In The Face Of Great Evil by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D.
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| Chapter 8 — Child “Protective” Services — Who's Minding The Minders? |
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December 26, 2011 — In my 70+ years in this incarnation I have learned to deeply distrust those with pious intentions. And if those self-same individuals take the government's coin in payment for their piety I have come to truly fear them.
There is no question that the human race has produced monsters at all times throughout the world. But the worst exist using the power of government. Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, are obvious examples. But it is the thousands of petty monsters under them who carry out their destruction.
Most humans will not deliberately do evil as an individual. Typically they must be trained and part of a special team, even among military or police. Toward that end uniforms are important and have been used by tyrannical governments throughout history. And promoting such evil, even by specially-trained teams, typically requires a defined “enemy.” In Nazi Germany it was Jews, Gypsies, and non-Aryans. To be successful and sustainable, the “enemy” list must always grow. In America, as an example, for special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams and drug enforcement agents more and more “drug fiends” must be identified even though the principal substance their victims use is medically safe and even beneficial.
So today we find SWAT teams ever more widely used in the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and the war on American citizens. Only a SWAT team is likely to be breaking down your door at 2 AM because some anonymous informer said you had an 1/8 th of marijuana in your possession. Or shooting you in front of your wife and child after breaking down the door.
However, unconstrained and vicious their actions may become in a tyrannical state, and though they are the most visible, police are simply too few in number to carry out the multitude of tasks essential to oppressing a people. And the problem isn't just those who are openly trumpeting for tyranny, e.g., our Congress and President, who are the real danger, but all the little termites progressively gnawing away at freedom in their bureaucratic cubicles; who obey without question or thought the outrageous actions they are told to take; or take on their own initiative for the “good of the children,” or some other “greater good.” They are the real danger to our freedoms.
“As long as government is perceived as working for the benefit of children, the people happily will endure almost any curtailment of liberty.”
America is financially bankrupt but that is not the worst of our problems. The basic units of human society and our economy are our families. That strength is not a secret to those who would destroy us and for 50 years progressive neo-Marxists in America have set their sights on destroying patriarchal families and returning to the primitive state of matriarchy in the name of women's liberation.
In the United States today such petty fiends, all good robots simply obeying orders, can all too commonly be found in what are euphemistically called a “Department of Human Services” (DHS), while nothing could be further from the truth. Like many, if not all government-funded social programs, little or no effort is made to determine whether or not the program works and certainly no effort is made to determine if the program is cost effective. No effort is ever made to distinguish possibility from probability. And if saving the lives of children is a prime objective of DHS the Child Maltreatment 2010 report (p. 60) states that: “In 33 reporting States, the children whose families had received family preservation services in the past 5 years accounted for 12.1 percent of child fatalities.” Thus, for all the billions of dollars and tens of thousands of social workers, contact is only made with the parents of about 12% of child fatalities. The socialist answer, of course, is that more money and more social workers are required. The more likely solution would be to have DHS caseworkers cease their current practices of fear and intimidation that makes parents deathly afraid of them. That would almost certainly reduce the total fatality rate for children and cost less.
These progressives wholeheartedly believe, despite millennia of experience proving that families on average do the best job of raising their children, that the State must direct each and every parent who doesn't conform to the outrageous demands of DHS bureaucrats and commissioners, who frequently have no children of their own.
Among “human services” we find teams of “case workers,” typically with a minimalist ideological education, often no parental experience, dedicated, i.e., paid, to preventing vaguely-defined “child abuse” without regard to the long-term consequences of their actions, or the use of such niceties as warrants and court orders. This despite the fact that their actions all too often increase the “problem” they are ostensibly solving. For example, “child abuse” cases are often associated with single mothers or divorces. One then finds DHS ideologues threatening to take a mother's children away unless she will testify against or divorce her children's father. Those practices promote and require divorce and fatherless-children in an ever-expanding feedback loop.
