Why Judges Should NOT be Determining “What is Best for the Child”

Our headline, Why Judges Should NOT be Determining "What is Best for the Child", may sound like a statement that disregards child safety. It may lead one to believe that children are doomed to become victims in many cases if a judge does not step in and rule on what is "best for the child." However, Law Professor Vivek Sankaran has made the case that this is NOT the primary role of judges, and that instead judges should be interpreting the law and applying it by objective standards. The decisions about what are "best for the child" are really parental decisions, and the primary function of a court of law in determining child safety is whether or not the parents are fit to be parents. I myself would take that one step further, and state that parents should be judged like any other alleged criminal, in criminal courts, with the full due process of law that is part of our constitutional rights, just as these rights are applied to other alleged criminals, such as murderers, terrorists, etc. If a criminal court cannot convict a parent of criminal conduct, such as abusing their own children, then family or juvenile court judges have no right replacing the parents' responsibilities to raise their own children with their own opinions about how that child should be raised. Statistics clearly show that the State makes a poor substitute for parents, and even when it is done in the "best interest of the child," the child is almost always the one who suffers the most from the trauma of being separated from their families.

New Law Allows Sexually Abused Foster Girl to Sue Westchester County and New York CPS – Thousands More to Follow

Health Impact News has been reporting for the past few years that Child Protection Services and the U.S. Foster Care system is the main pipeline for sexually trafficking children. This child sex trafficking problem within the child welfare system is still not widely known in the U.S., but it is well documented as fact. Now, a new law passed in the State of New York may reveal just how prevalent this problem is within New York state. The Child Victims Act is a new law passed earlier this year that allows survivors of sexual abuse to file civil suits regardless of the statute of limitations. New York attorney Samantha Breakstone says she is representing "thousands" of victims under the new law, and she filed the first one in Westchester County on September 19th. According to Rockland/Westchester Journal News: "The lawsuit accuses the Westchester County Department of Social Services and the New York State Office of Children & Family Services of covering up or allowing the sexual abuse of a young girl in foster care during the late 1990s."

Illinois Parents Sue Doctors, Hospitals, and DCFS for Medical Kidnapping After Refusing Vitamin K Shot at Birth

In the moments after Angela Bougher gave birth last winter, she and her husband, a suburban Chicago pastor, were eager to hold their new baby girl. But as Bougher was being treated in the delivery room, the couple contends, a nurse picked up the infant to administer a vitamin K shot, a common practice in maternity wards across the country to help a baby’s blood-clotting ability in case of emergency. The Boughers said they are not “anti-vaxxers” or against any procedure they believe to be medically necessary, but they didn’t think the shot was in that category. They had agreed to sign a waiver confirming their wishes that the new baby — their fifth child — not receive vitamin K, based on their beliefs that God’s creation isn’t automatically deficient or flawed at birth. But instead of offering them a form, the Boughers allege, the nurse announced she was reporting the couple to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and left the room with the newborn. On Monday, the Boughers and several other parents filed a sweeping federal lawsuit accusing the agency, its current and former leaders, a number of doctors and three hospitals of violating their constitutional rights just after the births of their children.

5-Year-Old Tennessee Autistic Boy Accused of Sexual Abuse by CPS for Hugging and Kissing Kindergartner Classmates

One family says their 5-year-old son with autism is being punished for giving his classmate a hug. East Ridge Elementary leaders say the boy overstepped his boundaries. Nathan is a 5-year-old boy kindergartner at East Ridge Elementary. The principal says the school staff has talked with him several times. Putnam says Nathan has autism, which she says can make it difficult for him to understand social cues. "If you don't understand how autism works, you'll think he's acting out or being difficult," Putnam said. "But, that's not the situation." Putnam says the teacher said Nathan was overstepping boundaries. She says the teacher accused her son of sexual activities after she was told he hugged a child and kissed another child on the cheek. Debi Amick, Nathan's grandmother, posted in a private Facebook post: "What do you do when a 5 year child is being labeled a sexual predator and accused of sexual harassment by the school system? It was disclosed that it will go in his record for the rest of his life that he is a sex offender. This child is austic, he comprehends and functions very different than your typical 5 year. What do you do? Who do you turn to for help when the school will not even listen to the child’s doctor when he explains the child’s difficulties in his comprehension of simple things such as boundaries."

