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Saturday, May 20, 2006

The unbearable darkness of being
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
I have been writing about Jeffrey Baldwin off and on for more than three years, since shortly after his miserable death in his prison of a room in an east-end Toronto house on Nov. 30, 2002.
In that 42-month period, I knocked on the front door of the house, this in those early days before his grandparents were ever arrested, and was chased away by his obese, glowering and remarkably entitled grandmother, who later called police to complain about me; broke the story of how the Catholic Children's Aid Society had agreed to give custody of Jeffrey and his siblings to the grotesque grandparents without even checking its own files that detailed the pair's earlier, separate convictions for child abuse; covered much of the grandparents' criminal trial (they were found guilty of second-degree murder and will be formally sentenced on May 30); attended a tender memorial, organized by strangers, for the dead boy; and read and wrote about a searing report written by an external consultant, who described in crisp prose the ways the CCAS had failed Jeffrey.
For the longest time, I had a picture of the little boy on a wall of my home office and, later, a T-shirt with a blown-up version of the same photo.
I took them down a couple of weeks ago.
Jeffrey's grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman, are likely to pass the rest of their lives in prison — second-degree murder carries an automatic "life" sentence with only the parole ineligibility period still to be decided by the judge — but, as an outcome, this is so profoundly unsatisfactory as to evoke despair.
Last month, Mr. Justice David Watt of Ontario Superior Court ruled that, as Jeffrey's caregivers, the grandparents are guilty of killing him, and so they are. For her part, the grandmother is of borderline intelligence but a vicious, self-referential woman, and surprisingly capable and cunning. The grandfather is a big, lethargic dope, uninterested in much beyond his own creature comforts and unwilling to put himself out one bit to help the child who was slowly dying before his eyes.
They richly deserve their sentences, and not a whit of pity.
But, my God, Jeffrey and his little sister, centred out for cruel treatment by the grandparents though Jeffrey bore the worst of it, lived in that small house surrounded by adults.
Two of the Bottineau-Kidman grown daughters, and their men, also lived there, the most notorious of them one James Mills. Mr. Mills is the best known because he was the only one of that household to testify at trial — Judge Watt described him as "a curious mixture of blatant self-interest and unfathomable loyalty to the persons charged" — and because, as the only one in the house not related by blood or marriage, he might have been presumed to be less bound to the studied indifference that was the household's reaction to the little boy's plight.
Alas, like Mr. Kidman, whom he so admired, Mr. Mills lifted not a pinky, not once, not ever, to help the suffering Jeffrey. The night the little guy died, Mr. Mills was in the bedroom next door, playing video games.
The only price he paid for his stunningly heartless behaviour was the sting of publicity, the same price, albeit to a much lesser extent because they were not called to the witness stand, paid by the other adults who lived in the house.
So, while the grandparents are the perpetrators, while it was their legal duty and theirs alone to have properly cared for a vulnerable child, there was a larger pool of adults who donned blinkers. This is not criminal conduct, but it is morally reprehensible and depressing.
Institutionally, there were three different systems involved one way or another in the case. Two of them — the police and the administration of justice — did their jobs and emerged with honour, in reasonable good time.
Though homicide detectives probably harboured dreams of charging every person in that vile house and the agency that agreed to give the grandparents custody in the first place, and though they would have done so to wide applause, they correctly arrested only the grandparents, because only they had legal liability and opportunity and could be successfully prosecuted.
The accused were robustly defended before one of the best judges in the nation, who heard the case without a jury and wrote a 200-plus-page decision that is as sound as it is literate.
Only the Catholic Children's Aid Society came out of the abyss if not entirely unscathed — the agency, too, was called to account in the realm of public opinion — then unbowed.
At the crux of the agency's explanation for what happened was that there was, at the time Jeffrey's grandparents gained custody of him, a policy vacuum in child care.
Back then, went this explanation, when relatives stepped into the breach when parents were deemed unfit, there was no rule that workers do background checks on the relatives — as though it were perfectly acceptable that a requirement for a thorough family history, in any custody case, should flow from a formal directive.
Child-welfare agencies, chiefly the CCAS, were intimately involved with Jeffrey's various family members for 36 years; there was a wealth of frightening information about the grandparents in the files the agency failed to review.
To my knowledge, the agency has never explained — nor been asked to explain by anyone other than the press — how it was that it also approved Ms. Bottineau as one of its own paid child-care providers a mere four years after her husband was convicted of assaulting two of her youngsters from a previous marriage and despite her own conviction in the 1970 pneumonia death of her first baby, an infant named Eva who later was found to have suffered multiple fractures consistent with battered-child syndrome.
Its front-line workers involved in the case have never publicly explained their thinking.
There remains one last hope that the agency and those workers will be asked these questions and others — Ontario's chief coroner has called an inquest into the little boy's death.
The cynical view is that little good can come of these proceedings, because the recommendations of any inquest jury are only that — recommendations — and because the inquest cannot assign blame.
I don't subscribe to that view. I think the more such decisions are examined, the more publicity brought to bear on the workings of secretive organizations, the more good, ordinary people see that wasted little boy as he appeared on the autopsy table, the better.
Studies show that the sort of slow, semi-starvation Jeffrey Baldwin endured is worse, physiologically and psychologically, than total starvation. In the latter, hunger pangs disappear within a few days; in the former, there is no such blessing.
I can't bear to look at his picture any longer, but he remains in my heart. I await the inquest with eagerness.
cblatchford@globeandmail.com

266 comments:

1 – 200 of 266   Newer›   Newest»
Anonymous said...

Hi,
I just wanted to tell you a little bit of my story.Eight years ago the Childrens Aid took my sisters four children.Which they had good reason.But they never once contacted any of the other family members.When i called the cas the same day i said that i could take the kids.They advised me that was not the way it worked.It took me four months of fighting in court.Another two and a half years of being supervised.Two workers visiting once a week.I had a two year old son at the time with no involvment with the cas at all.I also brought character letters in to court.The most important one being from my sons doctor.If the ccas is using the excuse of we did not do background checks at that time,they are lying.Myself,and all of my family members had police checks done.When i finally did have temporary custody.They asked the judge to appoint the childrens lawyer to my nephew and nieces case.The cas wanted me to obtain full custody.Among many,many other hurdles i had to jump through.The cas told me they pushed me this hard because of my age and because i was not married.But i was with my childs father.Fifteen years,and four children later we are still all together.My youngest niece is with her father.My nephew and other niece is now with my mother.They are all very spoiled, happy and very well taken care of.Also they has been no other involvment with the cas.I just wanted to share my story because if the ccas is trying to say that they did all they could at that time i am prove that those rules and regulations did in fact exsist at that time.
Thank you.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the first poster. It is obvious that what kind of checking was done in kinship cases was left to the vagaries of whomever was dealing with the matter so that in one case the checks could be very stringent, in another, they would not look into anything. The point is it was all left to chance.

I hope the first poster will join us at the May 30 rally to express her views about the CCAS experience she engaged in. These are the people who should be coming to speak out!

Anonymous said...

I too adopted a a child( kinship) long before the grandparents were given Jeffery, and we also went though full cheaks, including crimianl records cheaks, if this can be done by a lawyer in a private adoption, whats with the CCAS.

Thank you Christie for you storys on this child, and the systems that failed him, no one will ever forget.
Until all people that are to care for children are held accountable for there actions, and lack of them, I fear we will read about more tragic deaths of children, in care or placed in care, by CAS and CCAS, UNTIL this government takes action, and Minister Chambers stops telling whit washed lies, they too have the blood of every child on there hands.

God bless Jeffrey, and god bless his siblings.

Anonymous said...

Crown seeks 25 years for grandparents
Long prison term needed to express `society's revulsion'

5-year-old boy starved, kept in a locked room each night
May 20, 2006. 01:00 AM
NICK PRON
COURTS BUREAU


The convicted killers of 5-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin should serve 25 years in prison before they can apply for parole, a prosecutor has recommended.

"Only the maximum will significantly show ... society's revulsion," Crown attorney Beverley Richards told a court yesterday.

Last month, Justice David Watt found Jeffrey's grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman, both 54, guilty of second-degree murder in his Nov. 30, 2002, death.

Bottineau's apparent anger over her conviction boiled over in court when she quietly called Jeffrey's other grandmother, Susan Dimitriadis, a "f---ing bitch" as Dimitriadis passed by the prisoner's box, moments after tearfully telling the University Ave. courtroom of her grief at the boy's death.

"I will always remember his great, big beautiful smile," Dimitriadis had said, reading from a two-page statement.

When Watt was later told of Bottineau's remark, he warned her: "Ms Bottineau, keep your mouth shut."

The couple had kept Jeffrey in a locked room each night, their trial heard. He slept in a feces-covered crib, and when he died he weighed just 21 pounds, about the same as when he was a year old. He died from septic shock, his body weakened from bacterial pneumonia.

Bottineau's lawyer, Nicholas Xynnis, argued she should be allowed to apply for parole after serving 12 to 14 years in prison. Under the Criminal Code, the parole eligiblity period for second-degree murder can be set anywhere between 10 and 25 years.

Xynnis described his client as a person who is "borderline mentally defective ... wholly unqualified to raise children." He blamed the Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto for "failing in its public duty" by encouraging her to take Jeffrey and three siblings.

They were taken from their abusive birth parents and given to the couple under a court order, the trial had heard. The court also heard how the society didn't check its own records, which showed that Bottineau and Kidman each had a previous conviction for child abuse.

Robert Richardson, Kidman's lawyer, said his client was aware of the "obvious mistreatment" of Jeffrey at the east-end home, and was guilty of "failing to intervene." But he suggested that Kidman should be allowed to apply for parole at the lower end of the range for second-degree murder.

Watt is to rule on May 30.

Anonymous said...

Crown pushes for 25 years without parole
Jeffrey Baldwin's grandparents 'bankrupt of morality,' hearing told
GREG MCARTHUR

Elva Bottineau, convicted of starving, neglecting and eventually killing her five-year-old grandson, Jeffrey Baldwin, was scolded by an Ontario Superior Court judge yesterday after she whispered an "unflattering" remark to the little boy's paternal grandmother.

After Susan Dimitriadis read a victim-impact statement from the witness box at yesterday's sentencing hearing -- a statement that described how her grandson's death overwhelmed her with pain -- she passed Ms. Bottineau as she returned to her seat.

As Ms. Dimitriadis glanced at her grandson's killer, Ms. Bottineau muttered "fucking bitch," Ms. Dimitriadis told reporters.

Crown attorney Bev Richards alerted Mr. Justice David Watt, which prompted a blunt order.

"Ms. Bottineau?" he asked.

"Yes, your Honour?" she replied.

"Shut your mouth," Judge Watt said.

Ms. Bottineau's insult underscored the argument put forward for most of the morning by Crown prosecutors -- that she and her co-defendant, husband Norman Kidman, are callous and accept no responsibility for what they did to Jeffrey.

The couple have been sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder, but won't know when they'll be eligible for parole until Judge Watt renders his decision on May 30.

But yesterday, Ms. Richards reminded the judge of all the times the couple, who were handed Jeffrey and his little sister by the Catholic Children's Aid Society, tried to skirt blame for his death.

She quoted Mr. Kidman's interviews with police, when he cited Jeffrey's bad behaviour as the reason for the state of the boy's decrepit bedroom.

In those interviews, he also described Jeffrey as a "good eater," even though when the boy died in 2002 he weighed 21 pounds -- less than half the normal weight for a child his age.

Ms. Richards also attacked Ms. Bottineau's past explanations for the boy's malnourishment -- that Jeffrey's sister swiped food from him at the dinner table.

"I submit My Lord, that Mr. Kidman and Ms. Bottineau are completely bankrupt of morality," she said, recommending no parole for 25 years.

However, Ms. Bottineau's lawyer, Nick Xynnis, said the court should not seek retribution against his client, who was an abused child and suffers from mental and personality disorders.

He recommended a sentence of 12 to 14 years, and asked the judge to look at the "wider context of a woman who was wholly unqualified to raise children but was entrusted to do so by the Catholic Children's Aid Society, and as the years progressed, was even encouraged to do so."

Bob Richardson, Mr. Kidman's lawyer, didn't suggest a specific time frame for his client to be paroled. Rather, he pointed out that the average time span is around 15 years, and that Mr. Kidman should be eligible for parole earlier than Ms. Bottineau because he was less culpable in Jeffrey's death.

Anonymous said...

Bottineau lashes out at Jeffrey's grandmother
Prosecutor says boy's killers should get 25 years
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Font: * * * * Peter Brieger, National Post
Published: Saturday, May 20, 2006
Elva Bottineau -- the Toronto woman who starved her grandson Jeffrey Baldwin to death -- cursed at the five-year-old victim's paternal grandmother in court yesterday.

"F---ing bitch," the 54-year-old whispered at Susan Dimitriadis after she described the crushing loss of a boy with a "great big beautiful smile."

Bottineau and common-law husband Norman Kidman were found guilty last month of second-degree murder in the boy's starvation death.

Yesterday's incident was brought to the attention of Justice David Watt, who warned the petite grandmother, "Ms. Bottineau, keep your mouth shout."

It was the first contact Ms. Dimitriadis has had with Bottineau since her arrest for Jeffrey's death on Nov. 30, 2002.

"[Bottineau's] just lashing out because she realizes she didn't get away with it," Ms. Dimitriadis told a reporter outside the downtown courthouse as relatives held up signs with Jeffrey's picture and the words "No more dead children."

Police investigators have described the boy's death as one of the worst child abuse cases they've ever seen. Jeffrey weighed just 22 pounds when he died, less than half the average weight of a boy his age. His body covered with sores and bruises, Jeffrey died of septic shock brought on by severe malnutrition.

Prosecutor Bev Richards told Judge Watt yesterday that Jeffrey's "agonizing death" should earn the pair 25 years in prison before they can seek parole. Second-degree murder carries a life sentence with parole eligibility between 10 and 25 years.

"The shocking brutality of the crime showed a profound disrespect for human life," the prosecutor said. "There is no appropriate explanation for Jeffrey's death."

Ms. Richards argued that, despite Bottineau's "mental deficiencies," she abused Jeffrey and one of his sisters while fawning over two other grandchildren who also lived in the couple's east-end home.

The trial heard that Jeffrey and one sister were often locked in a spartan, unheated room that reeked of urine and feces. In one diary entry, Bottineau referred to the pair as "little pigs."

"This crime had a profound effect on our community," Ms. Richards said. "It shocked our community. It angered our community."

Nick Xynnis, Bottineau's lawyer, asked the judge to bar his client from seeking parole for 12 to 14 years, noting that the woman grew up in an "impoverished" household where she was sexually, physically and emotionally abused.

The woman is also borderline mentally retarded yet was entrusted to care for her grandchildren by the Catholic Children's Aid Society, Mr. Xynnis argued.

The society had records that Bottineau pleaded guilty in 1970 to assault causing bodily harm in the death of her baby daughter; Ontario's chief coroner is launching an inquiry to probe how the agency placed Jeffrey and his siblings with his grandparents.

"[Bottineau's] belief in her own child-care abilities was reinforced by the CCAS," Mr. Xynnis told Judge Watt.

The lawyer argued that while the Baldwin case is "horrendous," Bottineau deserves a crack at parole sooner than Marcia Dooley, who was convicted in April, 2002, of the beating death of her seven-year-old stepson, Randal, whose injuries included 13 fractured ribs and a lacerated liver.

Dooley is required to serve 18 years in prison on a second-degree murder conviction before she can apply for release.

Bob Richardson, Kidman's lawyer, said his client played almost no role in raising the children and deserves less than the average 15-year parole ineligibility period for child abuse crimes. Tony Dooley, Randal's father, received 13 years, Mr. Richardson said.

Judge Watt is expected to sentence Bottineau and Kidman this month.

Anonymous said...

Just to make readers aware of the latest false case of shaken baby syndrome. On May 30, The National Post reported a Toronto mom was just acquited on these charges. Of course, medical "experts" had dismissed the mothers explanations and labelled her a murderer. One cannot imagine the hell of losing her her daughter - then being falsely labelled a murderer. This goes on all too frequently. One more example of the system's insanity.

Anonymous said...

Inquests are jokes. Lawyers take them hostage and milk them for all they can. Coroners use them to spread their agenda. We all know they're in bed with the CAS on this one.

Anonymous said...

Christie Blatchford took down Jeffrey's picture. It is symbolic that she is done with this story. The grandparents of the province are now left out in the cold. The story is really about how the Toronto CCAS bungled the case. Where is their consequence? Maybe the CCAS allowed Jeffrey to die deliberately. Everytime there is a new horror story, the CAS get more power. They now have a shit more of power.

Christie is alone and childless. She can fight their cause. She knows nothing about parents and children. It is all about her and her career.

We shall wait for the next bit of ugliness from Christie. Why has Christie not done the Matthew Reid story?

Michelle Cheung has 1000 times the bravery of Christie Blatchford. She did the real story.

Anonymous said...

Christie WHY did you take down his picture why did you give up?I knew all the strangers would give up once the trial was over. SHAME ON THE ONES THAT GAVE UP.To everyone else THANKYOU.

Anonymous said...

To the last poster: I think you may have misinterpreted Ms. Blatchford's last column. She indicated that she awaits the coroner's inquest eagerly, which I presume means that she will cover the inquest proceedings. I am not certain what to make of the decision to take down Jeffrey's picture otherthwise, however.

In any event, I am not sure why the last poster refers to "stangers" no longer being interested after the criminal proceedings are over. Does this mean that this poster is a family member, and if so what family member? I am of the view that it is only strangers who have and continue to show any interest and not the family members who have not moved me at all.

Anyway, I, a so-called stranger to Jeffrey, will be at a rally on May 30 to keep up the fight for him and other children in the system.

Hope you will join us, whoever you are.

Anonymous said...

I was there on Friday. It took 2 hours of fighting traffic to get there and almost 2 1/2 to get back. I will be there again, earlier then the last time, but I think that if we can get as many people out to support this cause the better. John please keep the signs out front in the morning and possibly some on the side ( the media is always there) and at the end do it only on the side for the media. We can do more protesting later in front of CCAS building. Maybe after the inquest, or during.

Anonymous said...

I don't know why people are bashing Christie Blatchford, and to whomever is I think they are wrong for doing it.

Have you looked at the little face of Jeffrey for 3 years? Have you sat in that horrific trial for that long?

I think she did very well on this which is to be applauded.

Anonymous said...

On February 2, 2002 the Liberal Party of Ontario held a policy conference at the Oakville Conference Centre. The following item was on the agenda:

L2. Adoption Reform
Whereas Children's Aid Societies are non-governmental agencies that are governed at the local level; and

Whereas there is no central registry or matching system for children available for adoption and families interested in adopting; and Whereas the families interested in adopting may only apply in their local area and are only allowed access to local children; and

Whereas in most CASs due to limited funding, a `home study' is not conducted until a child is available locally for adoption; and

Whereas there is an increasing emphasis on removing children from troubled homes but no equivalent increase in the ability of the system to find adoptive homes; and

Whereas there is a one-year limit for a child under the age of 6 to be in temporary protective custody, but nothing happens when the deadline is not met; and

Whereas 75% of children in care are not eligible for adoption due to a court-ordered access for the birth family and a law that disallows adoption where an access order is in place; and

Whereas a `special needs' tag is needlessly applied to most children in protective CAS custody (rather than cataloguing the specific needs and factors), thus hindering their adoptability; and

Whereas it is to the benefit of the child in care to be adopted at the youngest possible age (and thereby not be a ward of the state for an extended period of time); therefore

BE IT RESOLVED that the Ontario Liberal Party promote while in Opposition and implement when in Government:

1. A comprehensive review of the Children's Aid Society system to determine new province-wide policies and procedures that will allow the speedy adoption of Ontario's children in care.

2. The development of a centralized adoption registry to allow effective matching of children in care to Ontario families who are willing to provide stable adoptive homes.

So the OLP has lost an opportunity to listen to community experience, and has adopted a resolution representing only the agenda of social workers.
From Dufferin Vocal.

In 2002. ?????? and no recorded vote on Bill 210 , WHY NOT, and the Bill has not even been proclaimed as of yet.
But Minister Chambers office sent out a press release stating the Tory's were hold Ontario's most vulnerable children hostage?? because of the protect right before the house broke for winter break. Now minister Chambers no one was holding the children hostage, but the CAS and your so called child well being and protection agency's.

This agency along with any and all governments that fund and legislate on there behalf is in the least unethical, and corrupted.

Minister Chambers, tried to sneak bill 210 past not only the abiriginal community leaders, ( as yes what government allowed to happen to them was nothing short of an attempted genocide, call it paranoid if you wish, but what is the UN looking at)
Bill 210 , if both immoral and in ethical, and has nothing to do with children, much more to do with regulating society, and now adoption bonus, that money would be better spent,on actual services for families . We all know this, but the government is being lobbied by the Child protection agency, so is the medical system and the schools.

Minister Chambers said on record, that the leader of the third party did not receive a letter from the Ontario Ombudsman well Minister Chamber, you have no credibility left and should resign. The letter was cc to not only the leader of the NDP but also TO YOU, and Dalton Mc Guilty. He was also sitting there allowing you to lie and insult the NDP.

Your story on ombudsman over sight is hog wash, the fact that your own office send complaints about the agency's, back to them with warnings??? about a parent taping. every parent involved would be wise to tape conversations.

If everything was on the up and up, what's the big deal.
Jeffrey Baldwin's grand parents sat in with CCAS and made plans for their care, that grandmother is clearly impaired mentally, has an IQ so low, she would not have the needed skills to raise children. And CCAS did not pick that up???? never mind not checking files!!!
What does this say about the wisdom of the people in that meeting?
And why on earth was she encouraged by CCAS to run a day care.

The secrets, protecting child's identity, crap, is to protect the agency's, why is it when grown crown wards want there history, its still not allowed?
Why can people report ( under threat of fines and jail time) every child that MAY BE AT risk of neglect and neglect can be a home schooled child, a missed dentist check, any thing and every thing,
is this in good faith, NO, and what is reasonable. Do you NOT understand that this system is being abused as well, by doctors and schools advocating parents have become targets of the agency's, as a doctor will report rather then face the collage, or a lawsuit, this has become a very common theme.
Other doctors and nurses and teachers signed the petition in droves, in both city's. And story's of young social workers threatening medical licences???

The story's of child abuse in care being past is bogus, look at the Crown wards on the streets as we fund for them to sleep in shelters or no place at all, they were taken as children, how dare anyone fail them to such a degree. The abuse of medications, in schools in foster care in group homes, J, story is not at all the only one. And who will now pay back his grand parents for actually saving the child's life and getting him out of the inept system, going broke in the process. Mary Mc Kay is no lackey, she knows what she speaks, this child was not alone.
No one dares speak about the sexual abuse, within one month of being in care, a child A CHILD, Minister Chambers sexually abused in care???
Also a known part of the history and present day system. How many settlement will we see in years to come, how can we expect to fund it, and how dare you not stop the abuse of children in care, rein in the power of the child protection industry, and for gods sakes think about how many future tax payers ( that wont be, because of the harm in care) by last family bonds, by wounded families.
Why children are still dying in care? most want to just go home. If it ever right to make a child suffer for real parental neglect, of course not, but that is what the system does so well. Breaking bonds Minister Chambers causes attachment disorders, and more, it will help keep the jails over flowing, and take away a child's god given right, NOT a Liberal party social agenda rights, to their OWN biological family.
Minister Chamber you have lied to the public and on record, you should resign. And Bill 210 well its been the plan for years, brilliant really, change the reasons for which you can apprehend large amounts of children, ( an obscene increase) and then make go back and force the government to allow us to go into the adoption business, as we are needing increasing funds, also an obsession amount of money, and NO accountability. Child abuse id against the law, pit bulls have a better chance in Ontario then children do, or the single poor mother. The agency should be held accountable for every instance of child abuse, and endangerment, for putting massive amounts of children at RISK. and tearing Ontario families apart.
How long has this been going on? for as long as anyone can remember, child protection has been done in secret, the Grove inquiry. over a decade ago.

Anonymous said...

EXCERPT FROM HANSARD
Official Record of the Ontario Legislature

QUESTION PERIOD
Wednesday, May 17, 2006

CHILD PROTECTION
Mr. Howard Hampton (Kenora-Rainy River): My question is for the Premier. Today, the individuals responsible for the death of the little boy, Jeffrey Baldwin, will be sentenced. Yesterday, I told you of an eight-year-old boy from Durham whose grandparents had to struggle against the children's aid society and the group home where he'd been placed. Every day, we hear from families across Ontario who cannot get independent reviews of children's aid society decisions. Nearly every other province in Canada provides for independent review of children's aid societies, except the McGuinty government in Ontario. We know staff at children's aid societies are overworked and overloaded. Premier, why is the McGuinty government denying children in Ontario and their families an independent review of the activities of children's aid societies?
Hon. Dalton McGuinty (Premier, Minister of Research and Innovation): To the Minister of Children and Youth Services.
Hon. Mary Anne V. Chambers (Minister of Children and Youth Services): The leader of the third party asked this question yesterday, and I will repeat my response. Bill 210 was introduced by the McGuinty government to strengthen accountability on the part of children's aid societies and to provide better protection for children in care. In fact, our commitment is that any child in the care of our child well-being and protection system will be better off because we have been involved in their lives. That does not mean that everything is perfect. It means that we are working very hard to ensure that this is indeed the case. Now, through Bill 210, we provided an independent third-party body, with the responsibility for complaints and the Ombudsman has jurisdiction over that body.
Mr. Hampton: It's interesting, because your response yesterday brought this letter from Ontario's Ombudsman. This is what he says: "Upon review of Hansard yesterday, I noted reference to my jurisdiction over the Child and Family Services Review Board, under Bill 210." He then goes on to say, "An Ombudsman investigation is not an appeal of the board's decision, and would not involve an investigation of the underlying complaints about children's aid societies. These would continue to remain immune from independent investigative oversight."
It seems that the Ombudsman says that the McGuinty government has it wrong, that you are not providing for independent oversight, and that, in fact, you have stacked the cards against parents and against kids who simply want to ensure that children's aid societies are not a power unto themselves.
I ask the Premier again: Why do you continue with this charade? Why do you continue to oppose independent oversight by the Ombudsman into children's aid society decisions?
Hon. Mrs. Chambers: The Ombudsman has independent oversight jurisdiction over the Child and Family Services Review Board, and I am sure that the Ombudsman of this province -- and I know of his commitment, which we share, to kids -- I know that the Ombudsman would not be writing to the leader of the third party if he is in fact trying to impact policy-making by this government. I have a very constructive, very positive working relationship with the Ombudsman. I am sure that if the Ombudsman has had any difficulty with what I am doing, I will hear from him directly.


MINISTER CHAMBERS, WHY DID YOU LIE?

WHY DO YOU CARRY ON THIS LIE,
AND YOU OWE MR. HAMPTON, AN PUBLIC APOLOGY, AND SHOULD RESIGN.

THE LEADER OF THE NDP WAS SENT THE SAME LETTER YOU AND THE PREMIER, ALSO WERE CC THAT LETTER.

AND WE DO UNDERSTAND, IF PERHAPS YOUR LACKING IN THE ABILITY TO DO SO. LET THE PUBLIC EXPLAIN, AS THE OMBUDSMAN HAS ALREADY TRIED TO AS HAS THE NDP.
THE OMBUDSMAN IS ONLY GIVEN AUTHORITY TO REVIEW THE DIRECTORS REVIEW BOARD, AND THEY REVIEW VERY FEW CASES, THIS STILL LEAVES NO ONE TO REVIEW CHILDREN'S AID AGENCIES ACTIONS, OR LACK OF THEM.

ARE THE LIBERALS AS CORRUPT AS THE AGENCY? IT LOOKS THAT WAY FROM WHERE MANY OF US ARE SITTING.
AND WE ARE CHILDREN AND, AND!! FAMILY ADVOCATES.

YOUR REFUSAL TO REMEDY THIS LACK OF OVERSIGHT SPEAKS VOLUMES.
and to contiune to spread your untruths in the media even on the record, shame.

Anonymous said...

to the post 2 above wow, where did you get that, and it is so telling, this has been the agenda all along, the liberals are in bed with the agency's, no wonder they cant afford oversight, and special need tags that's so the agency's can bill more for children in care!!!! and in custody , more like it , they take them screaming from their parents and instead of handcuffs used drugs.

And reading the above post, she should resign, Chambers is playing us all for fools, and looking like an arrogant ass in the process, that or very simple

Anonymous said...

CAS MINISTER PLAYS ‘FAST AND LOOSE’ WITH THE FACTS

QUEEN’S PARK – Ontario Minister for Children and Youth Issues is misleading people when she says there is independent oversight by the Ombudsman of Children’s Aid Society decisions in Ontario, NDP Leader Howard Hampton said today.

On the very day young Jeffrey Baldwin’s killers are being sentenced, Hampton produced a letter from Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin, who disputes statements made by Minister Mary Anne Chambers in response to Hampton’s questions in the Legislature yesterday.

“Yesterday, I told you of an 8-year-old boy from Durham whose grandparents struggled to save him from a group home. Every day we hear from families who can’t get an independent hearing to overturn a CAS decision,” Hampton said. “Nearly every other province allows for independent oversight – except Ontario. Why are you denying children and their families an independent avenue of appeal?” he asked Chambers.

NDP Children’s Critic Andrea Horwath has tabled a bill to give the Ombudsman independent oversight of Children’s Aid Societies, but the McGuinty Liberals are fighting it. The McGuinty government points to a review board under its Bill 210, instead.

“Bill 210 does not give the Ombudsman adequate oversight over the Child and Family Services Review Board. It simply allows the Ombudsman to examine the process followed by the board, but not the substance of the problem,” Hampton explained.

The Ombudsman’s view agrees with Hampton’s. In his May 17th letter, Marin said, “Bill 210 does not introduce meaningful oversight of children’s aid societies.”

“An Ombudsman investigation is not an appeal of the Board’s decision, and would not involve an investigation of the underlying complaints about children’s aid societies. These would continue to remain immune from independent investigative oversight,” said Marin.

According to Hampton, the CAS is overworked, overloaded and under-resourced. “The way the McGuinty Liberals have it rigged, aggrieved children and families don’t have fighting chance.