For DHS the definition of “child abuse” is ever-broadening and they cast a widening net for children supposedly suffering from neglect and abuse even though statistically children are much safer with their biological father and mother than in the hands of state-approved foster parents. And those parents who dare to defy our defunct public education system and home school their children are prime suspects for neglect and abuse allegations by DHS. As a result, DHS is widely regarded by many parents as a legalized kidnapping agency operating adoption rings. And numerous mothers have reported being coerced and told by DHS case workers that their children will be taken from them and placed in foster care if they don't “cooperate” with whatever socialist insanity the case worker spouts.
Of course, if there isn't enough crime to justify the budgets and grants government agents are known to create “situations” or replay old ones over and over. And like tyrannical governments everywhere, citizens are encouraged to inform on their neighbors anonymously. In fact, today virtually everyone who comes in contact with other peoples children, doctors, nurses, teachers, pastors, etc., have been made “mandatory reporters” and subject to criminal penalties if they don't report “child abuse” on the slightest suspicion. Of course, as a result of the numerous resulting reports DHS budgets must be increased, an ever-present goal for all bureaucrats.
I happen to live in this county so I'll use them as an example of socialism gone wild. EPC DHS is the first stop on your way to becoming a dependent of the State and victim. DHS in your county may well be worse than mine but it is almost certainly not any better.
There is nothing new in my complaints. In the year 2000 citizens petitioned the El Paso County Commissioners for relief from these same abuses by the county Dept. of Human Services. In their petition they noted that:
“1) DHS routinely removes children from homes that are not abusive and where the children are in no danger of abuse or neglect, and does not prefer to keep the children in their own homes or to place them in the homes of relatives as required by law. DHS merely has to cite the phrase 'in the best interests of the child' to justify their abuse of the family.
2) Repeated violations of...'To preserve and strengthen family ties whenever possible.' DHS has been more effective in breaking down and destroying family ties.
3) Repeated violations of C.R.S. § 19-1-102(b) 'To remove a child from the custody of his parents only when his welfare and safety...would otherwise be endangered.' DHS fails to use this standard for the removal of children from their homes. They traumatize children by forcing them into foster care and then drug them when the children act out due to the cruel separation from their loving parents.
...They ignore, and conspire to cover-up the abuse of children in foster care.
...There are other cases where the children and their non-custodial parents beg for DHS to remove them from an abusive home, and DHS will not. These children continue to be abused.
4) Repeated violations of C.R.S. § 19-1-103 which defines abuse or neglect extensively and mandates that these standards be applied to the decision for removing the child from the home. These requirements are often not met before the child is removed from the home. Conversely, where the statutory definition of abuse is met, often the children are not removed from that home, especially if it is a foster home.
5) Repeated violations of C.R.S. § 19-1-103(b)(89) which mandates the agent to provide, purchase, or develop the supportive and rehabilitative service to the family to prevent foster placement and with the goal of reunification. The services provided by DHS are detrimental to many unwilling participants. The system is fraught [with] fraud, with conflicts of interest, and built upon keeping the child and the family in the system as long as possible. The effects of this intervention has been overwhelmingly negative to the families involved.
6) Repeated violations of C.R.S. § 19-3-208(2)(a)(1) which says the services are to 'promote the immediate health and safety of children...' DHS has not only failed to provide services to promote the immediate health and safety of some truly abused children, but they have also subjected non-abused children to abusive and intimidating interviews and therapies. There are documented cases of healthy, happy children being removed from the home and as a result of the trauma induced by the removal from their loving parents and the traumatic therapies forced on them, of being declared emotionally unstable, or medically fragile, or any number of diagnoses that entitle the department to obtain additional funding. Is this promoting the health and safety of children?
7) Repeated violations of C.R.S. § 19-3-208(2)(a)(II) '...to reduced the risk of future maltreatment of children who have previously been abused or neglected.' We assert that more children are abused by the system that is supposed to be protecting them than are abused by their families...DHS does nothing to reduce this risk and even contributes to the risk by their inaction with abused children, and by their abuses against non-abused children.
