Criminals Have More Rights Than Parents

Let's begin with some more than troubling statistics... Less than 16% of children taken from their parents are done so because of actual abuse and of that 16% only 17% of those cases are ever substantiated. Yet the children stay locked away in a system away from loving parents often for years. Families are destroyed all for having done nothing and are, for the most part denied, due process, a fair and impartial trial or any of the other benchmarks of the criminal justice system- because the hearings are held in family court- a part of the civil court system. In other words criminals get due process and parents do not. Child abuse is a crime, so why aren't parents charged in criminal court? The answer is obvious- because the burden of proof is higher in a criminal case- the prosecution has to prove their case... rumor and innuendo only work in civil hearings.

 In the name of protecting some children, many more children are traumatized and abused by the very system tasked with protecting them. Medical kidnapping and state-sanctioned seizure of children is more common than most people have realized. Yet parents whose children are taken find that they have less rights than criminals. The right to due process is conspicuously absent from almost all CPS cases. A legislator once told me that she does not care about the Constitutional rights of parents when it comes to child abuse allegations. 

The last sentence is particularly troubling, especially since it comes from a legislator. The Constitution was designed to protect the individual in every facet of their lives... this includes parents. If we've learned anything from all of the people who write in @familyprotection is that the family and their inherent rights, in the eyes of the state, are inimical to "compelling state interest," the most often cited credo of bureaucrats and legislators. In the eyes of the state we are all merely possessions with which they can do as they please. It begs the question, is it even possible to protect children and maintain intact family units... or is the purpose of the state to destroy these units?

What if the rules that currently apply in family courts were to be applied in the context of terrorism, it is readily apparent that there would be an outcry to the violations of civil liberties created by the fictional proposed laws.  Richard Wexler, the Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) posed that very question:

 Special anti-terrorism police could search any home without a warrant – and stripsearch any occupant — based solely on an anonymous telephone tip.

Any occupant of the home could be detained for 24 hours to two weeks without so much as a hearing – and they’ll probably be detained far longer because, in the special anti-terrorism court set up by this legislation, all the judges are afraid to look soft on “terrorists.”At that first hearing the detainees may – or may not – get a lawyer just before the hearing begins, and they almost never get effective counsel.

At almost every stage, the standard of proof is not “beyond a reasonable doubt” or even “clear and convincing” but merely “preponderance of the evidence,” the lowest standard in American jurisprudence, the same one used to determine which insurance company pays for a fender-bender.

And in most states, all the hearings and all the records are secret. 

If this was to happen the ACLU would be going berserk... so why the silence when it comes to America's families? The problem, according to Wexler is that this hypothetical terrorism law is the law that governs America's families.  If Constitutional principles and civil liberties were actually followed by all state actors, then children would not be terrorized by our own government taking them away from loving homes. 

 Much of what happens with Child Protective Services is done in secret. Courts are often closed, and parents are threatened with unconstitutional gag orders if they try to talk about the seizure of their children. While agencies cite “confidentiality” concerns to the public, bad actors are left free to trample civil liberties like due process, perjury is unchecked, and children are left to be abused in foster care or group homes, or even to be trafficked to pedophiles or pornography rings. Criminal actions are shrouded in a veil of secrecy. 

The abuse meted out to children by CPS and the family courts and their "experts" is far worse than anything but a tiny minority suffer at home. The power of the state must be checked by accountability. If the actions of the state are unchecked it leaves the system open to almost unlimited abuse of power. People stopped believing in: "We're from the government and we're here to help" back in the 80's.  The power must be checked by accountability. Accountability is not possible in secret.

Nor is accountability possible simply by hiring people with more expertise and assuming they will do the right thing. It’s not supposed to work that way in a democracy. That is why it is so urgent that all court hearings and almost all records in child welfare cases be presumed open. 

The most frequent excuse for secrecy is to keep the children from being traumatized, yet according to Wexler"

 The most traumatic cases are likely to involve not only child protection proceedings but criminal cases as well. These hearings already are public.

Yet we have never seen nor heard a single account of a child saying that she or he was traumatized by the fact that such a trial was public. Nor do we know of any adult coming forward years after the fact to complain of such trauma. 

 There are some states that have opened up their CPS court cases to the public, and the results were positive. New York Judge Jonathan Lippman found that: " “It has been 100 percent positive with no negatives … Our worst critics will say it was the best thing we ever did. Their fears were unfounded … I wish other states would do it.” 

THis has worked in other places as well. Washington, who had one of the worst records for removing children, mostly due to testimony from Child Abuse Pediatricians, has adopted a novel approach:

 In Pierce County, Washington, the judge in charge of the county’s juvenile courts was dismayed at the escalating rate of terminations of parental rights – knowing that he was dooming some of the children to a miserable existence in foster care.

So he persuaded the legislature to provide enough money for defense attorneys to have resources equal to those of the Attorney General’s office, which represents the state child welfare agency in juvenile court. The result: successful reunification of families increased by more than 50 percent.

Wexler proposes taking this one step further... "  I would like to propose a legislative mandate that, whenever an allegation by a Child Abuse Pediatrician is heard by a court, the court should be required to consider the testimony of any medical experts who disagree with the interpretation of the Child Abuse Pediatrician or who can attest to a medical condition that explains the child’s symptoms." This would go a long way toward negating the testimony of  doctors driven by ideology rather than medical expertise. There are many other things that can be done to protect the best interests of children and their families as well...

 Too many parents have learned the hard way that a vindictive neighbor, a scorned ex, or a hostile relative can destroy their family by picking up the phone and making up lies. While this can waste resources that could be needed for truly abused children, it also serves to open up the door to CPS social workers to go on a “fishing expedition” to find the slightest excuse to take a child and put them into the system. 

 NCCPR recommends:

Before a call is accepted by a child abuse “hotline” and referred for investigation, the caller must be able to demonstrate that s/he does, indeed, have “reasonable cause to suspect” maltreatment.

The caller must be able to offer something more than a guess that a child really is being abused or neglected. To help hotline operators accomplish this goal:

A rational method must be established for screening hotline calls.

Anonymous calls should not be accepted.

Of all the sources of child abuse reports, anonymous reports consistently are the least reliable. They’re almost always wrong.

This makes sense- once anonymity is taken away, people are far less to abuse the system for vengeance or their own purposes. These are small steps but important ones if we're ever going to see an end to the abuse of America's families and our children. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and if the system becomes open to scrutiny the scourge of state child abuse can be held in check and perhaps the child trafficking pipeline finally shut down.

http://medicalkidnap.com/2018/11/26/murders-rapists-and-terrorists-have-more-rights-to-due-process-of-the-law-than-parents-accused-of-child-abuse/