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N.Y. Times Exposes How Poor People More Likely to Lose Children to CPS

She was caught up in what lawyers and others who represent families say is a troubling and longstanding phenomenon: the power of Children’s Services to take children from their parents on the grounds that the child’s safety is at risk, even with scant evidence. The agency’s requests for removals filed in family court rose 40 percent in the first quarter of 2017, to 730 from 519, compared with the same period last year, according to figures obtained by The New York Times. In interviews, dozens of lawyers working on these cases say the removals punish parents who have few resources. Their clients are predominantly poor black and Hispanic women, they say, and the criminalization of their parenting choices has led some to nickname the practice: Jane Crow. “It takes a lot as a public defender to be shocked, but these are the kinds of cases you hear attorneys screaming about in the hall,” said Scott Hechinger, a lawyer at Brooklyn Defender Services. “There’s this judgment that these mothers don’t have the ability to make decisions about their kids, and in that, society both infantilizes them and holds them to superhuman standards. In another community, your kid’s found outside looking for you because you’re in the bathtub, it’s ‘Oh, my God’” — a story to tell later, he said. “In a poor community, it’s called endangering the welfare of your child.”

N.Y. Parents Speak Out: ACS a “Fraudulent Entity” – Abuses and Takes Children Away from Families

It has been well documented that Child Welfare Services across the country disproportionately targets poor families in removing children, when often their only "crime" is being poor. Families in New York City who have been abused by Child Protective Services (called ACS - Administration for Children's Services - in NYC) have a local advocacy group they can turn to for support: FPA-Foundation. The Foundation has their own YouTube channel where they regularly broadcast interviews with parents who tell their stories of how ACS has ruined their lives.

Alaska Homeschool Dad Framed by FBI – Social Services Targets Children for Political Reasons

Today, Health Impact News is reporting on the story of Francis August Schaeffer Cox. Schaeffer Cox is allegedly a political prisoner today, serving a 26 year prison sentence for crimes he never committed. Schaeffer Cox, a well known 2nd Amendment lobbyist who had won 38% of the vote in a State House election, became the subject of an intense FBI investigation after he angered state and federal authorities by openly accusing them of drug trafficking and child prostitution. Oil pipeline service company executive, Bill Allen, who had been spared prosecution on multiple counts of sexual abuse of minors in exchange for his 2008 testimony against pro-2nd Amendment Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, was among those implicated. “The State Wide Drug Taskforce supplied children for sex to a number of state and federal officials in exchange for those official’s cooperation in concealing the ongoing illicit drug trafficking activities of the State Wide Drug Taskforce,” Schaeffer Cox said. Not long after these public statements, the same departments that Schaeffer Cox accused of corruption sent in numerous provocateurs to try to switch his efforts off of exposing corruption and on to violent vigilante-type actions. Schaeffer Cox, who believes in non-aggression and voluntarism, can be heard on multiple undercover recordings telling the provocateurs, “No, I’m going to pull a Ghandi, NOT a Rambo” and “if we turn violent, people will see us as the bad guys.” In what some have called a deviation from accepted investigative techniques, the FBI responded to Schaeffer Cox’s rejection of their violent proposals by creating a threat to his children that could serve as a motivator. Working with the Office of Child Services, the FBI filed a child neglect complaint regarding Schaeffer and his wife Marti’s 1 and 1/2 year old son. Because they do not require probable cause, child neglect complaints are an attractive tool for investigators who wish to enter a home, but lack any evidence to support a warrant.

Judicial Corruption in Family Courts Exposed

Judicial corruption is a topic we have reported on frequently at Health Impact News, particularly in our Medical Kidnapping stories on MedicalKidnap.com. A documentary film called Divorce Corp. states: "More money flows through the family courts, and into the hands of courthouse insiders, than in all other court systems in America combined – over $50 billion a year and growing." More about the documentary: "Through extensive research and interviews with the nation’s top divorce lawyers, mediators, judges, politicians, litigants and journalists, DIVORCE CORP. uncovers how children are torn from their homes, unlicensed custody evaluators extort money, and abusive judges play god with people’s lives while enriching their friends. This explosive documentary reveals the family courts as unregulated, extra-constitutional fiefdoms. Rather than assist victims of domestic crimes, these courts often precipitate them. And rather than help parents and children move on, as they are mandated to do, these courts - and their associates - drag out cases for years, sometimes decades, ultimately resulting in a rash of social ills, including home foreclosure, bankruptcy, suicide and violence. Solutions to the crisis are sought out in countries where divorce is handled in a more holistic manner." The film has a YouTube channel featuring the "Family Law Report." We are including here a 4-part series on judicial corruption in family law with film producer Joe Sorge and New York attorney and former assistant district attorney Susan Settenbrino.

Should All Homeschooled Children be Required to Report to “Child Protection Services” to Check for Abuse?

