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Government – A better Parent?
Government interference in the lives of our families has reached epidemic proportions. Women's shelter advocates, virtually always successful if they attempt to remove fathers from their families, have enormous influence with government officials and bureaucrats who are diligently devising a never-ending stream of anti-family and anti-male legislation, everything from the encouragement of women to "escape" the "oppression" by men, to income tax regulations that penalize married parents, to the "apprehension" of children who are said to be at danger of being abused, unless, of course, that danger is posed by the natural mothers of the children. A typical example of the influence of the battered women's shelter advocates was presented in the lobbying involved that resulted in the introduction of the latest draft of anti-father and anti-family legislation that made its presence known in the form of the brand-new proposal for a "Protection against Family Violence Act", supposedly a private member's bill by Jocelyn Burgener, an Alberta Progressive Conservative MLA, but by all appearances a bill that is being promoted by forces in Alberta Social Services and Alberta Justice who are aligned with battered women's shelters advocates. "Jocelyn Burgener's Bill", just like Alice Hanson's bill that was introduced in the previous year, has the appearance of being gender-neutral and is being announced as such, but it is obviously, just like Alice Hanson's bill before, an instrument being designed by battered women's shelter advocates. It is being justified solely based on statistics that originate from battered women's shelter advocates, flawed as these statistics are, as they include a considerable number of women who sought refuge in shelters for no other reason than to use them as hostels. Another concern that should make anyone hesitate in lending his influence to support "Jocelyn Burgener's Bill" is the fact that, although women and men are equally likely to initiate violence against each other and to inflict injuries, it is almost exclusively men who are being sentenced for crimes of violence against their spouses. In connection with a judicial system that is enormously biased against men and in favour of women, the attitudes motivating "Jocelyn Burgener's Bill" should give all of us great concerns. Currently, the ratio of incarceration of women versus men in Canadian penal institutions is 1 : 100, as opposed to a ratio of 1 : 18.6 in the USA. Even if one ignores the higher incarceration rates per capita in the US, it is still unlikely that Canadian women are 100 times holier or saintly than Canadian men, or more than 5 times saintlier than their American sisters. After all, we all were brought up by the same mothers in the same society. The plight of our children who must suffer abuse at the hands of their mothers, without any doubt by far the primary abusers of children, goes largely unnoticed. Matthew Vaudreuil in B.C. was tortured and murdered by his natural mother-in full view of a number of Social Service workers who were involved in his "welfare", if not with their full knowledge. (See speech by Senator Anne C. Cools about Child Abuse and Neglect at < http://sen.parl.gc.ca/acools/nex.htm >, and her speech on the "Gove Inquiry into Child Protection in British Columbia" at < http://sen.parl.gc.ca/acools/gove.htm>) A number of such cases have since come to our attention in all Canadian provinces and territories. Surely, if "all men batter" their wives, and mothers are not capable to provide good care for their children all by themselves, the Government can do a better job of providing loving care for our children-well, think again! HORRORS OF THE NON-HOMEFrom Insight Magazine By Timothy W. Maier What happens when children are taken from their homes and put into a foster-care system that just doesn't work? And how can parents be protected from abuse by administrators who take precipitous action based on false or overblown charges? "Mommy, Mommy, They're raping me!" Then click and a dial tone. The desperate call had come in the dead of winter 1994 at 2:30 a.m. to Alma Kidd. Her 14-year-old daughter, Norma "Hope" Robbins, was trapped in a Washington state foster-care home. Kidd immediately reported the incident to police, but no charges were filed. The rape was described as consensual lesbian sex. This story seems almost unbelievable, but Insight has reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, depositions, videotapes and internal Child Protective Service, or CPS, field investigations confirming this and other sadomasochistic sexual assaults.
