California Foster Father Sentenced to 6 Life Terms in Child Sex Trafficking Case: Hid Children for 10 Years Where They Were Chained, Raped, Tortured, and Starved

Jose Centeno of Rohnert Park, in Sonoma County, California, was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences last week for torturing, starving, raping and sodomizing his three foster children, whom he kept hidden from the public in cages for 10 years. I have covered a lot of these kinds of stories for more than a decade, and this one is vying for First Place in the most horrific and demonic stories that I have ever encountered. Jose Centeno and his wife Gina Centeno were both arrested in August of 2020, but Gina died in jail earlier this year while awaiting trial. When their arrest was made in 2020, it drew national attention, especially after it was discovered that one of the foster children had not been seen in about 10 years, Kaya Centeno, who is the only one that I could find a photo of online. The jury trial of Jose Centeno was conducted in July of this year (2024), and the details and testimonies that were presented in the courtroom literally traumatized the jury, as is to be expected, and as I have personally also experienced over the years from covering these types of cases. What these corporate media sources failed to report, however, was the back story about how this horror could have continued for so long with a state-licensed foster care family. A situation like this does not just happen by a rogue, rare exception to the foster care system. To get away with a child sex trafficking operation like this, there has to be complicity from local law enforcement, to the social service agencies that allow this to happen, and none of the corporate media reports even bothered to look into that. Nor did they bother to investigate why these children were taken away from their biological family in the first place. One of the articles I read while researching this story from Sonoma County today mentioned that there had also been a federal lawsuit filed in this case, but that it had been settled. It took me some time, but I found the lawsuit, and it has NOT been settled, but is still ongoing. This lawsuit provides a LOT more details, including suing all the people and government employees who were complicit with this child sex trafficking ring, and providing details that are even more horrible than what the corporate media is reporting.

Innocent Children Continue to Die in the Nation’s Evil Foster Care Child Trafficking System

A tragic story was published this week in Albany, New York, where a 2-year-old child was forcibly removed from his family by the family police force known as "Child Protection Services" (CPS), even though there was no record or claims that the child and his brother, who was also removed, were ever abused. The 2-year-old child along with his brother were then placed into a State-licensed foster home, where one of the members of that home had formerly been investigated for child abuse. That member of the licensed foster home was Sarah Carter, the adult daughter of the licensed foster mother, who subsequently left the young toddler, 2-year-old Antonio, in a hot car for 4 hours where he died of hyperthermia, or overheating. What makes this story, which happens all too frequently, so tragic, is that Antonio had parents who loved him, and observed how he was being mistreated in the foster home he was placed in during the supervised visitation times with their son, who often showed up with bruises and cuts, and smelled like he had not been bathed for some time. This was reported to the caseworker, and other family members tried to gain custody of young Antonio, but to no avail. A caseworker assistant who transported Antonio and his brother back and forth between the foster home and the biological parents for visitation, noticed what was happening to Antonio in the foster home, and reported it to her superiors. As a result of her trying to step in and advocate for these two children, she was fired.

How American Christian Culture Destroys Motherhood and Kidnaps Children of Single Moms

Modern day America is largely defined by Western Christian and Jewish values, and those of us who grew up in this culture and read the Bible, will naturally tend to read and understand the Bible from our own Western cultural values. However, the inspired authors of the literature contained in the Bible did not write from a Western cultural perspective, but from a Middle Eastern culture perspective, especially the Old Testament. To be sure, during the New Testament period, the Roman culture, which grew out of the Greek culture and is the foundation of "Western" culture, was transitioning to become the dominant culture in the world. But the Jewish writers of the New Testament still largely lived their lives based on Middle Eastern culture, and Middle Eastern cultural values. As an American, I have been very fortunate to live a significant portion of my adult life outside the United States, including many years in Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and 1990s, where Middle Eastern culture and Middle Eastern cultural values were still the dominant force shaping their societal values. Most of the modern English translations of the Bible, as well as the English commentaries on the Bible, including the "older" commentaries, some of which were written in German during the Reformation period in Europe and then later translated into English, are all written by Westerners with Western cultural values. One of the most damaging effects of using Christian and Jewish Western cultural values to translate and interpret the Bible, is how the modern definition of  "orphans" and "widows" is used today. It's easy for me to sum up the Western cultural view of "widows" and "orphans" today as defined and practiced in the United States in one sentence: Grab the "orphans" and turn them over to the Government's lucrative child trafficking system called "foster care" and "adoption" and let the widows fend for themselves after they lose their children.

