the adults entrusted with her care, sometimes by their biological children, sometimes by other foster kids or her own relatives, Bentley testified in federal court Wednesday. A rotating cast of Child Protective Services caseworkers who were supposed to watch out for her safety often didn’t show up for monthly visits, she said. When they did visit, it was usually for a cursory handful of minutes during which they failed to detect what was happening to her. “I would hint that something was going on, but when they asked me if I was being sexually abused, it was always right there in front of my abusers,” Bentley testified. “What could I say?” Bentley’s testimony Wednesday came on the third day of a trial in a class-action lawsuit brought by Children’s Rights, a New York-based advocacy group on behalf of 12,000 children in long-term state care in Texas.
The Fourth Amendment strikes a carefully crafted balance between a family’s right to privacy and the government’s need to enforce the law. In most situations, government agents cannot simply force their way into a home. Instead, they must explain to a neutral magistrate why they need to enter the home, and they must provide real evidence to support that need. This rule applies to all government agents. Court after court has agreed that there is no social services exception to the Fourth Amendment. All too often, law enforcement officers and child-welfare workers act as if the Fourth Amendment does not apply to CPS investigations. They are wrong.
She delivered the baby naturally at 2:34 a.m., and around noon was put in a room with two other new mothers and their babies, including one who Langwell says kept talking loudly on her cellphone. Later that afternoon, Langwell decided to check out and go home. Langwell said the baby was breastfeeding well and was healthy, and she preferred to take her home early "AMA" (against medical advice) so they could all get some sleep. When she left, a member of the hospital's staff called and reported her to the county's child welfare agency. The next day, a representative of the child welfare agency in Riverside County, California, took the infant into protective custody.
Marc Herrmann is a teenage boy who desperately wants to go home to his family who loves him, but apparently he cannot. The 17-year-old feels he is trapped in what he sees as a cruel system that won't let him go, and now he is crying out for help. He says he is just "A child in Canada," who has no voice, who feels like no one is listening. He says he is tired of being a medical lab rat for research projects to which neither he nor his parents ever agreed. He has been sending messages written in the third person that have been posted on a Facebook page created by friends of his, called "A child in Canada." Despite the possible risks to himself in coming forward with his story, he says he is ready for his story to be told. He wants somebody to listen and just let him go home to his family.
Isaiah Rider is 17 years old, and has been in custody of the State of Illinois for several months over a medical dispute. However, for the past several weeks Isaiah was allowed to return home from Lurie Children's hospital in Chicago to his grandparents' home in Kansas City, while his mother, a nurse, has fought the State of Illinois to regain custody of her son. On December 6, 2014, the State of Illinois, allegedly via his guardian ad litem, Kim Boone, forced Isaiah Rider to get into an ambulance and return to Chicago, even though neither he nor his family wanted him to return to the place where he was separated from his family previously, and where he reportedly suffered emotional distress. Isaiah made a very emotional video the night before he was taken away by force in an ambulance. The video has been posted on YouTube. The Team Isaiah Facebook Page is reporting that Isaiah is confined at Comer Children's Hospital, is not allowed visitors, and is wearing a "security sensor bracelet" on his wrist. They report that he has even been denied pastoral care by the hospital.
Commissioner Thomas Verge ruled Friday that Cleave and Erica could have their three babies back, after CPS had removed them from their home, as first reported by Health Impact News on our Medical Kidnap website. The original story has been read by over 1.5 million people and shared on Facebook by over 1 million, creating a national outcry. It is but one of many stories we have covered at MedicalKidnap.com. We get multiple requests every day from families begging us to publish their stories of "medical kidnap." If we had not picked up this story and published it on behalf of the parents who requested us to do so, would they be going home today with their children? Judge Verge, in allowing the parents to have their children back, reportedly made several conditions, threatening the young couple that their children would be removed again if they did not comply with his directives.