Chinese-American Family in Nebraska Destroyed as Teenage Daughters Medically Kidnapped and Sex Trafficked by CPS

They were Chinese medical scholars continuing their education and careers in the U.S. Yang Wang, who upon obtaining her U.S. citizenship changed her name to Catherine Anderson to have an easier name for Americans to pronounce, graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai, one of the top universities in China, and reportedly harder to gain entrance than Harvard University in the U.S. Her husband, whose last name is also "Wang" but unrelated outside of marriage, graduated from one of the top medical schools in China, Capital Medical University in Beijing. They obtained student visas to continue their education in the U.S. Catherine went on to obtain two Masters degrees, one as a Clinical Nurse Specialist from Maryland, and another one as a Family Nurse Practitioner from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Her husband obtained his Nebraska physician license when he started his residency in Creighton Medical School in the Pathology Department, and became the Chief resident and was retained as a faculty member at Creighton after his graduation. Two beautiful daughters were born to them while residing in Nebraska. Both went on to become honor students in high school, ranking number 1 in their classes, following in their parents footsteps to achieve academic excellence and preparing for college at the age of 14. Unbeknownst to them, tragically, they had settled in a part of the U.S. that is known for one the largest child sex trafficking scandals ever uncovered and then buried in U.S. history: the Franklin Cover-up story centered around Boys Town. Catherine learned that her oldest daughter was developing an unhealthy relationship with one of her male high school teachers outside of class, and eventually learned that this teacher was "counseling" her on "sexual identity issues." After finding inappropriate text messages on her daughter's phone, she reported the teacher to law enforcement. What followed next is every parent's worst nightmare. Instead of investigating the teacher, Catherine became the focus of investigation, and not only did Nebraska CPS take custody of her older daughter who was then 16, but they seized her younger 15-year-old daughter as well, against the wish of the younger daughter who had no complaints against her mother and wanted to stay home where she felt safe. The tragic story that follows is a story about how one mother fought as hard as she could to get her daughters back, not realizing in the beginning that she was fighting an apparent child sex trafficking ring that allegedly brings in more money to the state of Nebraska than any other business. She has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees fighting for her daughters, and has had her career destroyed. Her youngest daughter went from honor roll high school student preparing for college to being forced into a life of prostitution and being sexually trafficked, while every government agency she contracted to try and end this nightmare just stood by and watched. Welcome to the new America.

Michigan Law Professor: “The United States Destroys More Families than any other Country in the World”

Vivek Sankaran is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, and he directs both the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic, through which law students represent children and parents in trial and appellate proceedings. Professor Sankaran understands the failures of today's foster care system better than most people in the U.S. do, and he has written: "The United States destroys more families than any other country in the world. While our Supreme Court has recognized that a parent’s right to care for her child is one of the oldest and most fundamental rights recognized by our Constitution, our federal child welfare policy is centered on the destruction of families."

DC School Warns Parents they’ll call CPS if You’re Late to Pick Up Your Children After School

As we have frequently reported here at Health Impact News over the years, very few children in the U.S. seized by Child Protective Services are taken because they are being abused.  Frequently, the threat of having children taken away from their families by CPS is used as a weapon to coerce parents. Recently a school district in Pennsylvania received media attention for threatening parents who were late in paying their school lunch fees of being reported to CPS and possibly losing their children. Now, another report out of Washington D.C. shows how one school threatened parents who did not show on time to pick up their children from school with being reported to CPS.

Is the Franklin Cover-up Scandal of Child Sex-Trafficking in Boys Town, Nebraska Still Happening Today?

