Legally Kidnapped

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Monday, April 14, 2008

Texas judge wonders how to decide fate of 416 seized children

Texas judge wonders how to decide fate of 416 seized children

Lawyers said the state told the mothers that if they leave the shelters where their children are being held, they will not be let back in. Griselda Paz of Legal Aid of Northwest Texas said she had never seen such restrictions in 20 years of legal work.

"By isolating them, by not letting them talk to their lawyers or giving them the choice between leaving their children and being able to talk to lawyers and prepare for this hearing, they feel that that's unfair," said Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City lawyer who has represented the FLDS and some of its members in civil and criminal cases. "And of course they are out of their element, they're frightened of all those things."

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:03 PM

    I'm curious to know what the blogmaster thinks of this. Is foster care right for these sexually abused kids? Would any foster parent in their right mind really want a completely indoctrinated child who has been severely sexually abused since the age of five as many of these children have?

    I've been a foster parent for a number of years, and I can tell you right now, I wouldn't want to get involved with this mess. Give them back to their not-so-loving mothers and let them deal with the aftermath of what they have wrought.

    Personally, I think they seized the wrong end of the family. They should have nabbed the old guys running the place, put them all in an institution, and called it good.

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  2. Anonymous8:41 AM

    A foster contractor wonders what I would think of something? Hmm.

    Personally I wonder if this foster contractor has any understanding of the concept of brainwashing. Religious cults will do that you know. It kind of takes some of the guilt away from the mothers if you ask me. Not all but some. Were the mothers the ones doing the abusing? No. They were probably abused themselves.

    Perhaps they could offer shelter for the mothers and kids, counseling, deprogramming, support. Of course to a foster parent, destroying the families is always the answer.

    No worries, it looks like you are going to have your way.

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  3. I am not a foster parent, but I am educated enough to know that if SOME abuse occurred to SOME children it is Constitutionally and morally wrong to remove ALL 416 kids before evidence is shown to indicate abuse allegations are correct. ACCUSATIONS DON"T MEAN GUILT

    and yes, many foster parents would jump at the chance...there are many foster parents who jump at the chance to molest their charges...this way, they would know what to do!

    Last I checked, your screen name, nor real name is God...he and these families are the only ones to know the truth.

    Thank God you are bowing out on this one! Whew, one indoctrinated home to another, that may be too much for their little minds to recover from!

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  4. oopsie, meant to type, name is NOT God....oh well...I made a mistake in typing they thought they were god...they made the mistake in thinking they WERE God...

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  5. Anonymous1:33 AM

    Like I said, I WOULDN'T want to be involved with that mess. I think they SHOULD go back to their families. Although I do believe the bastards that run the place should be arrested for the truly illegal behavior. I agree that the mothers are not completely to blame although I don't believe abuse is an excuse to allow your children to be abused.

    In this case, of course, it was practically impossible for a woman to escape this place with her children. Personally, I think CPS did the stupidest thing imaginable. Putting the kids in jail instead of the parents responsible (i.e. the old guys raping the underage girls) was just plain brainless. Now they have a whole mess of kids on their hands, some of whom will probably never go home and never get adopted, who would have been better off staying with their mothers.

    If you've ever been a foster parent you'd get it. Why would anyone want a child so incredibly disturbed that the first thing they think of to do in your house is kill all your pets? Get real people! We don't invite these kids in our house for our own edification. We do it for the simple reason that if WE didn't, the only ones who would are the ones you accuse of doing so--child abusers. But then we get accused of doing it anyway.

    Those people whose kids are mistakenly taken away by the CPS people on a major power trip (I've known a few) better be glad some of us good foster parent are left. The more mud we get hit with the few a farther between we get. Where are those kids gonna go then? It's not like CPS is gonna suddenly get nice, reasonable people working for it. I swear they only attract one kind of person.

    How happy are you gonna be when your kids are locked up in a mental ward because there's no homes to put them in and CPS hasn't changed policy, just run out of foster homes?

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  6. Anonymous8:25 AM

    There is a little thing called common sense. The child protective industry is severely lacking in this. I mean it was just a couple months ago that they stopped housing these kids in the CPS offices in Texas because of a lack of foster homes. What are they going to do with all of these kids? Maybe they could lower their standards for foster parents so that they can hire a few more. Secondly, what proof do they have that all 416 of these kids were in danger? That's just plain stupid.

    I personally think that this is a great example of jumping the gun. It is quite possibly the stupidest think CPS has ever done. It shows the mentality that justifies the current state of the system. Take the kids first and ask questions later. Sure, they will get the federal reimbursements from it. They will put a lot of cronies to work because of it. But telling mothers that they have to leave because their kid is over 5 years old is inhumane.

    And finally, since when did Child Protective Services been about protecting children? That's a lie. CPS destroys lives, and as a foster parent, you damn well know it. Kids in the system come out ten times worse then they were when they went in. They force these kids to take meds that they don't need, they base it on the kids behavior which is caused by their situations but god forbid they could ever come to terms with that. Nope, lets just blame the real parents. They bounce them around from foster home to foster home. They throw them out on the street at age 18, ready or not. For lots of these kids their forever home becomes a jail cell. They talk about loving, caring foster parents, but those are few and far between. Most of them do it for the money and self-glorification that comes with being a foster parent. They complain that the money isn't enough which proves that the state isn't doing enough to take care of all of the kids that come into the system. And they hold their "April Is Child Abuse Prevention Month" fairs and rallies, in an effort to get more people to rat out their neighbors.