8) Repeated violations of C.R.S. § 19-3-208(2)(a)(III) 'Avoid unnecessary placement of children into foster care.' DHS does the opposite of this statutory requirement, in practice they place children in foster care whenever they can get away with it and then work diligently against reunification of the family.
9) Repeated violations of C.R.S. § 19-3-208(2)(a)(IV) 'Facilitate...speedy reunification of parents with their children...' There is nothing speedy about what DHS does when it intervenes with a family, especially when the allegations are false.
10) Repeated violations of C.R.S. § 19-3-208(2)(a)(VI) 'Promote the best interest of the child.' DHS fails to recognize that the best interests of the child could mean that the child stays with the parent. DHS does nothing to promote the best interests of the child, they promote the best interests of DHS.
11) Repeated violations of C.R.S. § 19-3-208(2)(a)(IX) 'Family preservation services, which are brief, comprehensive, and intensive services provided to prevent the out-of-home placement of children or to promote the safe return of children to the home.' There are documented cases of where the children have been removed without any evidence of abuse or neglect and the children are still, months and years later, not reunited with the parents. DHS services are neither brief nor designed to promote the return of the children to the home. Additionally, the services provided by DHS are incompetent, unreliable, sub-standard, and fraught with deceit and fraud.
An increasing number of these violations are resulting in the termination of parental rights, making these children available for adoption. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, 25% of children adopted through state agencies are returned like so much defective merchandise. Considering that their biological parents, in many cases, fought their termination of parental rights, this is unconscionable...”
The response to this petition, and the outrage expressed at the time by a number of state representatives, was to remove Loyd Malone as the director of El Paso County Children and Family Services. Does it surprise you to learn that the same Loyd Malone is now the state director for the Division of Child Welfare Services?
As one might expect in the radical-feminist world of today, DHS sponsors a Center on Fathering but not a Center on Mothering, though a visit to their facility clearly shows the great majority of their clientele are (presumably single) mothers. Maybe I've missed something, but most of the problems with child abuse are associated with females. But coming at a problem from the wrong end seems to be a requirement for socialist programs illustrated so well by EPC DHS.
I have previously documented the history of this pious absurdity and turn now to the cost in human lives and scarce resources of executing this insanity.
It is a bit difficult to determine total funding for El Paso County DHS since they piously receive funding from federal, state, and county budgets, as well as other sources. But the 2012 county budget allocates $54 million to DHS, the largest single budget item by a factor of two. Apparently they get another $2-3 million from general funds as well.
DHS also gets additional funding from grants, $3.7 million in 2011. There are apparently also special funds to deal with children placed in foster care, particularly if the children can be classified as “disabled.”
Like many government problems the roots lie in unconstrained and essentially unmonitored spending. In El Paso County, and most other counties, the responsible elected body for oversight is the county commission. The commissioner here specifically tasked with DHS control is supposedly-Republican Sallie Clark (District 3 in which I live).
The situation today is aggravated by the inaction of Commissioner Clark, who clearly lacks understanding of the many problems and failings of DHS. Over many years I have repeatedly brought problems with DHS to Commissioner Clark's attention involving:
• Errors in child support collection that have frequently resulted in men being jailed;
• Paternity fraud being endorsed or enforced by DHS;
• Excessive turnover in staff and lack of training;
• Unjustified bias against fathers in custody cases and disputes;
• Multiple case workers assigned to the same case leaving the parents dazed and confused;
• Illegal issuance of orders by DHS case workers;
• Threatening mothers with taking their children if they don't cooperate with DHS case workers;
• Overstepping the bounds of their jurisdiction, particularly with military families;
• Condoning, if not actually enabling guardianship/conservatorship fraud of the elderly and infirm;
• Failing to respond to inquiries from parents;
• Modifying and altering agreements reached with parents without the parent's knowledge or consent;
• Unnecessary, destructive, and costly dependency and neglect cases;
• Obfuscation and outright lies by case workers.
