CPS and Legal Kidnapping: Follow the Money

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The best way to determine the intent of any institution is to watch how they spend their money. This is particularly true of government because for one thing, it's your money they're spending. Politicians say whatever they think necessary to get either elected or reelected so by watching voting patterns, not necessarily as individuals, but by what they vote to fund as a whole tells us what their intent truly is... when it comes to families and children it paints less than a pretty picture. Although most elected officials claim to support families, they consistently vote to support CPS and the bureaucratic machinery it represents. For example in yesterday's post the problem that the Veroza families biggest problem was not one of noncompliance, but transportation. It would have been far cost effective to buy them a second hand car than to remove the children... unless removing children is in fact the intent of the state.

 

“Follow the money,” Deep Throat advised investigative journalist Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal.

How has Child Protective Services fallen into what appears to be, in too many cases around the nation, legal kidnapping?  Try $6.8 billion dollars – that’s billion with a “B” — in federal funding that is projected for CPS fostering and adopting out children in 2015. [1] Through the Social Security Act of the 1970s, Title IV-E funding, and the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, each child fostered or adopted by the state is worth reimbursement to state and local government. This provides incentives for ever more children to be removed from families. 

 According to the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform:  For every dollar projected to be spent on preventing foster care or speeding reunification in FY 2016, the federal government is expected to spend more than ten dollars on foster care and adoption. That's a 10:1 ratio in favor of destroying families, a very telling statistic.

 The federal government gives “bounties to states of up to $8,000 or more per child for every adoption they finalize over a baseline number,” NCCPR reports.

The NCCPR also points out that children often are removed from their families “prematurely or unnecessarily” because federal aid formulas give states “a strong financial incentive” to do so rather than provide services to keep families together. 

 

Kids are a Commodity in the Billion Dollar CPS Business

 It’s simple, really, says former Director of DCFS in Baltimore, Molly M. Tierney:

The only time the federal government pays me is when I take somebody’s kid. And as soon as that kid’s in foster care, they instantly become a commodity…

That pretty well sums up the position of state and local governments (CPS) across the country. Naturally, as has been written time and time again, the families targeted are those with the least capacity to fight back- the poor who don't have the resources to competent legal representation. Once inside the system, the child enters the gristmill of abuse- physical, sexual, etc.. One reason is that not all of this money goes to help the children at all.

 The twist is that states are not required to put this money back in to keeping families intact or even for preventing child abuse. Instead, by law, they can use it for non-child-related things, such as delivering meals to senior citizens or for transportation services, or a range of other home-based services!

. . . A look at any state’s budget—from Minnesota to Florida to Connecticut and back to California—can tell you that local governments and states are cutting back or flat-lining children’s services and using these extra federal dollars to balance their budgets. 

Once a child is taken and placed in "the system" they are more vulnerable than when at home... especially given that the reasons they were removed in the first place are most often questionable at best. CPS had been given almost unlimited power over families and they are inevitably backed up by the star-chamber like family courts where cases are conducted in secret- away from family and the media. Neither the public nor any public watchdog has been allowed scrutiny or oversight of the handling of CPS cases. This includes the media. Additionally, accusers have immunity through anonymity or as “mandatory reporters” such as teachers, nurses and doctors. As most of us learned in elementary school, unchecked power always tends towards abuses of that power. 

 “There is tremendous pressure on the medical community to report any suspicions of abuse or neglect. They can be fined, imprisoned, lose their license, and even be sued in some states. It’s like they have a gun to their head,” says Bradley Pierce, an attorney with Heritage Defense, a non-profit legal advocacy organization which defends parental rights.” 

This is what has spawned the ideological Child Abuse Pediatricians... "doctors" who have no particular specialty that qualifies them other than a desire to destroy families. If a legitimate specialist finds for the family they are most often shouted down by a chorus of these ideologues and other "experts." The NCCPR had advocated for open hearings saying: " Secret files, secret evidence, secret accusations, secret proceedings, and gag orders all allow abuses to thrive and expand throughout the system. Restore accountability and transparency for hearings, and allow for open records." Without these abuses, the CPS and their cadre of "experts" would come crashing down like a house of cards- they depend on the abuse of the system to operate.

 The CPS system, like the family court system, has handed off more and more of its fact finding and decision making responsibilities to psychologists, doctors, mediators, evaluators, and even to volunteers (CASA). These evaluators operate under no standard of evidence, no rules of admissibility and no legal protections at all. Personal opinions, hearsay, psychobabble, prejudice, lies, and gossip, are treated as facts which are provided to the judge with a set of recommendations. In nearly all cases the judges blindly rubber stamp these recommendations. 

If the family court system was open for all to see, these abuses would be more difficult. These hearings should be closely monitored, we are talking about people's children who deserve legal protection... from the alleged protectors. Family courts operate on a "preponderance of evidence" standard- the lowest legal standard allowed. Basically it's a 51% vs. 49% standard. " Courts should raise this standard to “clear and convincing” for every decision, argues NCCPR. This requirement for evidence and rigor in the CPS/juvenile court system would shut the door to the influence of mistakes, bias, discrimination, prejudice, vengeance, hearsay, junk science, nonsense, and arbitrariness of all kinds." Make the ideologues prove their cases.

Even criminals are provided more rights than parents who want nothing more than to keep their families intact.

 Parents’ rights are neither specified nor protected – even petty criminals must have Miranda rights read to them, are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and retain rights to privacy and private property, to name but a few. The CPS system, which has the immense power to destroy families by taking away their children, presumes parents are guilty until proven innocent, violates multiple aspects of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and does it all legally because CPS is considered “civil” court and not “criminal” court. 

If parents are guilty of abuse, this is something that should be handled by law enforcement. They should be arrested and be afforded the same rights as any criminals... not be tried in a civil court where rumors and innuendos are considered evidence. But as long as the juvenile system is a cash cow for the more than 25 different "professionals" involved, nothing is likely to happen. After all these people have livings to make and the child trafficking pipeline requires victims to operate.

http://medicalkidnap.com/2015/10/06/child-protection-services-is-out-of-control-what-ordinary-citizens-can-do-about-it/