- 30 -
Media Inquiries: Marion Nader (416) 325-2601

Anonymous said...

LET OMBUDSMAN PREVENT CHILD WELFARE TRAGEDIES

Queen’s Park – Children’s life and safety issues won’t be fully safeguarded until Ontario, like most other provinces, allows independent oversight of child welfare administration and decisions made by Children’s Aid Societies, NDP Leader Howard Hampton said.

Following Friday’s guilty verdict in the horrific child abuse death of Jeffrey Baldwin, 5, Hampton was in the legislature seeking to extend the powers of the Ontario Ombudsman into child welfare, authority McGuinty Liberals have to date refused to grant.

“Ontario’s children’s aid societies use money to fulfill the Crown function of caring for children in need of protection. And yet Ontario is one of the few provinces without an independent officer overseeing Children’s Aid,” Hampton said.

Hampton called on the McGuinty government to pass Bill 88, introduced April 5 by Hamilton East MPP Andrea Horwath, the NDP Critic for Children and Youth Issues. Horwath’s private members bill would ensure independent oversight for the Ombudsman in CAS matters, a function Ombudsman André Marin urgently requested in December but the government denied.

“I am struck with immense frustration, as my office cannot investigate cases like Jeffrey’s because of the limits of its jurisdiction,” Marin says.

The Ombudsmen of Canada first identified child welfare as their top investigative priority in 1986. Eight provinces now have their child welfare system accountable to an impartial legislative officer. But Ontario wants a toothless board of partisan appointees on the flimsy Child and Family Services Review Committee to do the job.

“Why is Ontario so out of step with the other provinces, and how can you claim that your lame duck committee would be more effective than our independent Ombudsman who is trained and able to do an excellent job?” Hampton asked the Minister of Children and Youth Services, Mary Anne Chambers.

“Ontario’s children deserve better,” Horwath added. “They deserve the independence, resources, investigative training and impartiality of the Ombudsman’s Office, nothing less.”

- 30 -

Media Inquires: Marion Nader (416) 325-2601

I will post the Ombudsman letter, as well, it is cc to Chambers, who then lied. its in a doc, I am having a hard time with copy, but have sent it to press.

Anonymous said...

The person that who said the kids just want to go home has identified a simple but profound truth. The system is such a disgusting sham - the abuse it inflicts on children and their families is inhuman.

Anonymous said...

Question. How are people finding the time to go to court multiple times? I cannot take that much time off of work, for one thing. How are others doing it?

Anonymous said...

To the last poster: Answer is I don't have the time, but I make the time. I think that it is just inexcusable to shrug this off with the "I don't have time" excuse.

Maybe nobody will have time for you when you have a problem or you are personally affected by tragedy or injustice. Indifference and self-absorbtion will get you nowhere.

Anonymous said...

We can't allow another 'Jeffrey'
By Lee Prokaska

There have been too many cases of children who fell through the cracks of the system and we fear there are systemic fault lines that mean we will hear of such abuse again.

Child protection service organizations too often cloak themselves in privacy issues, seemingly more concerned about covering their own butts than improving the system that is supposed to protect children.
The Hamilton Spectator, April 11, 2006




Agency admits Baldwin 'errors'
By Oliver Moore
Leaving Jeffrey Baldwin in the care of grandparents whose extreme neglect eventually killed the little boy was a mistake that would not be made now, the head of the Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto said yesterday.
Executive director Mary McConville acknowledged the organization had "made errors," but she rejected calls for more oversight of child-welfare services, saying it is already "a highly regulated sector."
Globe and Mail, April 11, 2006



Jail awaits sadistic duo
Grandparents found guilty of second-degree murder in starvation death
By Sam Pazzano
Jeffrey Baldwin was handed to his grandparents by the courts and the Catholic Children's Aid Society.
But instead of protecting and nurturing their tiny grandson, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman locked him up in abominable conditions and left him to die.
The couple were sentenced yesterday to life imprisonment for Jeffrey's murder.
The Toronto Sun, April 8, 2006


Toronto grandparents who starved boy to death guilty of second-degree murder
By Mike Oliveira
TORONTO (CP) - The grandparents of a five-year-old boy who was locked up and left to wither and die in a cold, fetid room were convicted of second-degree murder Friday in what police described as one of the worst cases of child abuse Canada has ever seen.
Fifty-four-year-old Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman, 53, were supposed to save Jeffrey Baldwin and his siblings from a life of abuse at the hands of their birth parents.
Instead, the pair used the children as a source of income, collecting government support cheques in their names while confining the young ones to what police described as "a horrible room" that was "harsh, dark, cold and damp."
Netscape.ca, April 7, 2006.


Verdict in starved child case expected soon
By Cassandra Szklarski
TORONTO (CP) - The fate of two grandparents accused of abusing and starving a five-year-old boy to death was placed in the hands of a judge Tuesday after a lengthy trial that shocked and angered spectators.
Relatives of victim Jeffrey Baldwin left the courtroom brimming with emotion after Crown lawyer Bev Richards urged the judge to convict Elva Bottineau, 54, and Norman Kidman, 53, of first-degree murder. One of Jeffrey's cousins clutched a ball of tissue as she left court with the boy's paternal grandmother, Susan Dimitriadis.
Cnews, January 17, 2006


Fostermother gives disturbing testimony in Baldwin case
By Shannon Kari
TORONTO -- The Jeffrey Baldwin murder trial heard some of its most disturbing testimony to date, in a proceeding already marked by unrelenting allegations of abuse.
The foster mother of the boy's three siblings testified about comments made to her by the children that suggested Jeffrey was considered sub-human by everyone in his home and that even his young sisters and brother knew he was going to die.
November 2, 2005


Missing CAS documents delay murder trial
By Brenda Craig
The first-degree murder trial of a Toronto couple accused of starving their grandson to death was delayed Tuesday until the Catholic Children’s Aid Society provides the Crown with documents related to the case.
Five-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin died three years ago. At the time, the CAS had entrusted the boy to the care of his grandparents, Norman Kidman and his long-time common-law wife, Elva (Eve) Bottineau.
CBCUnlocked, Sep 20, 2005



Campbell blasted on child welfare
Lindsay Kines and Jeff Rud Sound Off
Three former government watchdogs say they've been waiting nine months for Premier Gordon Campbell to answer their concerns about B.C.'s child-protection system.
The former ombudsman, children's advocate and children's commissioner couriered a letter to Campbell's office last June complaining that his government had undermined public oversight of child-protection issues.
Times Colonist, March 9, 2005





copy from, the Nordic Commission on Human Rights

Anonymous said...

Mary Mc Conville does NOT want any oversight, but Mary, if you could hire some staff with an IQ higher then 62, maybe MAYBE, we could trust your so called system of child abuse, sorry well being and protection,

Minister Chambers, should resign, she is a liar, and in bed with the agency's, well we already knew that, but to mislead the public on record in the media, is reason for her to step down. We will be asking the leaders of all 3 party's to look carefully at this situation.
Over sight is in the very least what CCAS and all CAS requires. Children do need to be protected and so do parents, you harm every thing and any one that gets in the way of an agenda that has nothing at all to do with child protection.
How dare you, I don't know how anyone of you, and that includes the politicians, that do nothing but feed them more power sleep at all.

Go take a look at a toddlers face spending the night, and perhaps the rest of his life away from his /her parents. Go take a look at the group homes.Go take a look at your own records, the history of abuse.

LOOK at the faces of the homeless, did you apprehend that young man/ women, that teenager behind bars, the grave with no marker,the far to many over medicated children, lost souls, walking wounded, the crown wards. Did you steal them late at night, to save them from something they did not even understand was abuse, and show them the horror of what abuse really is, the story of J, poor child, how dare you, and anyone ANY PARENT would have known the child was acting out, and any parent reading for side effects of the outrageous dose of medications that child was on, and got him the hell off it, and to a better doctor. His grandparents tried, why did you make them fight to save their own family member, two of them. WHY???
And now J also understands the horror of abuse, that we all know is rare in the general population, but NOT rare at all in foster care and group homes, sexual abuse.

This system has placed more children into the hands of sexual abusers then we will ever know.
Neglect
did you tell the government what would happen when you added neglect, and all the psychobabble you would call neglect, that really parents had no rights at all anymore, THEY KNEW, its on the record, this government knew many many children would be apprehended, and there were no services for them. Your so called services. Children need love not services. They knew what was missing, no mental health care for children, and more, so only children with out parents were entitled to the intitlmenst the so called services. Now anone looking at all this in history, and not to distant, will wonder how anyone let this all get so fuck up, politicans, its easy. But right! not a chance.
Children need parents, the ones that god gave them, not the government, not some social worker, and not some system that has such disregard for basic human dignity, they turn there back on children abused in there care, that they removed for far less.


I now have heard of 4 foster homes that have been fired by one agency, for abuse, just to be hired by another in Ontario.

Please explain that Minister Chambers if a foster family is on CAS records for abusing a child or children in their care, how can they not even move house or name, but start working for the CCAS, or an agency in another city?
How common is this little bit of true and shocking news?
While parents are paying though the noise for the lawyer, and worried night and day that their child could be sexually abused or murdered or just lost in care, because MAYBE MAYBE there will be risk to the child of some sort of neglect,or they know they pissed off a doctor,or ex wife has an axe to grind or husband, while grandparents , because the CCAS failed Jeffery, all grandparents will now wait for the checks and so much more, and go broke in doing so, because the CCAS and CAS are funded for keeping the child, and god knows what if the abuse in care comes out, that's risk to the agency, and the government.
So why are foster family's NOT checked in the same way. I believe a few but only the minority of placements may actually care about children, but it does not replace parental love, and never will. Look at the faces of the Homeless LOOK did you apprehend that young girl when she was 7.

They public is watching, for young mothers baby's, any mother on welfare needs extra protection from the public now. A bonus for you to get the children out of for ever hell, parents cant move children around like you do,only children with out parents can and are abused beyond BEYOND there so called natural resiliency, the CAS likes to say children are resilient, well leave them at home with mom and dad the real experts.
The labels of special needs, is for more funding we all know that, so far to many children in care are given that label, like you needed to, you made up protection concerns for the special needs children and its so ugly, nothing the agency's do should be trusted after that boondoggle as well. FEAR over sight is the issue. Not this ombudsman, he's to ethical, you cant buy him off.

Funny how you had so many children labelled , ( and what did that do to their education ) now how will you remove the label to get them adopted,and collect the bonus money.
Just point out there strengths and weakness, that's the new plan, dear god its all so transparent, why its allowed is beyond so many of us, and not beyond the players is WELL beyond me.

I know a women suffering, the loss of her infant, her family all suffering, and why????? because she lost an infant, so her other children are in so called care. As they grieve the loss, and I wont get started on this, it MAKES ME SICK, IT MAKES THE PUBLIC SICK. parents are not out murdering there baby's, and who in their right mind could do this to a family, WHO. Go look at the faces of the mothers, are you trying to kill them as well????
Thanks to some idiot who came up with all children under age two, who die, need to be investigated for abuse, and the MAYBE killing of that child????, so CAS comes and removes the other children, and it takes months, and months for any results to come back, in every case. How long do you think you can keep this up, I hope it happened to some one very close to that came up with this crap. Watch the tragic event turn into something out of the dark ages. Because some one needs to justify the removal of the other children after all. How many have died of SIDs, and what is SIDs why don't you tell the public what it very well may be duh!!! and the family's are relying on the coriners office??? oh please, is Dr Charles Smith, still out there. when a new Head Lines Globe and Mail story is full of shit, a new breaking case, PLEASE , explain, why no one thought of that right off the bat, how the doctor missed it and what are mothers doing on codeine and breast feeding?? when this is OLD NEWS, and a risk that should have been understood. Dear god its scary how little are so experts know, SCARY as hell.
Why are they so out of date?? why do doctors that care for children for anyone for that matter not need to be kept up to date. It must be scary for them as well, parents with papers, or the little women with papers, they call them the problem patients, because they may actually know something the gods don't. Or dare ask questions, and guess what you have MSBP. lol they cant even figure that one out, everything is MSBP there is no profile, its every thing a parent might do. Its also based on a lie. I am waiting for some one to become a hero out there in medical system and go over the Hinterlands of child abuse, and see what is there, and has been there all along, for anyone that really cared to read it. It was not child abuse, its tragic and industry has been built upon another lie. Like repressed memory's. GOD I wish I could repress mine.

The more anyone reads on this so called child savers crap, the more one understands, its very hard not to become angry, and angry at what has been going on for so many years, no wonder you don't want over sight.
Its gone to far. Why did CAS want to go into the Chinese adoption business?? Children Bridge and private more ethical, ( sorry I disagree that all private adoption lawyers are unethical, as many on this blog feel. They tend to at least do back ground checks, and have for years.
But what's with the 2002 memo from the meeting in Oakville all about, its about adoption, and how the liberals will give it to you.
Well the liberal party in Canada is going to be gone, and it should be, Harris was dam scary, but at least we all knew who the devil was.

Gee I wonder who will have the guts to order an inquiry into all children's aid society's.
Children have a right to be safe and feel safe, why is this missing from Child savers agendas. Go speak to the children that have gone though an apprehension , they don't feel safe anymore. No one feels safe anymore.

Not even my fingers after typing this rant, no advocate for children and familys is safe. No one with children under 18 is safe. Look at the large numbers of your so call unsubstantiated cases, workers go crazy trying to find reason for protection, some just make it up, easy to do if you don't have a lawyer, or deep pockets, but shit no one has the deep pockets the agency's have, the public funds it all. How proud we should all be, the nanny state Canada. We have no democracy, a Charter, now that's a laugh. And there is NO due process in the family courts. Since we now have young men and women being killed for democracy in Afghanistan, Aboriginals once again needing to stand there ground, for what is rightfully there's, ( I hope this premier will not order any one shot ) I am ducking as I type, lol. Is it not time for dignity, basic human kindness, the government should
not have any say, when it comes to other peoples children.

Write your letters please, ask that Chambers, gets canned for misleading the public, lying on record and lying to the press.
The NDP should ask her to resign, you cannot slander the leader of another party. You said Mr Hampton, did not have a letter from the ombudsman's office, your misleading remarks unethical, to say the least. The press has the letter, it is clearly cc to Minister Chambers, Dalton. Julie Munroe,
the Mr Marin said there is still no over site. and we understand that Minister Chambers, and so do you, if you don't, what on earth are you doing , perhaps you should go sit with a few case workers that felt in case meetings, that Jeffery's Baldwin's grandparents, were suitable to raise children, and a daycare!!!! this women !!!!! (and sorry I don't mean to be judgemental,) but even her children, are sorely lacking. But what's the CCAS excuse, it took must of us a couple of minutes of listening to Yvonne, speak, to understand, she was not raised by the brightest brick on the block, (no offence intended to Yvonne,) her mother killed her son, her half sibling, and more.

Anonymous said...

Foster care bill signed into law by Holden
Dominic James Act to overhaul state system.

Bob Holden Governor vetoed broader version of child-welfare reforms last year.
Bob Holden Governor vetoed broader version of child-welfare reforms last year.

By James Goodwin
News-Leader

Nearly two years after the death of Springfield toddler Dominic James, Gov. Bob Holden signed into law Tuesday an overhaul of the foster-care system.

The Dominic James Memorial Foster Care Reform Act includes changes already under way and grants new protections to children and guardians accused of harming them.

"I would say it's a good day for kids and a good day for parents," said House Speaker Catherine Hanaway, R-Warson Woods, sponsor of one of two foster-care bills Holden signed. Sen. Norma Champion, R-Springfield, sponsored the other.

The laws require:

• Public access to most court proceedings involving custody cases initiated by state or county authorities.

• Meetings involving parents and caseworkers be held within 72 hours of a child being taken into custody.

• Background checks, including fingerprinting, for prospective foster parents and school employees who might have contact with children.

Holden vetoed a broader version of the legislation last year. On Tuesday, he signed the two bills — House Bill 1453 and Senate Bill 762 — in private.

"I applaud the General Assembly for endorsing these reforms, and I am pleased to sign these measures into law," Holden said in a prepared statement.

Dominic was 2 when died Aug. 21, 2002. He spent his last two days on life support. Last November, an Osage County jury found the boy's foster father guilty of child abuse resulting in the death of a child. John Wesley Dilley is now serving a 15-year sentence.

Dominic's biological father, Sydney James, blamed the state for ignoring his concerns about injuries Dominic received before his death.

"I kept asking what had happened to my son, and they kept telling me I was overreacting," James said in August 2002.

Debate over the extent of proposed reforms flared up regularly for the next year and nine months, until the legislature approved the overhaul minutes before the session ended in May.

Multiple drafts were vetted, and in the end the least controversial measures were separated into Champion's bill so they at least could pass.

The overhaul allows for the firing of state Children's Division employees who "purposely, knowingly, and willingly" violate division policy or rules if doing so "directly results in serious physical injury or death."

The legislation also raises the standard of proof required to list a suspected individual on the state child abuse and neglect central registry.

The old standard required "probable cause" to believe the individual committed child abuse or neglect. The new threshold is "a preponderance of evidence."

The latter provision was an important sticking point for Holden, who supported the old standard.

In the end, most sides found compromise. The final version of Hanaway's HB 1453 passed the House 156-4 and the Senate 33-0.

Not everyone is happy, though.

The Rev. Ronnie Dean, a critic of the foster-care system, believes caseworkers who wrongly accuse parents of neglect or abuse and remove children from the home deserve jail time.

"It's devastating to parents. It's devastating to children," said Dean, president of Families for Change. "And I don't see any hope until (the law) says, 'If you're wrong, caseworker, you're going to jail.'"

Dean acknowledged, though, that the new law offers more protection for accused parents than what they had before.

Bill Prince, a staff attorney in the Greene County Juvenile Office, said he thinks the legislature aimed to balance the safety of children and rights of accused parents.

"As this is implemented, I think we will see if that works that way or not, but I certainly hope it does," he said.

Some tweaking may still be needed, Hanaway said.

"I'm sure that next year we'll have a foster-care reform bill that has to fix these things we didn't get quite right," she said. "Sometimes they don't emerge until you apply it."

• Highlights of the new laws. 6A

Child welfare law

Also included in legislation signed into law Tuesday overhauling Missouri's child welfare laws:

ADOPTION TAX CREDITS

Raises annual cap on adoption tax credits against state income taxes to $4 million from $2 million. Sets aside half the amount for adoptions of children from Missouri, and prorates the tax credits if the amount sought by applicants exceeds the cap.

BACKGROUND CHECKS

Requires criminal background and protective order checks on all adults in potential foster homes and extends checks to anyone older than 17 in the home, instead of the current 18. Requires fingerprint criminal background checks for school personnel, including teachers, administrators, cooks, custodians, bus drivers and others, hired after 2004.

CHILD CUSTODY

In cases where a noncustodial parent owes at least $10,000 in overdue child support, the custodial parent may ask a judge to terminate the parental rights of the other parent. Requires that children removed from a home because of abuse or neglect be returned to the custody of a non-offending parent as promptly as possible.

COURTS

Requires the Supreme Court, by Feb. 1, 2005, to develop a procedure for a mandatory court hearing to be held within three working days after a child is removed from a home. Court hearings must be held within 60 days on whether the child should remain in state custody and within 90 days on the disposition of the child's case. After that, periodic review hearings are to be held.

Opens foster care court hearings to the public, except when a child is testifying or a judge deems it appropriate to be closed, by no later than July 1, 2005.

EMPLOYEE CONSEQUENCES

Requires state employees or contractors to be fired in cases where children die or are seriously injured and the employees purposely violated policies or laws related to child abuse and neglect. Allows exceptions for employees with excessive caseloads who made good-faith efforts to follow the rules.

EVIDENCE

Requires a "preponderance of evidence" of abuse or neglect to remove a child from a home, instead of the current standard of "probable cause."

HOTLINE CALLS

Prohibits anonymous hot line calls by people mandated to report suspected child abuse, such as school personnel, but keeps their names confidential. Requires the state to develop protocols for classifying hotline calls based on risk and injury to the child.

OVERSIGHT

Creates an independent child advocate's office to investigate complaints about the state's child protective system. Creates a state Board for Early Childhood to coordinate efforts among state agencies.

PRIVATIZATION

Directs the state to expand the use of private contractors, after July 1, 2005, to provide case management services for children and families.

QUESTIONING

Requires law or juvenile officers to quit questioning children when they request the presence an attorney or parent or guardian who is not suspected of abuse or neglect.

SEX ABUSE LAWSUITS

Allows lawsuits seeking damages for childhood sexual abuse to be brought until a person is age 31 — instead of the current age of 23 — or within three years of when a person discovers an injury or illness was caused by sexual abuse, whichever is later.

ON THE WEB

House Bill 1453 and Senate Bill 762 are available for viewing online.

• Go to: www.house.state.mo.us/jointsearch

• Type HB 1453 or SB 762 in the search field.

Anonymous said...

File raises red flags for mother
State says foster parents were "the best choice at that time."

Christopher Cryderman Died Nov. 22 in state custody after being removed from his parents' home.
Christopher Cryderman Died Nov. 22 in state custody after being removed from his parents' home.
News-Leader File Photo
Cryderman case background

Days after he was born, Christopher Cryderman was forcibly removed from his parents' home by the state.

On July 30, Springfield police kicked in the front door of the Crydermans' home after a Greene County Children's Division worker reportedly told officers the baby was "at risk of death" by staying at the residence. His mother, Najwa Cryderman, had initially refused to open the door and lied about her whereabouts when contacted via phone.

The basis for removal was a court order citing positive marijuana tests for both parents, their refusal to work with preventive services and the fact that their 1-year-old daughter, Karissa, was already in foster care.

Urine tests conducted on Christopher shortly after birth showed no signs of drugs in the premature baby's system.

The couple had voluntarily placed Karissa in protective custody in September 2003 as they worked through their domestic-violence problems.

Within days of publicizing her child's removal, Najwa Cryderman was arrested and accused of selling crack cocaine in December 2003 and January 2004. Police say some of the alleged deals took place near McGregor Elementary School.

By Matt Wagner
News-Leader Staff

The mother of a baby boy who died from the flu last month while in foster care and the state agency that placed him with first-time foster parents are interpreting the same pile of paper very differently.

A redacted version of Christopher Cryderman's 216-page case file was released this week by the Missouri Department of Social Services. It includes caseworkers' notes, e-mails, treatment plans and juvenile court records.

Najwa and Chris Cryderman, the infant's biological parents, asked the department to open their son's case file after his death Nov. 22 in the foster home.

Najwa Cryderman has raised questions about the foster parents, pointing to part of the file that suggests that the couple was having second thoughts about their ability to care for Christopher and his 1-year-old sister, Karissa, over the long term.

Bev Long, director of the Children's Division's Greene County office, said her employees adequately addressed the Crydermans' concerns and were comfortable with the foster parents' abilities.

The foster father is an assistant football coach, and the foster mother is an elementary school teacher. The couple, who have not returned phone calls from the News-Leader, have two children of their own, Long said.

"We try and make the best match possible," she said. "I'm certain that the staff felt this was the most appropriate placement for these children."

She added: "We have no indication that any actions of any past or current employees or foster parents have done anything that has contributed to Christopher's death."

The News-Leader is not naming the foster parents because of ongoing investigations into the child's death by the Greene County Sheriff's Department, the Child Fatality Review Board and the Children's Division.

Choosing a foster family

Long said the division considers several factors when selecting a foster family for children in protective custody.

In the case of Christopher and Karissa, the division was looking for a family in Greene County that wouldn't have to travel far for weekly supervised visits with the Crydermans in downtown Springfield, she said.

Long said all parties agreed the siblings needed to stay together and should be placed in a foster home where parents have raised children of their own.

"If we are able to, we look at ... placing children with families with the same cultural and ethnic background," she added.

The Crydermans are a bi- racial couple, and the foster parents are African-American.

When asked why the division would place children from a high-profile case with first-time foster parents, Long said the couple "were the best choice at that time."

The Cryderman children were placed with the couple on Oct. 5, according to the file.

Prior to that, a couple that had been longtime foster parents were caring for Christopher and Karissa. However, they indicated to the Children's Division in late August that circumstances precluded them from caring for both children long-term.

"It would be my BIGGEST suggestion that if you decide to move them, I would place the kids with a 'seasoned' family ... especially with all the media attention on this case!!!" the original foster mother wrote in an Aug. 23 e-mail to then-caseworker Cindy VanBuskirk.

Records show the division arranged for Christopher to stay with the original foster parents 30 days longer than normal. But as the deadline neared, the agency was still scrambling to find another foster home for the siblings in late September.

The division ultimately selected the first-time foster parents after ruling out a biracial couple, according to the file.

Parents wanted choice

As division officials searched for a new foster home, the Crydermans pursued a kinship placement with their guardian of choice, the Rev. Ronnie Dean.

But before any decisions could be made, the division was required to conduct a study of Dean's home. Dean is a former foster parent and president of Families For Change, a local advocacy group critical of the Children's Division.

A private agency that contracts with the division evaluated Dean's home to ensure that the review was fair and thorough, Long said.

But because the Deans haven't been licensed foster parents for about four years, they had to submit fingerprints for a criminal background check — a mandatory practice under the Dominic James Memorial Foster Care Act of 2004.

Those reforms were passed after Dominic James, a Springfield toddler, died as a result of abuse while in foster care.

The checks are conducted by the Missouri Highway Patrol, which Long said is facing a significant backlog. Consequently, Dean's application for guardianship has been stalled.

The pastor said Thursday he never believed the division was seriously considering his home, given his open disdain of the agency. Dean said the division contacted his references just this week.

"I don't think they wanted to put the babies in our home and wasn't going to put the babies in our home," said Dean, who has children of his own.

Long said the division had no choice but to find a new foster home for the Cryderman children after Christopher's 30-day extension expired.

The last visit

Also contained in Christopher's case file is a write-up from a Nov. 16 supervised visit — the last time the Crydermans saw their son alive.

The report confirms that Najwa Cryderman told Children's Division employee Alyce Stoll that she thought Christopher was wheezing.

Stoll, who supervises scheduled visits, indicated that she didn't hear the strained breathing Najwa Cryderman had mentioned.

"... I laid my hand on his chest and it didn't (feel) like he was retracting when he was breathing," Stoll wrote.

Najwa Cryderman said she again raised concerns during a family support team meeting after the visit, but division officials have disputed the mother's claim.

Larry Moore, Najwa's public defender, also attended the meeting and said he remembered a brief discussion about the baby being congested.

Records show that caseworker Ivy Doxley later called the foster parents and left a message about Christopher catching a cold but stopped short of arranging a doctor's visit. He was last seen by a pediatrician on Sept. 27, for his two-month checkup.

The next visit had been scheduled for Nov. 29, according to medical records obtained by the family.

"You can second-guess all you want on what actions should or shouldn't have been taken, but our workers are trained to handle situations the best that they can," Long said.

In the end, she said, the decision to take Christopher to the doctor was at the discretion of the foster parents.

"We trusted they took appropriate measures," Long said.

But Najwa Cryderman said she isn't so sure.

Doxley's notes indicate that caring for Christopher and Karissa may have been more than the first-time foster parents could handle, according to the file.

The foster mother indicated in early November that she was "managing so far" and that she and her husband would give the division a month's notice if they decided they were unable to care for the siblings.

"I felt like right then and there that was an unsafe environment for my children," Najwa Cryderman said.

After reviewing a copy of the case file and hearing Long's comments, Najwa Cryderman said she just wants the division to leave her family alone.

"I pray that they see the wrong they've done and I pray that they return my daughter because at home I know she'll be safe," she said.

Karissa was transferred back to the original foster parents after her brother died.

Anonymous said...

Enough, do we all agree, enough Children have died, the children are not really protected but done more harm when ever this agency has anything to do with them,

Then do what you can to change the system, it needs oversight, that is why this blog was started, Bill 88 should be called Jeffreys Law, want to help that happen,???? YOU all can, write and come out to Queens Park, Dufferin Voca has information about rally posted on the web site.
The media will be there. Some experts will be speaking.
Please John join us in this effort.
there will be people who are going to show up, we do not live in the GTA, but people will be coming from around Ontario, perhaps Minister Chambers, would be so kind and help pass Jeffreys Law, Bill 88 oversight
of the childrens aid societys. With out her misleading yaks on how there is oversight blah blah.

Anonymous said...

Police probe reports of neglected Girl Guides
Children left out in rain, ordered to clean toilets
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Font: * * * * David George-Cosh and Roberta Pennington, CanWest News Service
Published: Wednesday, May 24, 2006
WINDSOR - Ontario Provincial Police are investigating reports that a group of Girl Guides between the ages of nine and 11 was denied proper shelter, left unattended and neglected by three group leaders during a weekend camping trip.

"These girls were on the verge of child abuse and neglect all weekend long," said Jennifer Brooks, mother of Katelynn, 11.

OPP Constable Deb Mineau confirmed yesterday that an investigation has been launched after several parents filed complaints with the Lakeshore Police Department.

Parents were outraged when their children told them they spent their weekend at the Belle River Lion's Club camping in the rain and doing chores, while group leaders sat inside a warm house, played board games and ordered pizza.

Katelynn, who was nursing a sore throat after spending her Saturday night in the rain after her tent became damaged, says she tried to get help from her leaders but was brushed off.

"[The leaders] said it's our problem to deal with and went back inside," Katelynn said.

Katelynn says she was also forced to clean toilets and scrub floors instead of going on a scheduled hike at a nearby golf course.

"The hike never took place because the leaders said the golf course was closed," Ms. Brooks said. "But when I called the golf course on Sunday, they said they were open all day Saturday. It was such a nice day outside, it makes no sense why they wouldn't go.

"Instead, the girls were told to walk around the camp hall 10 times. That's not what I would call a hike."

Ms. Brooks said the Girl Guide troop was also left unattended after all three leaders decided to go to Tim Hortons for coffee and doughnuts.

According to a Girl Guides of Canada safety document, under no circumstances should members of the troop be unsupervised at any time by group leaders.

"It's disgusting," said Ruth Baillargeon, mother of nine-year-old identical twins Haley and Hanna Bellacicco. "There's no way in the human mind that it's OK for 19 children to be left alone in a place they're unfamiliar with, all night long and unsupervised."