Commissioner Clark has been unresponsive to these complaints, has constantly made excuses, denied, and temporized; she has blamed others especially the courts for DHS' problems; and claimed that the safety of children demanded draconian actions. Yet, despite the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars, children still die on a regular basis in El Paso County and often after DHS has been notified and supposedly intervened. All too often the child is in foster care at the time of death but that sad fact isn't mentioned by Commissioner Clark in her pious defense of her sorry record.
As I was writing this essay the Colorado Springs Gazette published a series of articles by Barbara Cotter describing the El Paso County DHS. In her first article she describes the failure of CPS to help an obviously maltreated boy for 17 months after his condition was reported in June 2008 by an electrician doing some repair work on a townhome. And the neglect had previously been reported in Georgia and then in 2005 to DHS by a school social worker after the family moved to Colorado Springs. And that is but one example she quotes of how dysfunctional DHS is. And when questioned DHS generally hides behind a screen of privacy concerns, points the finger at other agencies like law enforcement, or by blaming “home schooling” for masking child neglect from authorities. However, in the experience of the EJF it is fear of DHS that prevents parents from seeking help even when they know it is needed for their children. That is particularly true of disabled parents. Ms. Cotter also notes the high turnover of personnel in DHS and the inadequate training for case workers.
Cotter's second article is basically a whitewash for El Paso County DHS. She quotes Director Bengtsson as stating: “In 2010, El Paso County had 752 children removed from their homes, some for only days, and the reunification rate was 90 percent.” A reasonable person might suppose that if a problem in the home was so minor that it could be fixed in a matter of days that it is ridiculous to traumatize children by removing them from their parents. Cotter also notes that court approval is needed before a child can be removed from its home. But that is also a confidence game. In talking with parents one quickly learns that DHS judge shops until they find one who consistently rules in their favor. One doesn't spend much time in Judge Thomas Kennedy's court before noticing the multitude of DHS cases that come before him, the parade of parents whose rights are being terminated, the hallway full of children being adopted and placed in foster care, and how seldom he rules against DHS.
In her third article Cotter notes that in 2007 alone thirteen children died while enduring the tender mercies of the Colorado child welfare system. I have previously posted an article noting that from 1995 to 2002 that twelve children died in El Paso County alone after DHS neglected warnings of abuse. In 2010 apparently seven children died from abuse or neglect. It is reported that at least eight children in El Paso County have died in 2011 despite DHS' best efforts, three of them while this essay was being written over a two week period. The socialist solution trumpeted by Cotter is that more laws, regulations, and another layer of bureaucracy will, in time, fix the problems. As a realist I think that the first step would be to determine whether the tens of millions of dollars spent on social services in the county provide a statistically significant reduction in the deaths of children from neglect. At present I am skeptical and suggest that the parental fear induced by the present draconian actions of DHS, together with the many documented cases of murder-suicide of children after DHS becomes involved, actually increases the number of child deaths.
In a fourth article Cotter points out that the large military presence in Colorado Springs, together with the repeated deployments troops have endured over the past decade, do not result in a statistically significant increase in child abuse among our veterans compared to the general population. However, despite supposedly limited resources, DHS has formed and manned a separate unit to deal with the special needs of the military population but two children of military families have been murdered in just the past month
However, Cotter's reporting lacks a critical component. She does not anywhere report that she has talked directly with parents who are dealing, or have dealt with the DHS dictatorship. In large measure that is because case workers threaten to take the children of any parent with the temerity to tell their story.
For balance, let me bring forward just one example of many of the injustice done to but one soldier recently. And his story is by no means unique or rare in this military metropolis:
In order to understand the injustice in this case it is essential to present some background. The following are details and a timeline of events in case number 2011 JV 1220 brought by EPC DHS child protective services (CPS) against Army Specialist Deonte Carter alleging strangulation of his 2-year-old son. At all times pertinent Spc. Carter, his wife Whitney, and son were on Fort Carson, a federal military reservation, and initial examinations were carried out by Army doctors at Evans Hospital on base. The release of medical information about the case has been specifically given by both parents to the Equal Justice Foundation.
