Are America's children being sold for a profit.... Broken into 3 parts

This is the first time that I am putting a seriuos thread on GLP. I wrote this for another site. Please read the article first, then reply. All outside text will be highlighted red.


INTODUCTION:
Foster Care does good for many children, Right? What if I could show you it was an unchecked system.
That this system is able to make alot of money from these children. That to the scared parents, this system is in fact above the law. What if I could show you the children are being used as ginny pigs for drugs. What if I can peel back this curtain and show you the curroption hidden with in. Would you listen or turn away????

Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997
Purpose: To promote the adoption of children in foster care
~Extended categories of services to include time-limited reunification services and adoption promotion and support services
~Required criminal records checks for foster/adoptive parents who receive Federal funds on behalf of a child, unless a State opted out of this requirement
***Accelerated permanent placement:
~Required States to initiate court proceedings to free a child for adoption once that child had been waiting in foster care for at least 15 of the most recent 22 months, unless there was an exception
~Allowed children to be freed for adoption more quickly in extreme cases
Promoted adoptions:
$$$$Rewarded States that increased adoptions with incentive funds
~Required States to use reasonable efforts to move eligible foster care children towards permanent placements
~Prohibited States from delaying/denying placements of children based on the geographic location of the prospective adoptive families
~Required States to document child-specific efforts to move children into adoptive homes
~Required shorter time limits for making decisions about permanent placements:
~Required permanency hearings to be held no later than 12 months after entering foster care
~Required States to initiate termination of parental rights proceedings after the child has been in foster care 15
of the previous 22 months, except if not in the best interest of the child, or if the child is in the care of a
relative]
[link to www.childwelfare.gov]

The above is from their own site as an overview summary of the law. What exactly does this mean??
After a child is removed from the home an adjudication hearing happens in no less then 3 mths. After that a second hearing by law is allowed to take up to 12 mths. At this point the child as been in the system for 15 mths. The now alloted time for them to be bumped for adoption and terminate parental rights. Yes I relize the law doest specificaly state this. But there is a loop hole the size of a crater there.Does that seem to be a fair and uncorrupt system?

§ 6361. Organization for child protective services. [P.a. state statutes Domestic Relations]
(b) Staff and organization.--The county agency shall have a sufficient staff of sufficient qualifications to fulfill the purposes of this chapter and be organized in a way to maximize the continuity of responsibility, care and services of individual workers toward individual children
& families. The department, by regulation, shall set forth staff-to-family ratios for the various activities required of the county agency under this chapter, including reports and investigations of suspected child abuse, risk assessment and the provision or monitoring of services to
abused children & families.]

[link to www.legis.state.pa.us]

To the untrained eye this seem's on the up and up. But to the trained eye not so.
The problem with the Adoption and Safe Families Act and this is now there is a system in complete control. Since they are the sole investigaters in child abuse incidents.
Their conclusion becomes the only one. At least the police have I.A. to over see any suspected coroption within the department. Don't think its that bad, read the next statute......

§ 6362. Responsibilities of county agency for child protective
(a) General rule.--The county agency shall be the sole civil agency responsible for receiving and investigating all reports of child abuse made pursuant to this chapter, specifically including, but not limited to, reports of child abuse in facilities operated by the department and other public agencies, for the purpose of providing protective services to prevent further abuses to children and to provide or arrange for and monitor the provision of those services necessary to safeguard and ensure the well-being and development of the child and to preserve and stabilize family life wherever appropriate.
(b) Assumption of responsibility by department.--When the
suspected abuse has been committed by the county agency or any of its agents or employees, the department shall assume the role of the agency with regard to the investigation and directly refer the child for services.
[link to www.legis.state.pa.us]

Now you can see the delemia of this. Not only do they not have the years of training under their belt that a detective might or even a forensic scientist. But they are aslo in charge of their own corruption's. Nice right??

§ 6318. Immunity from liability.
(b) Presumption of good faith.--For the purpose of any civil or criminal proceeding, the good faith of a person required to report pursuant to section 6311 (relating to persons required to report suspected child abuse) and of any person required to make a referral to law enforcement officers under this chapter shall be presumed.]
[link to www.legis.state.pa.us]

I thought this might be prudent to the discussion. When a CPS agency investigate's you. It is considered a criminal investigation.[Since they are solely incharge of child abuse] So by this statute, any nutt job with a grudge is held in higher regaurd then you. In a child abuse investigation, its not innocent untill proven guilty. But the exact opposite.

