Federal Judge in Texas Fines CPS $50K a Day for “Shameful” Foster Care: CPS has “Lied to me at almost Every Level”

A federal judge in Texas appears to be getting fed up with Texas government officials who are delaying in abolishing the State's foster care and child protective services agency and establishing a new one. This week she started fining the state $50,000.00 a day for not implementing the reforms she ordered back in 2015 when she ruled that the Texas foster care system was unconstitutional. In her original ruling, Judge Jack wrote: "Texas’s PMC (Permanent Managing Conservatorship) children have been shuttled throughout a system where rape, abuse, psychotropic medication, and instability are the norm." Rather than comply with her ruling, however, the State of Texas wasted taxpayer funds in fighting against the injunction. Now, Judge Jack is apparently tired of waiting, and has announced fines of $50,000.00 a day which will double in the near future if the State does not comply with her orders. Earlier this week she said that she no longer finds the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services "credible" and that the state has "lied to me at almost every level." During the hearing, Jack scolded officials with DFPS who testified because they could not answer questions concerning the conditions in placements for foster care children.

$10M Lawsuit Filed in New York Against Motels that Allegedly Allowed Child Sex Trafficking of Foster Children

Andrew Denney and Gabrielle Fonrouge of the New York Post have reported on a $10 million lawsuit filed recently alleging that a 10-year-old foster girl was raped, tortured and beaten as she was sold for sex at two New York motels while staff turned a blind eye to what was happening. The young girl was trafficked through motels, according to the lawsuit, with the full knowledge of the motel staff who did nothing to try and stop this kind of sex trafficking of children. According to the NY Post article, 45% of all sexual exploitation in New York City happens in hotels. To understand the scope and depth of this problem of foster care children being sexually trafficked, go to an Internet search engine and search for law firms that specialize in representing foster care children who are sexually trafficked. You will have plenty to choose from. It is apparently a tragic booming business for attorneys. Here are a few:

Is the Arizona Human Trafficking Council Preventing Child Trafficking, or Facilitating it?

Episode 5 of The Medical Kidnap Show aired on KFNX Talk Radio 1100 out of Phoenix on Sunday night, November 3, 2019. Our guest for this show was Lori Ford, the head of the DCS Oversight Group, which is a group of volunteers who attend meetings regarding Department of Children Services issues in Arizona. The group also has "court watchers" who attend Dependency Court hearings as parent advocates and to observe how these parents are being treated in Dependency Court. When asked why the members of the group provided their services to families and others free of charge, she replied: "The reason that we do this, is it's so important. This is the future of our country, the future of our nation. And family means everything to all of us. So that's why we do it. We see so many rights being violated in this dependency court system." This past week (Tuesday, October 29, 2019), the Arizona Human Trafficking Council conducted a meeting that was open to the public, and Lori Ford and other members of the DCS Oversight Group attended. Lori addressed the Council, pointing out that while the Council had exposed websites that trafficked kids, such as BackPage.com, which was shut down by the FBI last year, that the Council had not addressed another website in Arizona that trafficks kids, the DCS .gov website: "Children's Heart Gallery." "The children who are on this Heart Gallery, which is part of the DCS website, are children that are in DCS custody. They're foster kids, they're kids in group homes. This is a forced adoption, a forced re-homing if you will, website, of children who are in DCS custody. They're pimping out kids online."

The Medical Kidnap Show on KFNX Talk Radio Phoenix is Now on Sunday Nights – Listen Online!

Starting Sunday, November 3, 2019, The Medical Kidnap Show will air on KFNX Talk Radio 1100 broadcast out of Phoenix at 9 p.m. local time (8 pm PST - 11 pm EST). This Sunday's show will look at the question: "Does Doug Ducey's and Cindy McCain's Arizona Human Trafficking Council actually stop human trafficking in Arizona, or contribute to it?"

Tampa Bay ABC Investigation Uncovers Medical Kidnapping of Seniors Throughout Florida with State Guardianships

The state of Florida, home to many seniors who have retired in that state, has had numerous investigations this year by local media outlets in the state's guardianship program that takes away the civil rights of senior adult patients, allowing them to seize their estates, and in at least one high-profile case, even issue a "do not resuscitate" order without involving the patient's family. Now one local media outlet out of Tampa Bay, ABC Action News WFTS, has conducted a three-month investigation that uncovered numerous examples of hospitals in Orlando, Miami, West Palm Beach, Naples and other Florida cities paying private attorneys to file hundreds of court petitions to put patients into guardianship. An I-Team review of state court records found: Tampa Bay area hospitals, including those owned by Baycare, AdventHealth and HCA, went to court to put more than 100 patients into guardianship since 2017 alone. Tampa General Hospital filed five nearly identical court documents seeking guardianship for patients, describing each as having “disorganized thinking and poor cognition.” A hospital spokeswoman said TGH spent $28,000 on guardianship cases so far in just 2019. An attorney for Florida Hospital Altamonte requested guardianship for a patient because her “Kia Soul that was almost paid off… may be repossessed.” Nationwide, government guardians oversee an estimated 1.3 million adults and $50 billion of their assets.