In 1988, the raid and closure of the Franklin Federal Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska revealed a child sex trafficking ring, mainly boys and, later, girls from Boys Town, Nebraska, that included prominent members of society and government officials as the perpetrators. The investigation into the credit union and its General Manager, Larry King, ended with the arrest and conviction of Larry King for a forty million dollar fraud. Despite multiple investigations into the credit union, Larry King and Boys Town, one of the greatest cover-ups was not only successful, but resulted in the accusations made and corroborated by several witnesses as nothing more than a “hoax,” leading to multiple conspiracy theories. A documentary created in 1993 by a film crew from Yorkshire Television in the UK, went to Omaha, Nebraska to make a documentary about the alleged pedophile ring. Funding for the film was made by the Discovery Channel in the U.S.A. The documentary was set to air in Ireland and the UK as part of Yorkshire Television broadcast, “First Tuesday.” A US broadcast would follow. The documentary crew claims to have found a vast operation throughout the country, providing children to the wealthy and political establishment for molestation, drug trafficking and blackmail.  A year later, in 1994, the documentary, “Conspiracy of Silence,” was complete and ready to air in the UK, but the Discovery Channel withdrew support and reimbursed Yorkshire Television the half million it cost to make. The documentary remains unaired till this day, although copies can be found on the Internet.

Investigation Reveals North Carolina CPS Took HUNDREDS of Children Away from Parents Illegally

“I’m sort of flabbergasted by it. It’s one of those situations where – very rarely am I speechless – I am absolutely speechless over it.” These were the words spoken by North Carolina District Attorney Ashley Welch, when reporter Kate Martin, writing for the Carolina Public Press, asked her to respond last week (August 2019) to news that an internal memo revealed that state officials knew that Cherokee County Department of Social Services was illegally removing children from their homes, before a civil lawsuit was filed in 2018 and before a request was made for a State Bureau of Investigation probe into the matter. In 2018, Associated Press reporters Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr published an investigative report showing that Cherokee County Department of Social Services removed many children from their homes illegally, perhaps "hundreds."

Arizona Mom Melissa Diegel Suffering in Jail

Malinda Sherwyn, who has been a court watcher and child advocate for 26 years, was interviewed on Northwest Liberty News to give the public an update on Melissa Diegel, who is currently confined to a jail cell in Arizona where her health problems are allegedly not being addressed. The medical kidnapping of Melissa Diegel's two girls is the story that launched MedicalKidnap.com back in 2014. Her two daughters had special medical needs, and when Melissa started questioning doctors and seeking a second opinion, she was charged with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. After losing custody of her two children, she moved to Florida, but was recently arrested and brought back to Arizona as a "fugitive from justice" and now resides in a jail cell in Arizona, as her health deteriorates.  Watch the interview with Malinda Sherwyn to get the latest updates on this sad story.

Former Foster Parent Criminally Charged for Child Sex Abuse – Again

More horrible news this week highlighting the fact that the U.S. Foster Care system is America's #1 pipeline for child sex trafficking. From WCVB5 in Boston: "After 5 Investigates uncovered years of physical, mental and sexual abuse in a state licensed foster home, the state launched a review and the Worcester County district attorney opened an investigation in a case that has been hidden for decades. In the latest case, John Williams told investigators that when he was a young foster child, he was neglected by his foster parents -- forced to sit naked with another foster child -- and was fondled by Blouin, who put his hands in his underwear and touched him on multiple occasions. Williams and his younger brother, Nathan, told 5 Investigates they were beaten, put in dog cages for hours and tortured by Blouin's wife, who is a registered nurse, and her boyfriend, who moved into the home after her husband's conviction in the earlier cases." In Providence, Rhode Island, a man was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison followed by a lifetime of probation for repeatedly recording himself raping an unconscious child. The man was caught with one of the largest collections of child pornography ever seized by law enforcement in Rhode Island, which consisted of more than 36,000 images and 960 videos.

