Multiple Studies Show Children Better Off Left in Troubled Homes than Put Into Foster Care

A new study conducted by Martin Guggenheim, from the NYU School of Law School, shows that children seized by Child Protection Services spend much less time in Foster Care if the parents are provided with high-quality legal representation, with no compromise in child safety. This means that many children in Foster Care today would not even need to be there if their parents had proper legal representation to fight the massive billion dollar foster care and adoption system, which for the most part has nothing to do with child safety. Richard Wexler, writing for the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform blog, notes that this is one of several studies showing that most children do far better when left with their biological families, even troubled families, than those children taken out of troubled homes and put into foster care. Taking the truth of what these studies conclude, that children are better off left in homes even when those homes are not perfect, with the fact that the child welfare system is so corrupt that some state legislatures have had to actually pass laws enforcing that child social service agencies stop lying and falsifying records in order to take children away from their families, such as a recently proposed bill in Texas, we come to the same conclusion that the late Georgia Senator Nancy Schaefer did, that the system is too corrupt and too powerful to reform.

Shaken Baby Syndrome Hypothesis Has Never Been Scientifically Validated

For years we have known that the diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is flawed. Yet too many innocent parents and caretakers remain wrongfully incarcerated and face wrongful convictions based on this false evidence. In a statement released by the Innocence Network on April 30, the Network explains that although the SBS hypothesis was popularized in the early 2000s, it has never been scientifically validated. In 2016, an independent group of experts appointed by The Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services, one of the oldest medical assessment organizations in the world, published findings that SBS evidence is “insufficient” and unreliable. Still, medical experts continue to erroneously and carelessly assert the validity of SBS accusations in our courts.

Connecticut DCF Punishing Tennessee Parents for Taking Their Story Public? Refuse to Let Parents Visit Baby

We recently published the story of a Tennessee couple who was traveling through Connecticut on their way to a vacation destination in Maine, when the wife, who was pregnant, starting experiencing back pains and decided to check into a hospital in Connecticut for a check up. Her Egyptian Christian husband was allegedly accused of being a Muslim terrorist, and before they knew it, she was being drugged against her will and forced to have cesarean surgery to remove her daughter from her womb, when she had been planning on having a natural birth. Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) then proceeded to take custody of the baby, with no formal charges ever filed against the parents. The parents eventually had to return to their home in Tennessee with their other two children, making the 20-hour one-way trip back to Connecticut each week to have a supervised 2-hour visit with their daughter as they tried to comply with DCF to get their daughter back. After six months, the parents decided to take their story public. Suzy, the mother, has now reported that Connecticut DCF is refusing to allow them to see their baby since they went public with their story. "We have just driven all day yesterday and all night for the past nearly 20 hours straight to get to Connecticut to see our baby and now our case worker David Friend is telling us that he cannot accommodate our visit and we cannot see our child!"

Pregnant Mom Traveling Through Connecticut with Husband Stops at Hospital Where They Forcibly Drug her and Perform Cesarean Surgery to Kidnap Baby

In a story so horrendous that it reads like a Hollywood script to a movie that could only be fiction, Tennessee parents Suzy and Peter Saad have decided to go public with their story of alleged medical abuse and medical kidnapping in Connecticut. Peter and Suzy both have master's degrees and were former medical school students, which is where they met. However, they put their plans for medical school on hold to start their family. After delivering two boys by cesarean birth, mom's dreams were finally realized when she became pregnant for the third time, and this time it was a baby girl in answer to her prayers. Suzy wanted the best for the new daughter growing in her womb, so she sought medical help to try and have a natural birth, uncommon but not impossible when the first pregnancies end in cesarean births. The family was living in Tennessee, and Suzy was not happy with the prenatal care she was receiving. Peter's family is from New Jersey, and after one of his family members died and they traveled to New Jersey to attend the funeral, they found a birthing center there that Suzy felt comfortable with in terms of trying a natural birth. At 38 weeks of pregnancy with her daughter, Suzy was experiencing some anxiety and suffering from bad nights of sleep. Family and friends suggested she take a few days off with her husband, while family members watched the two boys. They knew about a lovely place in Maine they had been wanting to visit, and decided that the 6-hour trip would do them some good. As they drove from New Jersey to Maine, Suzy experienced some pain, and to be on the safe side, they decided to stop at a hospital in Connecticut. This is when the real nightmares began. Her husband's family is originally from Egypt, although Peter grew up in the United States and has been a U.S. citizen since he was a child. His family in Egypt are Coptic Christians, a minority group in a country that is predominately Muslim. Before they fully understood what was happening, Peter was allegedly being accused of being a Muslim terrorist and fleeing the law, and Suzy was being accused of being a drug addict, simply because she had some prescription medications with her to treat her high blood pressure and diabetes. She was allegedly drugged and forced to have cesarean surgery, and hospital staff then allegedly worked together with social service workers to take custody of her baby. After 6 months of trying to comply with everything the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) was requiring of the parents in order to get their baby daughter back, they have now decided to go public with their story.