Ms. Baillargeon says she was shocked to see her daughters and their belongings soaking wet when she picked them up on Sunday,

"It was so bad, their shoes kept squishing around as they walked," Ms. Baillargeon said.

"My daughter Haley hardly had anything to drink over the week. The leaders were supposed to provide bottled water but they brought in enough for everybody to have one bottle for the entire weekend."

Haley and Hanna told their mother that on Saturday night, instead of inviting the rain-soaked troop inside the house for shelter, the girls were allowed to run their hands under warm water in the bathroom for a few minutes before staying outside for the rest of the night.

Girl Guide spokeswoman Evelyn Parfitt said, "I am aware of the incident and can assure you that we are co-operating fully with the police in their investigation. We will also be conducting our own inquiry into this incident. We have no further comment at this time."

Calls made to each of the supervising Girl Guide leaders for a statement were not returned.

Anonymous said...

Every single person in that vile house should be in jail with the murderers, well said Christie Blatchford, I totally agree.

And I hope that Jeffrey's parents stop having children, they need to.

Anonymous said...

the CAS thinks girl guides is a good thing for children,
lol be prepared,
is everything abuse? what are we teaching children?
I went to Brownies and Girl Guide, went to camps it was called roughing it, good for you, and earning badges, we also cleaned ( way back then in the old days, out houses) and rain and cold, and trying to eat cold pork and beans, and wieners, the smores graham crakers, with no fire to raost
marshmellows in the rain.

Give me a break, I loved it all, a weekend away with a bunch of follow guides, rain, shit, and terriable weather,
its all abuse today.
My child has come home muddy and wet from hiking with Beavers troop, happy and healthy, and a lessons learnt, willing to do it all again on the next fall hike and cook out. Parents volenters to help out, marshall arts put children at risk of being harmed so do swimming lessons, gynastics take a toll on young bodys, track and feild, risk if shin splints, where does it end!!!! every thing is not abuse, over pampered child abuse, TV abuse, coke and pizza abuse. Public school abuse.( there are some real issues there) but its all insane, someone better think a head and remeber its ok for children to have fun, and get creative, appricate the camping out with the girl guides, can they imagine the children in Packistan? winter and no shelter dying from no food, and exposer, what do we teach, children? that life is a no risk event, that there will always be comfort, money, its all fair, as we drive them from soccaor to ballet, to Mc Donalds and blockbuster, make excuses when they treat teachers with disrepect, dont feel like doing home work, but get to go to Billys Birthday party at the high tec arcade and the paint guns( IMHO should be banned) events.
Parents as well need to think about how far do we want to take the pychobabble of abuse, and stop children from expernacing life.
life is risk, enjoy it

Anonymous said...

The Times May 25, 2006

Secret witch-hunt syndrome
Camilla Cavendish
NEVER HAVE THE powers-that-be collected more information. But never has it been so difficult to find out what they know. It took months of questioning by an MP on the Public Accounts Committee to expose the foreign prisoner debacle; Whitehall twisted and ducked. Now another committee of MPs is being fobbed off in answer to a question that could prove to be of similar importance. The question may not sound like much. It is how many people are being accused by social workers of having the psychiatric disorder Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP).

The MPs in the all-party group have an unusual link: each has constituents who were wrongly accused of having Munchausen’s. It is legitimate for them to wonder whether these individual cases might form part of a systemic pattern of overzealousness on the part of the authorities, a concern that was being expressed in Parliament as long ago as 2001. But Beverley Hughes, the Minister for Children, is not prepared to answer their question. “We don’t collect the data,” she told them at their recent meeting. She may come to think better of that statement.

MSbP, also called factitious illness, is a perverse disorder in which an adult invents or deliberately creates a child’s illness to draw attention to themselves. Even the experts agree that it is extremely rare, affecting about 50 people a year in Britain. But campaigners fear that far more people are being accused of it because of steady definitional creep. Psychologists in the mid-1990s established a set of traits of the Munchausen mother that are broad enough to cast suspicion on many whose children are genuinely ill. The signs include attentive mothering, a reluctance to leave the sick child’s side, familiarity with medical terms and, most devastating, the denial of accusations of abuse. There, but for the grace of God.

You may think that is just so Nineties, That if there really was overzealous diagnosing of MSbP, it must have ended with the high-profile release from jail of women such as Angela Cannings. Not necessarily. Two months ago Mr Justice McFarlane castigated social workers who had removed a nine-year-old girl from her parents after her mother had sought help for the girl’s modest behavioural difficulties. Social workers decided that the mother had Munchausen’s after a nurse rang them to say that she had taken the child to hospital with stomach pains and was asking to see a doctor when the nurse found nothing wrong. Within hours, and without consulting the doctor, social workers were seeking an emergency order to take her into care. Despite no doctor ever suggesting fabricated illness, they kept the girl from her parents for 14 months. This judgment is only public because Mr Justice McFarlane chose to make it so: we cannot know how many other cases there are.

Which is precisely why MPs are asking questions. Among other things, they are concerned that the 2002 Department of Health guidelines for social services may encourage professionals to spot the disorder where it doesn’t exist. Charity workers, nursery nurses, teachers and pharmacists are all told to look out for and help to identify it. The dreadful risks of a false positive are barely mentioned. What used to be treated as a rare condition, diagnosed by a paediatrician and a psychiatrist, looks dangerously like becoming a way of relabelling sick children as abused.

“A significant number of (abusive) parents,” say the guidelines, “are likely to report having experienced genuine medical problems. They may or may not have been substantiated by medical investigations.” Come again? Their children may “present a rosy picture to the outside world”, “have been seriously ill” or have a medical history that started early in life. This is a charter for Little Hitlers and busybodies.

Innocent parents are in a double-bind. If they deny the accusations, they may be seen as a danger to the child who will be taken away from them. If they “admit” that the child is not ill, she or he stands less chance of being treated. The worst of both worlds came to Donna Reid, of Los Angeles, in 1997, when social workers said she was exaggerating her son’s asthma. He was taken from her and died six weeks later in care, of an asthma attack. The foster mother complained that she hadn’t been told how bad his asthma was.

Have we learnt nothing? Three weeks ago the High Court ruled that the General Medical Council should re-examine the complaint by a mother from Braintree about two paediatricians. The doctors believed that her daughter was not genuinely ill, but was feeling low because of her mother’s excessive anxiety.During a long battle to keep her out of care, another doctor finally diagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome in the girl. We know about this case only because the parents fought all the way to the High Court.

A simple answer to a simple question would be of enormous help here. If Whitehall does not know how many cases there are, it should ask each social services department. The excuse is that it is expensive to go through individual case files. But accurate data could at one stroke show either that there is no problem — if there are fewer than 50 cases a year — or indicate where the problem really lies. It is quite possible, for example, that an analysis by region would show clusters of cases — clusters that could indicate overzealous clinicians and social workers. They are the only people who have an interest in keeping this secret.

While the information vacuum persists, there is a huge undercurrent of claims and counter-claims. Attempts are already being made to rubbish the MPs as naive. I have spoken to four of them. They are not. And they have a duty to their constituents. Those are real people, people who were hunted down as monsters for seeking help for children. We should not permit the authorities the protection of obfuscation. This is a democracy, and all we need is the answer to one simple question.


How many mothers in Ont have been accused, far to many when every lawyers handles at least one a week.

Anonymous said...

The Times May 25, 2006

Secret witch-hunt syndrome
Camilla Cavendish
NEVER HAVE THE powers-that-be collected more information. But never has it been so difficult to find out what they know. It took months of questioning by an MP on the Public Accounts Committee to expose the foreign prisoner debacle; Whitehall twisted and ducked. Now another committee of MPs is being fobbed off in answer to a question that could prove to be of similar importance. The question may not sound like much. It is how many people are being accused by social workers of having the psychiatric disorder Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP).

The MPs in the all-party group have an unusual link: each has constituents who were wrongly accused of having Munchausen’s. It is legitimate for them to wonder whether these individual cases might form part of a systemic pattern of overzealousness on the part of the authorities, a concern that was being expressed in Parliament as long ago as 2001. But Beverley Hughes, the Minister for Children, is not prepared to answer their question. “We don’t collect the data,” she told them at their recent meeting. She may come to think better of that statement.

MSbP, also called factitious illness, is a perverse disorder in which an adult invents or deliberately creates a child’s illness to draw attention to themselves. Even the experts agree that it is extremely rare, affecting about 50 people a year in Britain. But campaigners fear that far more people are being accused of it because of steady definitional creep. Psychologists in the mid-1990s established a set of traits of the Munchausen mother that are broad enough to cast suspicion on many whose children are genuinely ill. The signs include attentive mothering, a reluctance to leave the sick child’s side, familiarity with medical terms and, most devastating, the denial of accusations of abuse. There, but for the grace of God.

You may think that is just so Nineties, That if there really was overzealous diagnosing of MSbP, it must have ended with the high-profile release from jail of women such as Angela Cannings. Not necessarily. Two months ago Mr Justice McFarlane castigated social workers who had removed a nine-year-old girl from her parents after her mother had sought help for the girl’s modest behavioural difficulties. Social workers decided that the mother had Munchausen’s after a nurse rang them to say that she had taken the child to hospital with stomach pains and was asking to see a doctor when the nurse found nothing wrong. Within hours, and without consulting the doctor, social workers were seeking an emergency order to take her into care. Despite no doctor ever suggesting fabricated illness, they kept the girl from her parents for 14 months. This judgment is only public because Mr Justice McFarlane chose to make it so: we cannot know how many other cases there are.

Which is precisely why MPs are asking questions. Among other things, they are concerned that the 2002 Department of Health guidelines for social services may encourage professionals to spot the disorder where it doesn’t exist. Charity workers, nursery nurses, teachers and pharmacists are all told to look out for and help to identify it. The dreadful risks of a false positive are barely mentioned. What used to be treated as a rare condition, diagnosed by a paediatrician and a psychiatrist, looks dangerously like becoming a way of relabelling sick children as abused.

“A significant number of (abusive) parents,” say the guidelines, “are likely to report having experienced genuine medical problems. They may or may not have been substantiated by medical investigations.” Come again? Their children may “present a rosy picture to the outside world”, “have been seriously ill” or have a medical history that started early in life. This is a charter for Little Hitlers and busybodies.

Innocent parents are in a double-bind. If they deny the accusations, they may be seen as a danger to the child who will be taken away from them. If they “admit” that the child is not ill, she or he stands less chance of being treated. The worst of both worlds came to Donna Reid, of Los Angeles, in 1997, when social workers said she was exaggerating her son’s asthma. He was taken from her and died six weeks later in care, of an asthma attack. The foster mother complained that she hadn’t been told how bad his asthma was.

Have we learnt nothing? Three weeks ago the High Court ruled that the General Medical Council should re-examine the complaint by a mother from Braintree about two paediatricians. The doctors believed that her daughter was not genuinely ill, but was feeling low because of her mother’s excessive anxiety.During a long battle to keep her out of care, another doctor finally diagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome in the girl. We know about this case only because the parents fought all the way to the High Court.

A simple answer to a simple question would be of enormous help here. If Whitehall does not know how many cases there are, it should ask each social services department. The excuse is that it is expensive to go through individual case files. But accurate data could at one stroke show either that there is no problem — if there are fewer than 50 cases a year — or indicate where the problem really lies. It is quite possible, for example, that an analysis by region would show clusters of cases — clusters that could indicate overzealous clinicians and social workers. They are the only people who have an interest in keeping this secret.

While the information vacuum persists, there is a huge undercurrent of claims and counter-claims. Attempts are already being made to rubbish the MPs as naive. I have spoken to four of them. They are not. And they have a duty to their constituents. Those are real people, people who were hunted down as monsters for seeking help for children. We should not permit the authorities the protection of obfuscation. This is a democracy, and all we need is the answer to one simple question.


How many mothers in Ont have been accused, far to many when every lawyers handles at least one a week.

Anonymous said...

How can this happen here?
Camilla Cavendish

IMAGINE A COUNTRY where parents accused of child abuse are assumed guilty unless proven innocent. Where secret courts need no criminal conviction to remove their children, only the word of a medical expert, and rarely let parents call their own experts in defence. Where even parents who are vindicated on appeal cannot see their children again, because they have been adopted.
And where the “welfare of the child” is used to gag them from discussing the case ever after. I live in that country.



In that country, a mother who has had her three children taken away broke the gagging order on BBC One on Monday night. She was brave to do so. For she is in grave danger of also losing the baby she is due to give birth to in two weeks’ time. Nicky Hardingham’s three children were removed because one had unexplained fractures in his bones. Two paediatricians categorically stated that the boy could not have the brittle bone disease that can cause such fractures, even though the disease is in four generations of Mrs Hardingham’s family. Medical geneticists have since said that the boy could indeed have inherited the disease, although Mrs Hardingham herself has not suffered fractures. The police dropped all charges against the Hardinghams. But the court’s decision to take away her children was final.

I won’t name those two doctors. It is partly the fault of my own profession that doctors now have so much more to fear from failing to spot signs of abuse — of missing another Victoria Climbié — than they do from diagnosing abuse where it does not exist. Many social workers and judges are so terrified of false negatives that they hasten to false positives for which they will never be accountable. Yet this alone does not explain why professionals make categorical statements in situations where they should merely be posing questions.

In classic child abuse cases, there is often a family history of abuse and vile evidence of assault, such as bruising and cigarette burns. Yet there seems to be a growing number of cases in which these factors are totally absent. The metaphyseal fractures suffered by Mrs Hardingham’s son are said to be caused by an adult violently twisting little limbs. But it would be virtually impossible to do that without bruising the skin. And in case after case, there is no bruising.

Other parents are accused of violently shaking their children, because doctors have found haemorrhages in the brain or the eye. Again and again parents are told that they have shaken their babies at a velocity of “30 or 40 miles an hour”. Yet the evidence is flimsy. Lorraine Harris was cleared after serving a jail sentence for shaking her four-month-old to death, when she proved that he had a blood disorder. She has little hope of ever seeing her other child again. Joe Wainwright was jailed for shaking his baby son, even though the scan used in evidence was taken after the hospital had smashed the boy’s trolley into a concrete pillar. He has not been given leave to appeal. The list goes on.

At a conference in London two days ago, I watched American scientists rip the medical canon on child abuse to shreds. Kirk Thibault, a biomechanical engineer from Pennsylvania, has demonstrated that even a child falling over its own feet can sustain much more serious head injuries than one being deliberately shaken. So perhaps the courts should have given more credence to all those parents who pleaded that their daughters had slipped on the floor. Marvin Miller has found that low bone density is responsible for many infant fractures, and that this can be caused by lack of movement in the womb as well as by a brittle-bone gene. Low bone density does not show up on the conventional X-rays used by the radiologists who pronounce on abuse. Patrick Lantz has studied 890 bodies to find that a whopping 15 per cent of adult corpses, and 19 per cent of those under the age of 1, have the haemorrhages that the textbooks cite as proof of abuse. John Plunkett, the forensic pathologist from Minnesota who has helped to free more than 100 wrongly accused parents in America, neatly summed up the problem. “If all you have is a hammer,” he said, “everything looks like a nail.”

Most of these men started out on the other side of the argument, as doctors testifying against parents. At some point each seems to have become alarmed by the number of allegations being made in families with no history of abuse, and stunned by the flimsiness of the research. The belief that metaphyseal fractures are incontrovertible evidence of abuse, for example, is based chiefly on one 1986 study by the American radiologist Dr P. K. Kleinman. He found such fractures in four infants who were known to have been abused, and none in one who had not. How could any court convict Nicky Hardingham, and many others, on the basis of such an unscientific sample? Yet they have.

At Tuesday’s conference I met a young couple looking completely shell-shocked. Social services took away their child last month. It is hard to escape the feeling that any one of us could be in their shoes.

I do not know quite how we have created a situation where abuse has become the default diagnosis in the face of the unexplained. Or why social workers and judges have come to rely so heavily upon medical theories that are presented as fact. The only way to avoid miscarriages of justice must be to throw open these decisions to thorough scrutiny. Children in Scotland, Canada and New Zealand have not been damaged by family courts being open to the press. The longer these processes remain secret, the more danger there is that children will suffer from misguided decisions.

It is too late for Nicky Hardingham to get her three children back. But if her next baby is taken away, we must suspect that the system has learnt nothing. In telling her story she has at least begun to expose how the system is skewed. There are so many like her who dare not speak. We should not stand for that in this country.

they mis quote is IT DOES HAPPEN HERE, the family courts need to be opened,as well. We have a secret society running us all, called the CAS. Cazy As that Sounds.

Anonymous said...

I have been following this horrible tale for some time now and cannot wrap my head around how something so horrific could happen here in Canada. I am curious to know why the other adults living in the same house are not being held accountable? If an adult were held captive in someone's home, abused, starved and then died as a result of this abuse, wouldn't witnesses to these crimes be held accountable as accomplices? Why do the same laws not apply to protect children? And as for the paternal grandmother and other family members who have also come forward, where were they over all these years that Jeffrey was being abused? And what about his parents? Did they not visit him? How could they not be aware of what was happening and why did they not try to put a stop to it. What is most disturbing to me is that I read on the internet that the people who lived in the house said they could not tell through his clothing how thin he had become. This means that he was never touched, because if they had ever touched him in passing, offered him a hug or held his hand they would have known. Every time I look at my two children I think of Jeffrey and think of how sad it is that he lived a life without any human dignity, without a touch, a kiss or a hug. And it enrages me to know that someone could just play video games as he listened to a child sob as he gasped and drowned to his death in the next room. There were at least 8 adults in this world that knew Jeffrey existed and that saw him over the years that he was being tortured, why didn't any of them make 1 goddamn phone call to the police?

Anonymous said...

Hi

To the poster that is "making the time" it must be nice to have a job that is flexible enough to allow you to take so much time off. Some of us are not that lucky. Are we supposed to risk losing our jobs? Is that going to solve anything. Just becuase you are not able to attend a rally does not make you indifferent?
Are you going to try to say that becuase Amanda is now is school at not attending rallies she is indifferent?

Anonymous said...

Your question regarding why didnt anyone make a phone call is a good one. I have pondered that question time and time again.

As for the poster who talks about not being able to take time off work don't take it personally. It's just another attack--something this blog specializes in.

Anonymous said...

I think that the question is a very valid one. It is a shame that people are being attacked on this blog -- the people doing it should stop attacking others and maybe listen to other viewpoints rationally without being abusive or hostile to anyone that says anything that they don't agree with. This blog should not be about specializing in attacks. I think this blog has too much anger on it and as it is anonymous it is also a blog of incredible poor communication.

People shouldn't be called nasty names for even asking things. Someone said that this blog is being run like a communist country I think they are right and it should stop.

The people attacking others should be ashamed and should not continue to be here if they cannot talk about this without running people over.

It isn't good to be attacked. Someone also said that people think they are so smart that they know it all and that they have ESP in knowing who someone else is they are right things are not logical on this blog.

When people become too immersed in emotions they can become totally "clueless" in the end.

If people have lost interest in this site then it defeats what could have been a good discussion.

Anonymous said...

I refer to the Administration’s Child Welfare Program Option, the proposal to take billions of dollars now reserved for holding children in substitute care and allow states to use that money for safe, proven alternatives as well.

The story of one child and his mother explains why this change has the potential to be so important.

This is what a single mother in the Bronx named Rose Mary Grant had to do every week for many, many months, just to see her 11-year-old son, Issa, as described in a keenly-observed story in the Westchester County, N.Y. Journal-News:

"Starting from her brick apartment tower, Rose walks a block to Gun Hill Road, takes the 28 bus to the subway station, catches the 5 train to Harlem, makes her way down 125th Street, boards the Metro-North train to Dobbs Ferry, and rides a shuttle … At each step, she places two metal crutches ahead of her and swings forward on two prosthetic legs."[1]

The journey would have been worth it, had there been something worthwhile at the end of the line. But there wasn’t. Issa was warehoused at a "residential treatment center." This is a form of care so utterly ineffective that even the head of the trade association for child welfare agencies, the Child Welfare League of America, had to admit that they lack “good research” showing its effectiveness and “we find it hard to demonstrate success…”[2] (He made these remarks in a pep talk to residential treatment providers, so it’s not surprising that he went on to blame the lack of success on the fact that children weren’t placed in RTCs soon enough).

Issa is not paranoid, he's not schizophrenic, he's not delusional. The only label pinned on him is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Sometimes, at home, he was seriously out-of-control. But his handicapped, impoverished single mother couldn't do what middle-class and wealthy families do: find a good psychiatrist and hire home health aides. She couldn’t do that because the federal government does almost nothing to help pay for such alternatives. But, in many cases, the federal government will gladly reimburse states between 50 and 83 cents for every one of the 86,000-or-more dollars it costs to keep children like Issa in his "RTC."

Now consider another case, described in the cover story of the June, 2003 issue of the outstanding trade journal, Youth Today. EMQ Children and Family Services used to be just like the place that warehoused Issa. But 11 years ago, they admitted to themselves that what they were doing was not helping children. So they shut down 100 of their 130 beds and came up with far better alternatives for the children. They wound up helping more children at less cost and getting far better outcomes.[3] Another institution, Youth Villages in Tennessee, won a national award for doing the same thing.[4] Keep in mind that the children they helped in their own homes or foster homes are the very same children that the child welfare establishment – what I have come to call, “the foster care- industrial complex,” insists absolutely cannot be helped anyplace except in their institutions.

But both Youth Villages and EMQ encountered the same problem: For years, even though their alternatives were better and cheaper, they couldn’t get reimbursement from their states because of what Youth Today aptly characterized as opposition from “the group home industry.” EMQ almost went out of business.

There are many cases that don’t involve institutions at all, but do involve needless use of foster care. Here are a few:

* In Orange County, California, an impoverished single mother can’t find someone to watch her children while she works at night, tending a ride at a theme park. So she leaves her eight-, six-, and four-year-old children alone in the motel room that is the only housing they can afford. Someone calls child protective services. Instead of helping her with babysitting or daycare, they take away the children on the spot.[5]
* In Akron, Ohio, a grandmother raises her 11-year-old granddaughter despite being confined to a wheelchair with a lung disease. Budget cuts cause her to lose housekeeping help. The house becomes filthy. Instead of helping with the housekeeping, child protective services takes the granddaughter away and throws her in foster care for a month. The child still talks about how lonely and terrified she was – and about the time her foster parent took her picture and put it in a photo album under the heading: “filthy conditions.”[6]
* In Los Angeles, the pipes in a grandmother’s rented house burst, flooding the basement and making the home a health hazard. Instead of helping the family find another place to live, child protective workers take away the granddaughter and place her in foster care. She dies there, allegedly killed by her foster mother. The child welfare agency that would spend nothing to move the family offers $5,000 for the funeral.[7]

Contrary to the common stereotype, most parents who lose their children to foster care are neither brutally abusive nor hopelessly addicted. Far more common are cases like the ones above, cases in which a family’s poverty has been confused with child “neglect.”

Why do states take children in these cases? There are many reasons, but back in 1991, one of the most distinguished groups ever to examine the issue, the National Commission on Children, chaired by Sen. Rockefeller, found that children often are removed from their families "prematurely or unnecessarily" because federal aid formulas give states "a strong financial incentive" to do so rather than provide services to keep families together.[8] That hasn’t changed.

Even the official journal of the Child Welfare League of America has reported that one-third of America’s foster children could be safe in their own homes right now, if their birth parents just had decent housing.[9] And that makes CWLA’s opposition to flexibility that much more disturbing.

Documentation for this, and other problems related to the widespread confusion of poverty with child “neglect” can be found in our Issue Papers at www.nccpr.org.

Other cases fall on a broad continuum between the extremes, the parents neither all victim nor all villain. What these cases have in common is the fact that there are a wide variety of proven programs that can keep these children in their own homes, and do it with a far better track record for safety than foster care. Sometimes, these in-between cases involve substance abuse. And that raises another question: Why even bother with parents – usually mothers -- in these cases? But the reason to “bother” is not for the sake of the parents, but for their children.

University of Florida researchers studied two groups of infants born with cocaine in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the other with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children placed with their birth mothers did better.[10] For the foster children, being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.

It is extremely difficult to take a swing at “bad mothers” without the blow landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about their parents. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with addicts – it does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a better first choice than foster care for the child.

And every day we are seeing more evidence, most recently in research results from Washington State, that addiction to methamphetamine is just as treatable as any other addiction.[11]

That Florida study only hints at why avoiding foster care is so vitally important. Last year, one of the groups opposing flexibility did a fine job of conjuring up all the old stereotypes: In a series of cookie-cutter reports released in different states with little beyond the name of the state, and the state chapter of the issuing organization, changed, they sought to have readers infer that children are taken only from sadistic brutes or hopeless addicts, and always are placed in, to use the phrase they repeated over and over “safe foster care.”[12] Please beware of such “inference peddling.”

Most foster parents try to do the best they can for the children in their care, many are true heroes. Nevertheless, often, foster care is not safe. Sometimes it is not safe for the body; very, very often it is not safe for the soul.

One year ago, a prominent foster care provider, Casey Family Programs, and Harvard Medical School released one of the most ambitious studies ever conducted of foster care alumni. Even as she spoke against flexibility, a representative from Casey Family Programs shared some of the alarming findings with you at a hearing last year. But the case for flexibility is apparent in some of the findings she didn’t get to, that are even more shocking. Fully a third of the former foster children said they’d been abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home. (The study did not even ask about one of the most common forms of abuse in foster care, foster children abusing each other). Overall, when looking at a series of measures of how these young people were functioning, only one in five could be said to be doing well.[13]

I cannot fathom why some of my fellow liberals are so wedded to locking away billions of dollars and restricting those dollars to funding a system that churns out walking wounded four times out of five.

Anonymous said...

Why do some good, loving parents surrender their children to foster care when it’s the only way to get mental health care? Not because they’re evil. But because money leaves them no other choice. Financial incentives matter.

Why did Sen. Rockefeller’s National Commission on Children, which examined these issues so thoroughly, find that children were removed from their homes “prematurely or unnecessarily”? Because, they found, financial incentives matter.

Why did the Pew Commission on Foster Care zero in on how child welfare is financed as one of two key areas for reform? Because they realized financial incentives matter.

Congress provides millions of dollars in bounties every year, payable to states that increase the number of adoptions over the pervious year’s total. So Congress knows: Financial incentives matter.

And to see how much they matter, one need look no further than Illinois, where changing financial incentives is the lynchpin of a reform effort that transformed that state’s child welfare system from a national disgrace into a national model.

In 1997, Illinois had 51,000 children in foster care – proportionately more than any other state. Today, the foster care population in Illinois is under 18,000[17] – and, proportionately, below the national average. At the same time, and this is most important, child safety has improved.

If you thought that was all due to adoption, it’s understandable. Since that’s the part of the story that is most popular politically, for many year it was the part that state officials liked to tell the most. But the biggest changes in Illinois are that the state is taking far fewer children in the first place[18] – and it has changed financial incentives to get children back into their own homes faster.

Illinois no longer simply pays private agencies for each day they hold a child in foster care. Instead, they’ve switched to a system they call “performance-based contracting.” Agencies are rewarded for keeping children safely in their own homes or finding them adoptive homes. They are penalized for letting children languish in foster care. Once Illinois changed the payment system, lo and behold: The “intractable” became tractable, the “dysfunctional” became functional, the foster care population plummeted and, independent court-appointed monitors found that child safety improved. Remember, these are the same children that those good, caring people said absolutely had to be in foster care, back when the financial incentives encouraged foster care.

No one is harder on agencies than the lawyers who bring class-action lawsuits to reform them. In Illinois, the lawsuit that transformed child welfare was brought by Ben Wolf of the Illinois Branch of the ACLU. Says Mr. Wolf:

“Performance contracting was the centerpiece of the reforms here. In conjunction with the retraining and restructuring of the front-end investigations and initial removal decisions, it was the key reason that our system was able, consistent with safety, to become so much smaller. Performance contracting was the principal reason that so many thousands of children were able to achieve permanency.”[19]

Some have argued that the very fact that Illinois managed to do this under the current system shows that there is no need to change federal financial incentives. However:

* Illinois is an exception. It required rare and extraordinary guts and imagination, combined with an unprecedented child welfare crisis – and the class-action lawsuit -- before the state could summon the strength to fight its “foster care-industrial complex” and accomplish real reform.
* Illinois was among the first states to take advantage of waivers and among the most creative in their use. That option, of course, doesn’t even exist at the moment.

In order to accomplish its reforms, Illinois had to swim against the tide of federal policy as reflected by where the federal government puts its money. If we really want to change child welfare and improve the prospects of America’s most vulnerable children, then the tide of federal policy needs to turn toward reform, so states that want to do better are swimming with the tide instead of against it.

This doesn’t mean that agency executives sit around a table clasping their hands and chortling with glee as they contemplate how to hold more children in foster care. It’s much more subtle than that. Rationalization is powerful – it’s easy to convince yourself that residential treatment really works when it doesn’t, or that those birth parents are so awful that this child really could use a few more months in foster care anyway.

A major study of child welfare in Milwaukee found that large numbers of children could be home if their parents just had decent housing. But caseworkers were, to use that favorite child welfare term -- in denial -- about it.

According to the study: “workers may simply not be in a position to provide assistance with housing due to a lack of resources. If this is true, they may tend to ignore housing as a problem rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by the recognition that they cannot help their clients with this important need…”[20]

Similarly, because funding has been so skewed toward foster care for so very long, those very good frontline workers who do recognize that, for example, housing might save a child from foster care often believe they have no choice. There’s no money for housing – there’s always money for foster care. As Dr. Fred Wulczyn, Research Fellow at the Chapin Hall Center for Children told this subcommittee last year: “Once funding is tied up in the foster care system, redirecting foster care dollars when it is advantageous to do so is difficult.”[21]

Of course, financial incentives aren’t the only incentives pushing needless foster care. There are the incentives caused by fear and loathing of birth parents – the false stereotypes that lead to assumptions that every child in foster care really needs to be there. There are the incentives caused by highly-publicized deaths of children “known to the system” which can set off foster-care panics -- huge spikes in needless removals of children – which only divert scarce resources from finding children in real danger and actually lead to increases in child abuse deaths. And there is the constant pressure of the foster-care industrial complex; agencies with their prominent boards of directors woven into a community’s business and civic elite.