Defying Gag Order, Woman Who Drove Arizona Girl Raped and Burned in Foster Care to Supervised Visits with Parents Speaks Out on Arizona Corruption

Beth Breen, the driver contracted by Arizona DCS to drive young Devani from the foster home where it was later learned she was repeatedly raped by her foster parent who was arrested for running a child pornographic and child sex trafficking ring out of his state-approved foster home, to her parents home 90 miles away each week for a 2-hour supervised visitation, was recently interviewed by Jim White at Northwest Liberty News. Breen states that she is under a gag order and not supposed to speak about the case, but she "doesn't care" because the gag order is unconstitutional. This is one of the most horrific cases Health Impact News has ever covered, and one of the most-read stories ever published on MedicalKidnap.com. Breen gives an update on the current situation in the interview, and states that Devani has still not been returned to her parents, or to her grandmother who has allegedly taken her petition all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court. One of the most incredible statements that Breen gives during the interview, is when she recalls her time in jail with Merissa Hamilton because they were peacefully protesting in Phoenix against the abuses committed against Devani by Arizona DCS in this case, and she said they talked to the other women who were in jail to find out why they there: "While we were in jail, we interviewed a lot of women in jail and asked them why they were there. When we told them what we were doing, they stood up and applauded us, because out of every women that we interviewed, their charges were drugs, and the reason they turned to drugs was (because) their children were taken away. And they fought and they fought, and they finally just gave up. Because you can't win in this system."

Medical Kidnapping of Children Often Based on Race and Economic Class

When a child experiences a mild head injury and a parent seeks medical attention, what happens next in New York City seems to depend on the ZIP code and the color of the parent’s skin. In April, the actress Jenny Mollen, wife of the actor Jason Biggs and resident of Manhattan’s affluent West Village, announced on social media that she had accidentally dropped her 5-year-old son, causing a skull fracture and requiring treatment in the intensive care unit of a private Manhattan hospital’s I.C.U. Three months earlier and several miles north in the Bronx, my client, a Latina mom, was folding laundry in her apartment when she saw her 9-month-old daughter and 7-year-old son bump heads while playing on the bed. The following day she noticed that her daughter had a bump on her head. She took the baby to her pediatrician, and a follow-up at the hospital showed two minor skull fractures with a small underlying bleed. This is where Ms. Mollen’s and my client’s stories diverge. According to Ms. Mollen’s social media account of the incident, she and Mr. Biggs were met with compassion and sympathy by the hospital. Ms. Mollen publicly thanked the staff, saying she was “forever grateful.” At the Bronx hospital, though, my client was met with suspicion, interrogation and accusations of child abuse, even after explaining her daughter’s accidental head bump with her brother to the hospital staff. Emergency room staff members called the New York City Administration for Children’s Services to report possible child abuse.

Self-Appointed Internet Police Declare MedicalKidnap.com and DOJ Vaccine Court Reports Fake News

Health Impact News was recently contacted by John Gregory, a medical reporter working for the company NewsGuard, a self-appointed Internet policing group that awards "nutrition badge" ratings for websites determining if they are "reliable" or not. Mr. Gregory accused me right up front of publishing "false" claims, and asked me to comment on a list of articles in our network that he determined were "false." Curiously, one of the articles he chose to exhibit as something published that was "false" was one of our articles on the Department of Justice quarterly reports on compensated cases for vaccine injuries and deaths in the U.S. Vaccine Court, submitted every three months to the federal government Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV) under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The article is reporting what is public information from government sources. When they gave Health Impact News a negative rating, they even gave a negative rating to Created4Health.org, which is not even a news site but a site where I publish my devotional articles based on Bible studies. They also gave a negative rating to MedicalKidnap.com. Mr Gregory accused us of simply taking unverified social media posts from parents who claimed their children were being kidnapped by the state, and asked us if we even bothered to verify their stories. There is strong evidence that NewsGuard is comprised of "old-school journalists" who represent corporate interests, and are doing everything they can to squelch free speech on the Internet, especially in social media platforms. Health Impact News provides a free service to the public that often is seldom found elsewhere, and that is especially true with our Medical Kidnapping stories, where we are one of the few places parents can come to and find a platform to tell the world what is happening to America's children who are being kidnapped by the State, and often end up being sexually trafficked. What a shame it would be if the corporate censorship forces get their way. What can you do to fight corporate censorship?