Inconvenient Truths: The U.S. Government Kidnaps, Trafficks and Murders American Children Every Day in America, Land of the “Free”

For the past several days, both the corporate and alternative media have been publishing headlines about the tragic death of a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student, Laken Hope Riley. And while this is indeed a very tragic death, thousands of young people die every day in the United States, so why has this girl's death made headline news all over the country? Riley's death is making headline news because her alleged murderer was a migrant who crossed the border illegally, so that her tragic death can be politicized. Those on the Right are blaming Biden, while those on the Left are blaming Trump. Do you see how the Mockingbird Media cleverly controls the narrative so that no matter what side you are on, you will blame this tragic death on foreign criminals who are coming to this country illegally and putting our young people and children at risk due to policies at the border, and that therefore this "problem" needs a political solution? Filling the mass media (both the "mainstream" and the "alternative" media) with stories like this that divide the nation accomplishes an even a greater purpose, however. It draws the public's attention away from the REAL criminals who are kidnapping and murdering America's children: The U.S. Government. So here are several other stories from the past few weeks where children and teens were murdered because the U.S. Government (HHS) kidnapped these children from their families who loved them, and put them into the nation's Foster Care system with either "Foster Parents" or into group homes run by the foster care system, where they were murdered. The "inconvenient" truth here is that American children are being trafficked and murdered with your taxpayer funding, and it is insanity to think that the way to stop these crimes is to look for political solutions from the very criminals who are responsible for these murders in the first place. Here are some of the stories of recent murders of children in Government custody that you probably did not hear about because they did not make the national news cycle like Laken Riley's story did.

After 9-Year-Old Medically Kidnapped Boy Murdered in Foster Care, Investigation Reveals Many Deaths Happening in Arizona Group Foster Homes

A 9-year-old boy with Type 1 diabetes died 18 days after he was medically kidnapped from his father and put into the Arizona Foster Care system, and into a group home. The child's grandmother who lived in another state and would have surely welcomed the stay of her grandson, was apparently never even considered as a placement for the 9-year-old boy. ABC15 has published an investigation they conducted on the Arizona Foster Care system, and found that other children have died after being removed from their parents and put into Foster Care. But we are never going to get rid of the murderers and kidnappers if we keep saying that stories like this are "a systemic failure." This is a clear example of "systemic ABUSE", because this kind of abuse happens regularly throughout the entire system. To call it a "failure" is to claim that the system is failing to do what it is designed to do, and it pre-supposes that the system is designed to "protect" children. But that is NOT the function of the system, even though it claims to be. We need to move past what the system is claiming to be, and look at its actions and call them out for what they are DOING, and not what they are SAYING. We know that the system does NOT protect children, and we have known that for decades now based on wide-scale research on children in foster care. And that research states that children are better protected when they remain in their home with their family, even if that family is "troubled" and has issues, such as the parents being drug users, than when that child is ripped apart from the only people they have ever known who love them, and put into homes of strangers, or as in this case, into "group homes" who are for-profit businesses that make a very lucrative income from collecting funds from the State to "take care" of foster children. And this case with 9-year-old Jakob's murder is a clear example of how the child welfare system works, where neither he nor his father requested separation, but were forced to do it in what can only be called "kidnapping," and then 18 days later he was murdered by medical neglect and abuse by the Foster Care system. If Jakob had died in the care of his father because of not continuing his insulin dosages, his father would be facing murder charges for "medical neglect and abuse" today, but because it happened in a Foster Group Home run by a private corporation who collects funds from the Government, nobody will even be charged for those very same crimes.

LA County May be Forced to Pay $3 Billion in 3,000 Claims of Child Sexual Abuse in Foster Homes, Children Shelters, and Probation Camps

Three years after the Child Victims Act went into effect, L.A. County — responsible for facilities meant to protect and rehabilitate the region’s youth — has emerged in court filings as one of the biggest alleged institutional offenders. Two weeks ago, in an otherwise dry budget document, county officials delivered figures that stunned even some of the most seasoned California sex abuse attorneys. County officials predicted that they may be forced to spend between $1.6 billion and $3 billion to resolve roughly 3,000 claims of sexual abuse that allegedly took place in the county’s foster homes, children shelters, and probation camps and halls dating to the 1950s. The county is gearing up to litigate the cases, bringing on 11 law firms to work through the claims. Experts say the volume is unlike anything they’ve heard of in local government. There is only one apt comparison, attorneys say: the Catholic Church.