Anonymous said...

Michigan is planning to make extensive use of the Family to Family program, which seeks to avoid foster care placement and, when such placement is necessary, keep children with their extended families, in their own neighborhoods. That way, they are surrounded by friends, teachers, classmates and loved ones, visiting is easier, and foster parents can act as mentors to birth parents. (Family to Family is an initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation which also helps to fund my organization, and should not, by the way, be confused with Casey Family Programs).

But the Associated Press reports that late last month, representatives of private foster care agencies trooped up to Lansing to oppose the program, telling a legislative committee that children should continue to be placed with total strangers far from home, because the strangers lived in better neighborhoods with better schools.[24] Apparently, the fact that this is exactly what we’ve been doing for about 150 years, with horrible results, did not faze them. The dreadful educational outcomes for foster children did not faze them. And neither did the fact that, while every child should get to go to a good school, it is obscene to suggest that a child should have to trade in his family for the privilege.

So yes, most people in the system, especially on the frontlines, mean well. But it also is worth bearing in mind the words of one of the most distinguished experts in the field of child welfare and mental health, Dr. Ronald Davidson. Dr. Davidson is director of the Mental Health Policy Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Psychiatry. He’s been a consultant to the successful reforms in Illinois and was instrumental in getting the main campus of the state’s largest orphanage – once thought to be a model, but actually rife with abuse – effectively shut down.

Says Dr. Davidson: “Sadly, there is a certain element within the child welfare industry that tends to look upon kids in the way that, say, Colonel Sanders looks upon chickens …”

You have undoubtedly heard and read a great deal about the “addiction” problem in child welfare. But the biggest addiction problem in child welfare isn’t substance-abusing parents, though that problem is serious and real. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare is politically powerful, old-line, well-established child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to per-diem payments These agencies are putting their addiction ahead of the children.

And the biggest “enabler” of this addiction is the federal government, with its “open spigot” of money for substitute care, and far, far less for anything other than substitute care.

Breaking an addiction is extremely difficult. One first has to get past the addict’s denial. So it’s no wonder that so much of the foster care-industrial complex opposed the Child Welfare Program Option without even seeing it.

And some of the opposition to this proposal has consisted of a shameful collection of fear, smear, and scare stories. At one point, one prominent opposition group even told its members that the plan would “dismantle” foster care. That’s a great way to rally the base - - but it’s flat wrong.

* First of all, this is not a “block grant” in any meaningful sense of the term. Under a block grant, several different funding streams are combined, states are allowed to use the money for any purpose covered by any of those funding streams – and, often, some money is cut from the total.

In contrast, this plan involves only one portion of one funding stream – Title IV-E foster care funds. This money could be spent on prevention and adoption. But the other funding streams remain separate. Title IV-B funds for prevention, for example, cannot be used for foster care. This “IV-B firewall” is a crucial feature of the plan. Were IV-B and IV-E to be combined, the “foster care-industrial complex” would grab the prevention money to use for more foster care. In fact, just such a shameful grab of funds intended to help families has occurred in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, something I discuss below.

Flexibility cannot be absolute. It must always be in the direction of helping the most vulnerable, not helping powerful special interests. The Administration plan recognizes this. In the absence of this firewall we would oppose the plan. Indeed, the lack of such a firewall is the fatal flaw in the much more tepid recommendations from the Pew Commission.

Huge industry about money, not saving children. We much find a better way.

Anonymous said...

America's Secret Crime Against the Family
by Jess DelBalzo

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is child abuse, slavery, and rape all rolled into one pretty package, marketed to wealthy infertile couples as the answer to all their prayers and forced upon unsuspecting members of the lower classes. It is an industry that earns $1.4 billion each year shamelessly promoting its product with no regard for the damage it is doing to children and their parents. Surprise! It is not the tobacco industry, nor is it a chemical company polluting our air and water. It is adoption, and it is toxic to America's families.

Deemed a "loving option" by social workers, agencies, and anti-abortion crusaders, adoption puts children at risk for a myriad of psychological problems that range in severity. That may sound like love to the people who receive a portion of the $1.4 billion, but it should scream child abuse to anyone else. After all, parents can be prosecuted for child neglect over something as simple as a messy house. And in reality, adoption workers are guilty of more than neglect. Since the 1940s, professionals have known about the damaging effects of adoption on mothers and children. In fact, the Florence Crittenton Home brochure from 1942-1956 responded to suggestions of adoption with the statement, "Motherhood, and the love and care of a baby, strengthens the character of every girl who has the mentality to grasp it. As to the child: psychologists and social workers have learned that no material advantage can make up for the loss of its own mother." In spite of their knowledge, the Florence Crittenton homes went on to become some of America's biggest adoption proponents, once supply and demand made it more profitable to sever a mother's rights and sell her infant to a wealthy but sterile couple.

The abuse that adoptees suffer throughout their lives comes in many forms. As infants, they are separated from the only person they have ever known: their mothers. They're born into the world expecting the familiar scent of family and the warm voice that they grew accustomed to in utero, and instead they're handed over to strangers masquerading as "mommy" and "daddy." Because this severing of the world's most natural bond occurs at a time in a child's life when he is unable to communicate his emotions and experiences, it is a trauma that will stay with him into adulthood. Adopted people also report struggling with their identities, as the legal lie that they are "as if born to" their adopters works far better on paper than it does in the real world. Already a trying time for any young person, adolescence presents a special challenge for adoptees who lack knowledge of their heritage, family traits, and other critical factors for establishing one's self. Perhaps this explains why adopted children are over-represented at both in and out-patient psychological treatment facilities.

As if it's not bad enough that every adopted child is at risk for the complex psychological problems that seem to come with the territory, these children are also more likely to be physically or sexually abused. One fact that the adoption industry would love to ignore is that children are more likely to be abused by people other than their true parents. Perhaps we should evaluate this as common sense. Mothers especially have a primal instinct to care for their children and ensure the survival of their family trees. For true families, a baby is not valuable for profit but for the fact that he is living proof of a connection to the past and future. As parents, our instinct is to protect, rather than abuse something so precious and rare.

However, the abuse of the adopted child is not the only crime committed against him. Adoptees, stripped of their families, given new names and even falsified birth certificates, make up a new generation of slaves in America. In a society where the average cost of a private adoption is $60,000, agencies and social workers see infants only through the dollar signs in their eyes. The child's welfare takes second place to the profit he can bring in; otherwise, parents would be informed of the risks of adoption before they could surrender their babies. Instead, children are sold like miniature slaves. Their birth records are altered to reflect the names of their purchasers rather than their parents, and their true birth certificate is sealed away. They are the only Americans who are denied the right to know their own name and the names of their parents.

Some are abused, tortured, or killed at the hands of those who claim to love them. Others, like the "fortunate" slaves of the 19th century, are treated well by their adopters. But we all know that once you've been stripped of your rights, taken from your family, and forced into an uncomfortable lie, there's no such thing as being fortunate. In their adopter's homes, children are the ones expected to do the care-taking, to compensate for the babies they couldn't have, to fill a void in the marriage that's gone stale, or to guard them emotionally from the harsh realities of the world. Adoption's smallest victims become slaves to the lies that surround them and protectors of the only caregivers they have been granted. Denied knowledge of their true parents' whereabouts, they have nowhere to run. And they know what's expected of them: to be "as if born to" their adopters, to act out the role they were purchased to play.

Investigating why any parent would knowingly surrender their child to abuse and enslavement, we learn about a third crime in adoption. Since the 1950s, fathers have been exiled while mothers have been raped of their infants. Their bodies have been used as incubators, and once their purpose has been served, they are expected to fade silently into the shadows. The common defense of the rapist is the simple statement, "She asked for it," and the same has been said of the woman who dared to experience her sexuality outside of marriage. Adoption is the punishment she "deserved" for getting caught in defiance of our puritanical ideals. A life-time of grief, regret, depression, and trauma to make amends for one night of passion (which could have just as easily been a physical rape itself). Used, abused, and discarded, these mothers have been raped of their children and their souls.

Unlike the victim of a physical rape, the mother of adoption loss is not permitted to grieve. She has been told, by the same "professionals" who spied her baby with dollar signs in their eyes, that she is doing the "best thing," the only thing to do, and if she truly loved her baby she would do it. No one tells her what's down the road for her, or for her child. No one mentions the grieving that both will endure. No one speaks about the immense gap that will fill their lives once they've been separated. Instead, she is told that she is "giving a gift" to an infertile couple, as if it is her responsibility to meet the demands of a barren stranger. Like something out of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, she is expected to quietly serve her purpose and promptly disappear.

The tactics that are used to rape the new mother vary. Without anyone to tell her otherwise, and wanting to fulfill her child's needs, she may believe the social workers when they tell her about the "loving institution" of adoption. After all, they work in a helping profession, and wouldn't they want to help her? She isn't told how much money will change hands along with her precious child. If she does become suspicious or recoils at the idea of adoption, she won't be left alone to care for her child. Instead, they will pressure her when she's most vulnerable, when she's just delivered and is groggy from labor or medication, when they lie and tell her that she can't revoke the pre-birth consent that she signed, when they batter her verbally and accuse her of being selfish for wanting her own baby. Selfish! Yet the adopters, standing at the door with their wallets open, begging to take home someone else's baby—they are regarded as saints.

Once a mother has been raped of her child by the adoption industry, her torture is just beginning. Every time she turns around, she'll be reminded of society's stereotypical "birth" mother; the drug-addicted, child-abusing tramp. In reality, she is none of the above. Yet, when reading the newspaper, she will be confronted with offensive language, labeling her a "birth" or "biological" parent, degrading her by tearing away her right to be regarded as her child's true mother. Television shows will present sappy stories of happy adopters, and she'll watch, knowing all the while that for every gloating adopter, there is a mother who grieves over the loss of her child. Mother's Day will come and go, and while other mothers receive cards and home-made gifts from their children, she receives nothing. At the mercy of the adoption industry, she gave away all her love and has only heartache to show for it.

These raped mothers and their enslaved, abused children are secrets in America. To report on them is to damage a sector of our economy, an industry that earns $1.4 billion a year through coercion, dishonesty, and suffering. We don't like to recognize that there are people in this world who put on the facade of a helper while working behind the scenes for their own benefits. We shy away from acknowledging pain and suffering, especially when it appears on the face of someone who "should" have gone on with her life. We are cowards when it comes to allowing the truth to disrupt an easier, fantasy life. But continuing down this path will only lead to further destruction of children and their families. We must prosecute those responsible for the crimes of adoption, and we must work harder to ensure that these abusive practices are discontinued. These secret crimes cannot be hidden forever at the expense of our mothers, fathers, and children. The adoption industry may be a money-maker, but the value of family cannot be measured in dollars and cents.

Anonymous said...

But the Associated Press reports that late last month, representatives of private foster care agencies trooped up to Lansing to oppose the program, telling a legislative committee that children should continue to be placed with total strangers far from home, because the strangers lived in better neighborhoods with better schools.[24] Apparently, the fact that this is exactly what we’ve been doing for about 150 years, with horrible results, did not faze them. The dreadful educational outcomes for foster children did not faze them. And neither did the fact that, while every child should get to go to a good school, it is obscene to suggest that a child should have to trade in his family for the privilege.
Read more from the Ways and Means comm, on Dufferin Voca, or
www.nccpr.org

It is the same thing here, only we are heading in a direction the Americans are having to tear down, because more children have died.

Says Dr. Davidson: “Sadly, there is a certain element within the child welfare industry that tends to look upon kids in the way that, say, Colonel Sanders looks upon chickens …”

Anonymous said...

Says Dr. Davidson: “Sadly, there is a certain element within the child welfare industry that tends to look upon kids in the way that, say, Colonel Sanders looks upon chickens …”

Class actions , there are a few going on in Ontario now a few others starting up, the MUNCH moms have had it, running into each other in the gorcery store looking for posions to give children, give me a break, mothers are not posiong thier child the enviroment is, and so is medicine.
Class actions, no one like too but remember Lawyers gave us seat belts.
As the governemnt sided with the auto industry, and docotrs in studys said they were not nessisary.
Lawyers took on big tabacoo, as politacan stood by smoking with the doctrs all screaming JUNK SCIENCE,
Health Canada sues tabacc giant for money for health cost, lol, hipocrits as they tax it and not ban it, as mothers rally for smoking bylaws.
Mothers took lead on, Neddleman the resurcher was almost ruined, today he has won the Nobel, and we NOW KNOW lead levels and juvinal crime go hand and hand, Ontario is doing nothing to get the lead levels down, as the youth shot lead into each other in the citys with the highest levels of it and mercury in the air and water, connect the dots!!

Mother fought drunk drivers, and politicans drove home drunk, and some still do. Not social workers not the docotrs and not the politicans or police.

Mothers fight pesticieds, safe schools, for safe play ground, for there speacial needs children, and safer vaccines, mothers advocate for their children and others because they and only they truly understand what it means to be a mother.
You advocate for all the children because they make up the society, work force, socail net work theier own child belongs too. Mothers advocate for each other, and more should, because they and only they know how it feels to hold that new born baby and fall in love
deeper by the day.

Mothers will take on children aid societys, because they know its harming far to many children, and mothers. Will the class action lawsuits be they only way, I am sorry to say it looks that way.

Anonymous said...

You have undoubtedly heard and read a great deal about the “addiction” problem in child welfare. But the biggest addiction problem in child welfare isn’t substance-abusing parents, though that problem is serious and real. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare is politically powerful, old-line, well-established child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to per-diem payments These agencies are putting their addiction ahead of the children.

And the biggest “enabler” of this addiction is the federal government, with its “open spigot” of money for substitute care, and far, far less for anything other than substitute care.

Breaking an addiction is extremely difficult. One first has to get past the addict’s denial.

The ways and means. US. the people that work on this have all worked in child welfare, they are now trying to reform it, others are reporters, and bright mothers that have had enough, some never even having had a call from child protection, Judges in Qube, and retired Judges in Ontario and BC have also spoke out, to bad they waited till retirement.

Anonymous said...

Jeffrey's parents (both of them) had regular visitattion with Jeffrey. Did they know there was a problem? They had to--look at the pictures taken at Christmas (Jeffrey died in November)...look at little Jeffrey's face, look into his eyes. The windows on the world tell a million stories. I don't buy the excuse that the police would not listen etc--BS. Anyone demanding answers regarding an abused child will get an answer if they demand it. You go above the local precinct if necessary. As for the persons living in that house who watched Jeffrey die--there is two words that describe them--white trash, they were too busy looking after their own hide as they were all free loading. How could ayone watch a child starve to death and do NOTHING? The detective on the case wanted every adult in the house charged but after consulting with lawyers etc he decided it wouldnt stand up in court so he dropped that idea though he didnt want to.

We now know the maternal family is crap but I will not comment on the paternal family via this blog.

Posting on this blog is kind of like expressing your opinion in a communist country only you dont get thrown in jail for doing it.

Anonymous said...

he question that needs to be asked – and answered, is what are the incentive issues and focus that drives the foster care system and best serves our Nation’s children.

The Federal Government gives incentives for the states to get children out of foster care by adoption to others ($6000 each) without any penalty or setoff for the number of new children entering the system.

"What incentive does the Federal Government give the states to reunify the families?”Or for that matter prevent them from coming into the foster care system in the first place?

If the Federal Government gave incentives to the states for every child that went home more children would go home instead of to adoption wouldn't they??

The states consistently say "we don't get money for services from the Federal Government unless the children are in custody” so little effort to prevent removal is made -unless it's free, or inexpensive. Also I've noticed an incredible number of parents are "cured" as soon as the Federal Money runs out.

If the states had X number of dollars per child or "unlimited cash" for 12 months but then the states had to foot the bill (or a large part of the bill) for the time after 12 months until adoption is completed, the states would be less eager to let children "hang out"/”languish” in long term foster care.

The Federal Government does not pay money for children (families) receiving services until a court establishes “jeopardy/jurisdiction”. What incentive do the states have to offer (pay for) services prior to jeopardy?

And because adoption and reunification can occur at the same time the states tend to use the "before jeopardy" time to locate an adoptive placement (they get paid for this). In cases where a child is placed in a pre-adoptive foster care home, lauded as concurrent placement, it creates an environment where foster homes have a very specific interest in doing everything they can to make sure the child stays with them as opposed to reunifying with their biological families. Another result is that it allows the foster home to “try out” the family situation to see if the child “fits in” as though a child is some kind of pet to be adopted or rejected.

If the States put as much effort into families the first 120 days as they do adoption assistance, there would likely be many families that would be "cured" within 120 days and jeopardy findings would not be necessary.

If the Federal Government gave "incentives" for family placements equal or similar to adoptive placements perhaps the states would be more inclined to place with relatives. States will argue they do just that but the numbers just don’t bear it out.

In short the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS RESPONSIBLE, the "incentives" are all directed toward "jeopardy" and adoption.

Its all about the money, it always has been , not child protection, that has never been the real reason, when will people wake up and understand this, it jobs, put a bunch of foster familys out of work taking care of children that dont need to be there, and taking care ( not usually) the foster parents would be looking for work or on welfare, since most were on welfare before, many are ex crown wards,
what would all the private group home owners do? the social workers the pycholgist, the people that write the crap on children at risk,
lots of lost jobs, and the family court lawyers, the Minister of children and youth, I say lets send them all to Hati

Amanda said...

None of you have ANY right to say anything bad about Christie! SHE kept this story on the front pages, SHE found out all the 'behind the scences' details, SHE is consistently writing about child horrors and I can't believe she hasn't snapped to be honest.

That she is alone and childless?? What difference does that make?? As Judge Watt so elequently put, 'shut your mouth'!

Anonymous said...

I agree Amanda re: shut up and stop bashing Christie.

It is obvious anyone or anything posted on this blog is subject to bashing unless you bow down and kiss some of these asses that write here.

Christie was and is very much involved in Jeffrey's story and she has a lot of readers--always has. When she writes people stand up and take notice.

Others do not garner the same attention even though they may be in the same field as Christie.

Anonymous said...

I agree she broke the story, she said it best, and she did the most with real love and care for Jeffrey. I commend her for that, as we should all.

Anonymous said...

I agree with not bashing Christie. I don't see why anyone is bashing anyone. So many of us feel the same pain, sadness and anger over this whole issue. I know for me, my core anger is at the lack of real justice in this case(that the adults in Jeffrey's life did nothing and the Ccas' getting away with murder)but more than anything I'm sad and angry because Jeffrey is gone and I can't bring him back. I didn't even know him but he's inside of my heart like I cannot believe. I kiss his picture and say"I love you baby and I'm so sorry that I didn't know what you were going through." and if that makes me a weirdo then so be it. I guess bottom line is I think we all have so much pain around what happened to Jeffrey that we don't know what to do with it. Let's just do what we can, support bill 88 and let people know about it and if you can come to the rally please do, if not, sign the petition.

Anonymous said...

Christie has moved on to defending our involvement in Afghanistan- a worthy cause no doubt. Jeffreys's only a fleeting moment of her journalistic fame. She is proud that
she has written about every grotesque detail of his life. Why is it that it has not come down on the CCAS like a ton of bricks but the fallout is instead on the legitimate grandparents of Ontario.

Amanda, you do protest too much. It has brought you a certain amount of fame. Maybe we can all run for the Ontario Legislature on poor Jeffrey's back.

Anonymous said...

Christie has put a lot of effort into this story and most likely it is not over for her. But she does have to be able to do other things with her life too.

Anonymous said...

Amanda was not and is not looking for fame. She did what no other person saw to do and she should be commended for it. But instead you choose to bash!

What did you do for Jeffrey's cause? Besides get on the blog and bash others, probably nothing.

Do you actually believe for one moment one writer, or one concerned citizen (along with a few supporters) can change the laws governing CAS? It would take an overwhelming number of citizens to change things.

Stop bashing those who tried. If they throw in the towel on Jeffrey's cause I will understand why.

Who would put up with this?

Anonymous said...

never doubt that a few hard working dedicated citizens can change the world, indeed its the only thing that ever has.

M Mead.
Rosa Parks sat on the bus!!!

Anonymous said...

Absolutely love the statement, and so very true!!!

Anonymous said...

: Wendy's, Pepsi, Tylenol Turn Fingers Against False Accusers; Innocent Accused Parents Lack Legal Teams

Pepsi, Tylenol, Wendy's can resume business and write off legal expenses and relatively (for them) small financial losses following even a national scandal that begins with an opportunistic false claim.

Too many families falsely accused and wrongly prosecuted will literally lose relatives, but they will have not way to recover their children or their once good names.

They never will recover emotionally, physically, socially, professionally, financially or in any other way.

An "impact statement" allows real victims to spell out specific injuries in a courtroom in front of convicted perpetrators for the benefit of the judge prior to sentencing. In cases arising from false allegations of child abuse or neglect those offenders are agents of the state. They are nearly wholly immunized no matter how egregious their actions affecting child or family.

Procedural and court processes against parents or caretakers accused are tax-subsidized, paid for by "the people." The State and U.S. Attorney General will defend official offenders of our liberty safeguards spelled out as state and federal constitutional rights but bypassed in administrative law. Reread what the U.S. Supremes opined in DeShaney.

Where are state laws requiring local agencies to "make whole" (insofar as objectively possible) families they have hounded--without offering or providing meaningful services IF wanted or needed--when even their own appeals process finally overturns a wrongful action?

"Family" Services?

Using improper reports to CPS of child protective services (most morphed agency names now include "family services") and misnamed investigations or assessments, locals start the nightmare, take accused innocents accused into court after the trauma and stigma of removing children. They leave an insurmountable paper trail. Then, even when the original action is overturned by their own final regulatory appeals process, they are not required to clean up the mess.

That paper mess, by then documents in court files, signal that a person will be hounded for payment of "child support" never owed per foster care orders fraudulently created, not to mention blotched credit records that effectively sandbag employment chnces. Consequences of leaving inappropriate court papers also mean myriad other life-changing and destroying results of violating a citizen's civil rights "under color of law" with impunity by those employed and empowered to protect children.

Unless and until those elected to Congress accept and act on their own accountability for appropriating huge amounts of money sent to states--states that funnel money to locals usually without monitoring OR by covering up when the decades-old violations persist--nothing will change.

Money from Congress is the gas, just as pass-through operations in each state represent the gas-soaked rags. Still, it is the extraconstitutional, uncompassionate and uncompromising actions of unchecked local agents that strike the match against stunned families. Is no one responsible for the resulting conflagration that dis-members society's most vital building block, the family?

Anyone to Blame?

Anyone over age 18 may be affected by a baseless allegation. Anyone under 18 may be labeled a "victim," whether or not true. A dependent adult may fall on either side. Laws threatening to prosecute anyone over the age of 14 who makes a false report were enacted to frighten briefly angry falsely accusing teens. If a recantation (he/she really did nothing to me) wrecks the story a prosecutor needs, the law against making false allegations may be perverted.

No able and articulate professional, politician, entertainer or influential sports figure (and forget media that play up occasional sensational individual cases of false allegations) wants to appear to be on the side of an ACCUSED child abuser or neglecter. Nearly every influential publisher or producer or spouse, anyone prominent in any field, is an active or honorary member of a locally based or national child abuse prevention organization. Numbers of those groups are funded, minimally tax-exempt, by one to three levels of government.

"Education" funding to instruct how to recognize and prosecute, for example, the emotive but baseless theory of "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy" (MSP) is in the Department of Justice budget. Among effects of much scientifically baseless education is the disappearance of conservatively thousands of children, including infants from the delivery room moved straight to pre-adoptive homes per 1997 federal legislation.

Groundswells of pro-adoption publicity--minus the truth that too many never abused children become Paper Orphans by the stroke of a judge's pen--leave no place for mistakenly or maliciously reported parents to stand in hope a newborn and siblings will be returned by government agents or proxies who raced away with them. Forget ever reading or hearing an apology: that might suggest there was accidental or deliberate error in agent judgment or from an underinformed or overly influenced bench.

Heaven help anyone with a child manifesting a genetic disorder such as "brittle bone," or reaction from doctor-prescribed medicines or state-mandated vaccines, not to mention environmental concerns (mold blowing through a home's air ducts affecting a baby's breathing) or an undiagnosed infection and other discoverable but deliberately not sought triggers labeled "child abuse."

April is always worst

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. Never seems to be the month that common sense, required competence and Constitutional safeguards will be permitted or demanded to clear false allegations of child abuse or neglect. Frankly, the label sticks, inside and out, for the accused and involved children no matter what happens to the paper. It sticks even when the children mature and do their utmost to speak after prosescutors and other officials cannot silence them.

When can we prevent family abuse that invariably traumatizes children removed from never-abusing homes? What about innocent parents behind bars, convicted because discredited theory was accepted by a judge who ignored or ruled out objective science? Not even proving that the prosecution paraded perjurious witness, the jury was tainted and tampered with, exculpatory information was withheld for decades and worse has been able to free more than one innocent mother.

In UK where the MSP label was coined and made public in a Lancet article in August 1977, incarcerated parents are being freed as an educated public derides its originator's claim that he shredded his notes. His motivation theory, never peer reviewed or replicated, is "discredited" where it began but still widely used. Freeing innocents in UK is a start and an appropriate example for reluctant courts in America.

When will we halt reallocation of children for praise and profit to both local agents who take them and homes that offer a new "forever family" while depositing post-adoption subsidies, enjoying Medicaid coverage, respite care and so much never offered or available to families with chronically ill children.

Those very ill children--"over-utilizing" the system because efforts of their strongest advocates, their parents--bring with them the largest continuing tax-paid subsidies and services to a new and less demanding residence. I've dubbed them cash calves, as newspaper series on group home abuses (North Carolina's Charlotte Observer and Fayetteville Observer) prove they are.

Who will be responsible when cousins and siblings date and marry because they have no idea where they originated, that they shared one or both parents in common?

Isn't that a good enough reason--protecting "our" children from marrying a close relative without realizing it--to turn a common concern into common sense? Is this April finally the time to clearly differentiate between actions used against a person falsely accused of child abuse and actions against a one who is actually guilty?

Child Abuse Prevention Month should recognize the right of a child to be protected from wrongful removal from a loving home (or extended family if the home is unsafe). Are we keeping the "numbers of reports" up at the expense of "our" children's future? God-given DNA connects children to family no matter what kind of American CPS Shuffle is tax-subsidized?


**The above may be reprinted and circulated as long as writer's name, email and (c) symbol are included. Barbara Bryan (BHBryan@aol.com) April 25, 2005

Barbara Bryan (BBryan@aol.com)
Communicatons Director
National Child Abuse Defense & Resource Center

Anonymous said...

: "Fast Track Adoptions" Copied From US by UK Courts: Press There Expose Easy Takings but US Media Mute

Roanoke, VA 24014 August 4 2004

Mute major media in America tiptoe around a cruel established practice here, more recently prevalent in the Isles: whisking babies from delivery rooms per a paid expert’s opinion minus any personal or professional connection with the bereaved mother.

Immaculate Perception has felled innocent families worldwide. Is is part of any state's "standards of care"?

Tony Blair’s support for full-time family life (his father was fostered because his entertainer parents traveled) is strong, as was that of the late Dave Thomas of Wendy’s.

In their ways, and oceans apart, the gentlemen inspired their nations to promote and pass legal changes that—as long as emotion trumps science—constructively endorse serial sterilization the hard way, after child by child is born to a family then removed and reallocated.

As long as scientifically baseless Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (and variant names) and the equally emotive “Shaken Baby Syndrome” (lacking science in a different way) are permitted to label parents and hired or volunteer caretakers, wrongful prosecutions and child takings occur.

While there have been occasional stories in media—usually individual ones, rarely noting pervasive systemic practices of accusing first, taking and placing for adoption a “victim” child, then offering stunned parents a “day in court” behind closed doors with their fate already sealed—the practice of decades, as well as of prior eras and continuing full blown, flourishes unabated.

It is hushed because too many people in high places, unable sadly or unwilling because of career pressures to have their own children, prefer not to learn that thousands and more children now legally their own just may not have ever been abused or neglected.

Bad Mother?

Margaret Talbot’s story “The Bad Mother,” in the current New Yorker magazine, could have been written about a lovely doctor accused by Vanderbilt’s Medical Center when her infant son showed signs of a liver disorder. Gregory died a few months ago after some good years and at death with his loving mother. She made news by “kidnapping” him from system "protection" Vanderbilt doctors arranged long enough to get a proper diagnosis. (See Harville stories in prior releases.)

Even Johnnie Cochrane’s considerable legal skills were insufficient in Gregory’s family’s slam-dunk case against powerful medical-legal influences in Tennessee. Others keep trying. The demise of the “Munch Hunch” before the 27th anniversary of its publication in Lancet should help.

Until American media trumpets the obvious—that science and common sense have very different explanations for what is accepted as MSP and “Shaken Baby” (check Oct. Conference topics)—any delivery to a labeled family may trigger the disappearance of a newborn on arrival.

“Fast Track” adoptions arise from “concurrent planning” in US parlance and “parallel planning” in that of UK. It means that the time and date from which planning for the polar opposites of family preservation and termination of parental rights is legally presumed to start at the instant of taking.

Families who once had 18 months in America to get their acts together may have weeks or no time at all with a label of MSP. That is, if indeed there were problems at all and not faulty DNA causing confusion or drug or vaccine injury no one wanted to consider,

Impossible Timing

Imagine right and left feet on banana peels at the same time. The “case” could go either way. Too often the baby or child goes immediately to a pre-adoptive home while parents are trying to figure what happened.

They are certain the matter will be straightened out, especially health-based problems: inherited disorders, drug or vaccine reactions, environmental overloads or temporary infections. But, all is in place to quickly create a Paper Orphan with an immunizing stroke of a judge’s pen.

Additionally, new “forever home” parents become part of “permanency planning” for “best interests” of a child who bonds to caretakers. Really nice natural parents wouldn’t want to upset their own children by ripping them away from a loving, new family, would they? Not easily consenting and “cooperating” to giving up children is labeled “unreasonable” in UK documents.

Before the light dawns that there never will be a chance to prove innocence, most parents and an unfortunate majority of attorneys (taught and still believing American courts and Executive Branch administrative agencies operate under Constitutional law) see the child is gone, legally.