After spending about six years in a foster home as a child where he and his brother were severely abused Deonte Carter joined the United States Marine Corps on September 5, 2005. After completing boot camp at Parris Island he was assigned to the Second Marine Air Wing at Cherry Point, North Carolina. From there he was deployed to Iraq on his first combat tour from September 2006 to March 2007.
After a two-year courtship he married Whitney Pressley on August 5, 2008. Shortly thereafter Deonte was deployed to Iraq again in September 2008. While he was in Iraq Whitney stayed with relatives in Magee, Mississippi, and gave birth to their son on February 19, 2009, in Jackson, Mississippi. The hospital there arranged for Deonte to be present for the birth of his son via Skype. It shames me to state that blacks are now treated better in Mississippi than in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We stand for equal justice for all throughout these United States and that is the point of this defamatory screed.
Marine Corporal Carter returned from his second combat deployment in March 2009. With a newborn son the couple had some adjustment problems after his return, as virtually all military couples do after a spouse returns from combat. They completed a joint parenting and relationship class together in June 2009 and have had only the usual minor problems couples have since then. From personal observation they enjoy each others company when together.
Deonte's Marine Corps enlistment was up on September 6, 2009, and, as many former Marines do, he joined the Army a few days after in order to preserve his pay grade (E-4). The Army then sent him for training to Fort Lee, Virginia, while Whitney and their son remained in Beaufort, South Carolina. Mrs. Carter has always suffered from eczema and skin problems and while Deonte was in training at Fort Lee their son was first seen for a skin rash in November 2009. As with most first-time mothers, Whitney was probably over-anxious about the boy's health, and with free medical services available through the military the child was frequently seen by doctors. Her nervousness about her child was no doubt compounded by the frequent absence of her husband for training and combat.
Following training at Fort Lee Deonte spent December 2009-January 2010 completing a military drivers course at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
In early February 2010 the entire family moved to base housing on Fort Carson, Colorado. Shortly after the move to base housing was completed they took their son to the base hospital (Evans) on February 13, 2010, with red dots under his eyes, a condition known as petechiae, for which there are many causes, e.g., viral infections, coughing, vomiting, or crying. The boy was seen again at Evans Hospital on February 25, 2010, for coughing and congestion.
On March 11, 2010, Spc. Carter was deployed for a third combat tour in Iraq by the Army where he drove trucks in convoy most days. During his deployment Mrs. Carter took the boy to Evans Hospital on Fort Carson a number of times for shots, sinus infections, balance problems probably associated with sinus/ear conditions. But on August 25, 2010, the boy was seen for a rash (petechiae) on his face and again for the same problem on September 22, 2010, while his father was in Iraq.
In late October 2010 Deonte came back to Fort Carson on a mid-tour leave. While here the parents took the boy shopping with them at the Outlets in Castle Rock, Colorado, on October 28, 2010. While there the boy became tired and began crying uncontrollably. His father then took him back to their car and tried to get the child to sleep while his mother finished shopping. The next day Whitney took her son to Evans Hospital for swollen cheeks and a rash (petechiae) around his mouth and under his eyes. Recall that a common cause of petechiae is crying. A follow-up visit on November 1, 2010, for the petechiae found the rash going away and no further treatment needed.
Spc. Carter returned to Iraq on November 11, 2010. While away his son was seen at Evans Hospital on January 4, 2011, February 16, and March 3, for discharge from nose and eyes, elevated temperature, constipation, and the usual conditions any parent faces with a young child. Of course her concerns were exacerbated by the fact her husband was in combat in Iraq.
Deonte returned safely from his third tour in Iraq on March 11, 2011, and took up family life again in base housing on Fort Carson. Aside from problems with sleeplessness, I have seen little evidence of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and he was not wounded or injured on any of his combat tours.