The Essence of Evil: Sex with Children Has Become Big Business in America

Children, young girls—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex in America. The average age for a young woman being sold for sex is now 13 years old. This is America’s dirty little secret. Sex trafficking—especially when it comes to the buying and selling of young girls—has become big business in America, the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns. As investigative journalist Amy Fine Collins notes, “It’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day—and a ‘righteous’ pimp confiscates 100 percent of her earnings.” Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry. According to USA Today, adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States. Who buys a child for sex? Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life. “They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.

Parents Share Their Pain of Being Wrongly Accused of Child Abuse and Losing Their Children

Knowing the date the fractures were discovered will never leave your mind. It will be some brutal anniversary you will always acknowledge, even when your "abused" baby is grown with children of their own. The flashbacks of the hospital. The clamps they put in your baby's eyes to check for retinal bleeding. The sound of the MRI machine. Your baby's wailing as they tried to insert an IV. The one nurse who couldn't make eye contact with you, wouldn't make eye contact with you, because she had already made her mind up about the mother whose child has 5 broken bones. The heavy weight you carry around, knowing CPS could be successful in terminating your parental rights, imprisoning you on false accusations. Your name permanently erased from your children's birth certificates. Wishing you could go back to believing every parent whose rights are terminated deserved it. Wishing every headline you read about an abused baby, you don't question if it was a medical disorder. Wishing you didn't know how many other parents are going through this, have been through this, who haven't made it through it. How will I heal from this?

NY City Council Asks Why Parents are Being Accused of Child Abuse for Simply Using Marijuana

As New York considers legalizing marijuana, attention is also turning to how the drug plays a role in the city’s child welfare system—one that has the power to remove children from their parents and that investigates, almost exclusively, low-income families of color. Parents and advocates have reported that recreational marijuana use can lead to investigations of child maltreatment by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services. Many times these investigations stem from testing pregnant women and their newborns at the city’s public hospitals, according to testimony at a City Council hearing on Wednesday. Queens Councilwoman Adrienne Adams called the practice “the systemic criminalization of women of color,” which comes with the threat of separating children and parents. “We are absolutely tearing families apart, needlessly,” Adams said.

Arizona Judge Orders Lawmaker and Media Out of Courtroom in Case Where Police Kicked Down Door Because Feverish Child was not Taken to Hospital

An Arizona Judge recently ordered state Representative Kelly Townsend and the local media to leave the courtroom during the trial of the Chandler Arizona family who lost all 3 of their children for failing to take one of them to the hospital regarding a fever. Police broke down their door at 1 a.m. in the morning and forcibly removed all three children. According to the Arizona Republic, Judge Timothy J. Ryan ordered one of their reporters and Rep. Townsend to "immediately" leave an April 10 pretrial hearing in the case. The judge was apparently upset over the media coverage this trial was receiving. This is consistent with how Arizona judges have acted in cases involving the State of Arizona removing children from their homes unjustly, as Health Impact News has been ordered several times in the past few years to take down our stories representing the families and victims of such actions. However, Health Impact News has never complied with such orders, as they violate the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