Marie Cohen’s latest column in The Chronicle calls for requiring that every parent who homeschools a child bring that child before a mandated reporter of child abuse for periodic inspection. As with every other well-intentioned proposal to intrude on families, the problem with this one is the harm it would do to children. The singling out of homeschoolers is odd for several reasons. The children most at risk of abuse or neglect are the youngest. So the same logic behind this proposal requires that every child from birth to at least kindergarten age also be presented for periodic inspection. Cohen even is selective in the lessons she chooses to draw from horror stories; and once again, horror stories are Cohen’s entire argument. In the two Iowa cases she cites, the children were homeschooled. They also were adopted from foster care. In one case, relatives desperate to take in the child were turned down. Yet Cohen offers no sweeping conclusions about regulating foster care or adoption.

Arizona Places 2 Year Old Child in Foster Pornographic Pedophile Ring – Foster Mom Burns 80% of Her Body

David Frodsham was arrested and accused of sexual misconduct with a minor, procuring minors for sex, and possessing and/or manufacturing child pornography. Law enforcement’s investigation revealed a video made by David Frodsham of a 3- or 4-year-old girl being penetrated by an adult male and screaming for her mommy. David Frodsham pled guilty rather than face a trial and has been sentenced to 17 years in the Arizona Department of Corrections. David Frodsham was part of a pornography ring involving numerous children in his pornography and the procurement of sex for the ring. Unfortunately, things did not improve much when the state moved Jane into the care of Justin and Samantha Osteraas, her guardian says. According to the complaint, “Defendant Samantha Osteraas submerged and held down Jane Doe, a 5-year-old, in a bath of scalding hot water. Jane Doe suffered severe burns over 80 percent of her body. When police arrived, there was blood on the floor and pieces of Jane Doe’s skin were falling off her body. There were bruises to her neck and arms along with other signs of trauma.” Jane had to be placed in a medically induced coma, suffering from organ failure. She lost her toes to amputation “and will undergo lifelong operations to replace 80 percent of the skin on her body and will need incredible amounts of care for the duration of her life as a result of the abuse she suffered in the Osteraas' home.”

L​andmark Federal Lawsuit Charges Missouri With Failure to Protect Foster Kids from Powerful Psychotropic Medications

Watchdogs Children’s Rights, National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics have today filed a landmark, civil rights complaint against Jennifer Tidball, Acting State Director of the Missouri Department of Social Services and Tim Decker, Director of the Children’s Division of DSS, on behalf of all minor children and youth who are or will be placed in Missouri’s foster care custody. The first class action lawsuit to shine a federal spotlight solely on the overuse of psychotropic medications among vulnerable, at risk populations – such as Missouri’s 13,000 children in foster care – the complaint alleges longstanding, dangerous, unlawful and deliberately indifferent practices by the defendants.

75% of Children Taken by Texas CPS are Based on Unfounded Accusations

Meagan Corser of the Texas Home School Coalition recently published an article about the status of Child Protective Services (CPS) in Texas regarding the evidence required to terminate parental rights. What she reports confirms what Health Impact News has exposed in many other states, that the vast majority of children taken away from parents are not for actual "abuse" where the child is in imminent danger. Corser reports that by Texas CPS' own admission: "in 75 percent of cases they lack sufficient evidence to support the accusations they made against the parent." That may seem like a high number to those who do not follow the articles we publish regularly at MedicalKidnap.com, but from our sources that number is probably too low, not too high. CPS whistleblowers have told us that only about 5% of the cases where children are removed from their parents are for actual cases of abuse that can be substantiated. In a recent report by ABC TV6 in Indiana, attorneys there report that "only 15% of children taken away from their parents are ever substantiated for abuse or neglect."

85% of Reports to Indiana Child Protective Services Unsubstantiated – Families Destroyed Needlessly

Kara Kenney of ABC TV6 has reported on an investigation into the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS). She interviewed Bryan Ciyou and Robert Schembs, Indianapolis attorneys who represent families in cases involving DCS. They give good advice to parents who are being investigated by DCS. They explain many of the problems and corruption found in Child Social Services that Health Impact News and MedicalKidnap.com report about regularly, including the fact that only 15% of children taken away from their parents are ever substantiated for abuse or neglect. And as we have reported many times, often the category of "neglect" is used very broadly for poor living conditions where abuse is not present.

Mother Falsely Accused of Shaking Baby Found Innocent But Loses Everything

Once again we see the terrible injustice of the false science behind "Shaken Baby Syndrome" (SBS) and how it destroys families, often imprisoning innocent parents and caregivers. More and more courts and judges are overturning past convictions as the "science" behind SBS crumbles. In this story recently published in Australia, Lorraine Harris was convicted of killing her baby, and then had her second child taken away from her after birth because of the false conviction. She served 17 months of her sentence before being paroled, and then fought to clear her name. She was "successful" in clearing her name, but lost everything. Her second son was adopted out and she has had no contact with him. Ironically, Dr. Waney Squier testified in both her conviction, and in her acquittal. That's because Dr. Waney Squier, a world renowned neuropathologist, has become one of the world's most outspoken critics on the lack of science behind SBS. She has sacrificed her career to tell the world the truth, and to stand for those wrongly accused.