Cassandra Jardine’s August 2 “Children are taken away – but the system can’t admit it’s wrong” in UK’s Telegraph (see link at end) makes pleasant reading for all who’ve said the same thing for decades in and to US press. Perhaps it will inspire more action in America.

When children are taken first and questions asked later or never, but “mental health evaluations” breach Fifth Amendment protections to fabricate “evidence,” there is something more than fishy in America.

Violated Amendments?

When First Amendment groups know that child protection agencies and judges silence parents, threatening to keep the children if they share details of practices or gag orders from “the court” with media, why are reporters still saying “Oh, another one of those?” instead of “The First Amendment is being stomped. We’ve gotta stop this”?

If not precious speech between parent and child or vital communication between citizen and press, entrusted with the First Amendment to watchdog government’s overreach (into the delivery room as well), what will spur a First Amendment group to action?

Jardine writes that UK agencies do not want to be the subjects of scrutiny. What with automatic cover from a judge’s pen, one wonders if American agencies fear anything at all.

All the states audited recently by HHS failed in “family preservation” efforts and methods. So far only Virginia is subjected to a re-audit for considerably less than forthcoming information and stonewalling repeated requests for supporting documentation.

Federal funds offer incentive money for adoptions of “special needs” or “at risk” children, labels attached to children of alleged Munch Moms (homicidal liars if the myth is allowed) or SBS “victims” (whose shot schedules and internal brain swelling is not considered).

Money Fuels It

Agencies get dollars for child placements as do adopters who take the children, usually with post-adoptive subsidies that do not close the books on money drains. Prize-winning agencies need numbers to show action that legislators and taxpayers, whose money they shepherd, approve. Not knowing the whole story, most people smile on connecting legal orphans with adoptive homes.

American taxpayers fund education on Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and SBS for police and social workers. Money comes from Justice Department education funds usually flowing through Child Advocacy Centers to presenters with their own agendas. Will sanity overtake official teaching on medical myths if media print only exciting accusations but ignore science and suspect money streams?

Thanks to the dike-breaking stories from UK press, perhaps American media will get into the swim of things by demanding “science” from courts that immunized delivery room takings, supported impossible “concurrent planning,” and snubbed State and U.S. Constitutions to do it.

Email: BHBryan@aol.com


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/02/ftadopt02.xml

http://web.tiscali.it/humanrights/articles/meadow77.html

Kimberly Hart (ncadrc@aol.com)
Executive Director
National Child Abuse Defense & Resource Center
P.O. Box 638
Holland, OH 43528
Phone : 419-865-0513
Fax : 419-865-0526

Anonymous said...

The Blood Will Tell," But You Gotta Ask: Child Abuse? or Victim of Bad Genes?

Roanoke, VA 24014 July 27 2004

When bad gene science explains why some newborns die suddenly, will innocent imprisoned parents get apologies and pardons?

Whatever elementary school children learned of Mendel and inherited disorders, too much of medicine and mental health ignores.

In the past 27 years, for example, a motivation theory prosecuted as "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy" (MSP) and still-emerging variant names--pediatric condition falsification, MPB maltreatment, facticious and induced illness among them--was used to take and reallocate children as well as to imprison parents and caretakers.

While numerous adverse reactions to drugs or vaccines, as well as environmental factors, caused confusing reactions in babies and children as well as some deaths, more often than ever investigated--thus never proved--genetic disorders were at the root of the problem.

In 1902 England's Dr. Garrod observed that metabolic disorders appeared to "run in families." Has America prosecuted innocent parents whose children truly were victims of serial SIDS because the same parents provided the same faulty gene combinations?

Prosecutions based on Roy Meadow's "Law," a pronouncement extrapolated from his now "discredited" MSP theory, accepted that one infant death was sad, a second suspicious and a third surely was homicide. But there is nothing "random" about repeated errors in the genetic code passed to successive newborns by the same set of parents.

Prosecute Puckett Posthumously?

"Aunt Orlena" Puckett, whose cabin is on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, gave birth to 24 or 25 children, with only the first surviving any length of time and then dying of diphtheria. The rest succumbed to a blood factor easily noted and treated today but unknown then. Should she have been strung up rather than hailed as the beloved midwife to a 1,000 or more?

Piero Rinaldo, world-renowned medical geneticist and professor of Laboratory Medicine at Mayo Clinic's College of Medicine, will describe metabolic errors and how to objectively determine recognizable ones by properly taking and preserving samples to be tested on sophisticated equipment.

Rinaldo, who broke the case against an innocent mother accused of feeding her baby anti-freeze (bad genes produced the rare MMA disorder), was recently appointed by the HHS Secretary to the advisory committee on inheritable disorders in newborns and children.

He joins a distinquished list of presenters Oct. 14-16 at the 12th International Conference titled Child Abuse Allegations" Separating Fact from Fiction" in Las Vegas.

Organized by Kimberly Hart, executive director of National Child Abuse Defense & Resource Center in Toldeo, the Conference offers distinquished faculty in the fields of law, medicine, mental health, private investigating, biomechanics (science of "Shaken Baby" claims) and forensic testing.

Too often unaware of available science, explaining signs and symptoms labeled "child abuse," defenders of accused innocents prosecuted and wrongly convicted are stymied by justice systems that fund education programs for scientifically unsupported theories such as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and Shaken Baby Syndrome.

The NCADRC Conference is designed for criminal defense attorneys, public defenders, legal aid and family court lawyers and other professionals called on to handle mistaken and malicious reports of child abuse or neglect that spiral out of control and result in wrong findings because of emotional and non-scientific factors.

For more information on the Conference and NCADRC, check falseallegation.org, more information on this site or call 419-865-0513.

Kimberly Hart (ncadrc@aol.com)
Executive Director
National Child Abuse Defense & Resource Center
P.O. Box 638
Holland, OH 43528
Phone : 419-865-0513
Fax : 419-865-0526

Anonymous said...

Whitaker had Newsweek sit on truth about predatory pediatrician in UK

Newsweek’s editor Mark Whitaker currently is apologizing for Mid-East deaths in riots sparked by belief in a Newsweek story that, on more careful review, appears to have no basis in fact. If the Koran was not flushed down the toilet, as the piece alleged, who is accountable for ensuing mayhem?

Nearly eight years ago, long before additional UK and other families worldwide had been dis-membered by assertions of UK pediatrician David Southall, Newsweek played up that doctor's part in inspiring Dr. Truman’s review of prior child deaths with undetermined causes at Children’s Hospital in Boston.

David Southall’s firebrand exploitation of UK's Sir Roy Meadow’s scientifically baseless motivation theory dubbed “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” (MSP) helped Dr. Truman decide in retrospect that many previously unexplained child deaths were the work of Mommy Nearest.

If one believes there is an MSP "disorder," once considered a "diagnosis" of a mother (or other caretaker), one leaps over common sense to accept that women carry multiple pregnancies, care for their children only to kill them in hard-to-prove ways. Because the disorder defined the mother as a homicidal liar, there was no point in hearing or checking her honest alternative explanation for the infant deaths arising from inherited problems, prescribed medicines, mandated shots or environmental factors among possible causes.

Newsweek Ignored Notice

While Newsweek polished David Southall’s self-placed crown as chief among international child abuse fighters he was under scrutiny in UK for a risky procedure involving premature newborns with immature lungs.

Infants brought into David Southall's testing of continuous negative air pressure or CNEP might have died because of too early births, but other methods to assist breathing also might have lessened numbers of deaths and brain damage from experimentation with his equipment. Pictures of red-faced babies, their necks tightly wrapped in order to ensure the Southall-directed different mode of air pressure, could fail to distress only the hardest of hearts.

Numbers of questionably recruited babies died and many were brain damaged during the CNEP trial. The lingering question for years, and sent to Mark Whitaker and Newsweek soon after the magazine's story ran, dealt with serious doubts that parental consent had been obtained at all, never mind "informed," and about the process itself.

Following years of demands that David Southall answer professionally for CNEP experimentation and results--and more horrific issues such as chasing children and using police to wrest them from appropriately frightened family members were raised by parents and press--the never mistaken medicine man finally officially will face complaints of parents of seven CNEP victims in a judicial review in June.

Translated from above: David Southall’s star was anything but rising in 1997 if a reasonable reporter or editor bothered to check, especially with material and contact referral information in hand.

Could Have Saved Lives

Assuming what was happening to David Southall was little known in the U.S. and, charitably, to Mark Whitaker, at that time Newsweek's managing editor, this writer telephoned his office and spoke with his assistant. She shared a fax number where information supporting severe doubts about David Southall's modus operandi was sent. It contained information on Southall's CNEP project, his creative use of CVS (covert video surveillance) to ambush innocent parents and more.

There was no response from Mark Whitaker or anyone else at Newsweek from my offering fact-based information on David Southall whose work had been lauded. Those papers and my fax confirmation, as well as notes from the Saturday afternoon chat with Mr. Whitaker's assistant, are boxed after a move. However, as those who know how long I keep "paper," they exist.

Mark Whitaker favored preserving the magazine's puff piece and chose to ignore an ambitious doctor's spree that escalated finally into an unavoidable nightmare for families on several continents at David Southall's unchecked hands. Ultimately UK's GMC, hospitals where he has worked and groups with which he is associated have had to listen to parents, then media and even courts about obvious and cruel errors.

However, consequences are slow and uncertain and the man seems to have an impossibly slow learning curve on actual vs. his perverted kind of invented child abuse.

The Truth in Time....

Unexposed by Newsweek when the whole truth mattered, David Southall had police help him obtain children he wanted for various sorts of treatment testing most would label unbridled experimentation. Claiming mothers created long-objectively documented children’s health problems or exaggerated them—that Mommy had MSP and the children needed to be rescued—David Southall used police and local council child protectors (in America the CPS or child protective services workers) as proxies to get what he wanted. It was cost and consequence free and under color of law.

David Southall's overreaching became legend, but at one point a few years ago the brakes began to be applied to his brand of child saving. Suspended from any work in child protection for three years at the time, he could not resist inserting himself in UK’s most significant case that unraveled the reputation of Roy Meadow as well as Southall. The well-defended Clark case finally had UK press calling Roy Meadow’s unsupported MSP, and by inference and more the man himself, "discredited.”

As attorneys, Steven and Sally Clark were crushed at the weeks-old deaths of their first two sons. While a third son survived and lived with his father, Sally was imprisoned on the basis of “Meadow’s Law,” an informal assessment by Sir Roy that one infant death was tragic, two was suspicious and a third surely proved homicide was the cause.

Overcome by his own infallible insight while watching a television program on the Clark couple’s plight, disregarding imposed suspension from child protection work, David Southall rushed to his friends at the police station to announce he was sure the father was the one who had killed the couple's two babies. The excited crime solver had no access to Clark family records nor had he examined anyone involved. Still, he alone knew what actually had happened and insisted the police proceed to act on his clairvoyance.

Pulled Out of the Air

That out-of-the-air (television transmission only) allegation against the also innocent father was more hubris than those who had remained mute could take. They had let Southall pick his child victims, use police, child protectors and courts to get them and destroy innocent families in the process; but, oooops, maybe the man was a bit overboard this time.

At this writing, David Southall has yet to feel even a little of the anguish he has inflicted on children traumatized by official, legal but wholly inappropriate, takings around the world. His apparent arrogance may prevent his ever experiencing the feeling of childless parents who knew how their children were being treated by the deliberately mistaken and overzealous experimenting doctor.

With every reporter, editor, publisher, producer, every media representative anywhere who tries to expose and to get the facts straight in the process, I am as sorry as Mark Whitaker says he is, and must be personally and professionally, for Newsweek's mortification and needless deaths the inaccurate news note spawned.

However, mute media choices—and his in particular on David Southall and the myth of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy in that Newsweek story and others the magazine ran on behalf of MSP allegations—have killed more than the very recent riots initiated over what Newsweek first claimed had happened to pages of one religion’s sacred text.

Mark Whitaker and mute media--objective evidence available, reasonable alternatives for the muted mothers accused of MSP into three decades by this writer--chose to ignore the truth and print and stand by what turned out to be an inflammatory error.

Tough Call?

On Sunday (May 15), more than a decade after David Southall's inglorious CVS days and the CNEP debacle, The Sentinel in UK highlighted the stories of two families "who say the professor's skill and compassion was responsible for keeping their children alive," according to journalist Dave Blackhurst.

No surprise those families never "lost" their children, were not accused by the doctor nor pursued by police at his request and never dragged into court for humiliation and termination of parental rights based on the MSP myth.

Editors have plenty of tough calls. Ignoring the whole truth and leaving the impression that an arrogant doctor--experimenting with fragile newborns and setting up mothers for MSP claims--is all right or a hero because Newsweek left that impression and chose not to recheck or apologize years ago should not be a tough call for a managing editor.

Barbara Bryan (BHBryan@aol.com)
Communications Director
National Child Abuse Defense & Resource Center

Anonymous said...

: Sick Children? Doctors and Child Protectors Use Each Other for Cover

, June 14 2005

A recent Amber Alert placed Katie Wernecke, barely 13, in foster care and her three brothers in a children’s home until her parents “quickly complied” with doctor-directed power-backed social workers’ plans. The Werneckes agreed to radiation treatments they and Katie thought were risky and not needed.

News reports indicate that “new test results” were announced last week in juvenile court Medical results were available only then? They had to be delivered in a highly-charged setting, justice scales tilted against parents?

Previously told Katie’s Hodgkin’s disease was in remission, and after hearing her express desire to have children someday, her parents believed they acted in her interests by declining treatments that could stunt growth and alter development. They relocated Katie to a relative’s home instead of volunteering her for treatment she wanted to avoid.

That protective move was described as “abscond(ing)” with her by a Nueces County judge. Increasing chances Katie’s parents would cave to orders of the doctor who treated her since January, one who made a prior child protective services (CPS) report, Katie’s siblings were whisked to a children’s home, Katie to foster care and their mom to jail. She is under a $50,000 bond.

The same state in which doctors use child protection agencies for cover has its share of publicized as well as less known errors and egregious cover ups.

Anybody Taking Responsibility?

Are doctors accountable, do judges waive their own immunity, will the State repay families and restore lives if predicted results of demanded treatments, or withholding or interfering with other ones, fail?

If the parents and Katie were right about her life quality, and doctors and child protection agents are overreaching and wrong, will parents and taxpayers be compensated by the system? Will those making health care choices for children repay property owners when suits against the State and agents succeed?

The Wernecke family’s story adds a chapter at another custody hearing this week. For Katie and her brothers, children needlessly traumatized when doctors and child protective services wrongly wield the purse and sword of the State, the damage is done. If posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the only residual effect of their experience, it is a frequent gift of similar government behavior.

If usually mute media and the public’s elected representatives expose how child protectors and doctors need and use each others’ powers to “win” with impunity, they and all will be amazed at the counterproductive protection tax dollars buy.

Health Care: For or Against?

“Under Texas law, parents may withhold medical treatment from a terminally ill child, but not in lesser situations,” claimed a wire story with a Corpus Christi, Texas dateline and appearing in a Florida newspaper.

Tell that to the mother of a child whose amazing life was effectively extinguished by Texas doctors. The story of non-accidental injury against that mother and child is being written. It involves nationally known “experts” in a baseless motivation theory used to remove and reallocate children and newborns for praise and profit to agencies and adopting homes.

The prime offending doctor, one whose failed attempts to have CPS remove the hyper-vigilant mother from her medically fragile child’s side became a challenge, ignored the mother’s and his colleagues warnings about medications that would injure the child. His pediatric team at the same hospital had settled for multiple millions of dollars after an avoidable error recently had killed a teen. He couldn’t make another mistake. What he did was purposeful and he walks free. He, too, had CPS call law enforcement to haul away that pesky parent from the hospital.

How best to divert the attention of a family than to do a cost-free, tax-subsidized smear? Why not have the alert parent, who observes and documents everything, publicly labeled abusive or medically neglectful? How cool to have Fox 4 in Dallas run a “Mother or Monster?” program then misplace the last video of the spunky child’s final upright hours?

Even better, what if the station never reports the mother’s full exoneration or mentions the child’s miserable years of state-covered decline before death? Oh, and forget the mysterious blot on the mother’s credit report that no one will describe but prevents her getting credit or employment and inspires dirty looks and occasional out-of-the-blue cruel comments.

“Shawna’s Bill”—one that legislators throughout the nation should vie to patron and sponsor—is that child’s lasting legacy. It supports justice for defrauded taxpayers as well as for wrongly prosecuted families and terrorized children.

Ordering Professional Payback

Simple tenets of Shawna’s Bill require professionals (medical or mental health doctors, social workers, counselors, school employers, any volunteer or “mandated reporter”) who make serial “mistaken” or malicious reports be flagged in the system (as are alleged offenders, parents, caretakers or others).

Prosecutors are required to pursue repeat offenders to regain misspent tax money: for needless investigations, wrongful removals, unnecessary foster care, inappropriate court time and agency administration, as well as costly prosecutions and payouts due to wrongful reporting and personal injuries.

For 30 years, since the Mondale Act (Child Abuse Prevention the Treatment Act or CAPTA) required states to simplify reporting “suspected” child abuse or neglect, accept anonymous reports, and to give immunity to growing numbers of “mandated reporters” with varying motivations, some children—prayerfully Katie among them—survive odds against benefits of government “help.” That is what removal from siblings, grandparents and all loved ones, including many who begged to provide safety if needed and family security, is called even if unwarranted.

Others, such as Shawna, were snuffed out with an abundance of “documented” justification that backwashes against injured and innocent parents as official and eternal injury. Where were official ethics of “health care treatment” for her?

The myriad reasons professionals need CPS, and the reasons the agency requires validation from professionals for actions such as removing children first and asking questions later, if ever, are supported financially by Congress, generally ignored by States, and overused with immunity by local front line CPS agents whose actions mostly are unmonitored or described imaginatively in “records.”

Shawna’s Bill holds accountable professionals who defraud taxpayers for personal protection or gain. Hopefully, even in my native Texas with its seemingly impenetrable sovereign immunity, prosecutors will want to stop financial fraud if not official child abuse and legalized family fracturing.

Barbara Bryan (BHBryan@aol.com)

Anonymous said...

Not until the press, tell the whole story the true story and the not another one of them story's( CAS) blunders, family ruined, children stolen story's, Not until mandated reporters have to have more then a MAY hunch the crystal ball of child removal. Not until good judges, (like the one forced to leave in OUR Canada because she knew and spoke of what she knew child protection is a corrupt) not until they speak up.

Not until we understand that Jeffery would be alive today, had the system left him with his mother, and not played god. Not until we stop judging those less fortunate less educated less then perfect , for who the hell is, and HELP.

Not until we mean what we say we care about children, and stop the best interest crap. Not until we make each and every person accountable that has anything to do with children including those legislating BAD Laws and cover and run, control the press, to afraid to speak, lobbied by industry, all accountable to the harm inflicted upon each and every child the child savers say the save, as parents weep, and family courts have nothing to do with law or family, that good men and good women stop using their children in ways that for ever harm the other, and most of all the children, Not until I can wipe from my memory the evil I see stalking a young mother, rolled in a ball of despair will I stop.

I will not forget why Jeffery died, I will not forget why Matthew Reid died, both murdered, and placed at risk by a system that is accountable to no one.
And NOT UNTIL they are, will I stop trying to change a system that harms more then it ever helps,

I do this this because I cant not do it.
How long did the bodys of Jews pile up, before anyone did anything? good reporters walked away, good people looked away, they still are.

Anonymous said...

Well said! As long as good people remain silence hoping that it will never happen to them, this will go on. Many are profitting from the misery of others. I cannot stand by and do nothing either.

Christie does not do justice to the entire picture. A good reporter tells the whole story. It is not just about the Bottineaus and the Kidmans but about the perversion of the entire system. The perversion of the system deliberately "allowed" Jeffrey to die to acquire even more power.

Anonymous said...

Keep on fighting--there is strength in numbers but you wont get the numbers on your cause.

Not until... parents who abuse/neglect stop will the entire CAS system collapse.

Of course this will never happen. Instead you will go to your grave a bitter woman.

Anonymous said...

Not until you understand I am by no means a bitter women an advocate for children and agree, parental abuse and neg, is a problem. but until people like your self listen and read the laws that make no sence, and not even legal,
But the abuse of child protection is when we expect so much more of them is not an any less of a problem. We can not bury are heads in the sand, and do nothing.
Michele Lafantaisie.

Anonymous said...

re until , thank you, I know how dedicated you are..
I ask the poster above what have you done to help children? And if you truly believe there are not problems, sever problems at that, with Child protection agency's, I can and do speak from first hand experience. Take a look at the Hughes inquiry, and the Americans scrambling to make all social workers accountable, the grass roots organizations are changing things state by state. Mich is correct when she writes Canada, especially Ontario is heading in the wrong direction. Why do you oppose change, you cant be a social worker, most of us also want to see it. Unless your part of the problem. And we also know that's real. Who would not want change?


One must be buried in the sand not to understand that what is happening in legislation and with the agency's not even following it in most cases, is at a crisis level, it will implode sooner rather then later. No one denies that some parents cant parent, but even then mistakes are made. Children are sent home when they should not be, and others taken when no one should have ever made the call. The more innocent the parent is, if a child has been wrongfully apprehended that harder the system needs to find fault, do you not understand this, they need to justify it.
We need to put money and effort into keeping children in the natural family. It is best for the child. I could no longer work in a system that's focus changed.
Look up the women's name in the post above, call the Premier of the province and ask him, what she has done to help children in this Province,and far beyond. Strength in numbers she has, strength and integrity, she has in spades. And at least is never afraid to sign her name. Look up a few of the Bills she helped pass,when everyone said else said no.
Are schools are safer for many, thanks to Michele, play grounds are safer thanks to Michele, Health Canada is working on improving adverse drug reaction, reporting, and the list goes on, your children are safer because women like her do understand what it takes to make that happen, she advocate for many,and for all of her adult life people who know here are lucky to call her friend. They don't give the order of Canada to just anyone. I know you do not need me to defend you Mich, but many do know how hard you work on issues that matter, and you would not take on one unless you knew there was good reason too. And I to support you. L.
Kennedy, MSW. ex Child protection worker, NY City, Ottawa On. BC.
now what did I come to say, right!

I agree Jeffery's Law , and thank you Amanda, should be ombudsman's oversight.

Anonymous said...

New Mexico: Victory over CPS

Social worker investigations trigger many of the calls our legal staff receive from HSLDA members. Because public school officials, relatives, and others still view home education with suspicion or doubt, the slightest reason can sometimes provoke them to report a homeschool family to Child Protective Services. Though the majority of these reports or accusations are unfounded, the effects of social worker investigations on innocent families are long-lasting and traumatic. (In circumstances such as the following, where social workers clearly violate a homeschool family's Fourth Amendment rights, HSLDA may in its discretion take the case in an effort to establish legal precedent, even if the family is not a member.)

In the case of homeschooling dad Rick Bentley, the two social services investigations forced on his family were wholly unwarranted. A single father of two teenagers, Rick took a stand for his constitutional rights as a parent, an action that resulted in greater constitutional protection for all New Mexico parents.

In February 2004, an anonymous report to the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) alleged that Rick Bentley neglected both of his children and sexually abused his daughter. CYFD contacted Mr. Bentley, notifying him that allegations had been made against him, but not revealing the nature of the accusations.

Complying with the social workers' demand, Rick drove his children to the CYFD office (more than an hour's drive from their home) where they also met Rick's mother, who had driven 90 miles from Albuquerque to support her son and grandchildren. When the CYFD workers demanded to interview the children privately, Rick stated he would not allow the interview unless the children's grandmother was present. The social workers acquiesced, interviewed the children, and found that the reports of neglect and abuse they had received were baseless.

Rick was shocked and angry when the social workers told him the nature of the allegations against him. “I was angry at CYFD for not exercising any difference in judgment on an anonymous tip as opposed to someone who would give their name and list specific times and dates of the supposed problems,” he says. A month and a half later, the case was closed as unfounded.

That August, a police officer appeared at the Bentley home, informed Mr. Bentley that a second report of abuse and neglect had been made against him, and demanded that CYFD be allowed a second interview with the children—this time without other family members present. When Rick refused to yield his children without a court order, the officer threatened him with arrest and loss of custody of his children. Finally, Rick complied. “You feel helpless not knowing what to do,” he says.

After the officer left with his children, Rick drove to the CYFD office, where he had been told the officer was taking his children. Instead, he found that his children had been transported to a “safe house,” where they were being privately interviewed by social workers. Still unable to find any evidence against Mr. Bentley during this second interview, the social workers again concluded that the charges against him were completely groundless.

This time, however, Rick was a member of HSLDA, having joined in April 2004. He contacted our offices following the second round of unfounded allegations. In the summer of 2005, HSLDA filed a lawsuit on his behalf in the federal district court of New Mexico against CYFD and the police department. We argued that Mr. Bentley's Fourth Amendment right to privacy and his right to be free from unreasonable seizure had been violated.

Desiring to end the case quickly without admitting any wrongdoing, CYFD and the police department agreed in February 2006 to settle and to compensate Mr. Bentley for the violations of his parental rights.

The Bentleys are not the only winners, however. Partly in response to this case, the state of New Mexico revised its abuse and neglect investigation procedures to comply with federal law; social workers must now be specifically trained to understand and act in conformity with the constitutional rights of parents.

“It's terrifying to find a strange police officer at the door saying that if you don't comply with his demands, he'll take your children,” says HSLDA Staff Attorney Darren Jones, who worked with Jim Mason on the Bentley case. “This kind of constitutional violation is the nightmare of every parent.”

“I hope that others don't have to go through the hassle and fear and trauma,” says Rick Bentley. “My kids were fairly older children (in their early teens) during the investigations, and it was still tough on them. My whole intent [in filing a lawsuit] was mainly to get the social worker procedures changed.”

&ldquo:It was very enjoyable working with Darren Jones, Scott Somerville, Jim Mason, and Melchior Savarese, our attorney in Albuquerque,” he adds. “I appreciate them and I've already put in my renewal for two years for HSLDA. There's no way that I could have done this on my own.”

Darren Jones applauds Rick Bentley for guarding his rights as a father. “It just took one dad who dared to stand up for his rights,” he says. “He won, and he also helped every other parent in the state of New Mexico.”

Another place they dont belong

Anonymous said...

Many fail to understand the true issues in the child welfare system. Many are continuing to profit through jobs careers and acquiring children. They continue to give us slogans such as the "Best Interests of the Child," "MSBP," and "Children's Rights."

One has to see the real cost in human lives ruined to understand why reform is necessary.

The system has to become more accountable and transparent. Ombudsman oversight is essential.

Christie Blatchford only told part of the story. The whole story really needs to be told. Does she have the will power and the strength of character to do so? I doubt it. I challenge her to tell the whole story.

That epitome of conservative journalism, the Globe, will not allow its reporters to do so. It must fear that its presses might have to stop at 5 AM again... Only when it is considered safe news, will the whole, true story be told.

For now, the rape and abuse of the Canadian parent and child will go on unchecked.

The true heroes are Michelle Lafantasie, Andre Marin, Andrea Horvath, and Howard Hampton. They have lent their names and reputation to this cause.

Anonymous said...

"The more innocent the parent is... if a child has been wrongfully apprehended....the system needs work harder to find fault, do you not understand this, they need to justify it."

This needs to be high-lighted because it is so true.

In my experience, this drives the court process. The more innocent one is, the higher caliber lawyer they have to use against the parent because she/he will not give up. The workers' accusations have to become more creative and absurd. The case eventually gets thrown out because the CAS lawyer cannot put the workers on the stand. It ends up bankrupting the parents and grandparents. Who wins? The lawyers, psychologists... etc. Reputations and lives are ruined.

The children and parents are penalized for fighting against the system.

Listen to the interviews on Canada Court Watch for validation of this statement.

Innocence breeds persecution. Shame on all of us, the good people of Ontario.

Anonymous said...

Statement of Barbara Bryan, Davidson, North Carolina

Taxpayers—federal, state and local—as well as contributors to tax-exempt non-profit groups are being defrauded under color of law as children are injured and innocent families are dis-membered in and because of America’s foster care system.

Without the usually unquestioned spending of billions of dollars appropriated by Congress, changes would have to be made.

States routinely cannot find hundreds of children either taken or entrusted to their agents. Children suffering real abuse and neglect, and always emotional trauma, in instant pre-adoptive homes (as former foster homes have too often become), are ignored because of financial and adverse publicity consequences to agencies that removed and reallocated them.

The Third World “Rule of Suspect,” one decried by more in Congress today for imprisoned foreign enemy combatants, is alive and has been hell for parents and caretakers “suspected” of often clearly non-existent abuse and neglect of children. Anonymous reporting, ruled out in the old USSR in 1984 because it is so unreliable, is the sine qua non of America’s child protection reporting that consigns a child to foster care.

Paper Orphans are a tax-subsidized phenomenon of the monopoly (no other agency permitted to investigate or handle child abuse/neglect reports: see the shameful DeShaney decision of the USSC) designated child protection agencies who recommend “termination” of parental rights.

That is achieved with an immunizing stroke of a judge’s pen and both the agency and adopting strangers are eligible for adoption bonuses (per 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act). Most states sweeten the pot with post-adoption subsidies, now a part of nearly every out-of-agency adoption for some.

Sibling Date; Marry?

Very few children in America are genuine orphans. Most have relatives, family friends, neighbors or godparents who could, and are willing to, keep them if they must be moved temporarily or permanently from parental homes.

Taxpayers are defrauded and children are at risk for what already has happened—brothers and sisters, not knowing they were redistributed by foster care, dating each other or marrying—because too many agency directors encourage taking an expensive, heart-breaking route to purported child protection rather than allowing the child to remain somewhere in the natural family or minimally in frequent contact.

If “most of the prison population once was in the foster care system” is a true statement, the success and efficiency of the program is obvious.

The public pays for backpacks, teddy bears, memory books and more to make moving around among strangers or getting accustomed to never seeing one’s grandparents, siblings and other friends and relatives more palatable.

Foster care in America is a disaster: financially, legally, emotionally, physically and by nearly any other perspective or measure possible to consider it.