Appellate Court: Parents Deserve an Impartial Judge and Fair Trial Before Terminating Parental Rights

A recent case out of Washington state was so egregious the appellate court not only rejected it, but sent it back to be heard again—in a different county. Generally, when a case is appealed, the appellate court will either uphold the original decision or “remand” it, meaning they send it back for a do-over, with special instructions from the higher court. But this case required the court to come up with a whole new option. “The right to a fair trial before an impartial tribunal is a basic requirement of due process,” Justice Smith wrote for a unanimous Court of Appeals for the State of Washington. “The right to due process is especially critical in a proceeding to terminate parental rights, where so much is at stake for both the parents and the child.”

Georgia Court of Appeals Blasts Judge in Juvenile Court that Denied Parents Justice Forcing them to Flee the State to Keep Their Children

The Reveal, a weekly news show at Alive 11 news in Atlanta, has published a report about judicial corruption in Georgia's Juvenile Court, highlighting a case where parents were denied their Constitutional rights, forcing them the flee the state to try and prevent the state from kidnapping their children. Judge Tripp Self from the Georgia Court of Appeals wrote in their decision: "We agree with the parents’ view that this ‘case is about much more than its individual facts. It is about the American legal system, about what our state and country require for every person brought before a court: fairness, respect, and a judicial system that should protect its citizens.’" Chief Judge Stephen Dillard went on to call the state’s justification for removing the children, “nonsense on stilts,” citing case law declaring parenting to be “a fiercely guarded right … that should be infringed upon only under the most compelling circumstances.” This story is all too typical of the kinds of stories we have been reporting at Health Impact News for years now, where parents are often denied due process and their Constitutional rights in family courts where decisions are made to remove their children. The judge in the case, County Juvenile Court Judge Joseph Wyant, used the excuse of "imminent danger" to order the removal of the children, even though the children's lives were allegedly not in imminent danger. The parents were denied legal representation and the opportunity to call their own witnesses and to cross examine the Division of Family and Children Services' (DFCS) witnesses. So feeling they had no options left in a corrupt judicial system, the parents packed up their children and fled the state. “I’m sure there are going to be people who are going to be judgmental and be like, 'You were stupid. You put their lives in danger.' Everyone knows in the back of their minds, if you have children, you would probably do the same thing,” said Martha.

Oregon Mother Jailed for Recommending Non-Chemo Cancer Therapies for Daughter

Christina Dixon of Oregon is the mother of a now 13-year-old daughter with liver cancer. When Christina’s daughter was 11, she was rushed to Oregon Health and Science University due to excruciating pain, which was diagnosed as Undifferentiated Embryonal Sarcoma, a rare kind of liver cancer that happens mainly in children. Many of us know and have seen the effects chemotherapy has on a body, let alone an 11-year-old body. According to oncologists at Oregon Health and Science University, this right is not up to the patient, or even the parent when it come to questioning, which this mother didn’t do or even consider other methods of treatment. It’s apparent this mother was to sit idly by as she watched her daughter agonize for 2 years with no results. Christina started using alternative treatments which include vitamins, herbs and pure CBD oil to treat her daughter’s cancer once she was release from OHSU in June of 2018. Records from Clackamas County juvenile court indicate a dependency petition was filed on March 26, 2019 claiming: “The mother has neglected child’s medical needs, which creates a risk of harm to the child.” Christina and her daughter were located in Las Vegas, Nevada, June 13, 2019, after Nevada police received a tip from the FBI and sheriff’s office that the two were staying in a hotel in Las Vegas. The daughter, now 13, was taken in “protective” custody of Nevada police and later transferred back to Oregon. This past week, Christina was arrested on charges of "first-degree custodial interference and first-degree criminal mistreatment." There is a DHS hearing on August 19, 2019 at the Oregon City Court House at 2 p.m. and supporters are asking the public to show up in support of Christine and Kylee.