Still not sure how corrupt the system can really be. Here's just a few court cases I dug up.

Constitutional issues and court cases:
~In May 2007, the United States 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found in ROGERS v. COUNTY OF SAN JOAQUIN,
No. 05-16071[17] that a CPS social worker who removed children from their natural parents into foster care without obtaining judicial authorization, was acting without due process and without exigency violated the 14th Amendment and Title 42 United State Code Section 1983.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution says that a state may not make a law that abridges ".the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" and no state may "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to
anyperson within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Title 42 United States Code Section 1983 states that citizens can sue in federal courts
any person that acting under a color of law to deprive the citizens of their civil rights under
the pretext of a regulation of a state.
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

~In case of Santosky v. Kramer, 455 US 745, Supreme Court reviewed a case when Department of Social Services removed two younger children from their natural parents only because the parents had been previously found negligent toward their oldest daughter. When the third child was only three days old, DSS transferred him to a foster home on the ground that immediate removal was necessary to avoid imminent danger to his life or health. The Supreme Court vacated previous judgment and stated: "Before a State may sever completely and irrevocably the rights of parents in their natural child, due process requires that the State support its allegations by at least clear and convincing evidence. <..> But until the State proves parental unfitness, the child and his parents share a vital interest in preventing erroneous termination of their natural relationship".
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

~Also District of Columbia Court of Appeals conclude that the lower trial court erred in rejecting the relative custodial arrangement selected by the natural mother who tried to preserve her relationship with the child. The previous judgment granting the foster mother's adoption
petition was reversed, and the case remanded to the trial court to vacate the orders granting adoption and denying custody, and to enter an order granting custody to the child's relative.
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

~One study by Johns Hopkins University found that the rate of sexual abuse within the foster-care system is more than four times as high as in the general population; in group homes, the rate of sexual abuse is more than 28 times that of the general population.
[link to www.suite101.com]

~An Indiana study found three times more physical abuse and twice the rate of sexual abuse in foster homes than in the general population.
[link to www.alberni.ca]

~A study of foster children in Oregon and Washington State found that nearly one third reported being abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home. These statistics do not speak to the situation these children are coming from, but it does show the very large problem of child-on-child sexual abuse within the system. There have been several notable lawsits concerning sexual abuse and negligence that caused review of the foster care system in some states:
[link to www.campaignsitebuilder.com]

~In 2010, an ex-foster child was awarded $30 million by jury trial in California for sexual abuse damages that happened to him in his foster home from 1995 to 1999. The foster parent, John Jackson, was licensed by the state, despite the fact that he abused his own wife and son, overdosed on drugs and was arrested for drunken
driving. In 2006, Jackson was convicted in Santa Clara County of nine counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child by force, violence, duress, menace and fear, and seven counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child under 14, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office. The sex acts he forced the children in his foster care to perform sent him to prison for 220 years. Later in 2010, Giarretto Institute, the private foster family
agency responsible for licensing and monitoring Jackson's foster home and others, also was found to be negligent and liable for 75 percent of the abuse that was inflicted on the victim,and Jackson himself was liable for the rest.
[link to www.signonsandiego.com]

~In 2009, Oregon Department of Human Services agreed to pay $2 million into a fund for the future care of twins who were allegedly abused by their foster parents; this was the largest such settlement in the agency's history.[92] According to the civil rights suit filed on request of
twins' adoptive mother in December 2007 in U.S. Federal Court, the children were kept in makeshift cages cribs covered with chicken wire secured by duct tape—in a darkened bedroom known as the dungeon.
The brother and sister often went without food, water or human touch. The boy, who had a shunt put into his head at birth to drain fluid, didn't receive medical attention, so when police rescued the twins he was nearly comatose. The same foster family previously took into their care hundreds of other children over nearly four decades.DHS said the foster parents deceived child welfare workers during the checkup visits.
[link to stopcorruptdss.wordpress.com]

