Social Workers Wall of Shame. Social workers accused of wrongdoing in some of our stories. Top left: Mississippi Social Worker Travys Velez (Story), Top Center: Kentucky Social Worker Eddie Nevitt (Story), Top Right: Oklahoma Social Worker Tamara Powell (Story), Bottom Left: Los Angeles Social Worker Stefanie Rodriguez (Story), Bottom Middle Left: Alabama Social Worker Ahzshaka Evans (Story), Bottom Middle Right: Kentucky Social Worker Carol Sanders (Story), Bottom Right: Texas Social Worker Jennifer Matthews (Story).
“What does not, or at least should not happen, is that an agent of the government, charged with the task of safeguarding the welfare of children, would completely fabricate contact with a family in order to mask non-compliance with the agency’s policy. Providing false testimony of any kind is an unfathomable violation of the trust that the people in the State of Iowa place in their public servants and cast a dark and permanent shadow upon all of us.” – Judge Adam Sauer
Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News
An Iowa judge recently reprimanded the Department of Human Services (DHS) after a social worker was found to have repeatedly lied to the court about parents in order to have their parental rights to their children terminated.
According to the Associated Press (AP), District Associate Judge Adam Sauer criticized the testimony of social worker Chelsie Gray for being filled with “lies and misrepresentations.”
Judge Sauer dismissed the state’s petitions to terminate parental rights on an Iowa couple’s 4 children, finding that they had been “unfairly stripped of their parental rights.”
He also ruled that “referrals for new foster case placements shall stop immediately,” because the original ruling was based upon false information.
Many parents all over the country fighting the medical or state-sanctioned kidnapping of their children report that their cases are built upon false allegations and reports, and they have the documentation to back up their claims. What is rare, however, is for this fact to be recognized by a judge.
Caught – Social Worker Gave “False Information” in Several Cases
The beginning of justice for the Iowa family began when Cerro Gordo County assistant attorney Nichole Benes noticed some “discrepancies” in the social worker’s testimony last spring in the TPR case, according to AP, and she let the court know what she found. She also reported her findings to the Iowa Attorney General’s office and to DHS.
It is policy in many states for the case worker to visit the children in their cases monthly.
Iowa social worker Chelsie Gray is not alone in reporting that she fulfilled that requirement without actually seeing the children.
ABC 15 Arizona spoke with an Arizona CPS whistleblower in 2014, who told them that many of her co-workers simply did “drive-bys,” driving by the house but never actually laying eyes on the children. If they were being abused in foster care, the social worker would never have known about it.
See:
CPS Caseworker in Arizona Turns Whistleblower – Reports on Abuse of Power
Gray’s false information didn’t end there, however. She told the court that she had spoken with the school teachers of the children about some concerning behaviors they demonstrated at school, but the teachers denied ever having been contacted by the social worker.
She accused the mother of testing positive for drugs and of not complying with terms of her plan.
Her testimony led to a lower court judge ruling to take away all parental rights last year. Judge Gregg Rosenbladt found her to be a “very credible” witness who was unbiased. The children were in foster care based on persuasive lies.
Judge Sauer stated that this was “unacceptable” and:
that false testimony is of grave concern.
There was a subsequent review of Chelsie Gray’s other DHS cases, and it turned up “10 known instances in which she gave false information.”
This was obviously a pattern for her.
Judge Adam Sauer did not take this lightly. According to the AP article:
He said that terminating a parent’s rights was the most important decision a court can make, and that it must be a fair proceeding based on facts and evidence.
“What does not, or at least should not happen, is that an agent of the government, charged with the task of safeguarding the welfare of children, would completely fabricate contact with a family in order to mask non-compliance with the agency’s policy,” Sauer wrote.
“Providing false testimony of any kind is an unfathomable violation of the trust that the people in the State of Iowa place in their public servants and cast a dark and permanent shadow upon all of us.”
Judge Adam Sauer recently acknowledged the importance of justice in family cases. Photo Source.
Unfortunately, as hundreds of thousands of parents have found, false testimony by social workers, and even doctors, is often standard fare when it comes to taking children from their families.
We have found this in our own investigations of hundreds of cases, where allegations written by social workers or Child Abuse Pediatricians are filled with discrepancies and statements that are readily demonstrated to be incorrect.
On the basis of false allegations, lies, and hearsay, without evidence, families are being ripped apart. They are victims of generational genocide, and the children are more likely to end up as victims of sexual assault, child sex trafficking, or death. Yet, the lack of due process and the corruption within the system is the rule, not the exception.
Adoptive Parents Abuse/Starve Iowa Teens, State Responds by Taking More Children from Parents
The decision by the Iowa judge follows 2 horrific, high-profile cases of teenage girls who died in the last year in Iowa. Both girls suffered from terrible abuse and neglect, as well as starvation, at the hands of their ADOPTIVE parents.
The Department of Human Services came under fire for doing an inadequate job of following up on the children entrusted to their care, children whose adoptions they were responsible for.
Sabrina Ray, 16, weighed only 56 pounds when she was found starved to death by her adopters. (Link to her story here). Natalie Fin, also 16, suffered a fatal heart attack due to being starved. (Link to her story here).
The tendency, as we have reported previously, is for social workers to have a knee-jerk reaction and start removing more children, not less, whenever there is a death of a child in their area.
Public and media outcry is often strong at those times for the state to “do something” to protect innocent children.
Social workers tend to try to avoid leaving a child in harm’s way and becoming the next day’s headline news for not doing enough.
Unfortunately, these tragedies are followed by periods of more children being traumatized by being taken from their families, “just in case.”