Pedophiles Continue to be Licensed as Foster Parents in the U.S. to Meet the Demand for Child Sex Slaves

It has been well-documented and frequently reported here at Health Impact News that the United States Foster Care system is the nation's #1 pipeline for child sex trafficking. Attorney Michael Dolce from the law-firm Cohen Milstein, who speaks from experience from representing children abused in foster care, wrote an opinion piece published by Newsweek in 2018 stating that the nation’s foster care system is set up to sexually traffic children. Dolce said: "Here’s the ugly truth: most Americans who are victims of sex trafficking come from our nation’s own foster care system. It’s a deeply broken system that leaves thousands vulnerable to pimps as children and grooms them for the illegal sex trade as young adults. We have failed our children by not fixing the systemic failures that have allowed this to happen for decades." In 2018 an independent candidate running for office in Virginia, Nathan Larson, admitted to being a pedophile. He encouraged other pedophiles to use the foster care system to adopt children as "sex toys." A recent State Department report on Human Trafficking confirmed that the United States is the top destination in the world for sex trafficking, and Geoff Rogers, co-founder of the United States Institute Against Human Trafficking, stated: "We have a major issue here in the United States. The United States is the No. 1 consumer of sex worldwide. So we are driving the demand as a society. We’re also driving the demand with our own people, with our own kids. So there are tremendous numbers of kids, a multitude of kids that are being sold as sex slaves today in America. These are American kids, American-born, 50 percent to 60 percent of them coming out of the foster care industry." Here are some recent local news reports of arrests of licensed foster parents accused of sexually abusing children in the past 30 days which is probably only a fraction of the actual number of foster parents sexually trafficking children, and shows that this problem is only getting worse, not better.

Idaho Mom Arrested Second Time as Attempts to Silence Her Fail – Meanwhile 16-Year-Old Son Suffers in Foster Care

Kristine McCreery has spent the entirety of 2019 fighting Idaho Child Protective Services for her 16-year-old son, Brandon, over allegations of medical abuse/neglect because of health issues potentially caused by an untreated Celiac condition. Canyon County Prosecutor Shari Dodge had Kristine arrested Saturday, August 10th, 2019, on felony Injury to Child charges. It was the second time she was arrested on the same charges, as she had posted bond back in June already. Kristine reports that even the police officers were confused as to why they had just arrested her a second time on the same charge, and they let her go without having to post bond a second time. Kristine has also now been charged with contempt of court for going public with her story. In reality, she is being held in contempt because MedicalKidnap.com and Fight for Lilly are refusing to remove Dr. Amy Barton’s picture and the St. Luke’s CARES video from the original article. According to court documents, Judge Courtnie Tucker also filed a written order, dated July 24th, 2019, demanding that the photo and video be removed from the article. As we mentioned in previous articles regarding this family, neither the website MedicalKidnap.com that contains the photo of Dr. Barton, nor the YouTube account through fight4lilly.org that hosts the CARES video, are within Kristine’s control.  MedicalKidnap.com and Fight4Lilly.org have their own policies regarding the removal of such things from their websites, and choose to stand upon the rights granted under the First Amendment of Freedom of the Press. Canyon County Prosecutor Shari Dodge and Judge Courtnie Tucker are publicly funded officials, and the St. Luke’s CARES institution that employs Dr. Amy Barton is a federally funded program - all subject to public scrutiny because they receive public funds. Kristine says that since she went public, those involved in the case have lost focus of the real issue at hand, the health of sixteen year old Brandon: “They seem to care more about publicity than my son or his well-being.” Kristine says Brandon continues to lose weight in foster care, and that his medical needs are not being met by the department. She is greatly concerned about the malabsorption caused by Celiac and a possible lactose intolerance.