    People need to learn to mind their own business. Foster parents and all the rest of you self-righteous hypocrites out there who think that destroying families is the answer to the problem of child abuse. You know, life was never designed to be perfect and the human race survived for thousands of years without you, and child abuse is a fact of life. A sad one yes. But a fact of life never the less. There is no solution to it.

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  7. The system pits us against each other.

    There are bad parents, there are good ones, there are those who were good parents and lost their children anyway. THESE parents had their hearts ripped out, grinded up, and pinned to their shirts...it is right out there in the open, so YES we are passionate.

    There are good foster parents, bad foster parents, and horrible ones.
    we resent you because we weren't allowed to raise our children...they were given to you.

    You resent us because people don't take kids away from good parents, we are looked at suspiciously. I believed this too.

    The Texas case may open a few eyes and hearts and HOPEFULLY allow more voices to be heard that can finally reform the injustice CPS has been doing to children, parents, families, and foster families.

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  8. Anonymous12:08 PM

    Yep!

    Then when you look at the extreme amount of pro-CPS bullshit that is put forth by the media, you stop wondering why.

    Some of us have given up on reform and believe that the system should be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up without the liberal feminist mindset.

    The concept of reform is a crock too. Especially when foster parents are involved in making policy change. For some reason it always benefits them.

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  9. Anonymous9:46 PM

    Where do you get the idea that foster parents are involved in making policy change? You're dreaming there baby!

    Foster parents are as powerless as the biological parents. We haven't got a thing to do with policy. I used to attend all the court hearing, family meetings and crap, and the I realized not one person was listening to me. I was just the foster parent. The person who took care of the daily needs of the child and the only one who saw the child throughout the case.

    Usually the case workers I dealt with never even met the children I had, nevermind knew them well. Home visits? Never heard of them. I'd be lucky if they returned my calls.

    You're dreaming if you think a foster parent has any power. Heck we're lucky if we can cut the kid's hair!

    So what do you suggest? Should I quit? How about if I leave the fostering to the bad homes I know are out there? CPS isn't going to change there policies because I decide not to be one of there foster parents.

    We have a clean home, toys, three young children who are friendly and taught not to tease. We don't smoke, don't drink, we sing songs and play board games for fun. We rarely, if ever use respite care, and we don't believe in leaving foster children behind when we take "family" vacations. We believe in building the parents reputations up, talking about what's good in their home, not the negative things. We want them to think positively about returning home and we encourage foster children to talk about their parents whenever they wish. We ask that siblings not be separated whenever possible, and despite the rooming constraints, we take sibling groups eagerly so that they won't.

    So, if your children are removed from your home, God forbid, by a power hungry jerk at CPS, who do you want them to be sent to?

    You decide.

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  10. Anonymous9:35 AM

    Foster parents don't have anything to do with policy change? That's a crock. They get a lot more respect and help from the government than any real parent. Hell, lots of them even intentionally thwart reunification efforts of the real parents because they grow attatched to and want to adopt the child. So they call their state legislatures to help them with that suddenly bills are presented making it easier to adopt a child from foster care. Maybe they go through maybe they don't but lots of misguided real parents are falling under the belief that reaching out to the foster parents somehow helps.

    When reforms take place, these fights are usually led by foster parents or some other self righteous hypocrite group, Mary Callahan probably being the most extreme example of a FP producing policy change and no she's not a self-righteous hypocirte, ever heard of her? Real parents are viewed as abusers, or a form of low life. When are their complaints against the system ever acted upon? In court? Ha!

    Now, if you, Anonymous Foster Parent, are one of the good ones, then great. If you are supportive of real families then great. We need more like you. There aren't enough. Far more often you run into idiots like Lanette or Julia from Adoption Blogs. The experts on fostering who take it upon themselves to make the problem appear much worse then it actually is. Spend some time reading that crap for a little while then maybe you'll see what I'm talking about. If you're one of the good ones then you are far too rare. Most would have you believe that their shit don't stink.

    You know, I'm pretty well grounded in reality. I know there is a need to protect children. I know that there are good foster parents out there. I'm not against them. But they are few and far between and quite often they are not needed because there is a family member out there willing and able to care for the child. Read what Senator Nancy Schaefer from Georgia has to say about it. Specifically "that grandparents have called from all over the State of Georgia trying to get custody of their grandchildren. DFCS claims relatives are contacted, but there are cases that prove differently. Grandparents who lose their grandchildren to strangers have lost their own flesh and blood. The children lose their family heritage and grandparents, and parents too, lose all connections to their heirs."

    On top of that, how are foster parents viewed by society? As hero's. How are real parents involved with the system viewed? As monsters. Hopefully this blog will help to change that. It's nothing personal, I assure you.

    And as for your question about where I would want my children to go? The answer would be certainly not into foster care. I know what happens to kids in the system. Believe me.

    Now that all said, I'm posting this quote from you. "Usually the case workers I dealt with never even met the children I had, nevermind knew them well. Home visits? Never heard of them. I'd be lucky if they returned my calls.
    "
    Care to elaborate?

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