While in foster care, Hope became a heroin addict, dropped out of school and grew so despondent that three times she tried to commit suicide. Records show she ran away at least 11 times, only to be brought back to her torturers. Hope was placed in foster care in March 1993 after CPS claimed Kidd abused her. The mother never had the hearing that Washington state law requires within 48 hours. Evidence shows mother and daughter had a strained relationship. Kidd objected to her daughter associating with boys involved in drugs and opposed Hope's desire to adopt a lesbian lifestyle. Hope once attacked Kidd with a knife, and another time told her, "You're not my mother. You're just someone who laid down and out I came." Hope clearly wanted to shock and hurt her mother, but reports also indicate that the girl recanted stories that her mother abused her, and wanted to go home. In 1994, Kidd was granted custody of her child under a court order. That order came after three separate investigations found the allegations that the mother had abused Hope were false. But after the custody hearing, Kidd was severely beaten outside the courtroom by a "mob of lesbians," some of whom worked for the state and previously had guardianship over Hope, according to court records and witnesses. The attack now appears to have been a premeditated tactical move between Hope's attorney, CPS, and the lesbian foster-care providers, which gained time for CPS secretly to transfer custody of Hope to an alternative residential placement run by yet another lesbian. The move only could have been filed by Hope herself, or her state-appointed attorney, and approved by a judge. In Hope's case, both her state-appointed attorney and judge were pro-gay-rights activists. At the new home, witnesses reported, Hope and other girls were seen naked in the apartment with chains around their ankles and wrists and a dog collar looped around their necks. When the distraught mother learned of this, she again filed a criminal complaint. She claims police officer Marlene Goodman pointedly told her: "Ms. Kidd, you're in Washington state now. They can chain her 24 hours, seven days a week, and there is nothing you can do about it. It's a lifestyle, a romance. We will tell them to tone it down." A few months later, Hope was tossed down two flights of stairs while in her underwear. Neighbor Carrie Songerez approached the girl and asked, "Can I help you? Is there anything I can do? Should I call the police?" Hope responded tearfully, "There is nothing you can do. They'll just get me again, and again and again." Hope's case had been placed under the authority of Washington's State Sexual Orientation Initiative program, which puts allegedly gay children with homosexual role models and promotes hiring of homosexual social workers and foster parents. Never mind that there is definite ambiguity about Hope's sexual preference, according to court records and her own writings obtained by Insight. At times she pleaded for relief from those pushing a homosexual lifestyle upon her. "I think I'm sick for becoming gay," she wrote. She filed a complaint, stating, "I want someone to answer for this mess" and requested to be "returned to her family." Her own writings speak of a desire to be placed in a "normal foster home," explaining "I don't want to be in a lesbian foster home," because "all lesbian foster homes are political weirdoes and pushy." The tragic story of this rebellious adolescent and others triggered state protests, prompting the Washington state Senate's Law and Justice Committee on Civil Rights to hold hearings this year, and some state senators have urged a federal investigation. No such probe is under way-and Hope now is reported missing. Child Protective Services has "lost her." Hope's case represents what critics charge is the basic problem: CPS spends too much time investigating well-meaning parents and too little time investigating children at risk. The result often is that innocent parents lose their children to state-sponsored hellholes and abusive parents get their children back. The solution is not so apparent as the problem. Some experts call for a national program where all caseworkers and social workers are credentialed and licensed. Congress wants to dump more money into the system to terminate parental rights and speed adoption so the child can find a permanent home. Still others support funding for family reunification, and some have reached the point of wanting to contract the entire problem to the private sector. Historically, the system's trouble can be traced back to when it began in the 17th century in England with creation of the Poor Laws. These helped the rich to adopt poor orphans, but the laws often were abused as adopted children were sold as servants or forced into manual labor. In 1912, the Children's Bureau was formed in the United States and it pressed to have the government take control. Within a decade, many local jurisdictions had passed laws allowing social workers unlimited power to intervene in cases of abuse. In the 1960s, California passed the first law requiring doctors to report child abuse, and other states began to follow with similar laws. In 1973, Democratic Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota held hearings on child abuse, and five years later millions of federal dollars were available for jurisdictions that created mandatory reporting laws, provided legal process for prosecution of parents and put children declared to be neglected and abused into state care. It looked to be necessary and good. It turned out to be a trap for millions-and an unspeakably nightmarish experience for children like Hope. Still, "you are always going to find bizarre cases that are messed up," says Ann Coyne, a professor of social work at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. "But if you step back and realize that a state may have dealt with 6,000 cases you will find that in the vast majority they did okay."