~Several lawsuits were brought in 2008 against the Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF), accusing it of mishandling reports that Thomas Ferrara, 79, a foster parent, was molesting young girls.The suits claimed that even though there were records of sexual misconduct allegations against Ferrara in 1992, 1996, and 1999, the DCF continued to place foster children with Ferrara and his then-wife until 2000.Ferrara was arrested in 2001, after a 9-year-old girl told detectives he regularly molested her over two years and threatened to hurt her mother if she told anyone. Records show that Ferrara had as many as 400 children go through his home during his 16 years as a licensed foster parent (from 1984 to 2000).Officials stated that the lawsuits over Ferrara ended up costing the DCF almost $2.26 million.[95] Similary, in 2007 Florida's DCF paid $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged DCF ignored complaints that another mentally disabled Immokalee girl was being raped by her foster father, Bonifacio Velazquez, until the 15-year-old gave birth to a child.
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

~In a class action lawsuit Charlie and Nadine H. v. McGreevey was filed in federal court by "Children’s Rights" New York organization on behalf of children in the custody of the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS). The complaint alleged violations of the childrens' constitutional rights and their rights under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, Early Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment, 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA). In July 2002, the federal court granted plaintiffs’ experts access to 500 children’s case files, allowing plaintiffs to collect information concerning harm to children in foster care through a case record review. These files revealed numerous cases in which foster children were abused, and DYFS failed to take proper action. On June 9, 2004, the child welfare panel appointed by the parties approved the NJ State’s Reform Plan. The court accepted the plan on June 17, 2004. The same organization also filed similar lawsuits against several other states in recent years that caused some of the states to start child welfare reforms.]

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

Not very many people are able to take a stance against this system of corruption. But what seems to be worse in my eye's. Is that most just dont see it. One is due to confidentiality and a great p.r. campaign perpretrated by cps. They are quick to show who they saved. But not the many they have failed. those stories are usely leaked out by family and community members.
Sometimes even busted by a reporter who combs through police reports. Two is that most people are unware of the corruption deep within this system. But one person a senator was able to see.

Nancy Schaefer was the first state senator to speak out forcefully, truthfully about the corruption of Child Protective Services. She was murdered, there went alot of famalie's last hope's. Someone people would listen to. Instead we have "The bad parents who desrve this" [According to the system] not haveing their voice's heard.

Here is some of what her report on child protective services had to say:


"In this report, I am focusing on the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services. However, I believe Child Protective Services nationwide has become corrupt and that the entire system is broken almost beyond repair. I am convinced parents and families should be warned of the dangers."

"· that caseworkers and social workers are oftentimes guilty of fraud. They withhold evidence. They fabricate evidence and they seek to terminate parental rights.
However, when charges are made against them, the charges are ignored;"

"· that The Adoption and the Safe Families Act, set in motion by President Bill Clinton, offered cash“bonuses” to the states for every child they adopted out of foster care. In order to receive the “adoption incentive bonuses” local child protective services need more children. They must have merchandise (children) that sell and you must have plenty of them so the buyer can choose. Some counties are known to give a $4,000 bonus for each child adopted and an additional $2,000 for a “special needs” child. Employees work to keep the federal dollars flowing;"

"· that if the lives of children were improved by removing them from their homes, there might be a greater need for protective services, but today all children are not always safer. Children, of whom I am aware, have been raped and impregnated in foster care and the head of a Foster Parents Association in my District was recently arrested because of child molestation;"

" that The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1998 reported that six times as many children died in foster care than in the general public and that once removed to official “safety”, these children are far more likely to suffer abuse, including sexual molestation than in the general population."

"· That according to the California Little Hoover Commission Report in 2003, 30% to 70% of the
children in California group homes do not belong there and should not have been removed from
their homes"]

[link to fightcps.com]



She had access to numerous case files plus poeple themselves who directly told her their story.She then immedietly took action after her investigation into this matter. One of her main complaintsover her blogs was as I stated.
CPS she not be performing any criminal investigation's. That should fall under the police dept. Plus fall into rule's of evidence. Which CPS virtually has none.

This set of circumstances is unfair to parent's and their children. There should be stronger rulesin place. Whats worse is atleast criminals get a chance to earn thier rights back. Not theparents who have become victims of a corrupt system with no way out.

Thanks for every one's time
LOTZA LUV

EDITED: To fix text

Just some vids that convey the feelings of being a lost foster child. These vids I picked due to the emotion conveyed or lyrics.







Last Edited by <@> on 09/06/2011 11:43 AM