A few weeks after Deonte returned the boy was seen again on April 4 th for a rash (petechiae?) at Evans Hospital. The boy's two-year exam on April 7 th finds him normal and near the top for height and weight for his age. Hardly what one expects with a neglected child.
On June 14, 2011, the boy is seen for congestion, runny nose, and snoring consistent with past history of sinus problems.
On July 25 th the boy's eyes are red and he again has a rash (petechiae). Despite the previous history, on this date Benjamin Choate, M.D., at Evans Hospital decides the petechiae are the result of choking (not uncommon for little boys to choke on something) and Army Social Work Services (SWS) were called. The medical report indicates the mother expressed “...concerns about the possibility that his father is trying to hurt him.” Mrs. Carter has denied under oath making any such claim but it is probable that under questioning at the time she became confused and her statements were twisted to conform to the preconception that the boy was being abused. That would hardly be the first time that has been reported to me by parents. Social services are noted for misquoting and misstating events so that the Equal Justice Foundation strongly recommends that every time parents talk with DHS they record everything. We are hardly the only advocates who make that recommendation to parents dealing with DHS.
Following the call to the base SWS, Army CID was also called in. As a precaution Deonte was removed from base housing and put in barracks for one night.
A follow up visit to Evans Hospital was made by Mrs. Carter on July 26 th and the rash (petechiae) was scarcely visible. The CID investigation found no cause for action and Spc. Carter was allowed to return home the next day.
Federal installation, federal investigation, end of story. Right? With no witnesses, no medical evidence other than a rash, a history of such rashes on the child, the mother denying any abuse, no bruising or marks on the child, and Army CID unable to find any further reason to investigate, one would assume case closed.
Fort Carson, like many military bases, has a Memorandum of Agreement between the Army and the El Paso County Department of Human Services (EPC DHS) that grants jurisdiction to the Fourth Judicial District in cases of suspected child abuse and authorizes EPC DHS to investigate all cases of suspected child abuse on Fort Carson. As you might suspect by now, any remote rumor of “child abuse” is presumed to be accurate and the father is to blame.
In testimony at trial, once Fort Carson SWS was notified there began a series of telephone calls that can best be likened to the telephone game we played as children. After about five relays the choking reported by Dr. Choate had become strangulation and Spc. Carter was now suspected of attempted murder of his son by EPC DHS.
Now the proper procedure in such cases is to bring the parents before a magistrate and, if sufficient evidence of child abuse exists, the magistrate issues a restraining order on a standard form provided by the state court administrator spelling out the terms and conditions the parents must meet and, if necessary and in rare cases, places the child in the care of DHS (foster care).
I have repeatedly heard that DHS was not following this procedure and, instead, case workers were issuing orders on their own. In a meeting with EPC DHS Director Bengtsson and Karen Logan, as well as representatives from Fort Carson, on October 27, 2011, that problem was raised and emphatically denied by the director (see p. 6 of meeting minutes).
Apparently there is a disconnect between DHS management and their case workers. On August 1, 2011, Spc. Carter and his wife were summoned to court where a lowly DHS case worker wrote out a restraining order preventing Spc. Carter from returning to his home and family and requiring no contact between Deonte and his son except under supervised visitation. Note that this “order” is not on a standard court form, is not signed by a magistrate or judge, and was not even submitted to her supervisor for review and approval. In other words one of the most basic rights a man has, that of living with his family and children, was taken away with impunity and without even court authorization by a mere DHS case worker acting on her own. Recall also that Spc. Carter had just spent six years of his life, including three combat tours, in defense of these rights that were so blithely taken away with a few strokes of this bureaucrat's pen. And there is no counting the cost to the boy of the time since lost with his father.
Spc. Deonte Carter has honored this specious and illegal order, which has kept him from his family since August 1, 2011.
At the first scheduled trial date on October 5, 2011, Whitney showed me petechiae on her leg and stomach and reported the boy also had the rash on his face again. Unfortunately, the rash on the boy disappeared before it could be documented. Whitney did get photographs of the rash on her legs however.