See:
Confessions of a CPS Caseworker: We Remove Kids to Protect Ourselves
The philosophy becomes the direct opposite of the cherished American value of liberty and justice whereby a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Where we once held the societal attitude that we would rather see a guilty man go free than condemn an innocent person, when children are involved, the presumption of innocence and due process seems to go out the window. “The best interest of the children” becomes an excuse for a witch hunt which sacrifices hundreds of thousands of families in its path.
Other CPS Whistleblowers Report Similar Horrors
These stories of corruption and lies within the system tend to be hidden from the public eye, but they are anything but rare.
One social worker from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services got to the point where he couldn’t sleep at night.
It wasn’t because of seeing too much abuse of children by their parents. His conscience could not handle the things that the department was pushing him and other social workers to do.
See:
Whistleblower in LA County DCFS Reveals Corruption in Child Kidnapping
He told Tammi Stefano of The National Safe Child Show that he needed to be able to look himself in the mirror and could not be a part of what DCFS was asking him to participate in:
Illegal activities such as taking a child away from a safe parent and having them adopted out or kept in foster care.
The gentleman and Tammi Stefano described situations in which a parent who was not on drugs would come up with a “dirty” drug screen. There are times that the test would be switched with someone else’s, or they would be labeled as having a dirty test because they were given too short of notice to get to the screening place in time.
Taking Orders for Children to be Adopted then Kidnapping them Through CPS
The whistleblower spoke of seeing foster parents literally putting in orders for a child that they want the department to secure for them. Tammi Stefano states that other whistleblowers have described the same scenario.
Isn’t taking orders for a child the same as human trafficking?
Several parents have sent screenshots to me of their social workers posting requests in social media for their CPS friends to “be on the lookout” for a child matching a particular description (e.g. blond hair, green eyes, female 2 year old) because they have someone who wants to adopt. These were never published due to the parents’ fear of retaliation.
Another whistleblower from the Midwest described being told by supervisors to drive through neighborhoods looking for children outside playing that would fit certain descriptions. If they found what they were looking for, the social worker would make up allegations in order to seize the child.
Investigative reporter John Boel of WLKY Target 32 News in Kentucky did a series of reports a decade ago in which he interviewed several former CPS whistleblowers. He discovered elements of corruption that we still see today. In 2007, he reported that he received:
…“confidential” family court tapes showing just how the system works, and how the actions of some caseworkers even disturb some of their fellow caseworkers. Records supporting parents seem to “disappear.” They also reveal conflicts of interest between case workers and foster parents who may be related to the case worker placing the child into the foster home.
John Boel explains that CPS whistleblowers reveal how Kentucky families are harassed, and CPS workers are pressured to boost State adoption numbers.
[One] former CPS worker explains how CPS is all about statistics, about how many children can be placed into adoption, since State and Federal reimbursement funds are all tied into statistics. She explains that CPS workers are encouraged to put more children into adoption.
These CPS whistleblowers also confirmed that CPS can and does take away children simply to retaliate against people who try to fight or expose the system.
See:
Whistleblowers Reveal CPS Child Kidnappings in Kentucky Adoption Business
California Attorney Shawn McMillan is known as a warrior who fights for families on the Appeals level. He spoke with Tammi Stefano of The National Safe Child Show about the way that the CPS system destroys social workers who go into the work because they truly care about children and want to help them:
According to McMillan, the good social workers don’t last. The good ones only last a year or two, and McMillan said that when he deposes social workers in a lawsuit, he can usually tell within the first 20 minutes which ones are new and will be gone in a year or two, and which ones are “lifers” who will stay in the system long term, and he states that this later group is “rotten to the core.”
“You can’t stay there and not be tainted.”
See:
California Attorney Shawn McMillan on Why He Fights CPS: “They’re Stealing Kids”
Consequences for Deceptive Iowa Social Worker?
Chelsie Gray may or may not face consequences for her “lies and misrepresentations” concerning the Iowa family who lost their 4 children based on her testimony. The Globe Gazette reported Thursday that a prosecutor is looking into the case to decide whether or not she will be charged with perjury. (Source.)
There was no mention of the possibility for her being held responsible on the rest of the 10 cases in which she was discovered to have given false information.
The social worker is no longer working for the department as of September 23, but the agency cites confidentiality and privacy reasons for refusing to disclose any information as to why she has left.
The editor of the Ottumwa Courier calls upon the Iowa legislature to close the loophole that allows the state to be mum on such information, and he calls out agencies who hide their misdeeds behind the policy:
If the employees weren’t fired or forced to resign over such serious misconduct, it’s entirely fair to ask why they weren’t.
Why did the ostensible guardians of the public’s interest decide such behavior by their employees warranted zero action? Such a lackadaisical approach to wrongdoing is hardly befitting organizations funded by taxpayer dollars.
It seems much more likely to us that the claims are a legal fig leaf, a fiction developed for the sole purpose of protecting institutions whose employees were out of control. They are a sacrifice of truth on the altar of image. (Source).
Are Judges Waking Up?
Fortunately, Judge Adam Sauer appears to be continuing a trend we are seeing lately of good judicial decisions attempting to reign in out-of-control Child Protective Services agencies.
Earlier this week, we reported that a Texas judge ordered CPS to have no contact with children the agency took over allegations that an emergency situation existed. The social worker not only lied to the court in order to remove the children, but he also pled the 5th Amendment in a later hearing when the judge asked why the children were taken.
See:
In Unprecedented Move Texas Judge Orders CPS to Have No Contact with 2 Children Removed without Warrant – Social Worker Pleads 5th in Court
Before that, an Indiana Court of Appeals overturned a number of termination of parental rights cases after judges recognized a disturbing trend of CPS repeatedly violating due process rights of parents.
See:
Indiana High Court Accuses CPS of “Significant Violations of Due Process in Termination of Parental Rights”
Perhaps this trend will continue, and families will once again find their due process and Constitutional rights restored.
See Also:
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