Others see it differently. "These are not isolated cases," says George Wimberly, founder of Colorado-based Victims of Child Abuse Laws, or VOCAL. "It happens more often than not." Wimberly says he receives dozens of calls every day from children recanting stories of parental abuse and begging for help to return to their parents. Nearly 3 million cases of child abuse and neglect are reported annually. Of those, 60 percent either are deemed false or lack credible evidence to move forward, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. This means more than 1 million people a year could be falsely accused. "Kids are being sequestered from their families," Wimberly says. "They are actually being held hostage. That's what it is. They're being told they have to say things against mommy or daddy or they won't ever come home again. They are so quick to place a kid in foster care that sometimes the child is held for months before there has been a hearing."
"The one thing that really bothers me is that on a juvenile and criminal level there is never any consideration as to relative or family placement," Wimberly adds. "We have cases all over the country right now where relatives are availing themselves to care for these children." One such case is in Louisiana with Betty Maddox, who lost both of her children to CPS, even though charges of child abuse were dismissed. Maddox says her relatives are willing to take the children but CPS won't turn them over. She explains: "They can't be placed in our blood line if our relatives believe in our innocence." Liz Richards, executive director of the Virginia-based National Alliance for Family Court Justice, pins the blame on CPS bureaucrats who fail to look at the evidence and instead retaliate by going after the accusers who report the abuse. "We're finding out that child protectors end up losing their kids," she says. "Now, we tell people, whatever you do, don't call CPS. Keep your mouth shut or you will lose your kid."
Retired Seattle attorney Robert A. Nord says even pedophiles working in state youth centers are escaping justice in the mad drive by bureaucrats to control children. Nord complained about the OK Boys Ranch sex scandal that recently rocked the Evergreen State. More than two dozen boys were abused at the youth center, but no charges ever were filed. A state investigation could not be completed because officials in the attorney-general's office destroyed confidential records regarding 326 allegations of abuse, according to investigators in charge of the probe. Finally the boys' families successfully sued Washington state and won $18 million in damages for what was described as a "jungle of molestation." In a letter a former Seattle police sergeant circulated to state officials, he says, "People in this county who publicly complain about the sexual abuse of children have their heads handed to them. They lose their jobs. They have their children taken away by CPS. They have criminal charges cooked up against them. They are harassed and intimidated by rogue police officers. If they have the temerity to accuse a protected pedophile-someone with establishment protection-the roof really falls in on them." Retaliation also may fall upon parents who complain against school administrators or psychologists, as Italian immigrant Joe Paolillo found out. He lost his 11-year-old son, Joseph, to the foster-care system in Washington state when the child confided to a school psychologist that he didn't get along at home. He claimed his parents abused him-a charge he later would recant. But the psychologist reported the incident to CPS after the father complained about lack of school discipline and the school's failure to tell him his son was seeing a psychologist. CPS took the child after the psychologist and a caseworker made statements referring to the Paolillo family as "culturally backward" and "Old New York Italians" who want their son to go into their "family business," records allege. In 1994, Joseph was placed in eight homes in 10 months and, the following year, three homes in 40 days. He was molested and so distraught that he engaged in a petty-crime spree that landed him at Echo Glen Youth Center, a juvenile-detention facility. Paolillo later learned that this center hired a private group to counsel teens on sexually related issues. One session includes asking teenagers, "What do you think caused your heterosexuality? Is it possible that your heterosexuality is just a phase you may grow out of? A disproportionate number of child molesters are heterosexual. Do you consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers?" Officials at the center offer no explanation for the questions. Frustrated with how CPS was "brainwashing" his child, Paolillo contacted the Italian Embassy, which helped him get his son out of the system and placed in a private facility in Missouri. James C. LaBrecque, formerly of New Jersey, also experienced how powerful CPS can be. LaBrecque lost custody last year of his 11-year-old mentally disabled child, Lauriano, because CPS claimed he was not giving the boy seizure medication. At the time Lauriano was averaging one seizure per month, according to medical records; that rate rocketed to 60 times a month while under foster-care supervision. Medical records obtained by Insight suggest that the increased trauma the child suffered in the hands of the state may have occurred as "a result of his removal from his biological parents." While Lauriano initially was placed in a foster-care home, he soon was transferred to the New Jersey Shore Medical Care Center because he was experiencing seizures that the foster parents couldn't handle. At the medical center he was placed in a cage-like crib with a top over it because the facility didn't have enough staff to monitor Lauriano. "He was petrified," says LaBrecque, who sneaked into the medical center and observed his son trapped in the cage. "He needed to pee. He is absolutely not violent. He is the most sensitive and tender-loving child you could ever meet. And now the child is in medical chaos. They have seriously damaged my son." After showing a photograph of his child trapped in the cage to a judge, LaBrecque still didn't get immediate custody. "I'll tell you what the problem is with the system," he says. "It's not the social workers. It's the courts and the judges. The courts allow them to do this. It's called junk justice." Finally, two weeks ago, the state was ordered to return little Lauriano to his father. And, like so many parents furious at such official abuse, LaBrecque plans to file a lawsuit against the state for failing to conduct proper investigation. In fact, 22 states currently are being sued in class-action litigations for failing to protect children in their custody. Many other actions have been filed against caseworkers and CPS agencies but few ever go to trial. When they do, CPS often ends up paying thousands of dollars in damages.