Iowa Social Worker Sued After Lying to Court to Remove Children from Parents

Former Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) social worker Chelsea Gray may finally be facing justice for her part in lying to a judge in 2018 that caused 4 children to be wrongly removed from their parents. District Associate Judge Adam Sauer had ruled in 2018 that Chelsea Gray had delivered fabricated reports and trial testimony that helped convince a judge to terminate the legal rights of the mother and father of four northern Iowa children. The judge said Gray's testimony was riddled with "lies and misrepresentations." "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. He added, "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." However, even after this ruling, apparently nothing was done to hold Chelsea Gray or DHS responsible for these actions, even after a county attorney found 10 other cases where Gray allegedly gave false information, and reported this to the attorney general's office. Earlier this month (April, 2019), however, criminal charges have now apparently been filed against Gray for perjury, presumably by one of the families that suffered from her false testimony.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Doctor Experimenting on Children as Young as 8 for Transgender Therapy with Government Funding

Dr. Michael Laidlaw, an endocrinologist from Rocklin, California, recently discovered via a Freedom of Information Act that a government-supported research program at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles was experimenting on children as young as 8 years old with cross-sex hormones. Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who runs the Los Angeles study, received a $5.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH.) There are currently more than 30 clinics for transgender children in the U.S. Olson-Kennedy’s clinic, the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, is the country’s largest, treating 725 children. Her youngest patient is 3 years old. Dr. Laidlaw said the minimum age for giving cross-sex hormones had been lowered from 13 to 8 in the NIH funded five-year study. He stated that there is an absence of clinical data on "transgender-affirming therapy" indicating it is a good idea or is at all healthy for the children. Walt Heyer refers to himself as a "former transgender." He refers to such treatment as is funded by the NIH “child abuse,” and said he claims to have spoken to many transgender individuals who called transitioning “the biggest mistake” of their lives. Dr. Marian Rutigliano stated: "For parents who believe they are placing their trust in doctors knowing what’s best for their child, the AAP’s 2016 guidelines on caring for trans-identifying children were written by a 12-person panel on which less than half the members were even physicians, led by a 25-year-old trans-identified female – and one of those physicians worked at a clinic in which every single child who came in for a consultation was considered appropriate for transition. Doctors who do attempt to stand up to the current vogue in transitioning kids are bullied or harassed into silence, often losing their positions."

Was Arizona Family that had Police Break Down Their Door at 1 A.M. Targeted by Medical Community Because They Don’t Vaccinate Their Children?

A story out of Arizona that we first reported at the beginning of March has received national attention, due to video footage of police breaking down the family's door in the middle of the night because the parents did not take one of their children who had a fever to the local hospital at the request of a doctor. The police and social workers removed all 3 children from the home. In our original coverage of this story, we mentioned a quote from the parents that they did not vaccinate their children, but the parents did not, at the time, think this was a factor in their removal. In a follow up report published in the Arizona Republic by Dianna M. Náñez after the parents' first court hearing, Arizona Representative Kelly Townsend, who attended the court hearing, stated: “It was brought to my attention that these parents may have been targeted by the medical community because they hadn’t vaccinated their children.” Arizona law allows for parents to opt out of vaccines for their children for religious or medical reasons. Townsend said parents who don’t vaccinate their children because of medical concerns aren’t criminals and shouldn’t be treated as such. She worried physicians were using it as a reason to refer parents to DCS. “I think if DCS decides to use this as a factor they would be violating a parent’s right to have a personal exemption, a religious exemption and perhaps a medical exemption,” she said.

Are Corrupt Police Assisting CPS in Trafficking Children?

Over the past several years Health Impact News has documented the abuse and over-reach of child "protection" social services (CPS) all across the U.S. who have participated in removing children from families where they are loved, and placed them into dangerous situations in the Foster Care system where they are routinely abused, and often sexually trafficked. Child sex trafficking is estimated to be the most financially lucrative illegal trafficking system in the U.S., with more money involved than both the illegal drugs and illegal gun trafficking businesses combined. When CPS comes to a home, parents are well-advised to know their Constitutional rights and resist any efforts to enter their home without a warrant signed by a judge. Social workers are not yet armed in the United States, so if they want to force their way into a home, the participation of law enforcement is needed. However, even police have to obey the Constitution, and if they enter a home without a sufficient warrant, they will almost always lose in court as violating the civil rights of the family. But what if law enforcement are actually complicit with CPS with the intent to harm children and even sexually traffick them? In this article we will look at the evidence that this may actually be happening all across the U.S.

Is Oregon Trafficking Children out of State via Their Foster Care System?