Inexorably the case proceeded to trial on November 30, 2011, since Spc. Carter steadfastly refused to admit guilt to a crime he had not committed. At trial prosecution was only able to show a 15-30 minute window on July 24, 2011, during which Deonte Carter was even alone with his son when the abuse was alleged to have occurred. And when the mother returned she found the boy fast asleep, an unlikely result for a child who had just been brutally abused by strangulation.
The DHS case worker was not sequestered as a witness but allowed to sit with the prosecuting attorneys. She was then admitted as an “expert” witness despite the fact she has only a Bachelor of Arts degree in social science and just six years experience as a case worker. No résumé for her was submitted but she professed no publications or learned writings, there was no evidence produced that she has any managerial or project management experience, or any other background that qualifies her in any way as an expert on any subject. Yet as an “expert” witness she was allowed to introduce what amounted to hearsay and apparently gossip. She produced no evidence to substantiate any abuse of the child but made it clear that if the boy was abused it was the mother who had the most opportunity as the father was mostly absent with his military duties.
The guardian ad litem (GAL), paid for by the county to defend the best interest of the child, instead acted as an attorney for the prosecution.
Despite the mother's testimony that she had never had any concerns about her husband abusing their son, three doctors from Evans Hospital were put on the witness stand to testify that the petechiae were the result of abuse and no other potential causes were likely despite the child's history of such rashes.
Given that only a preponderance of evidence was required in this dependency and neglect case, the jury found him guilty on December 1, 2011.
• The mother was coerced into taking a plea bargain and admitting guilt as to dependency and neglect. However, the court left the boy in her custody.
• The mother, like all parents who have had to deal with DHS, will be very reluctant now to take the child to a doctor for fear of being reported again. Since it often is not the parents who are abusing the child such reluctance to seek help for fear of being blamed increases the danger to children. Draconian DHS policies thus have the opposite effect of their expressed intent.
• The couple is scheduled for another family planning conference on January 21, 2012. Inevitably DHS will require the boy not leave El Paso County until all conditions of the department are met on the basis that the State knows more about raising the child than the parents. Likely DHS oversight will be continued for at least two years.
• Deonte is only allowed to see his son under supervised visitation and must continue to submit to expensive therapy for which there is little money.
• As a result of this conviction the Army CID is apparently reopening their investigation and it appears that Spc. Carter will be discharged from the Army (chaptered out).
• If he is discharged, in today's economy there is little chance he will find work and benefits to match what he receives from the military and he will be forced to seek work elsewhere. However, his son must remain here.
• Divorce in such cases is very common and it is unlikely Deonte will be able to pay child support if discharged from the Army. Thus, his drivers license will be taken away making it even more difficult to find or maintain employment. As a result he is likely to be jailed for non-payment of support.
• I hardly need elaborate on the dismal future of a black boy without a father in today's world.
I find this case to be horribly shameful treatment of a man who has reached down and pulled himself up by his bootstraps after a childhood in a corrupt foster home, and who has endured three combat tours in the service of his country!
And how has DHS stopped child abuse in this case, even in the unlikely event it existed? However, they have created more clients for their services in the future by their misguided actions and almost certain destruction of this family, and thousands of others like the Carters.
I have found no evidence that DHS practices in El Paso County have changed, except perhaps for the worse, from the disgraceful practices citizens petitioned for relief from in the year 2000.
The basic and unanswered question is whether, at a cost of tens of millions, DHS actually reduces child abuse and neglect either in the short term or in the long run. What and where is the evidence? I have certainly not found it and the children keep dying to the point where the county is forming yet another committee to investigate, no doubt formed of the same apparatchiks who are at the root of this evil.
I have found abundant evidence that EPC DHS has destroyed the lives of many children and families. If their objective is to instill fear and loathing into parents reminiscent of the Nazi SS and Soviet KGB I'd have to give them credit and rate them a success.