The parents filing these suits find fault in every aspect of the system that seized their children. Enraged, some speculate on widespread conspiracies that drive away the mainstream press, though once in awhile the evidence supports the theory. For example, in Washington state, there was the Wenatchee child-abuse case in which dozens of parents were accused of child molestation. It all was proved to be false when investigators learned that dozens of social workers and psychologists coerced the children to claim abuse.
But highly publicized cases, such as that of New York 5-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, who died of torture allegedly inflicted by her mother, place tremendous pressure on CPS agencies to act quickly. They know that five American children die every day of abuse, and the No. 1 killer for children under age 2 is child abuse. This leads them to step on parental toes whenever they think it is necessary "for the good of the child." The general rule is for CPS agencies to remove the child first, says Colorado author Brenda Scott, who wrote Out of Control: Who's Watching Our Child Protection Agencies? "They call it how they feel it," Scott tells Insight. "It's on the hip. They err on the side of what they think is safety." And as long as there is a suspicion of abuse, the child can be removed. It can be from an anonymous complaint as minor as someone reporting a mother spanking a child in public. Some schools even are urging children to turn in their parents. "The schools are teaching kindergarten children they have rights," Scott says. "Children are learning they don't have to be spanked. By doing this you just gave an immature child a way to send their parents to the principal's office." The agencies also have become more aggressive. In 1995 the government put 715,743 children in out-of-home care, such as foster homes, group homes, juvenile facilities and mental wards. The number of children in out-of-home care has increased by 74 percent from a decade ago. Likewise, the number of children reported as abused or neglected has increased in the last decade by 42 percent, from 33 per 1,000 in 1986 to 42 per 1,000 in 1995. About 40 percent of these children put into out-of-home care facilities never return to their parents. More than half will be away for at least one year and the majority will have multiple placements, some in as many as 15 different homes. "The trauma and the damage and the incredible harm comes when the child is taken away from their home," Scott says. "They suffer what we call a 'kidnap syndrome.'" In 1986 a survey conducted by the National Foster Care Education Project found that foster children were 10 times more likely to be abused than children in the general public. A follow-up study in 1990 by the same group produced similar results. And when the allegedly abused child leaves the system at age 18, the prognosis is not good. For example, in Massachusetts 60 percent of the state's criminals come from foster homes or state institutions, while in California that number is closer to 69 percent. [My emphasis --WHS]
Patrick Fagan, a senior fellow in family and cultural issues with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, blames the foster-care crisis on the collapse of the family and the rise of anti-communities, which he characterizes as those who don't support the traditional moral norms on sex, work, marriage or the worship of God. "Instead of a structure of love in a marriage, what we put in place is a structure of alienation and abuse," Fagan says. "The key factor is the breakdown of the marriage commitment and the cooperation of raising their kids. [In] the communities where most of the abuses occur-you don't have that cooperation. You have chaos."