That so many influential people in Congress, media, entertainment, sports as well as other elected, appointed and employed positions of respect have themselves adopted children and may prefer not to reveal the entire story of the system has slowed exposure of long known problems.

Supremes Avoid Precedent Setting

Equally, it is clear that the U.S. Supreme Court prefers not to deal with human and civil rights issues relating the foster care and how a child is sent to it or fares in it as an “institution.” If the whole truth were told, if Constitutional law were applied to federal and state permissions to suspect, accuse, remove children, forever cut them off from natural family and to be financially rewarded for reallocating them, it would and will rival the eras of slavery, sterilizations, treatment of native Americans and more.

Currently, although known for years, two health issues that have been accepted by courts in America and still are—despite notice—are being upended in United Kingdom’s courts and professional review boards.

Specifically they are the imaginative but mythical “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” (MSP) for which there never has been scientific support and the concept of “Shaken Baby Syndrome” (SBS) for which there is considerable science proving that without severe accompanying neck injury shaking cannot be the cause of the “signs” of SBS when they are described.

Because foster homes have become pre-adoptive homes, and because belief about MSP allows existing and subsequent children to be removed from a presumptively homicidal lying mother, newborns are whisked from delivery rooms and into the arms of delighted people who are doubtless pleased that mute media ignores the reality of both syndromes’ discrediting.

Rare and brave federal auditors have tried for years to show the shambles of the foster care misspending and occasionally the damage to children and families. The Commonwealth of Virginia in the early 1990s, through the office of its then-Attorney General’s assistant, tried to beat a federal audit of its foster care system by covering its failure to visit homes every year. It had regulations changed to say every other year was all right. That has improved since.

The best cover up, and example of why Congress is looking (repeatedly) at the same errors that only have been refined as well as the spin given auditors who genuinely try to learn, was that HHS/OIG noticed 40 court papers had failed to check the now ASFA-trumped “reasonable efforts” block about keeping the family together.

Nunc pro tunc, Nice Try

Cleverly, but in vain, the State tried to substitute 40 nunc pro tuncs that, of course, did have the blocks checked after all.

Most people gave up arguing “reasonable efforts” because there simply were none made. When an agency decides to take a child—and most often they are instantly put into foster care without alternatives, especially when they are attractive and marketable, the biggest influence is the attitude (preservation or termination) of the agency director. (see Ray Sirry, PhD dissertation at VCU)

Nearly always the ticket to regaining children from foster care was/is a mental health evaluation, but only if it is done by person or group either informally or by contract connected with the accusing agency. The anti-Fifth Amendment breach, agreed to in desperation by parents believing their children can be liberated faster if they “cooperate,” turns out to be “evidence” gathering and the child/ren too seldom ever leaves foster care to return to natural family.

In 1995 I walked the halls of Congress to leave with each office four pieces of paper and the plea to NOT continue sending boatloads of money to states to be used as they had been and, in the intervening decade, become worse.

Using the analogy of gas, rags and matches, I explained that CONGRESS and its large appropriations is, in the end, the proximate cause of the problem that cannot be avoided in its tragic expression in foster (or hostage, albeit official and legal) care.

Unmonitored money, actions

Congress provides the gas. Without huge amounts of money to spend and gain, individuals who use and get it might well not warehouse children they cannot do better for than the real abuse that some of them suffered (but still did not need to become a Paper Orphan).

States provide the rags. State agencies accept the giant appropriations and often do a pass-through, creating “revenue enhancement” by upping the value of the dollars in creative ways that consultants figure how to gain. That includes how children are “labeled” as special needs, at risk and the like, sometimes just because they have not yet been adopted at various descending age limits.

Agencies strike the matches. It is at the local level that the usually unmonitored expenditures occur. Federal auditors, and judges also, read the “documentation” in the agency record or court case file of an accused. I would have removed my own children if what was once written about me in 1983-84 had been true.

Foster care is an unsupervised, largely completely unneeded and expensive money sink and family-fracturing cottage industry that never should be used at all unless there truly are orphans in America without relatives and friends who can take them in. Grandparents and others should, in appropriate situations, not be deprived of the benefits and services (when they are both or either) available to children but only to be given to cooperative strangers.

Every admiration a reasonable citizen has for his/her own home—mixed up and messy as is every one sometimes and in some too often—has been turned on its head by the ease with which parents may be “suspected” and children taken and put into foster care.

Legal Extortion?

Oh, and the legal extortion of instant child support orders: that has a lasting impact on IRS collections and HHS outflow. Parents mortgaging their homes to liberate children from foster care, people unable (and unwilling) to pay “child support” for children who could stay with relatives without cost and not dun the taxpayer, find liens against their earnings IF they can keep a job after their employers are called and businesses visited by investigators on the report.

Countless Americans, former taxpayers, even if the agency has its own attorneys overturn its actions against innocent parents, cannot get or keep employment. That is because their pre-employment credit checks show there is a problem so they are not hired. If they do work, their usually low wages are garnished, all to pay a debt they had no control in creating and should never have been made: one to foster care that injured the child and family.

A benefit of these hearings could and should be a federal law requiring states whose errors are proved, early or late, to make whole the injured citizen, especially one under the eternal mark of a child support lien that was needless ab initio.

States should be required to expunge and remove (after ensuring the injured parties have true and correct copies) all “documentation” used to break up the family that remains in courthouses. Currently there is no mechanism to make that paper vanish even if the agencies have purged their records.

Because I personally know and/or have closely communicated with countless hundreds of families whose children were taken into foster care, I know things that I also know have been communicated to every possibly interested person for decades. Too frequently the most often suggested and tried “solution” is to bring law suits to “reform foster care.”

Wrong answer.

Purse & Sword of State

We can re-form Frankenstein but we still have a monster. Children do not deserve to be punished for suspicions—even correct ones—against their parents or caretakers. I deal with false mistaken, mischievous or malicious allegations, too many arising from professionals hoping to distract an anticipated adverse professional report or malpractice action, hence “Shawna’s Bill” (ask for it).

Parents cannot overcome the power of the purse and sword that Congress ensures states have to defend against extraconstitutional but “legal” actions of their empowered but unmonitored agents. Top law enforcers in each state—the Office of Attorney General—also is the lawyer for the offending agencies. Guess whose interests are first and best served?

Taxpayers should not be subsidizing all: everything that happens before, during and consequences of foster care as well as local and larger payoffs for suits that finally succeed against those needless and injurious actions that led to foster care and what happens when a child’s natural protectors are prevented from being there for him/her.

Only by tell the whole truth, now and not another decade or two later when the worst offenders, originators and continuing proponents are retired or deceased, will Congress have the heart and stomach to stop funding family-fracturing, child-traumatizing foster care (ever more obvious pre-adoptive pipeline, as it became after ASFA and continuing Congressional appropriations made money more available).

If the right, reasonable, compassionate and Constitutional route is chosen, the current foster care system that fuels America’s holocaust of the home will go into the history books and stop dis-membering American families.

Anonymous said...

Barbara Bryon, 30 years of non stop work, now that women is a hero.
and one I hope will see all her efforts, rewarded with change that is so needed.

So many will have to see, what so few of us have, to understand how
many more generations of children can we allow to be harmed, how many more family's?

Don't be afraid to lend your voice, fear is the big seller today .
Years ago good police detective, said to me, you can either walk away and not say a thing,
choose to
not witness what you have
not hear what you have heard, know what you
now understand,
Allow the intimidation and divide the town, the good folks live
with fear of retaliation, or you can stand up and say NO. Not in my town and perhaps, just maybe, a few other brave
souls will join you,
perhaps not, but its always up to us to decide to do the right thing. I stood up and said no, it was good advice.
I think of it often.
michele

Anonymous said...

Let us not forget the glorious Mike Harris a man that destroyed any system remotely human in this Province, but of course he is a super hero isn't he because he is an adoptive father.

Shouldn't that alone let us know what has went on with the CAS?

Anonymous said...

To the people bashing Christie Blatchford LET US NOT FORGET that she was the person that broke the story about that Goddamn agency to start with.

I hope that everyone writes to get Bill 88 passed and that we can rein that ruthless agency in along with their 52 counterpart culprits.

They have gotten away with everything under the sun and it is time for them to be accountable finally.

How much more will they be allowed to get away with? The bough broke a long time ago and enough is enough.

They have more power then the police do.

Anonymous said...

Many believe that heightened media attention on Harris's private life was the reason for his decision. He had recently separated from his wife a second time and was in a relationship with Laura Maguire, the ex-wife of hockey player and referee Kevin Maguire. It was alleged, through court documents relating to a custody battle, that Laura had spent lavishly and neglected her three children while dating Harris. Faced with this negative publicity, Harris decided to stand aside; he later endorsed former Magna International President and CEO Belinda Stronach, in the 2004 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election.
And the money that buys the police.

Anonymous said...

Poor little child. Defenseless and without a voice. You're pain is over now, but how many others are out there suffering as you did?

I'm utterly gutted. I can only think of you and hope that you are at peace. My tears are in vain ... too little too late for you dear child.

I'm so sorry. I don't know what else to say but I dearly hope you are being embraced in the light of God's love without any memory of your life in this world.

Anonymous said...

Infant Dies Under Suspicious Circumstances

May 26, 2006 07:03 PM

Abuse the Cause of Infant's Death?
Ella Yamamoto visits her granddaughter's gravesite.


(KHNL) - Honolulu police have opened a child abuse investigation after a baby girl in foster care died a little more than a month ago.

The foster mom was just 19 years old and had a baby of her own. Her husband is 23.

The state licensed them to run a foster home.

K-lyn's sister's grave is not marked. But grandmother Ella Yamamoto doesn't need a headstone to tell her where her sister is buried.

K-lyn asks, "Is she right there in the dirt?"

"Yeah," Ella answers

Ella has had to answer a lot of difficult questions since two month-old Alana Rickard-Cowell died. For some she doesn't have an answer.

Ella recalls, "First time I seen her I fell in love with her. She was cute."

When Alana was born she tested positive for exposure to crystal methamphetamine so Child Protective Services placed her with a foster family.

They took these photos. Alana appeared healthy, but one day her foster mom found her not breathing.

Ella explains, "C-P-S calls me up and says we have to rush to the hospital because Alana is in critical condition."

"I went to the hospital and she was in a comatose state. We all got to hold her and I had to be strong because everybody was crying," says Ella.

Alana died April 23rd and for Ella, sorrow has turned to anger.

The baby had fractured bones on both her arms and legs and detectives with the Honolulu Police Department's child abuse division are investigating.

Ella demands answers, "I want to know what happened how she became got broken bones how she stopped breathing."

Ella knew Alana's foster mom had an 18-month old of her own but KHNL leared a fact Ella didn't know. They gave Alana to a 19 year-old.

Ella responds, "OK, now I'm more mad. That is not right what they did to her."

Anonymous said...

Man Charged After Foster Child Dies in His Care
Foster Father Charged with Murder
Updated: 5:39 AM May 9, 2006
Dana Brueck


Investigators say the second child is expected to survive after suffering blows by his foster father.

No one can say how long the brothers were in this family's care. One of them is now in a Milwaukee hospital, the other is dead.

"It's a tragedy for all involved," Dave Titus with Dodge County Human Services says.
Investigators say the tragedy started at a home in Waupun, a foster home to a couple of young brothers.

"More than likely, the foster home license will be canceled at some point," Titus says.

The suspect, Shane Marquardt, now resides at the Dodge County Jail. He appeared in court by video conference before a tearful crowd, including his wife. The 31-year-old house designer faces charges of first degree reckless homicide and first degree reckless injury.

"He stated he just lost it, lost his temper because, I believe, one of the children vomited in his bed," Dodge County District Attorney Steve Bauer says.

The criminal complaint against Marquardt says the suspect woke up the two boys around eleven o'clock Friday morning, then noticed the three-year-old had thrown up in his bed.

"The defendant here struck the one child two to three times as hard as he could with his fist into the abdomen of the child," Bauer says.

Then, according to the complaint, Marquardt also struck the younger brother, as he would punch the punching bag in his basement.

"He stated that he then put the children to bed and later [the three-year-old] started vomiting which ultimately caused him to call EMS," the complaint states.

An autopsy shows the three-year-old suffered severe internal injuries.

"This is a criminal case. There are allegations ... have to prove them. Based on evidence, I'm confident we'll be able to do that," Bauer says.

Meantime, Titus says an internal investigation is underway. But he defends the system designed to protect children in need.

"Someone asked me how did this fall through the cracks. It really isn't a fall through the cracks issue. There was criminal behavior. It happened. The individual responsible will be dealt with," Titus says.

Marquardt has no prior criminal record. The judge set bail at $60,000. Marquardt is due back in court on May 18.

HOW MANY CHILDREN HAVE TO DIE, ONE IS TO MANY, WHO COULD DO THIS??
TO A SICK BABY??
HOW PLACED THE CHILDREN AND MAYBE THEY WONT FOSTER ANY MORE???
SURE THEY WILL FOR ANOTHER AGENCY,
WHERE IS GOD?
WHERE IS THE AGENCY, AND SOCIAL WORKERS, THE GOVERNMENTS THAT FUND THE MURDER, HOSTAGE TAKING, FAMILY BREAK UPS, WHERE IS THIS CHILDS MOTHER? DONT TELL US THEY ARE ALL ON CRACK, WE KNOW HOW THIS SYSTEM WORKS, and its NOT about children.Please stop the abuse of children. Stop the agencys taking children for little reasons to be killed in care.
Like the system in the urkrein, the children are beaten in care, by teens, the girls are postitues the young men are in prison and many have died, only a few have ever made it out to be apoted. And they take the children, they are left as babys banging and rocking, damaged because no one held them loved them.

From foster home to group hell to prison, or the streets.

Ontario cannot handle adpotions the Minister web site has a picyure of an 11 year old boy, he does not live with his siblings, how sad, he is 11 years old, and behind in school, and looks so sad, he also has every feature of fetal alchol syndrom. classic, yet its not mentioned, will the adopting parents be told?? or will they return him if they cant handle it. God bless this child.

They make a mess of the adoptions, promise a pre screened foster home a young baby girl , then give her back to her mother against a court order, that CHILD needed to be adopted. But no that child was messed up and in the US at 5 in foster care, found with her drunk mother out of the country, do they ever learn and that was Ontario . its NOT the only time its happened, they take children they should not, and others they should they mess up and leave to suffer, all around the children suffer.

Anonymous said...

They both OVERREACT AND UNDERREACT. They always have, and until they have accountability nothing will change. And the system was never about children to start with, nor is it now which is quite evident.

CAS must have oversight, we can say it over and over again. For anyone reading this blog write and get Bill 88 passed.

Anonymous said...

For those of us who are not sure or have come across this site recently, can you tell us who to write to to get bill 88 passed, or is there a petition that can be signed? Thanks for the info.

Anonymous said...

I hope that those disgusting, vile, parasites that killed Jeffrey get a full 25 years. I also hope that the agency that facilitated this is held to account for it in some way. If it means the Children's laywer going after them legally then GOOD it is about time that they took responsibility!!!

Anonymous said...

To the poster above re: who to write to this is the website of the Ontario MPP's. You can find your MPP on the site. If you are not sure of what political party you support (which may be the case, as often people are not as engaged in politics, or confused by the political system and this is not a put down) it would not hurt to write to the MPP's from all of the parties in your area.

http://www.ontariotenants.ca/government/mpp.phtml

In addition please copy your support in the cc line to MPP Andrea Horwath - who has really been a champion for Jeffrey in making Bill 88 to get Ombudsman oversight her email is on the website.

Just copy the website and paste it into your address line on your computer if you cannot get into the site from this blog.

And please for anyone that could not go to the rally do your part, just a simple small few words can help.

You only need to say this " I (and place your name in spot) support Bill 88, Ombudsman Amendment Act (Children's Aid Societies), 2006, as a concerned citizen of Ontario. The 53 CAS agencies have had no indepedent oversight for over one hundred years. In the name of Jeffrey Baldwin, a beautiful child killed in CCAS care, please support this urgent bill to be passed". You will need to include your name and address and number of where to be reached if you want the email to be considered valid. If you write other then email it is the same. They do not consider letters without identifying information to be valid.

If you are a former crown ward, or if you were adopted by an abuser then please also indicate this to your MPP.

Hope this helps.

Anonymous said...

Sorry the template did not have a spell check - her is the corrected version of what you could say.....

“I (and place your name in spot) support Bill 88, Ombudsman Amendment Act (Children's Aid Societies), 2006, as a concerned citizen of Ontario. The 53 CAS agencies have had no independent oversight for over one hundred years. In the name of Jeffrey Baldwin, a beautiful child killed in CCAS care, please support this urgent bill to be passed".

Anonymous said...

MPP Horwath has a petition that can be signed, as well so does Dufferin Voca at http://www.fixcas.com/

Simply ask for the petition from MPP Horwath and she will provide one.

In addition for a glimpse into what has went on with the CAS, and as to what is going on today please do read Dufferin VOCA - it has a number of different groups who have been concerned about the CAS for years connected to the site, as well as groups of the very people who were involved with the CAS - and boy does everyone one mass have a lot to say.

Anonymous said...

Baldwin trial waits one more week for parole decision
Last updated May 30 2006 10:22 AM EDT
CBC News

The final step in the sentencing of a Toronto couple found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of their five-year-old grandson in 2002 has been delayed to June 9.

Jeffrey Baldwin weighed less than a health one-year-old when he died just before his sixth birthday. (CBC)

Judge David Watt says he needs more time to decide on when the couple will be eligible for parole.
The grandparents, Elva Bottineau, 54, and Norman Kidman, 53, had pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder after the boy, Jeffrey Baldwin, who had starved under their care as a foster child, died of septic shock – a reaction to a severe infection.
FROM APRIL 9, 2006: Grandparents guilty in child's muder
Their second-degree murder conviction brought an automatic sentence of life in prison, but the judge must decide on whether to increase the parole eligibility from the minimum of 10 years to a maximum of 25.
The boy, who was put into the care of the grandparents without a proper background check, was kept in a locked room and forced to sleep in his own excrement. When he died just short of his sixth birthday, he weighed less than a healthy one year old.

Norman Kidman and Elva Bottineau were found guilty of second-degree murder. (CBC sketch)

When emergency crews found Jeffrey's body, it was covered with sores and abrasions.
After the original verdict, Dr. Barry McLellan, the province's chief coroner, announced an inquest and, in a release, said it would delve into "the Toronto Catholic Children's Aid Society's involvement in Jeffrey's placement and the role that agency, and others, had in monitoring his well-being prior to his death.

Anonymous said...

Justice delayed is justice DENIED!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the info, this will certainly help me and others who wish to do what we can for Little Jeffrey and for other children. I encourage every one to write today, for Jeffrey.

Anonymous said...

In regards to the article on Dufferin VOCA by Craig and Marc Keilburger of Free the Children. First I applaud these young men for being a voice for children. I also agree that children should be equal to adults. This is in fact why I am so enraged that the Minister is working with a group of adopters and baby brokers who had a motto “adoption is the price of a car, it could be a luxury sedan, or a compact model”.

If children are equal then why are they allowed to be bought and sold? If they are equal then why does Canada not ban private adoption the same way that Great Britain does? And it is banned in Great Britain which is why Tony Blair was so disgusted when the Internet twins were literally purchased by British citizens in the infamous, Kilshaw case. If people take issue with him for other political reasons that is fine, but at least he did express his revulsion for such a thing. The Minister here is actively working with the very industry that sells children to people such as the Kilshaws.

While I support a Children’s Ombudsman, this should not detract from the current Ombudsman from having oversight of the 53 CAS agencies of Ontario. And if the Minister thinks this is a way of barring Andre Marin then it is shameful.

At this point, it would not hurt to have both in fact – but before we even get to a Children’s Ombudsman - we need an adult one with legal experience, passion, intelligence, integrity, honesty, and dedication. Andre Marin is one of the best Ombudsman’s that Ontario has ever seen. He needs to be in power and now!!!

Craig and Marc Keilburger have been long time activists for children and they also have intelligence, integrity, honesty and dedication. Why can’t we have both a Children’s Ombudsman and an Ontario Ombudsman Minister Chambers?

And why are you working with so called “experts” that glorify the loss of a child from their entire family. If we are going to talk about children’s rights they have a right to NOT BE BOUGHT AND SOLD, and they have a right to remain with their families of origin UNLESS they are truly in harm of being abused.

Abuse is not “social cleansing” though is it? Abuse is not deeming one as being abusive due to their marital status is it? NO IT IS NOT but if we know anything about the CAS we will know that this is precisely how the system got started in the first place.

Anonymous said...

You are most welcome, thanks for asking the question.

Anonymous said...

Justice delayed is justice DENIED!

Justice delayed, is well thought out justice, from well thinking men or women, that do not want pit-bull lawyers making appeals in the worst case of child abuse in Canadian history. The judge is smart, he is doing a good job!

It is hard to be patient, let's hope the sentence gives the two of them 25 years!!!

Anonymous said...

But then justice delayed for too long is justice denied, at the same time as well.

Anonymous said...

I hope Justice Watt gives the same sentence as this monster got below.....


Woman Gets 25 Years in Adoptee's Death
By MATTHEW BARAKAT
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 25, 2006; 2:23 PM

MANASSAS, Va. -- A woman who beat to death a 2-year-old girl she had adopted from a Siberian orphanage was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison.

"'I'm sorry' doesn't even come close ... That's the way I feel," Peggy Sue Hilt told Prince William Circuit Judge William Hamblen before he imposed the sentence.


Hilt, 34, of Wake Forest, N.C., told police she had failed to bond with her newly adopted daughter, Nina, and flew into a rage June 30 when the girl wouldn't stop crying. She repeatedly punched, kicked and stepped on the child, who died the next day.

Hilt pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in March. The 25-year term exceeds the sentencing guideline range of 12 to 21 years.

"This child did not die from a single blow. Her injuries were the result of a course of conduct over an extended period of time," Hamblen said, calling Hilt's actions "completely inexplicable."

The fatal beating occurred in the Hilts' North Carolina home. The next day, after she and her husband had traveled to Manassas for a family trip, Hilt called 911 to say the girl had stopped breathing.

Hilt's attorney, William Stephens, said his client had been prescribed medication years ago to treat depression but had stopped taking it. She also was an alcoholic who hid her drinking from her husband and family, he said.

Stephens said Hilt cannot appeal because the sentence was handed down as part of a guilty plea.

Nina was adopted by Peggy and Christopher Hilt to join another girl, now 5, who had been adopted from the Ukraine. The girl has been removed from the home.

Anonymous said...

How did the demonstration go? Or are you all talk, no action, winnie-boys!

Anonymous said...

The case of the adopted child, and the women beating her to death, I read Matthew Reed was taken from his natural mother, because she had a history of depression, so why did this women ever adopt, and Matthew Reed was NOT harmed by his own mother, he was murdered in foster hostage care.

The women uses the excuse she never bonded, as shrinks write more and more, parent alienation syndrome, attachment disorders, its something all so called child protection agencies subscribe to, breaking bonds, family ties, and forever harming the child, this women's lame excuse, she killed the child, because she did not bond. Children are almost always safer with natural parents, if that can not work, they should be laced with relatives some one that has a natural bond to the child. Not all adoptive parents fail to bond with children, but it happens far to often, By the time CAS is finished its games, they child may be to damage to bond. Well this is not something they don't know, they just don't care, like are lying Minister Chambers.

Anonymous said...

Jacko: More Adopting Could Be in Future

Sources tell me that Michael Jackson’s weekend trip to Japan was not all about publicity and quick self-gratification for a dimmed star with no fans.

Jackson toured orphanages perhaps with a reason: I’m told he’s looking for more kids to add to his current collection of three.

He may be hedging his bets since his first wife, Debbie Rowe, wants hers back from him and is gaining ground in the courts.

Why Japanese authorities would let Jackson leave their country with children would be a good question. He doesn’t really have enough money to pay off officials there; the trip is underwritten by a promoter.

And certainly adoption laws are stringent enough in Japan that there would be some kind of background check. You’d think standing trial for child molestation would be an impediment to adoption, wouldn’t you?

Jackson is all about timing. He told London newspapers last week that he was in their city because he wanted to live there. None of those reports mentioned the real reason, as we did: he was giving a day-long deposition for the imminent Marc Schaffel lawsuit.

Since Jackson will not appear in person for the suit, his video deposition will be used as testimony, and should make for a hot ticket in court.

He should just call the CCAS they will give him a family, in Ont. who cares as long as it makes money right.

Anonymous said...

Jacko: More Adopting Could Be in Future

Sources tell me that Michael Jackson’s weekend trip to Japan was not all about publicity and quick self-gratification for a dimmed star with no fans.

Jackson toured orphanages perhaps with a reason: I’m told he’s looking for more kids to add to his current collection of three.

He may be hedging his bets since his first wife, Debbie Rowe, wants hers back from him and is gaining ground in the courts.

Why Japanese authorities would let Jackson leave their country with children would be a good question. He doesn’t really have enough money to pay off officials there; the trip is underwritten by a promoter.

And certainly adoption laws are stringent enough in Japan that there would be some kind of background check. You’d think standing trial for child molestation would be an impediment to adoption, wouldn’t you?

Jackson is all about timing. He told London newspapers last week that he was in their city because he wanted to live there. None of those reports mentioned the real reason, as we did: he was giving a day-long deposition for the imminent Marc Schaffel lawsuit.

Since Jackson will not appear in person for the suit, his video deposition will be used as testimony, and should make for a hot ticket in court.

He should just call the CCAS they will give him a family, in Ont. who cares as long as it makes money right.

Anonymous said...

Help vow too late to save bus girl

Dad: Letter came day my boy killed Amber

BY NANCIE L. KATZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Albert James says letter from city agency pledging help for his son arrived the day Amber Sadiq died.
Amber Sadiq
Heartfelt card is sent to grieving kin

The father of the boy whose school bus prank killed 8-year-old Amber Sadiq says he finally got a letter promising desperately needed help for his troubled son — on the day of the tragedy.

In an exclusive interview, Brooklyn dad Albert James said he had been trying for 16 months to get after-school day care help for his 8-year-old son, who has serious behavioral problems.

"If I would have gotten these vouchers before, maybe this would have prevented the accident from happening," said James, 25.

The dad also charged that the boy was improperly booted from school and that officials ignored his pleas just hours before the accident to let the child return — a contention a source familiar with the situation denied.

James spoke to the Daily News days after his son sneaked onto an empty school bus and released the emergency brake — sending the vehicle hurtling into his schoolmate as she walked home from Public School 161 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, last Monday.

On Friday, city officials, in keeping with the wishes of Amber's forgiving family, declined to charge the boy.

James describes his son as shocked, sorry and uncomprehending of "what he has done."

"I just want my son to get the proper help and hopefully put this all behind me," he said. "I'm very sorry for the loss of Amber. Words can't express how I feel. ... It broke me down in tears."

The father of three said he got the long-awaited letter from the Administration for Children's Services approving him for "daycare services for the children so they remain safe" on the day Amber died.

In a statement, ACS acknowledged working with the father since January last year, providing parenting, medical and other aid, and said it was evaluating its services.

The single father said he's worked nine hours a day to support his sons since their mother, Sophia Morales, left last year for Florida. His 7-year-old lives with him, and his 5-year-old is staying with family in Trinidad.

On Friday, James and Morales agreed to put their 8-year-old son in a therapeutic foster home.

Lacking money for child care, James said, he had to depend on the boy's ailing great-grandmother to care for his active, uncontrollable boy during the day.

She was watching him last Monday when she fell asleep. He sneaked out of the house and onto the school bus shortly after 3 p.m. Why the boy wasn't in school is a matter of dispute. James said his son had been suspended — for trying to climb aboard another school bus three days before Amber's death.

James said that just hours before the tragedy, he went to the school to meet with PS 161 officials — and was told the boy could not return to school without a letter from the regional superintendent.

That would violate Department of Education policy, which forbids schools barring elementary school children. Suspended children are supposed to be assigned to detention rooms.

A Department of Education spokesman declined comment. But a source familiar with the situation denied that any official barred the boy from school.

Last year, officials at PS 161 diagnosed his son as needing special education, James said. At first he winced at the label and refused services. Months later, he said, he went back and asked for help.

"He had behavioral problems, it was never fights. Just not listening, and running around. They won't let him come on school trips," he said.

Among the boy's 40 absences this year are at least three week-long suspensions and other days he was told the boy couldn't attend unless a guardian could stay, James said.

"They say he just runs around and they're not going to chase him," he added.

James, who was born in Crown Heights, said he got his GED and finished a two-year business school program with a 3.3 GPA in January 2005, then began working as an office manager for a law firm. He hopes to become an engineer.

Next door to his building is Amber's home, where her aunt Lucy Caba recalled James as a mischievous, mean child who also pulled pranks — like sending false fire alarms.

"I can't remember that stuff," he said. "But look at me now. I've been paying taxes since I was 14. Everyone knows I'm a hardworking father. I don't hang out on streetcorners."

Heartfelt card is sent to grieving kin

Albert James said he had wanted to visit Amber Sadiq's family and apologize to them from the moment he learned his son was responsible for the 8-year-old Brooklyn girl's death.

But he was tormented by what the appropriate move would be — and whether the family would accept his message.

James, 25, finally bought an American Greetings card on Wednesday, and got it to Amber's family on Saturday.

"Our hearts go out to you in deepest sympathy," read the greeting. "Although it is hard to put into words what we would like to say, our thoughts of deepest sympathy go out with you today."

James added these words: "Our heartfelt condolences to your family. We are deeply sorry for your loss. ... To the Sadiq family, with lots of love."

Amber's stepfather, Wascar Herrera, offered this simple message to James: "Thank you for the card."

Like ALWAYS , now two familys loss, and the 8 year old? will he suffer for the rest of his life, why did they not send in some afer care for the children. Its less then foster care, and ther sevices PLEASE. If they had listened to what this father needed, none of this would have happened.

Anonymous said...