Florida Parents Continue to Expose Child Trafficking as Pleas to Abolish the Nation’s “Child Welfare” System Pick up Momentum

We have previously reported about a lawsuit in Florida where dozens of parents were suing the State for illegally taking their children away from them. This has been an ongoing problem in Florida, where children are taken away from families who love them, and put into the foster care system where they are often sexually abused and trafficked. The original lawsuit filed last year has since been thrown out by a judge calling it a "shotgun complaint." The lawsuit accused the State of taking away their children illegally, and placing them with strangers instead of placing them with relatives. Many parents and their attorney have now amended that lawsuit and refiled it on the grounds that their Constitutional rights have been violated. Interestingly, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was a defendant in the original lawsuit, seems to have been dropped in the amended lawsuit. The late Georgia Senator Nancy Schaefer was one of the first to call for an end to the nation's Child Welfare System over a decade ago, and it cost her her life. But a couple of new books just published this year, 2023, show that others have now taken up the call to end the nation's child trafficking system that is so wrongfully referred to by such terms as "Child Welfare" and "Child Protection Services."

Holding Children for Ransom: Parents Losing Children because They Cannot Pay Foster Care Bills for Other People to Take Care of Their Children

Is there anything more ridiculous than the fact that our nation's messed up child trafficking system called "foster care" provides funding and training for prospective foster and adoptive parents to take care of other people's children, but that same funding is not available for the biological family to keep their own children? Yes, there is something even more ridiculous, and amazingly, NPR brought this to the attention of the public. In some states, if the state takes away your children and puts them into foster care, they require the biological parents to help pay for the foster parents to take care of their children. And if they don't pay this ransom to the state, they lose their parental rights and never see their children again. That's called "kidnapping for ransom," and it is happening under the color of the law in 12 states.

New Study: Drug Legalization Leads to Significant Reduction in Foster System Admissions

Richard Nixon, in his effort to silence black people and antiwar activists, brought the War on Drugs into full force in 1973. He then signed Reorganization Plan No. 2, which established the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).  Over the course of five decades, this senseless war has waged on. At a cost of over $1 trillion — ruining and ending countless lives in the process — America’s drug war has created a drug problem that is worse now than ever before. This is no coincidence. For years, those of us who’ve been paying attention have seen who profits from this inhumane war — the police state and cartels. For decades, millions of Black men — whose only “crime” was possession or sale of crack — were torn from their home and incarcerated. This led to millions more children growing up in fatherless environments which, in turn, put these future families in major deficits from their difficult childhoods. The effects have spanned decades and have turned once thriving communities into high-crime areas in which violence is the only constant. When we add marijuana prohibition into the equation, the damage done to the American family through the enforcement of the drug war could be considered a crime against humanity. Drug laws are now evolving but not fast enough. Despite knowing the effects of mass incarceration for victimless crimes, the state still aggressively pursues people for non-violent drug possession. Perhaps with the release of a new study out of Oxford, Mississippi published in the journal Economic Inquiry, this paradigm of destroying families over the war on drugs subsides more quickly. In the study, titled, Recreational marijuana legalization and admission to the foster-care system, a pair of economists with the University of Mississippi assessed foster care admission trends in states pre and post-legalization. What they found was both encouraging and infuriating at the same time.

Foster Care Industrial Complex: It Is Not a Broken System, It Is a System That Needs to be Broken!

The trauma and harm to families and communities caused by intrusive child welfare system interventions is well documented by multiple sources – to the degree that many argue the system can be more accurately viewed as the family policing system, family regulation system, or foster care industrial complex. In our paper It Is Not a Broken System, It Is a System That Needs to be Broken, we outline research that shows that the act of forcible separation of children from their parents is a source of significant and lifelong trauma. As we summarized in the article, “trauma associated with separation has been shown to result in cognitive delays, depression, increased aggression, behavioral problems, poor educational achievement, and other harmful outcomes.” Youth and parents who have experienced child welfare services regularly testify to the harm of separation and the failures of and trauma created by both short- and long-term involvement with the foster care system. Advocates and those working to reform child welfare from both within the system and without, regularly document this harm. It is within the context of this knowledge and understanding and our many years of concerted reform efforts that we have launched the upEND movement, an emerging collaborative aimed at creating a society in which the forcible separation of children from their families is no longer an acceptable solution when help is needed. This movement seeks to protect the health of children, which requires us to center our work around keeping them with their families and communities.