A great percentage of the abuse and neglect of children is coming from the very poor, with incomes less than $15,000, adds Nebraska professor Coyne. But she thinks that's only because it is much easier to detect neglect among the poor, while the "rich can hide it" by sending their child to psychologists and specialized doctors, she says. "This country needs some sort of family policy," Coyne declares, by which she means government policy to regulate family life.
"We have a tendency to blame the family as opposed to looking at society, and it is a breakdown of society. I grew up during World War II. When we needed women in the workforce there was a public nursery school. We developed public child care. Today we don't have that. It is incredibly difficult for two parents working to provide child care. We have responded with policies that focus on the family and we say the parents have to be responsible but they can't afford the child care."
George Mason University family-law professor Margaret Brinig says "the general breakdown of the family is caused by adults placing their interests above the kids. Once that happens you are going to see a lot of problems." She praises efforts to encourage family stability. Recent events include the Promise Keepers, the Million Man March, the Million Woman March and, this month, international and interdenominational marriage-renewal programs of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, involving millions. "Making more of a differentiation between living together and being married, and joint custody is helpful," Brinig says. "Any time you can get the family unit more stable you will have less problems with kids. But I don't think it's one easy fix for any of it." A 1992 San Diego grand-jury probe suggested that some foster-care parents are more interested in the dollar than the child. The grand jury found that, for many, foster care is a livelihood and that foster parenting has become another part of the child-abuse industry. Foster care was referred to by one witness as "the largest cottage industry in America today." It costs $10,000 to $15,000 a year to keep a child in foster care, but conditions can be grim and Insight discovered some foster homes to be in extremely poor condition. Social workers described one to a court as a large, sanitary house with a pool. Photographs showed a firetrap with garbage all over the kitchen. The pool was ripped and appeared not to have been used in years.
To reform the system, Congress is considering two measures. Michigan Republican Rep. David Camp's $1.7 billion bill passed the House overwhelmingly this year, but has hit a snag in the Senate. It would limit the time a child can spend in foster care to about a year, speed the process of deciding who the child will live with permanently and expedites adoption procedures. The Senate bill, sponsored by West Virginia Democrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller, is similar but requires the federal government, instead of states, to pay $2.3 billion for special-needs adoptions of children from no-poor backgrounds. It also reauthorizes Family Preservation Services for the next five years by endorsing "kinship care," which places foster children with members of their extended family-a practice that opponents say delays adoption. Patrick Purtrill, director of government relations for the National Council for Adoption, is one who says the Senate bill hampers adoption. "There is a professional culture that views adoption as a failure," Purtrill says. "All the programs view family reunification as the answer. But when you see the children become victims of violent sexual molestation, broken bones, starvation and unbelievable things, the emphasis has got to be on child safety and not rehabilitating the abusive parents." [see also Woman charged with rape of boy]
Nonetheless, some communities are having good results encouraging parental rehabilitation. These programs teach parenting and job skills-and offer drug counseling. A recent General Accounting Office study noted that more than 70 percent of children in foster care once lived in homes where there was substance abuse. Families First in Michigan has reported an 80 percent success rate in keeping families together through instruction and rehabilitation. Louvenia Williams, who runs a similar program in Washington, D.C., called the Edgewood-Brooklyn Family Support Collaborative, observes, "The bottom line is that most of these children don't want to leave their families. Children love their families no matter what these parents do to them. We put money into systems to deal with the children after the fact but not into the systems that deal with the family. Why can't we put money into the communities at risk?"
Seizing children — a tactic for the destruction of the family and to attain state-control of the population
TAXPAYERS PAID FOR THIS?Reader's Digest, February 1998, With his exhibit at the Timmins, Ont., museum coming to an end, artist Laurent Vaillancourt prepared to pack his suitcases with trash and head for home.
And thought-provoking it is. There it is: At least with respect to public funding, Canadian fathers are worth less than Canadian garbage, because there is no funding of any kind for them. --WHS According to Hedy Fry, 25% of spousal murder victims are men (what are the real numbers?). Yet, there are at most four battered men's shelters in all of Canada, with at least the one single one in Alberta run by WIN House (Women in Need). Would anyone in a society that has tried for so long to establish equality for women not expect to see at least one men's shelter for every three women's shelters?