And a not on children rights, I think ANY ONE that thinks they need separate rights is sick, it is what allows children to be sold, it is why children are taken, please read what's wrong with children rights, they have them. parents do not, it allows CAS to remove a child living in poverty, because they have the right to better families. it allows CAS to hostage care children from families with small business, i.e. farms, as children labour laws are twisted here to mean no chores,
Yet many adopt teens to work on farms and treat them worse them slaves.
It allows children to be sold to the highest bidder in sex trade. Children have rights to have sex after all,

It allows you teens to do what ever they want, call CAS for help or the police any where in Ont, and you will be told its a child centred law, Parents have no rights but your children do. The state is really the parent and they see our children as their Own investment.
If they wanted to invest in children
they would have done a great deal more years ago to put an end to days like today, that will harm every child in some not yet known way, for others sitting in the ER across the province with small children unable to breath with asthma and lung or cardio conditions, because of the air quality THIS IS MASS CHILD ABUSE.
as Ontario butts out and fires up another coal plant. Nothing this government does is honest or even logical.
How can we trust the Broken Promises, we cannot, they wont even give the Children's aid societies oversight, and send out letters that they are , lol we know the gig, its up Minister Chambers its really up.

Read Bill 107 for more shocking news Human Rights, god help us all, we are about to lose even that.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely, and worse the Ministry and the baby brokers working with them are going to convince society that their screening is so magical and wonderful that none of this ever happens. They are going to "build" families, they are going to create "forever safe, forever families". And in doing so they will be teaching society the most dangerous lesson ever - we never need to look after they screen them. Not all foster families are abusive, nor are adoptive one's but the numbers are abnormally high overall.

Before they start giving people other people's children, and before they have the nerve to even suggest that these people will be "forever safe" they better read this testimony. Bill 210 offers some checks, and it offers homestudies but it does not address the real problem which is that abusers become abusers after they get the children. And people as evil as Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman do not announce to these agencies that they are abusive. People are not "forever safe" as they adopt or foster, any more then families are "forever unsafe" due to their bloodline. The whole thing is ridiculous, but it is also quite dangerous overall.

And I agree many times the kids do not bond with the adopters as they have lost their families, and have been shipped to God knows how many foster families before they are adopted. So isn't it all that more absurd to expect them to just fit in and be like total strangers??

Jeffrey's siblings are not going to be just like strangers. Not all family members are monsters like the murderers in this nightmare either.

What is wrong with child protection is that very little has changed over the years. I didn't know how bad it still was - it is chilling. Now let us ask ourselves is sending children to the homes of strangers, expecting them to bond, expecting them to cure their problems, doing home studies on them that are marginal microscopes into the minds of the strangers, allowing them to be deemed as being safe simply as they are not related to the child a cure for child abuse or a recipe? And especially is it a recipe if no help is afforded to help the child with the trauma, and none to the stranger either. Leaving them to sort it out on their own, and all the while saying to everyone that the situation is totally safe and fine. If the CAS actually had to release actual information about their experiments it would be very interesting to know how many of these "forever safe, forever families" completely implode.

Look at the foster mother of the siblings, who I bet did care, and was not abusive, what help is giving someone three children and no information about any of them or very little? Secrecy though - have to keep the secrecy. Secret organizations.

Why are only those who the CAS cast as being a villian a villian, and only those who they glorify as being a saint a saint? Elva was a foster mother, it is chilling!

In the year of 2006 Canada's worst case of child abuse ends up being from a vile abuser who was also a foster mother?

And all too often the only difference with foster care and adoption is either temporary abuse or permanent.

MASHA TESTIFIES BEFORE CONGRESS: " NO ONE FROM ANY OF THE ADOPTION AGENCIES EVER CAME TO CHECK ON ME
Last week Masha Allen testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about her abuse at the hands of the US adoption industry and her adoptive father Matthew Mancuso. Her submitted testimony is below.

To read more about Masha and her case go to Bastardette's Masha postings here ,here, and here. These blogs also contain numerous links for further research.

Testimony submitted by
Masha Allen
to the
House Energy and Commerce Committee
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Oversight Hearing on Child Pornography on the Internet
May 3, 2006
Washington, DC


My name is Masha Allen. I am 13 years old and live near Atlanta, Georgia with my mother, Faith Allen. When I was five years old Matthew Mancuso, a Pittsburgh businessman who was a pedophile, adopted me. I was rescued almost three years ago when the FBI raided his home in a child pornography sting. After I was rescued I learned that during the five years I lived with Matthew he took hundreds of pornographic pictures of me and traded them over the Internet. Thank you for conducting this hearing. Also, thank you for letting me have Nancy Grace here. Nancy is really special to my family and me. She has been an advocate for me and lots of other kids. The Internet is everywhere in my story. You need to do something about it right away.

I was born on August 25, 1992 in Novochakhtinsk, Russia. For the first three years of my life I lived at home with my mother and siblings. My mother was an alcoholic. When I was three years old she tried to kill me. She stabbed me in the neck and I almost died. The government took me away from her and I went to live in an orphanage near my family’s home in Russia.

Living in the orphanage was scary and dangerous. There was constant noise and the older children abused the younger ones. I was afraid all the time. I kept all of my belongings under my pillow because I was afraid they would be stolen. After living in the orphanage for two years I found out that I was going to be adopted.

Matthew visited the orphanage a couple of times. He seemed nice. He gave me presents. I asked him if he was married and if I would have a mother but he said no. He adopted me in Russia in July 1998. After that we left Russia and traveled to his house outside of Pittsburgh. The abuse started the night I got there.

Matthew didn’t have a bedroom for me. He made me sleep in his bed from the very beginning. He molested me all the time. He made me dress up in adult’s clothes and even pretended to marry me. Sometimes he kept me chained in the basement. Because he didn’t want me to grow up, he only let me eat a little bit of food – plain pasta, raw vegetables, no meat. Five years after I went to live with him I had only gained a little bit of weight. When I was rescued I was 10 years old but I only wore a size 6X.

Matthew let me go to school and sometimes play with friends. But he told me if I ever told anyone what was happening that something bad would happen to me. Even though I was the size of a five year old when I was ten, no one at my school ever said anything to anyone. No one from the adoption agency ever came to check on me to make sure I was OK. I never told anyone about the abuse because I was afraid and I thought no one cared.

A lot of people ask me how any could let a pedophile adopt a little girl. I didn’t know very much about my adoption until my lawyer investigated everything. Now I know there were three adoption agencies involved in my adoption by Matthew. The first was Families Thru International Adoption in Indiana. I think Matthew found them on the Internet. He went to an office they had in New Jersey. The state of New Jersey found out that they were operating without a license and closed them down. The same people who worked for that agency just started a new agency in the same office in New Jersey that they called Reaching Out Thru International Adoption.

The two agencies are fighting over who was really responsible for Matthew adopting me. But the name of Families Thru International Adoption is on the home study, the immigration paperwork and the Russian government documents. I think Matthew also paid Families Thru International Adoption. Reaching Out Thru International Adoption was really just the same agency and the same people with a different name. A third agency did Matthew’s home study to adopt me. They were in Pittsburgh and were called the Family Health Council. But they just changed their name too, to Adagio Health.

I found out after I was safe that none of these agencies asked Matthew many questions. They never really checked him out. They showed him pictures of me, probably on the Internet, before he had a home study to adopt me. In some of the pictures they showed him of me from the orphanage I was naked. He told them he was divorced and had a daughter that he wasn’t close to. I found out later that the reason his daughter didn’t talk to him is that he molested her too. While I lived with Matthew no one from any of the adoption agencies ever came to check on me even though the Russian government requires it. Since my story came out we found out that two other kids – a boy from Romania and a girl from Russia – were adopted by pedophiles too. Just so you’ll know, fourteen other Russian kids have actually been murdered by their adoptive parents in America. I’m sure there are other kids in trouble. But no one seems to care about any of this. When I told my story in public for the first time all the adoption agencies, not just Matthew’s tried to cover up my story.

I lived with Matthew for five years. The whole time he starved and molested me. The whole time he took a lot of pictures of me. I didn’t know until later that he was putting my pictures on the Internet to trade and maybe sell to other pedophiles. I was rescued when the FBI discovered that Matthew had a lot of child pornography on his computer. They came to raid his house. They didn’t know I would be there.

When the FBI arrested Matthew I was taken to the hospital, examined and then put in foster care. My foster mother was Faith Allen. She understood what I was going through because she was sexually abused when she was little. She was a foster child in Georgia when she was growing up. As soon as I went to live with her I felt safe. She adopted me on May 14, 2004.

Matthew was prosecuted by the US Attorney’s office in Pittsburgh and on September 25, 2003 he was convicted on child pornography charges for all the pictures he had on his computer. He was only sentenced to fifteen years in prison for that. I was afraid he would get out of jail too soon. He was convicted again in Pennsylvania state court on August 23, 2005 of eleven criminal acts for some of the things he did to me. He was sentenced last November to 35 years in prison. I was really upset that he didn’t receive a harder sentence. I was even more upset that he was sent to a hospital in Massachusetts so he could be rehabilitated. A person like Matthew can never be rehabilitated. Plus in this hospital prison he has free health care, free mental health services and he can read magazines, play ping-pong and have hobbies. No one cared about rehabilitating me. I just lost my Medicaid and my mom has to work double hard to pay for the things I need while Matthew lays around the hospital playing games.

I was really mad that Matthew didn’t get harder sentences and that he went to an easy prison. But I got much more upset when I found out about the pictures of me that he put on the Internet. I had no idea he had done that. When I found out about it I asked our lawyer to get them back. He told me we couldn’t do that. Then I found out that they would be there forever. That’s when I got mad and decided to go public with my story.

Usually, when a kid is hurt and the abuser goes to prison, the abuse is over. But because Matthew put my pictures on the Internet the abuse is still going on. Anyone can see them. People are still downloading them – we get notices from the FBI every time someone is arrested for it. I want every single one of them to go to jail and really be punished. But that’s a problem too.

I found out last summer that if someone downloads a song off the Internet the penalty is three times worse than if someone downs child pornography. I couldn’t believe it! How can this be? That’s when I decided that we had to change the laws about downloading child porn. Senator Kerry and Senator Isakson and Congressman Gingery and Congressman Tierney introduced bills in Congress that make the penalty the same as downloading songs. That was a few months ago. There hasn’t been a vote on it. I want every single member of Congress to sponsor these bills and I want the Congress to pass them right away.

There are a lot of cases of people who downloaded my pictures and I want every single one of them to be punished as much as possible. There might be more pictures of me on the Internet than any other real child. The police told my lawyer that a lot of child pornographers – more than half even – have my picture on their computers. And there are a lot of other kids like me too. The people who are doing this should be afraid. We know who they are. A lot of the people downloading these pictures are professionals. They are doctors and teachers and ministers. We’re going to put THEIR pictures on the Internet and tell people what they are doing. People stopped downloading songs when they found out they could be sued. We’re going to sue these guys too – every single one we find out about. I want to tell them, “You’re not doing this in secret anymore. Everyone can find out who you are!”

I’m more upset about the pictures on the Internet than I am about what Matthew did to me physically. A lot of people are surprised that I wanted to go public with my story. But I’ve been on the Internet since I was five years old. Going on a television show wasn’t going to hurt me. I did it because I didn’t think anyone was doing enough about the things that happened to me and to a lot of other kids. Talking to John Quinones and Nancy Grace has helped me. They were my champions. I feel in charge of my story because of them. I know they will help me to help other kids like me. People need to know about this stuff. The adults who let this happen have just tried to cover it up.

You have to do something about the Internet. Matthew found the adoption agency on the Internet. They let him look at my pictures from Russia on the Internet even though they didn’t really know anything about him. Other kids have been adopted by pedophiles the same way. Matthew put my pictures on the Internet after he got me. People are still downloading them even though he has been in prison for two years. We don’t even know whether he still makes money for them even though he’s in jail. Even now that I’m safe the Internet is still a dangerous place for me to go. The police detective who found Matthew’s house for the FBI said I should never go to chat rooms even for fun things because they almost always have predators.

Ten years ago I was a scared little girl in a Russian orphanage. For five years I was held hostage by a monster. But in the last two years a lot of amazing things have happened. John Quinones and Nancy listened to me and told my story to the whole world. I called my Congressman, Dr. Gingery, who didn’t even know me. He introduced a bill in Congress right away to help me and other kids like me. Because of all these things, I believe I can do something for other kids so they don’t have to go through what I did.

Some people say we can’t control what’s on the Internet but that’s ridiculous. If we can put a man on the moon, we can make the Internet safe for kids. That’s just common sense. I’m going to work hard to protect other kids and make sure people who hurt them are punished. I hope you will help me. You can start by passing Masha’s Law right away! That would be a good start!


Witness contact information:

James Marsh, Esquire
Marsh, Menken and Weingarden, PLLC
81 Main Street
Suite 305
White Plains, NY 10606
914.686.4456

Anonymous said...

schools also to blame even in Ont, they have kicked children out and done more harm. A couple of years ago a 7 year old little girl was denied access for having an allergic reaction, no tutor, no nothing, why liability concerns,is it right hell no, then the CAS can come along and take the child ( but they did not) for education neglect. I know this was my child I called the CAS for help trying to get my child back into school, they did nothing, we had to hire human rights lawyer and take it to legislation as well, in hopes it will never happen to another child.The passed the Bill, nutty not do, so a school can bar a child and the board will help, so will the trustee, what a world. a culture of meanness all leads to genocide. its still happening.

Anonymous said...

(New York -WABC, May 26, 2006) - The 8-year-old boy accused of causing the bus to run over a little girl has been ordered placed in foster care. The girl, Amber Sadiq, was run over and killed Monday by a school bus in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Related Links

* Eyewitness News Video
* Images from the Story

Police say the troubled boy fiddled with the controls and caused the bus to roll backwards over Amber.

N.J. Burkett at family court in Brooklyn.

There were two major developments here this afternoon. First the child's father has been stripped of custody of the child. He will be placed in foster care for at least the next eight months.

Another major development is that the NYPD has dropped charges against the boy, which is essentially a technicality because the city could file its own charges at any time.

The little boy was arrested on Monday after he commandeered an empty school bus by releasing the brakes. The bus rolled 100 feet and ran over the child's second grade classmate.

Amber Sadiq was crushed by the runaway bus and the boy was charged with criminally negligent homicide. It was later learned that the boy had tried the same thing unsuccessfully just days earlier and was already under investigation by child welfare authorities for missing over 40 days of school.

Earlier this week Mayor Bloomberg suggested that prosecuting the child would serve no purpose.

Michael Bloomberg, NYC Mayor: "This was no a child who has a history of taking a gun and going out in the street. This is a child who tragically did something that I guess, if it wasn't so tragic, you'd describe as a prank. I think the answer here is that our prayers have to be with the poor young girl who died and her family and we will do everything we can to keep these things from happening, but I don't know what a penalty against an eight-year-old really would mean."

The child himself was not in the court room here. Those charges have been dropped mainly because the city said they needed more time to continue their own investigation.

The boy's lawyer spoke to reporters here this is what he had to say.

Samuel Karliner, Boy's Attorney: "This was a tragic, tragic accident. Their sympathies and heartfelt condolences go out to the Sadiq family and they would like to begin moving on with their lives."

So they did arrest the child aprehension means to be taken into custody, he will now pay for the school not monitering him, for social sevices not answerings the fathers plees for help, and gang up on dear dad, yes what a bad ass he was pulling fire alarms as a boy himself, please, childen do and will play pranks, this was very unfortante, and he will pay for it as well for the rest of his life, i wonder how many drugs he is on tonight, has been sexaully abused yet in group hell, will he grow up broken and lost removed from a father that clearly loves him enough to sick around and work 9 hours a day, not sit on welfare, drinking, the working poor. left by his mother, all this child had was his elderly grandmother and father and sibling, now what does he have, and who tried to prevent this tragidy, his father, not child protection, but he will be blamed for it.He is now.
a single African american father, he has done the right things, worked, did not run from his children. asked for help, why was he not rewarded for doing the right things, because he could not afford child care after school. and the schools are full of it. they want all kids on drugs to sit and not move, what are the really learning. 9 thats drugs must be fine) THIS IS A TRAGIC STORY, BUT ONE, THAT COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED.
HAD SOMEONE LISTENED TO THE YOUNG FATHER.

Anonymous said...

his type of treatment occurs in BC as well. I am a parent of a child with serious issues resulting from an uncalled for apprehension, by social services, which prevented me from even seeing my child for three months minimum. Then, once they created the issues my child now has, they blamed me for the following 10-11 YRS. When I would try to speak of the behavioral issues, I was told how I was belittling and calling my child down. All I can say is that I no longer have my daughter, in any form or fashion, as the teachings by social services have been that I have no power as a parent. The diagnosis' when I was told about them, were horrible. Devastating only because for many many years I had been looking at what I was doing wrong, since social services were telling me I deserved no child or children for many years. All i can say is, I have been blamed for everything by social services for years, now that my child is in permanent care because I could not continue caring her, suddenly social services says, oh it's not your fault and wants to close the door on this. I still suffer the effects, as social services tried to threaten and intimidate me via my second child who is 8 yrs younger, due to the fact that I told them they needed to know more of what they were dealing with. I had also made several reports of drug use and ethicical issues I have expereinced, only to be slapped once again with invalid concerns via "supervision orders". The abuse of power played on clients by this system has had a horrendous and inhumane impact on myself. Now they would like to say that I am paranoid, angry and shouldn't have kids due to "mental health" issues. I know how I came to have these "issues", and have looked at wages that would have been paid to a social worker, raising my oldest child. Just financially I am owed over $240,000.00, for the care my child required. This does not include the mental pain and anguish or the complete lack of trust in a system that was supposed to protect my first child, as well as my second.
# posted by Anonymous : Tue May 09, 03:30:41 PM 2006

Anonymous said...

It distresses me to hear that your child has become a permanent ward. Being made a permanent ward does not mean that you can never get your child back. It just makes thing's a little tougher. If I may, I would suggest that you go down to the children's advocacey office. Have a talk with them and explain your situation. They will know what to do and advise you on what you will have to do to get your daughter back. A few more word's of advise; never, ever, ever, ever, have a meeting with the dept. without someone from the children's advocacey's office or the ombudmunson's office with you. This way you always have a witness to what was said in that meeting. Always be polite no matter how ticked off you get. Never, ever, ever loose your temper. Go punch a wall after the meeting's over! Just kidding. Hope this helps a little.
Donna Jones
# posted by : Thu May 11, 08:12:03 PM 2006


I too have been abused by social workers involved with D.C.R.E.I am not a foster parent nor have I had children removed from my care, I did step forward to offer assistance to children who were removed from their parents. For a year and a half I've been lied to misled and been personally attacked by Megan Kostiuk who is a social worker with DCRE. She has filed false briefs with family court demeaning my character and she has provided revenue canada with false information. I too can never get calls back from anyone in the department. I'm starting to think 1 day means one year. So if someone there tells you you'll hear from them soon HA!! expect to wait up to 18 months like I did. I have been put through horrendous personal attacks I ve been treated like a piece of garbage I ve been lied to and threatened by social workers and I have to ask when do these workers have to answer to their injustices? Please keep in mind all I did to start this torrent of assaults was step forward as a citizen to help some well deserving children and the department has returned this favour by continual lies, deceit, intentional infliction of financial hardship, as well as providing false information about myself and my home as well as my family on several occasions
# posted by Anonymous : Mon May 29, 11:33:31 AM 2006

why are all the storys the same, but hey they have oversight, we do not

Anonymous said...

(New York -WABC, May 26, 2006) - The 8-year-old boy accused of causing the bus to run over a little girl has been ordered placed in foster care. The girl, Amber Sadiq, was run over and killed Monday by a school bus in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Related Links

* Eyewitness News Video
* Images from the Story

Police say the troubled boy fiddled with the controls and caused the bus to roll backwards over Amber.

N.J. Burkett at family court in Brooklyn.

There were two major developments here this afternoon. First the child's father has been stripped of custody of the child. He will be placed in foster care for at least the next eight months.

Another major development is that the NYPD has dropped charges against the boy, which is essentially a technicality because the city could file its own charges at any time.

The little boy was arrested on Monday after he commandeered an empty school bus by releasing the brakes. The bus rolled 100 feet and ran over the child's second grade classmate.

Amber Sadiq was crushed by the runaway bus and the boy was charged with criminally negligent homicide. It was later learned that the boy had tried the same thing unsuccessfully just days earlier and was already under investigation by child welfare authorities for missing over 40 days of school.

Earlier this week Mayor Bloomberg suggested that prosecuting the child would serve no purpose.

Michael Bloomberg, NYC Mayor: "This was no a child who has a history of taking a gun and going out in the street. This is a child who tragically did something that I guess, if it wasn't so tragic, you'd describe as a prank. I think the answer here is that our prayers have to be with the poor young girl who died and her family and we will do everything we can to keep these things from happening, but I don't know what a penalty against an eight-year-old really would mean."

The child himself was not in the court room here. Those charges have been dropped mainly because the city said they needed more time to continue their own investigation.

The boy's lawyer spoke to reporters here this is what he had to say.

Samuel Karliner, Boy's Attorney: "This was a tragic, tragic accident. Their sympathies and heartfelt condolences go out to the Sadiq family and they would like to begin moving on with their lives."

So they did arrest the child aprehension means to be taken into custody, he will now pay for the school not monitering him, for social sevices not answerings the fathers plees for help, and gang up on dear dad, yes what a bad ass he was pulling fire alarms as a boy himself, please, childen do and will play pranks, this was very unfortante, and he will pay for it as well for the rest of his life, i wonder how many drugs he is on tonight, has been sexaully abused yet in group hell, will he grow up broken and lost removed from a father that clearly loves him enough to sick around and work 9 hours a day, not sit on welfare, drinking, the working poor. left by his mother, all this child had was his elderly grandmother and father and sibling, now what does he have, and who tried to prevent this tragidy, his father, not child protection, but he will be blamed for it.He is now.
a single African american father, he has done the right things, worked, did not run from his children. asked for help, why was he not rewarded for doing the right things, because he could not afford child care after school. and the schools are full of it. they want all kids on drugs to sit and not move, what are the really learning. 9 thats drugs must be fine) THIS IS A TRAGIC STORY, BUT ONE, THAT COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED.
HAD SOMEONE LISTENED TO THE YOUNG FATHER.

Anonymous said...

Everything you ever wanted to know about fostering children and what the Department of Community Resources and Employment does not want you to know.

The foster parents that are good get fired, and slandered,

Anonymous said...

his type of treatment occurs in BC as well. I am a parent of a child with serious issues resulting from an uncalled for apprehension, by social services, which prevented me from even seeing my child for three months minimum. Then, once they created the issues my child now has, they blamed me for the following 10-11 YRS. When I would try to speak of the behavioral issues, I was told how I was belittling and calling my child down. All I can say is that I no longer have my daughter, in any form or fashion, as the teachings by social services have been that I have no power as a parent. The diagnosis' when I was told about them, were horrible. Devastating only because for many many years I had been looking at what I was doing wrong, since social services were telling me I deserved no child or children for many years. All i can say is, I have been blamed for everything by social services for years, now that my child is in permanent care because I could not continue caring her, suddenly social services says, oh it's not your fault and wants to close the door on this. I still suffer the effects, as social services tried to threaten and intimidate me via my second child who is 8 yrs younger, due to the fact that I told them they needed to know more of what they were dealing with. I had also made several reports of drug use and ethicical issues I have expereinced, only to be slapped once again with invalid concerns via "supervision orders". The abuse of power played on clients by this system has had a horrendous and inhumane impact on myself. Now they would like to say that I am paranoid, angry and shouldn't have kids due to "mental health" issues. I know how I came to have these "issues", and have looked at wages that would have been paid to a social worker, raising my oldest child. Just financially I am owed over $240,000.00, for the care my child required. This does not include the mental pain and anguish or the complete lack of trust in a system that was supposed to protect my first child, as well as my second.
# posted by Anonymous : Tue May 09, 03:30:41 PM 2006

Dear Anonymous,
It distresses me to hear that your child has become a permanent ward. Being made a permanent ward does not mean that you can never get your child back. It just makes thing's a little tougher. If I may, I would suggest that you go down to the children's advocacey office. Have a talk with them and explain your situation. They will know what to do and advise you on what you will have to do to get your daughter back. A few more word's of advise; never, ever, ever, ever, have a meeting with the dept. without someone from the children's advocacey's office or the ombudmunson's office with you. This way you always have a witness to what was said in that meeting. Always be polite no matter how ticked off you get. Never, ever, ever loose your temper. Go punch a wall after the meeting's over! Just kidding. Hope this helps a little.

# posted by s : Thu May 11, 08:12:03 PM 2006


I too have been abused by social workers involved with D.C.R.E.I am not a foster parent nor have I had children removed from my care, I did step forward to offer assistance to children who were removed from their parents. For a year and a half I've been lied to misled and been personally attacked by Megan Kostiuk who is a social worker with DCRE. She has filed false briefs with family court demeaning my character and she has provided revenue canada with false information. I too can never get calls back from anyone in the department. I'm starting to think 1 day means one year. So if someone there tells you you'll hear from them soon HA!! expect to wait up to 18 months like I did. I have been put through horrendous personal attacks I ve been treated like a piece of garbage I ve been lied to and threatened by social workers and I have to ask when do these workers have to answer to their injustices? Please keep in mind all I did to start this torrent of assaults was step forward as a citizen to help some well deserving children and the department has returned this favour by continual lies, deceit, intentional infliction of financial hardship, as well as providing false information about myself and my home as well as my family on several occasions
# posted by Anonymous : Mon May 29, 11:33:31 AM 2006


and they have oversight, funny evryone story is about CAS abuse of familys and children, why is NO ONE LISTENING.

Anonymous said...

In the case of Masha Allen it was not just the 3 broker agencies that tried to cover this up, it was the entire it seems or almost billion dollar adoption industry that did. They literally had adopters and prospective one's, along with baby brokers writing into ABC news to BEG THEM NOT TO LET HER TELL HER STORY! Many people who were also adopted by that same filthy industry wrote in to ask them to let her tell her story, along with several people in Canada.

Now how evil is the industry when it does not want it's victims to even be heard?

Quite sick if you ask me, and the only type of people that I can possibly imagine that would not want a 13 year old girl to come forward with courage, and honesty after such a horrible situation would be pedophiles and prospective one's that do not want their products and victims to dry up.

Anonymous said...

And the single black man trying to support his son was probably hated in the USA for the following reasons
1) he was black
2) he was single
3) he was struggling and needed help.

Of course he got NONE because the system is not about children in the USA any more then it is in Canada.

Anonymous said...

That's why we need the Ombudsman to oversee the CAS and that's why the government won't give in !

Ombud: Pay disabled $6M
Four month appeal window for process that takes eight months
May 31, 2006. 07:08 PM
CANADIAN PRESS

Ontario’s ombudsman called on the province Wednesday to pay millions of dollars to disabled people who were denied support payments because of government delays and the ``morally repugnant” enforcement of its own rules.
“The gig’s up. It’s time to return the money to these people,” Andre Marin said as he released a scathing report, called “Losing the Waiting Game,” which examines delays in processing applications at the province’s Disability Support Program.

The main problem Marin found was rigid enforcement of a regulation imposing a four-month limit on retroactive benefits for disabled people, even though it can take eight to 10 months to process an application for support payments.

“What was set as an internal performance standard became a rule that you took to hammer complainants, to hammer the citizens with disabilities who were looking to get full compensation,” he said.

“It became an asinine application of the rule.”

The report describes the support program as a “bureaucratic nightmare” that leaves thousands of disabled people struggling to pay bills without the $953 a month in support payments to which they were clearly entitled.

“Thousands of Ontario’s most vulnerable citizens have become losers in a cruelly insensitive and intensely bureaucratic game,” Marin said.

“Ontario’s disabled have lost out on financial benefits to the tune of at least $6 million, and likely substantially more.”

Marin said the $6 million would be for about 4,600 people who were denied benefits from April 2004 to December 2005, but he wants the province to return benefits to as many as 13,000 people going back as far as 1997.

“I will tell you that ($6 million) is an ultra-conservative figure. It could be double. It could be triple,” he said. “It’s a bit of a mess to figure out.”

New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton accused Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government of following a double standard, defending six-figure bonuses for hydro executives while denying the disabled benefits to which they are entitled.

“Thank God the ombudsman blew the whistle on the McGuinty government after three years, otherwise I’m sure this would have continued,” Hampton told the legislature.

Community and Social Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur said the government had already enacted several of Marin’s recommendations, including scrapping the four-month cap on retroactive payments, but would not agree to pay the money back.

“We are working on reviewing the recommendations,” Meilleur said. “The ombudsman gave us six months to report back to him on what we’re going to do.”

The ombudsman’s report said some applications from disabled people had fallen into a “black hole,” forcing them to face a financial penalty through no fault of their own.

The program “systematically restricts payments to individuals as a result of its own delays,” and many disabled people are too intimidated to complain, Marin said.

“I cannot ignore the egregious impact on those who have already lost significantly because of the effect of this regulation and the ministry’s endemic delays in processing applications,” Marin writes in the report.

“I believe the only way to make this situation right is for those who have lost the waiting game to receive the benefits they would have otherwise been entitled to if not for the ministry’s delay.”

Marin said he’s not asking to give the disabled anything more than that to which they are clearly entitled.

“This is not compensation,” he said. “This is money that doesn’t belong to the government. It shouldn’t have had it in the first place.”

Anonymous said...

Absolutely, because he is intelligent, honest and dedicated to Ontario citizens, none of what I would describe the 53 CAS agencies of Ontario as being - even remotely!

Anonymous said...

I have a letter the Ombudsman sent to Minister Chambers cc to Dalton cc to Howard Hampton, and Julie Monroe,
He is telling them all there is still no over sight for CAS the board chambers try's to pass off as over sight is false, she said in Queens Park Hampton did not have a letter and she would have heard herself, well she had the same letter More LIES, no one can trust this government and we should NOT, if anyone wants a copy of thee letter and minutes of what was said, and what she later told press about over sight let me know I will email it to you, He does not have over sight she is lying. The board she says he will have over sight on well its not over sight of CAS.
Michele Lafantaisie.

Anonymous said...

Feb. 13, 2006 — Vanessa Jackson was sentenced Friday for holding her four adopted sons hostage in her New Jersey home, and starving and abusing them. One of the four brothers spoke out in court and told the woman he called Mom about the pain she had caused him.