Oregon has a foster care problem. Too many foster children, and not enough foster homes to put them into. A 2016 lawsuit was filed against the state for housing foster children in hotels and offices. Richard Wexler, director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR), states: "Oregon tears children needlessly from their parents at a rate far above the national average." Since 2017, the rate of foster children being shipped out of Oregon to facilities in other states has more than doubled. Most of these are troubled youth being sent to psychiatric wards. Earlier this year (2019), Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that Oregon was shipping some foster children to facilities known for abuse. In an investigative report by Troy Brynelson of the Salem Reporter this week, it was revealed that two state Department of Human Services workers in Polk County, a supervisor and a paralegal, "remain on paid leave and stationed at home after the state investigated them for child abuse that involved indecency." The incident allegedly happened in Dallas, Texas.

BREAKING: Rockland County NY Becomes America’s First Vaccine Police State – Bans Unvaccinated Children from Public Places – Health Dept. Goes Door to Door

Rockland County Executive Ed Day held a press conference earlier today to announce that he had declared a "state of emergency" regarding the New York state county's 153 cases of measles over a 6-month period, and placed a ban on all children under the age of 18 from appearing in any public area, which includes schools, malls and places of worship. Mr. Day said that this was the "first such effort of this kind nationally." The emergency ban is clearly targeted towards parents of unvaccinated children, as Mr. Day stated: "Parents will be held accountable if they are found to be in violation of this state of emergency act. And the focus of this effort is on the parents of these children. We are urging them once again, now with the authority of law, to get your children vaccinated." Mr. Day tried to downplay fears of police checkpoints and random checks for vaccination status, but he also stated that any parent found to be not in compliance with the emergency order would be referred to the district attorney's office for possible prosecution. "If we have a situation where it comes to our attention that a parent is willingly, knowingly, not allowing a child to be vaccinated, under the emergency order, it will be referred into the district attorney." The Rockland County Health Department, who recommended the emergency ban, has reportedly been going door to door and calling homes within the community in an effort to deal with the measles "epidemic."

Idaho Lawmaker: Know Your Rights! Do Not Let CPS Into Your Home!

While 80 percent of home visits by CPS found no indications of child abuse, a growing culture within Idaho CPS deems it acceptable to use coercion and bullying to get into homes, sometimes telling families they must cooperate with extensive investigations. Citizens need to remember that without consent, or a warrant, or probable cause with exigent circumstances, no CPS staff or any government worker (including a police officer) can enter your home. There is ample case law in federal and supreme courts to prove this. With the help of concerned families from across the state, I drafted and introduced simple legislation, HB-170, to help address this CPS overreach. Here are some of your rights when government shows up at your door....

Investigation Finds Kentucky CPS Illegally Taking Children from Homes with Pre-signed Judge’s Orders

Kentucky social workers are failing to have courts properly scrutinize and approve the drastic step of taking some children from their homes, relying instead on blank removal orders with pre-signed judges' signatures, which is illegal according to several attorneys and judges. The allegations, which involve cases of purported parental abuse or neglect, have prompted numerous complaints to judges and state officials. They revolve specifically around the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services workers using pre-signed emergency custody court orders to remove children on weekends and after the courthouse has closed for the day. "The system that is currently set up allows for the social workers to call an on-call judge on the phone and then fill out the order themselves, a blank order with a judge’s signature on it," attorney Karen Faulkner said in an interview. "Children are being illegally taken from their home without judges’ proper authority."

Montana Legislator Calls for $1K a Day Fines and Jail for CPS Workers who Kidnap Children

James White of Northwest Liberty News out of Montana recently interviewed Representative Rodney Garcia, who has proposed legislation to punish CPS workers who break the law and remove children from their homes needlessly. Representative Garcia states: "Child Protective Services do not protect the kids, they kidnap them." He goes on to explain that CPS workers need a court order to remove children from their home, but routinely do not have court orders, and he wants to start fining them and putting them in jail when they take children out of homes without court orders. Prior to interviewing Representative Garcia, James White interviewed Debbie Westlake from Butte, Montana, as an example of the kind of corruption in child welfare services in Montana. He writes: "In summary, Debbie had some medical issues and needed to be hospitalized for a couple weeks. CPS took over and protected her son during her hospital stay. The visitation specialist who returned Debbie’s son, Robert, made advances on Debbie of a sexual nature, which she rebuked and then reported. The worker was subsequently arrested for 4 counts of incest and was sentenced to 80 years in prison. After another 5 hour hospital stay, CPS took Robert and he has not been home since." Watch both interviews at MedicalKidnap.com.