Although 80% of the men in the sinking of the Titanic gave their lives to save those of women (more than 75% of women survived) and children (about 57% of children survived), and even though many of the men who did survive were members of the crew who were ordered into the life boats to demonstrate to reluctant women that it was perfectly safe to negotiate a 65 foot drop, society assigned to today's men the reputation of enslaving, battering and oppressing women throughout all of mankind's history.
Today's men must suffer for "the sins of their fathers" what-ever those might have been in the perception of such people as we permit to destroy our families. That might explain society's disdain for our males. As to the real worth of men? We all are aware that women tried for a long time to achieve full equality in the job market. We are reminded of that every time a fire crew has a female member and the media display a large picture of her being involved in an effort to fight a fire. Whether she actually put her life at risk in that effort doesn't matter, as long as she is female. It is even better if it can be managed to show that her attire, or better yet her face, has been dirtied somewhat. Such pictures have enormous appeal. Nevertheless, it is still true, as Warren Farrell explained in his book "The Myth of Male Power", that women are conspicuous by their absence in job situations that involve sweat, dirt, and exposure to the elements or elements of risk. Ruth, my good-natured partner, just told me that at no time has that been made any clearer and on such a large scale than in the attempts to restore power to the unfortunate victims of the recent ice storm in Central Canada. Although much emphasis has been placed by the media on the suffering of women who have gone without the benefit of electricity for so long, isn't it astonishing that of all the many thousands of servicemen that must brave the elements in extremely cold and inhospitable conditions, to restore electrical power in the "Triangle of Darkness", the media has not been able to come up with a single instant of a woman braving the elements to help out in that endeavour, not a single woman pulling a powerline out of the snow and ice, not a single woman climbing a power pole to mount a cross-arm? (The media did show a few women reporters brave enough to interview some of the linemen who are working around the clock in near-arctic conditions) Ruth, who watches for things like that, did see one woman who stepped of a plane that brought members of the Canadian Armed Forces to help out, but of servicemen who came from all over to restore the powerlines, not one single one appears to be female. How many of the men involved in this heroic effort are fathers who hardly ever or never get to see their children because our society thinks that they are worth less than our Garbage? Worth less than our garbage, although when it comes to rescuing women and children, just as in the sinking of the Titanic, it is still almost exclusively men who selflessly put their lives on the line, even if it is for members of families that are not their own and even if they may not be able to do it for the members of their own families from which they were expelled. Men are more than just wallets! My heart and respect goes out to them. They deserve our admiration, now more so than ever before, especially because a whole society engages in heartless propaganda that makes men out to be batterers, brutes, rapists, drunks and deadbeats. But then, it should be clear to all of us by now that when it comes to propaganda, having a heart has nothing to do with the aim of a game that's about the greed for power and wealth. Isn't it a crying shame that more than a quarter of Canadian children hardly get to know their fathers, that a large and increasing number of them hardly ever, many never, even get to see their fathers, worse, that on account of false abuse allegations many fathers face criminal prosecution if they even attempt to call their children on the telephone, let alone attempt to see them face-to-face? Almost fully one half of the Canadian population has been vilified for a whole generation now in the largest program of social engineering and lies ever foisted upon Humanity—for what good purpose? Is there one Iota of tangible evidence that any of this social experimentation in any way improved our society? Do we now all love each other more? Do we have less violence and crime in our society? No, indications are that the reverse is true and that we are accelerating our slide into chaos. Mom sets son afire; he saves herhttp://biz.yahoo.com/upi/97/12/18/general_state_and_regional_news/uslighter_1.html
(The link is dead) ST. LOUIS, Dec. 18 [1997] (UPI) _ A 15-year-old boy is in critical condition after his mother threw lighter fluid at him, igniting his T-shirt and setting off a fire that gutted the family's apartment. Police say the youth saved his mother's life when the fire spread. The boy is recovering today at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis with burns over 50 percent of his body. The woman, her son and six young children she was baby-sitting, all escaped the fire and police did not immediately file any charges in the case. Police say a 9-year-old boy saved four of his siblings and then went back into the burning apartment to rescue the last child.
More at: Domestic Violence & Common Sense Newsletter # 1 and Newsletter #2 See also:
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NEWSLETTER #3, 1998 01 30