Study: Children with Court-Appointed Special Advocates do WORSE Than Children Without Them

A new study has just been published in the journal Child Maltreatment: The Effect of CASA on Child Welfare Permanency Outcomes. "The present study is the largest and most rigorous study to date on the effects of being appointed a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) on permanency outcomes of children in foster care. Overall, children appointed a CASA have significantly lower odds than children without a CASA of achieving permanency. They have lower odds of being reunified, greater odds of being adopted (if not reunified), and lower odds of being placed in permanent kin guardianship (if not reunified or adopted) than children who are not appointed CASA." Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform writes that this is the second large-scale study done on the effectiveness of CASAs, the first one being published back in 2004: "Back in 2004, Youth Today revealed the results of the most comprehensive study done to that point concerning the most sacred cow in child welfare: Court-Appointed Special Advocates. CASAs are overwhelmingly white overwhelmingly middle-class amateurs sent into the homes of people who are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately of color.  The amateurs then tell judges what decisions to make and, to a frightening degree, the judges rubber-stamp the recommendations.  Though CASAs almost always mean well, their only real 'qualification' typically is their white, middle-class status. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty, according to that 2004 study." Wexler goes on to say that it is time to defund the CASA program.

2-Year-Old Arizona Child Raped and Burned in Foster Care: Where is the Justice for Devani?

The Medical Kidnap Show Episode aired on KFNX radio 1100 in Phoenix Thursday October 24th. Host Rick Wood and show producer Brian Shilhavy welcomed guest Beth Breen on the show to talk about the Devani case, as Beth Breen was the contracted driver who transported young Devani from her foster home to visit her parents until David Frodsham, the foster father, was arrested for child pornography and child sex abuse. While David Frodsham has been convicted and is currently in prison for raping and sexually abusing Devani since she was 2 years old, and while Samantha Osteraas has also been convicted and is now in prison for scalding 80% of Devani's body to the point where she lost all of her toes, where is Devani today? Why is her family not allowed any access to her? Why has the lawsuit against the State and the State officials and agencies who are responsible for letting this happening been stagnant for over a year? Listen to the show as we discuss these issues, and where Brian Shilhavy says that there is one major action that can be taken today to put a serious dent into the corrupt foster care industry that continues to traffick these children.

Unnecessary Removals: The Most Unjust Adverse Childhood Experience

Removal is child welfare's most drastic and most protective safety intervention. It should be a last resort for state agencies charged with protecting children from harm. While there is a strong legal basis underpinning removal's limited use, there are also clinical reasons to invoke it sparingly. Dr. Monique Mitchell's research, as discussed in Does Anyone Know What is Going On? Examining Children's Lived Experience of the Transition into Foster Care, documents the ambiguity and loss that children suffer the moment they are separated from their parents and how this threatens child well-being. At removal, children can experience structural ambiguity (e.g., What is foster care?), placement reason ambiguity (e.g., Why am I in foster care?), relationship ambiguity (e.g., Who is this case manager? Who are these foster parents?), temporal ambiguity (How long will this last?), and ambiguous loss (e.g., Why can't I see my parents?). These are questions that haunt children moment by moment as they are physically separated from their parents. The research on the harm inflicted by separating children from their parents is so unambiguous that Harvard Professor of Pediatrics, Dr. Charles Nelson, told the Washington Post, "If people paid attention at all to the science, they would never do this." But we do this as a matter of routine in the name of child protection—more than 250,000 times per year.

Christian Churches Redefine the Meaning of “Orphan” to Justify Participating in Child Trafficking

The recent arrest of Mormon Paul Petersen in Arizona, a politician and adoption attorney, has shown the public that religious institutions and churches are a big reason why child trafficking exists today. Paul Petersen allegedly used his position in the Mormon Church to move to the Marshall Islands as a missionary, learn the local language and culture, and set up a very lucrative adoption business trafficking pregnant women and their babies to the U.S. The child trafficking business today, which includes trafficking children from outside the U.S. into the U.S. through adoption agencies, as well as trafficking children within the U.S. through the government-funded foster care system, is quite possibly the most lucrative  businesses in the U.S. today, if one includes "legal" ways of trafficking children, as well as illegal ways. In the Petersen case, for example, his organization was illegally selling babies through adoption for $35,000.00 to $40,000.00 per child. This is not a problem strictly confined to the Mormon Church, nor to the Catholic Church which has been rocked with scandals regarding pedophile priests. The biggest religious player in trafficking children today, is probably the Evangelical Church. If the Evangelical Church immediately stopped participating in overseas adoptions, and stopped participating in the government-funded foster care system, it would have a serious impact in stopping the flow of child trafficking today. When one looks at the rationale used today by the Evangelical Church to participate in government-funded programs that are documented to be involved in child trafficking, we learn that the church is using the term "orphan" incorrectly, and instead of obeying scriptural principles to care for "orphans and widows," they are actually doing the opposite, by completely denying parental rights and participating in the lucrative child trafficking business.

Philadelphia to Investigate CPS Medical Kidnappings and Possible Child Sex Trafficking

Earlier this year we covered the story out of Philadelphia regarding City Councilman David Oh, who presented testimony before the Philadelphia City Council regarding abuses in the state-run child protection services (DHS – Department of Human Services), and how they were continually breaking state law, while not admitting to any wrong-doing. Councilman Oh states, on the record, that he was threatened when he began looking into cases of CPS abuse: "There have been threats made, threats intimated, that there will be retaliation, that there will be political consequences – all types of threats. And I wonder why? Why is that, when all we are doing is our duty to provide an oversight to an administrative agency that is responsible for protecting children. Why the threat, why the problems?" According to Megan Fox of PJ Media, the Philadelphia City Council has now passed a resolution to look into the matter.