Is Justice Finally being Served in Arkansas 4 Years After Stanley Homeschool Children Kidnapped?

In 2015, we covered the story of the Stanley family in Arkansas, reporting how the local sheriff department arrived at the home one night with local social workers and issued a warrant to search their property for a "dangerous" mineral supplement that was supposedly being forced upon the children and endangering their health. The Stanley family homeschool their children, and that night, despite the fact that no dangerous materials were found in the house, and that a local doctor who came in an ambulance and examined each of the 7 children cleared them as being healthy, the local sheriff deputy ordered all 7 children to be forcibly removed from their home. Prior to this time, they had never spent a night away from their parents. DHS workers reportedly remarked that there was no reason to take the children out of the home. When Mr. Stanley asked who actually made the decision to take their kids, Garland County Deputy Mike Wright allegedly replied, “I did, and I am proud of it.” It turned out that the mineral supplement was perfectly legal, and posed no health threat to the children. So in order to justify the removal of the children, the charges were changed to something that was not on the original warrant, including "educational neglect" due to the family's homeschooling practice. The children were forced to live with foster parents and start attending public school. None of the charges were ever substantiated, and it was determined later that one the older teenage children made up all the accusations because he did not like being homeschooled and the family's strict Christian values. 5 months later, all the children were returned home, but not before suffering tremendous emotional trauma from being separated from their parents. After 21 months, all charges were dropped against the Stanleys. But this was not the end of their ordeal, only the beginning. Working with local attorney Joe Churchwell, the Stanleys sued the Garland County Sheriff's Department for a violation of their civil rights - a case that has reached all the way up to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which last year upheld a U.S. District Court ruling depriving the lead investigator from "qualified immunity." So the civil rights case continues. The investigator, Kathy Finnegan, was recently deposed by Attorney Joe Churchwell, and the Sentinel-Record has published an account of the deposition. Finnegan allegedly revealed that there was no evidence for the Garland County Sheriff to take the children in the first place.

New Proposed Texas Bill would Stop Child Protective Services from Falsifying Records

A new bill submitted in the Texas state Legislature by state Representative Gene Wu of Houston would require Child Protective Services (CPS) to increase accountability and prevent social workers from altering case records. What does this say about the current moral status of social workers in CPS when a law has to be passed to stop them from lying and falsifying records? One of the cases that was the motivation for this Texas bill is a case from 2018 that we reported here at Health Impact News where a family court judge ordered CPS to immediately return two children, a 5-month-old baby boy and 2-year-old little girl, to their family and have no more contact with them since they were removed from their home without a warrant and under false allegations. Later, Judge Mike Schneider took the unprecedented action to sanction CPS $127,000 for wrongfully removing the couple’s children and lying to the court about it. Representative Wu who authored the bill told the Houston Chronicle: “We’re talking about taking children away from families, breaking up families — we need to have the utmost transparency. We want there to be integrity in the reporting system.” According to the Chronicle: "The bill would require the department to track who makes every entry in a case and when, and it would require that the electronic records system prohibit users from modifying or deleting information."

Police Break Down Door of Arizona Family at 1 AM to Medically Kidnap 3 Children Because Parents Refused to Take Child to Emergency Room with Fever

Local news media in Arizona have reported that a family had their three children forcibly removed from their home in the early morning hours after armed police forces broke down their door to gain entrance. The military SWAT-like actions of these armed police forces were captured on video by the family's security cameras. The incident is reportedly the result of the family's doctor reporting them to child services because they did not follow her advice and take their 2-year-old son to the emergency room due to a high fever. The parents claim the child's fever came down considerably on the way, and that he started playing with his siblings. They offered to bring him back to the doctor to verify he was not in danger, instead of spending thousands of dollars for an emergency room visit, but the doctor allegedly refused and reported them to social services. If local authorities truly believed the child was in imminent danger, why did they wait until the middle of the night when the entire family was asleep to break down their door and come in and raid their home, traumatizing the children and taking all three of them into custody? The parents do not even know where their children are located, and social services reportedly canceled their meeting.