Human actions that can be controlled or limited by law are relatively few in number and that number was reached a long time ago. Laws today are largely based on emotions and feelings rather than logic and results. And where laws don't go far enough, bureaucratic regulations are quickly generated to fill in any gaps in government control.
Blurred, if not eliminated is the once bright line between criminal and civil law. That is most noticeable to citizens with civil restraining orders that carry criminal penalties.
“Crimes” today no longer require a victim, they are for the most part simply actions the State doesn't like and if you are male you are presumed guilty, particularly if you are black.
Of course the courts must cooperate to give the proceedings a patina of legality. But there are many examples of corrupt and infamous courts and actions that ring down through history. Star Chambers in England, Dred Scott, Courts of Honor under Stalin in the Soviet Union, People's Courts in Communist China, and “family” courts in America today such as the one where Spc. Deonte Carter was tried. And the bar for admission of an ideologue as an “expert witness” has been lowered to ground level.
Of course these actions make lucrative careers for every bottom-feeding attorney, politician, bureaucrat, child or victim advocate, social worker, psychologist, and other court cronies. So reform attempts are met with great resistance.
Obviously, as public resistance to these outrageous practices grows it is necessary for these parasites to change tactics and redefine terms. As one example, shown above, petechiae has become a new buzz word for the abuse industry. Like “cycle of violence,” “batterer,” “power and control,” “trained killers,” before it. And petechiae need only be observed, or claimed to have been observed to be considered proof and the family destroyed.
Any system of such blind stupidity that is granted the power to take our children virtually at random constitutes a great evil. Though the primary focus of this essay has been on child protective services there are three pillars of evil under DHS
• Child support enforcement — depends on ever more divorces, single mothers, stupidity of fathers, jailing, taking away drivers and professional licenses.
• Child abuse — depends on an ever-broadening definition of “abuse” such as petechiae in the case cited above.
• Elder abuse — conservatorship/guardianship abuse of the well-off as they age
These programs were unquestionably established with the most pious intentions. But, like virtually all government-funded socialist programs, they quickly morphed into the imposition of draconian penalties for those who did not “cooperate.”
Through it all no distinction is made between possibility and probability. Extreme events are treated as though they are the norm. And since the bureaucrats “know” the events will happen they must take steps to prevent them irregardless of how remote the probability of their occurrence or the cost/benefits of such steps.
And amongst it all it is the children whose families are destroyed by DHS who suffer the most by the great evil done in their name. And all parents who have had to deal with DHS are very reluctant now to take the child to a doctor, and frequently even to school, for fear of being reported again. Since it often is not the parents who are abusing the child such reluctance to seek help for fear of being blamed increases the danger to children. Draconian DHS policies thus commonly have the opposite effect of their intent.
In the miasma of propaganda generated to justify their increasing budgets in the face of the patent failures of their practices, even DHS statistics are ridiculous. For example, Health and Human Services statistics for child fatalities in Child Maltreatment 2010 reports on p. 58: “Fifty-one States reported a total of 1,537 fatalities. Of those 51 States, 44 reported case-level data on 1,262 fatalities and 42 reported aggregate data on 275 fatalities.”
Charles E. Corry, Ph.D., F.G.S.A.
Dr. Corry is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and an internationally-known earth scientist whose biography has appeared in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Science and Engineering, among others, for thirteen consecutive years.
After service with 1 st Marines he became involved with the early space program in 1960, doing preflight testing and failure analysis on Atlas and Centaur missiles, including all the Project Mercury birds. In 1965 he switched to oceanography and did research at both Scripps Institution in San Diego and Woods Hole Oceanographic on Cape Cod. He has also taught geophysics at university and worked as a research manager for a Fortune 500 company.
He has climbed high mountains, been shipwrecked and marooned on an unexplored desert island, ridden horseback through Utah, Arizona, and Colorado, among other adventures during his career.
Presently Dr. Corry is president and founding director of the Equal Justice Foundation.
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| Chapter 8 — Child “Protective” Services — Who's Minding The Minders? |
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