"You starved us," said 21-year-old Bruce Jackson. "You said we stole food and then you starved us that whole day."


The other three gave their accounts on videotape.

"One time I took some food from the kitchen because I was hungry," said one of Jackson's brother in a taped statement. "She said: 'Why are you stealing?' I said, 'Because I'm hungry.' She gave me a beating."

The Jackson brothers began their road to freedom two years ago when a neighbor found a starving Bruce digging for food in a trash can and called the police.

"The day I left her house, the neighbors were still up," Bruce Jackson said. "I was hungry, and I looked for food in the garbage cans."

The neighbor called 911: "This little kid is eating out of the trash can at 3 in the morning. It's a little kid and he says he's hungry so he's out here at 3 in the morning. He must be homeless or something."

Operator: "How old does he look?"

Neighbor: "His name is Bruce. He says he's 19. He can't be 19. Oh Bruce, I'm going to start crying. It's a shame. I didn't mean to holler at you. I thought it was a dog in the trash can."

Two years ago, Bruce Jackson weighed 40 pounds. His brothers were also malnourished and undersized.

Prosecutors said Jackson and her husband, Raymond, who has since died, kept the four brothers in appalling conditions. Sometimes they were so hungry, they gnawed the walls. The Jacksons' biological children were allowed to lead normal lives.

The couple maintained their innocence, until last November, when Vanessa Jackson pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child.

Her lawyers still insist the brothers' stories are not accurate, but, since leaving the Jackson home, they have thrived. Bruce Jackson has grown from 4 feet tall and 40 pounds to 5 foot, 3 inches and 130 pounds.

If you look at me now, you can see how much I have grown and all the help that I got from people that care about me," said another brother in a taped statement.



Last year, the Jackson brothers accepted a settlement from the state of New Jersey for $12.5 million.



The judge handed down the penalty that had been decided in a plea agreement, but seven years is far less than what Bruce Jackson thinks his adopted mother deserves.



"I want to see Ms. Jackson go to jail for life," he said. "You took my childhood."

Foster parents abuse and with hold food, it the same all over I know a child here, the foster family did not let her eat good food, only there children, she was malnourished when she came out of care not when she went in.
This is like welfare to them. the state is supporting it.

Anonymous said...

By Dean Schabner

March 12 When a couple seeking to adopt a white baby is charged $35,000 and a couple seeking a black baby is charged $4,000, the image that comes to the Rev. Ken Hutcherson's mind is of a practice that was outlawed in America nearly 150 years ago — the buying and selling of human beings.

The practice, which is widespread among private adoption facilitators, of charging prospective parents different fees depending on the race or ethnicity of the child they adopt is one that Hutcherson is fighting to change from his Redmond, Wash., church. The Antioch Bible Church has established its own adoption agency, and is lobbying state legislators to change Washington's laws.

"I've got championship Rottweilers. I sell them by supply and demand," Hutcherson said. "I raise thoroughbred racehorses. I sell them by supply and demand. I'm not going to let people sell children by supply and demand. What's the difference between that and slavery?"

The campaign to change the law is directed at Washington state legislators, but Hutcherson said he would prefer to see the federal government step in and create one set of regulations governing adoption, rather than leaving the issue to the states to decide.

Current Washington law bans payments to a birth mother for placing a child for adoption, but does not address payments for arranging an adoption or the fees that may be charged.

"I think it's an issue that Americans have not looked at closely enough, because if they had, things wouldn't be the way they are," he said.

He hopes to get attention around Washington with a billboard campaign as soon as he can raise the $70,000 to $80,000 he needs. The billboards will feature a white baby, a latino baby and a black baby and next to each, the fees some adoption facilitators might charge for them: $35,000, $10,000 and $4,000.

He said that besides putting a price on children, the practice discriminates against white babies and people who seek to adopt them — an issue he said has been overlooked because white people, particularly those who can afford the high adoption fees charged, are not used to considering themselves victims of discrimination.

"I know about discrimination," said Hutcherson, who is black. "I don't care who it's against, it's wrong. Tell me that if it was black babies that cost $50,000 and white babies that cost $4,000, people would be screaming their heads off."




Disparity in Fees



Some adoption professionals said the reason for the difference in cost for adopting white babies as opposed to babies of other races or ethnicities is that there are fewer white infants available and there is more demand for them.



"Often the justification may be that children of some ethnic groups are more difficult to place," said Gregory Franklin, an attorney who said that 90 percent of his business is providing legal representation for people involved in the adoption process.



"Obviously, any time that somebody brings up the word discrimination, everybody's going to take notice and draw attention to the issue, whether or not there's an issue there," said Sean Lance, the director of American Adoptions, which has a fee structure that results in prospective parents paying more to adopt white babies than to adopt black babies. "It's not set up as discriminatory. The difference is in the cost of the process — living expenses, medical expenses. Our agency fee for all adoptions are identical."



He said that minority mothers often qualify for Medicaid or other financial support that pays their expenses while they are carrying their babies, and sometimes will cover the cost of the delivery, whereas white mothers often do not, so those costs are paid by the prospective parents of the baby.



In some states the birth mother's living expenses can also be passed on to the adoptive parents, and that can create a disparity in cost for different adoptions. If a birth mother does not have other support, laws in some states allow the cost of her rent, maternity clothes and food to be passed on to the couple seeking to adopt her child.



One Web site for a licensed, non-profit adoption agency says it will wind up costing prospective parents about $19,000 to $35,000 to adopt "non-African American (i.e. Caucasian, Hispanic, Native American etc. or any non-African American combination of races) healthy newborns and infants" through the "Traditional Programs."





In the "Minority Program," prospective parents can expect to pay an average of $8,000 to $15,000.



The difference between the costs for black and non-black babies is explained by the "subsidies to help offset the costs of these adoptions" and because more advertising is needed to find non-black babies.



There is also a difference in cost depending on whether a family is willing to wait nine to 18 months for a non-black baby ($19,000-$24,000) or wants an infant in three to nine months ($27,000-$35,000).



"The fee difference results from higher living expenses and medical expenses for the birth parents," the site explains. "Also, because there are fewer familes that can afford these higher cost adoptions, the waiting times are significantly reduced."



Hutcherson and some adoption experts said the range and disparity of fees seen on the site are representative of the fees of many private adoption agencies as well.




‘Money Should Not Be Driving Factor’



Every state prohibits the buying and selling of children, but agencies and facilitators are allowed to charge fees that are deemed to be reasonable.



Only four states — Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts and Minnesota — ban adoptions by independent facilitators or attorneys, though Connecticut, Massachusetts and Minnesota will all waive the requirement that adoptions be done through an agency if the child's interests are better served by an independent adoption.



"It is interesting that states have never looked at why the fees for a white newborn might be $30,000 and why the fee for a black 5-year-old with slight retardation should be $2,000," Adoption Insitute executive director Cindy Friedmutter said. "The costs of adopting either child shouldn't be any different.



"The laws are in some cases not strong enough and in some cases are not enforced well enough," she added. "Money should not be the driving factor."



Some states allow independent adoption agencies, facilitators or even families who want to adopt to place advertisements in newspapers, magazines, on the Internet or other means to find birth mothers who want to give up their babies. Unscrupulous facilitators will sometimes try to pressure pregnant young women into giving up their child for adoption by holding out the promise of money for their "product," Friedmutter said.





For poor families, for young, unwed mothers, that creates untoward pressure," she said. "That's not the way adoption is supposed to work.



"When money's involved, ethics go out the window," she added.




Is High Cost a Guarantee?



Friedmutter said she draws a distinction between facilitators or agencies that charge prospective parents more or less depending on the race or ethnicity of the baby that they want to adopt, and those who charge on a sliding scale based on the family's income.



She said charging people according to what they can afford is a way for agencies to make adoption a viable choice for more families, and still let them balance the books.



But she rejected the argument put forward by some facilitators that charging higher fees for healthy white babies — who are in short supply and high demand — allows them to charge less for youngsters who are not in such high demand.



She said that practice could create a sense in parents who spend more money on an adoption that they are buying a product with an implicit guarantee — that this child will be everything they want in a child.



"The thing that is scary to me is that children aren't perfect," she said. "People who are willing to pay high fees for healthy kids don't always get perfect children. If you pay $50,000, it doesn't mean that child is going to be healthy, gorgeous and smart."



According to Hutcherson, the answer is to take money out of the equation. The adoption agency he started at his church is run by volunteers and funded by contributions, and that is the model he would ultimately like to see adopted nationwide.



"When it comes to adoption, America needs an enema and I'm hoping God made me the chocolate laxative," Hutcherson said.

now if that does not make you sick, I dont know what will.

Anonymous said...

eb. 9, 2006 — Fifteen-year-old "Debbie" is the middle child in a close-knit Air Force family from suburban Phoenix, and a straight-A student — the last person most of us would expect to be forced into the seamy world of sex trafficking.

But Debbie, which is not her real name, is one of thousands of young American girls who authorities say have been abducted or lured from their normal lives and made into sex slaves. While many Americans have heard of human trafficking in other parts of the world — Thailand, Cambodia, Latin America and eastern Europe, for example — few people know it happens here in the United States.

The FBI estimates that well over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today. They range in age from 9 to 19, with the average age being 11.

And many victims are no longer just runaways, or kids who've been abandoned. Many of them are from what would be considered "good" families, who are lured or coerced by clever predators, say experts.

"These predators are particularly adept at reading children, at reading kids, and knowing what their vulnerabilities are," said FBI Deputy Assistant Director, Chip Burrus, who started the Lost Innocence project, which specializes in child- and teen-sex trafficking.


And, he said, these predators are going where the kids are.

CAS and foster homes. and Many children are sexually abused in care, other leave and work on the streets, is this part of it all,

Anonymous said...

Nov. 2, 2005 — The Ohio couple accused of keeping some of their 11 adopted children in cages is breaking their silence and fighting to get their children back.

The children were removed from the house of Michael and Sharen Gravelle in September after a social services investigator spotted one of the children in a cage. The children range in ages from 1 to 15, and police say eight of them said they slept in cages that were less than 3 feet high.


Family Crisis


The Gravelles told "Good Morning America" in an interview today they only kept three or four children in the enclosures and that they did so because they were severely emotionally disturbed and a threat to themselves and the other children. They said two other children "just liked sleeping in the enclosure."

"One little girl, she had a regular bed that's still in the room and she chose to get down and get in the enclosure," Sharen Gravelle said. "They play in them."

The Huron County Sheriff's Office reported finding nine cages built into the wall of an upstairs bedroom. The Huron County Department of Job and Family Services has alleged in court documents that the children, who suffer from conditions such as fetal alcohol syndrome and autism, were abused and neglected or in danger of being mistreated.

The Gravelles said there are only six enclosures and not all the children suffer from disabilities.

Michael Gravelle told police he built the cages himself in 2002 after a child therapist assured him it was the best way to protect the kids from each other. He said the cages were meant to accommodate a twin size mattress and that they are spacious, allowing a child to move around and stand up in the larger cages. They said the cages were never locked, but were fitted with alarms that alerted them when a child was up and about.

"There are no locks," Sharen Gravelle said. "We didn't even lock our house at night so why would we lock our child in?"

Michael Gravelle said he was willing to compromise with family services about keeping the children in cages if they regain custody.

"Several of the children still need to be in some type of enclosure for their safety and for the security of the whole family," Michael Gravelle said. "Yes, we would consider any type of compromise … That is our goal, to reach out to them so they will listen to us and negotiate with us in all fairness and bring our children home."

In a hearing last week, Huron County Common Pleas Court Judge Timothy Cardwell rejected a motion to allow the Gravelle's 19-month-old adopted child to be returned to a Chicago-area adoption agency.

No charges have been filed in this case.

Anonymous said...

I have a letter the Ombudsman sent to Minister Chambers cc to Dalton cc to Howard Hampton, and Julie Monroe,
He is telling them all there is still no over sight for CAS the board chambers try's to pass off as over sight is false, she said in Queens Park Hampton did not have a letter and she would have heard herself, well she had the same letter More LIES, no one can trust this government and we should NOT, if anyone wants a copy of thee letter and minutes of what was said, and what she later told press about over sight let me know I will email it to you, He does not have over sight she is lying. The board she says he will have over sight on well its not over sight of CAS.
Michele Lafantaisie.

Anonymous said...

Feb. 13, 2006 — Vanessa Jackson was sentenced Friday for holding her four adopted sons hostage in her New Jersey home, and starving and abusing them. One of the four brothers spoke out in court and told the woman he called Mom about the pain she had caused him.

"You starved us," said 21-year-old Bruce Jackson. "You said we stole food and then you starved us that whole day."


The other three gave their accounts on videotape.

"One time I took some food from the kitchen because I was hungry," said one of Jackson's brother in a taped statement. "She said: 'Why are you stealing?' I said, 'Because I'm hungry.' She gave me a beating."

The Jackson brothers began their road to freedom two years ago when a neighbor found a starving Bruce digging for food in a trash can and called the police.

"The day I left her house, the neighbors were still up," Bruce Jackson said. "I was hungry, and I looked for food in the garbage cans."

The neighbor called 911: "This little kid is eating out of the trash can at 3 in the morning. It's a little kid and he says he's hungry so he's out here at 3 in the morning. He must be homeless or something."

Operator: "How old does he look?"

Neighbor: "His name is Bruce. He says he's 19. He can't be 19. Oh Bruce, I'm going to start crying. It's a shame. I didn't mean to holler at you. I thought it was a dog in the trash can."

Two years ago, Bruce Jackson weighed 40 pounds. His brothers were also malnourished and undersized.

Prosecutors said Jackson and her husband, Raymond, who has since died, kept the four brothers in appalling conditions. Sometimes they were so hungry, they gnawed the walls. The Jacksons' biological children were allowed to lead normal lives.

The couple maintained their innocence, until last November, when Vanessa Jackson pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child.

Her lawyers still insist the brothers' stories are not accurate, but, since leaving the Jackson home, they have thrived. Bruce Jackson has grown from 4 feet tall and 40 pounds to 5 foot, 3 inches and 130 pounds.

If you look at me now, you can see how much I have grown and all the help that I got from people that care about me," said another brother in a taped statement.



Last year, the Jackson brothers accepted a settlement from the state of New Jersey for $12.5 million.



The judge handed down the penalty that had been decided in a plea agreement, but seven years is far less than what Bruce Jackson thinks his adopted mother deserves.



"I want to see Ms. Jackson go to jail for life," he said. "You took my childhood."

Anonymous said...

BRIAN ROSS



For almost two years, no state caseworker ever came to inspect the Lynch home. And even after the state received reports from a school and a court-appointed guardian about possible abuse, the caseworkers continued to file reports with "nothing but high praise" for the Lynches, "excellent foster parents," "a secure, loving home."



JORDAN RODRIGUEZ



When they hit us, they'd say it's your fault that you're getting hit because you're retarded and stuff like that.



BRIAN ROSS



And do you think most children live this way?



ROBBIE RODRIGUEZ, SON



Yeah.



BRIAN ROSS



You do?



BRIAN ROSS



In addition to the beatings, the children described sadistic punishment. Several of them said the foster mother's teenage son taped them into large plastic crates like this one and then dumped them into the swimming pool.



JORDAN RODRIGUEZ



It was scary because you couldn't get out, trying to hold your breath, but you can't.

Anonymous said...

Prime Time live doing a show on foster care, what we fail to undertand is yes its damaging, and always children do better when let in home, will this be a push for more adoptions, Yes, but it should not be they know children even with a mom on meth with help will have a better out come then children in care or adopted, hell they cant even get that right, ask some of the people that have returned children to CAS they palnned on adopting. Also the BIG lie, they had so many children labled speacial needs to bring in more funding, now how to adopt them out with out the lable they have the freaking gull to discuss this in meetings

Anonymous said...

This guy's HOT:

Disability funds 'unjustly' delayed
Jun. 1, 2006
KERRY GILLESPIE
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU

Dan Nolan couldn't buy enough food or get winter boots for his 10-year-old daughter because the province delayed and short-changed the disability benefits he was due following a serious back injury.
Dianna Wyatt had to sell family heirlooms, do laundry in her bathtub and subsisted mostly on bread for weeks to make ends meet because she too was short-changed benefits.
Ontario's Ombudsman André Marin has called on the government to pay Nolan, Wyatt and tens of thousands of other disabled Ontarians millions of dollars in unpaid benefits.
The way the government runs the Ontario Disability Support Program is "unreasonable, unjust, oppressive and wrong," Marin said yesterday, releasing the results of his investigation.
The main problem: It takes the government an average of eight months to process an application for disability support and there's a rule stating the government will only pay four months of retroactive benefits.
That "morally repugnant" rule short-changes disabled people months of needed benefits.
"It seems beyond obvious that a seriously disabled, impoverished individual should lose out on benefits they would otherwise be entitled to, solely by reason of the ministry's delay or error," Marin said.
Community and Social Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur said the government is in the process of revoking, and has already stopped enforcing, the four-month rule, as a result of Marin's investigation.
She wouldn't say whether the government will pay restitution to those already caught by it.
"My staff is working right now with the ministry of finance, and we will report back on what we will be accomplishing," Meilleur said.
The province spends $2.43 billion annually on support payments for more than 215,000 Ontarians with severe physical and mental disabilities, according to the ministry of community and social services. For a single person, the maximum payment is $959 a month.
The government has been benefiting financially because of the backlog and the four-month rule, Marin said.
"It's as if the citizens with disabilities in Ontario have unwittingly been providing the government of Ontario an interest-free loan to run the province. ... It's time to return the money to these people," Marin said.
From the 21-month period ending Dec. 31, 2005, the government owes at least 4,630 people $6 million in unpaid benefits, Marin said. But the government needs to go back as far as 1998, when the four-month rule was brought in, Marin said.
"The $6 million is an ultra-conservative figure. It could be double, it could be triple or more," Marin said, adding that the government record-keeping for most years is so bad he can't say just how many people have been affected or how much is owed. Whatever it is, it should be paid, he said.
"This is money that doesn't belong to the government. (It) shouldn't have had it in the first place."
"These are not individuals who are looking to profit from the government coffers. They are not malingerers, or welfare fraud artists. They are the very persons the Ontario Disability Support Program was intended to serve."
Wyatt, 46, who worked as a counsellor and computer technician before she had to leave the workforce a year ago because of chronic depression, said she was thrilled with Marin's report.
"Whether I get the money due to me or not, the people who come after me will be treated as human beings," said Wyatt, who was short-changed three months of $679 payments.
"They're not there to help you, they're there because you might rip them off," Wyatt said of the attitude of ministry staff with whom she dealt.
"You have to really fight to get anything, but the reason someone is on disability is because something is wrong. How are they supposed to fight?"
Lyndsey Aukema, 19, has myotonic dystrophy and cerebral palsy. She has trouble walking, has the mental capacity of a toddler, and she'll never be able to work or care for herself.
"Incredibly, it took the (government) eight months to figure out that she was a person with a substantial disability," Marin said.
She is owed $2,500 because of a delay in getting adult disability payments.
Before she turned 18, Aukema, like other severely disabled kids, received support under a program for children. When they turn 18, the government forces them to apply all over again to get adult funding under the Ontario Disability Support Program — where they hit months of delay and lose out on payments because of the four-month rule.
The four-month rule was originally an internal performance standard — the maximum length of time the government should take to process an application, Marin said.
Over time, it became twisted into a "hammer" that was used against the disabled, he said.
Meilleur said her government was saddled with a system, set up by the previous Progressive Conservative government, that doesn't work.
But Marin said the problems with the backlog and the rigid use of the four-month rule have become worse under the Liberal government.

Anonymous said...

Mother not allowed to sue doctor
Wrongly charged in killing daughter based on initial autopsy results

Pathologist Charles Smith protected by witness immunity rule, court says
Jun. 1, 2006. 05:37 AM
HAROLD LEVY
STAFF REPORTER


Former Hospital for Sick Children pathologist Dr. Charles Smith cannot be sued by a woman once charged with murdering her daughter because of a centuries-old legal rule protecting witnesses from lawsuits, a court has ruled.

The decision blocks Louise Reynolds from pursuing the $7 million lawsuit she brought against Smith, after a second autopsy revealed that Sharon, 7, died after being attacked by a pit bull in the basement of her family home in Kingston.

Smith, who once headed the hospital's prestigious pediatric forensic pathology department, Ontario's largest facility for conducting autopsies on children, had concluded following the initial autopsy that Sharon's death was the result of more than 80 stab wounds made by a knife or scissors.

Reynolds spent two years in pre-trial custody, plus time in a halfway house, and was forced to put another daughter up for adoption before prosecutors withdrew the charge on Jan. 25, 2001.

Legal experts are concerned that the decision by Ontario's Divisional Court — described by a dissenting judge as the first of its kind in Canadian jurisprudence — could shield pathologists, such as Smith, from being made accountable for their actions in the courts.

Smith's work on 44 cases involving suspicious deaths of children — including the Reynolds case — is currently under review by a panel of independent experts as part of a probe ordered by Ontario Chief Coroner Dr. Barry McLellan to protect the integrity of the coroner's office.

Reynolds alleges in a statement of claim that Smith displayed "a reckless disregard for the truth" and was motivated by "improper purposes," such as "assisting the police in securing (Reynolds') conviction, self-aggrandizement, and to avoid professional embarrassment in having to reverse his prior report." A statement of claim contains allegations that have not been proved in court and Smith denies the allegations in his statement of defence.

Justices John O'Driscoll and John Jennings accepted Smith's argument that he could not be sued because of the witness-immunity rule, which was developed by judges over the centuries to encourage witnesses to testify freely without fear of lawsuits.

O'Driscoll said in his 16-page ruling that, although the witness-immunity rule does not exist to protect wrongdoers, "it will sometimes do so," and that "for the immunity to be effective, witnesses must be protected from all lawsuits, not only unmeritorious ones."

"This protection of witnesses from the risk of suit is seen as more important than righting a wrong in a particular case," he said.

However, in a dissenting opinion, Justice Janet Wilson found that Smith was not protected by the rule because the lawsuit was directed at the initial investigation of the death that he carried out for the coroner's office and not at his ultimate testimony in court.

"Counsel for Dr. Smith argue that a pathologist appointed by the coroner to conduct an autopsy is not conducting an investigation, but is rather conducting an examination in the course of preparing evidence for a possible prosecution," she said. "I do not agree."

Wilson noted that "there is no Canadian jurisprudence considering the scope of witness immunity in circumstances sufficiently similar to this case."

Professor Alan Young, who teaches law at Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Toronto, said in an interview that witness immunity should be reviewed because "our legal system puts a premium on accountability and there was very little concern over accountability when the witness-immunity rule was developed centuries ago."

Toronto lawyer Cindy Wasser, a director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, said yesterday she hopes Reynolds' case can ultimately proceed to trial.

"Louise Reynolds deserves to have a jury of her peers decide whether Dr. Smith has committed the torts of bad faith and misfeasance," Wasser said in an interview. "And the public has the right to know whether Reynolds' allegations against Smith have been proven."

The Divisional Court decision was a setback for Brenda Waudby of Peterborough and other individuals whose lawsuits against Smith have been put on hold pending final resolution of the witness-immunity issue.

"All we ask for is the opportunity to present our claims against Dr. Smith in a court of law in which he would have a full opportunity to defend his actions," Waudby said in an interview. "That shouldn't be too much too ask."

Waudby had been accused of the 1997 murder of her baby but the charge was withdrawn after six experts disagreed with Smith's conclusions about Waudby's daughter's death.

Reynolds' lawyer, Peter Wardle, said in an interview that she "is in this for the long haul and she will appeal."

Niels Ortved, who represents Smith, declined comment.

The lawsuit can continue against other defendants, including the Kingston Police Services Board.



all hospitals blame parents, there was blood on the dogs mouth for Christ sakes why on earth is this moron Smith not in jail, so called experts, Toronto Sick Kids needs to clean house, there head toxicologist is on the collages wed site, dishonest immoral, they said it not I, a disgrace.
CHEO, London Mc Master, all kill more children, blame parents and cozy up with the CAS, the pathologist still has his medical licence, YES, so he can do this to some more people, we have a Pandemic of mothers being accused of having MSBP , shit maybe they will come up with a vaccine, god knows what idiots.
Mothers are NOT out here killing are children or poisoning, the medical system is in serious trouble, nice loop hole sue the government for not over turning that crazy law, he was the expert, he is why her child is adopted, and she is alone, they all need oversight, and this sucks.
Nothing is going to bring her children back on is dead, the other stolen, BUT who is accountable, why did the CAS give her child up, did they not have any family the child could have lived with, I AM so angry, this is NOT the only CASE. who will tell her daughter sorry, life just is not fair.
if there is one reason to stop adoptions this should be it. Chambers lies to the public, the courts are a mess, who is god the insurance companys. One has to wonder,

Anonymous said...

There are many cases that have chilling common themes with the Jeffrey Baldwin case - but the other cases have one HUGE AND MARKED DIFFERENCE - the torturers were those forever safe and loving "adoptive parents".

A PEEK INSIDE EVIL DUNGEON

By JENNIFER FERMINO Post Correspondent
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COVER-UP: The enclosed "bunk beds" that at least nine kids slept in at a rural Wakeman, Ohio, home were painted in bright colors.


September 15, 2005 -- NORWALK, Ohio — These mini wooden torture chambers (facing page) were a sadistic couple's idea of bunk beds for their adopted children — oversized chicken coops splashed in "Romper Room" pastels to conceal their brutality.
In this chamber of horrors in Wakeman, Ohio, Michael and Sharen Gravelle, imprisoned nine of their 11 adopted children — all of them with mental and health disorders including autism, Down syndrome, HIV and fetal-alcohol syndrome.

The windowless, second-floor kids' room was like a summer camp from hell. The cages were brightly painted in kid-friendly colors — but they were so small that the children couldn't stand up inside, these exclusive pictures obtained by The Post show.

The children were forced to sleep on thin mats or blankets instead of real bedding.

Most of the 40-inch-high, 30-inch-wide kinder-coops had chicken wire to prevent the kids from escaping. Another had two pieces of wood across the entrance door to prevent it from being opened without the Gravelles' knowledge.

Investigators said the room smelled of urine when they showed up with a warrant after receiving an anonymous complaint that the children were being mistreated.

But yesterday, the Gravelles' lawyer said his clients did not abuse the children — and, in fact, had them sleeping in the cages for their own good.


"These are special-needs children, who have very serious emotional disorders, including reactive attachment disorder, PICA [an eating disorder in which people eat things that are not food] and other conditions resulting in extreme behavioral problems," lawyer David Sherman said in a statement.

"Because of these disorders, traditional methods of behavior control were unsuccessful. The children have been out of control and have caused serious harm to themselves and each other," Sherman said.

"In order to prevent further injury, Mr. Gravelle constructed enclosures around their twin-size bunk beds to provide a secure space to keep them safe while the parents were asleep at night."

Sherman objected to the term "cages," saying "that was not their function."

"There was no cruelty, excessive restraint or risk of harm," he said. "The children were free to leave their beds anytime they wanted."

He claimed that "a licensed social worker" as well as an adoption agency told the Gravelles to build the enclosures to prevent the children from eating "batteries, clothes, blankets, mattresses, wood, carpets, chemicals and anything they could obtain," which they had previously done.

He claimed that the social worker has been visiting the children every day for the past five years — but added that she is "temporarily out of the country."

"The Gravelles love and miss their children, and are devastated and broken-hearted with worry, since their children have been ripped away from them.

"Their motives and intentions were good. They would never harm a child. The children love their parents and want to come home."

Local officials said the Gravelles received a subsidy of at least $500 a month to care for the children, a payment that is meant to encourage adoption by ensuring that foster families can maintain their standard of living.

"There's no follow-up because you're giving that family the money so they can incorporate that child into their life," said Rhonda Abban, chief of adoption services for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

In 2001, the Gravelles adopted an infant born with HIV through the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, director Jim McCafferty said.

Before that adoption, private agencies gave the couple "glowing reports," McCafferty said.

Sheriff's deputies were called to the home twice in the last five years: once to settle a dispute with a neighbor in 2000, and last year, when a 12-year-old boy was upset and ran away for several hours. He was found down the road.

Nine of the children were removed by local authorities Friday on the grounds that they were neglected and abused.

The couple's two other children — Abba, 8, and Sharen Jr., 14 — were also removed because they were living in the abusive environment, not because they were neglected or abused themselves, authorities said.

Huron County Prosecutor Russell Leffler said that Abba and Sharen Jr. were not forced to sleep in the cages, but he would not say why, citing the ongoing investigation.

Only two of the children — Michael Jr., who was in sixth grade last year, and Sharen Jr., who was in eighth — are known to have gone to school. They were both removed from Western Reserve Elementary last year, according to principal Mary Lynn Mahoney.

"Michael was popular. He had friends and you'd see him talking to them as they waited for the bus," she said.

Mahoney said she saw no evidence of abuse, but told The Norwalk Reflector, a local paper, that "the parents were very strict and had disagreements with school administration."

The paper reported that Mahoney was upset that the Gravelles barred their children from class trips if they had misbehaved in the home.

"We disagreed with [that] restriction," she told the paper, saying that field trips are educational, not superfluous.

The children ranged in age from 1 to 14 and many have Biblical names such as Elijah, River, Jordan and Sampson. All are black, while the Gravelles are white.


Additional reporting by Gersh Kuntzman in New York

Anonymous said...

Yes isn't it also chilling that mentally ill nutjobs like Michael Jackson can buy children? In adoptionspeak by the baby brokers and the industry they would consider him to be "touched by adoption".

The woman that beat the little girl to death and got 25 years was also "touched by adoption", and the putrid baby brokers do not want anyone to even mention when a child is dead that it was an adopter that killed them either?

They would have hated the Globe and Mail for covering Masha's story, they would have just hated it. It would have made the lot of these brokers cringe. Chicago didn't have the guts to print it - as it might have hampered the filthy adoption business of buying other people's children for $60,000 a head in the United States.

They call it love, I call it slavery as it is.

God forbid these infertile couples and their baby brokering accomplices might not be seen as being "superior" any longer.

We know there is a high rate of abuse in foster care (no not all) but we see adoption as being better?? Why IT IS THE SAME HOMESTUDY, IT HAS THE SAME CHECKS, AND IT IS DONE BY THE SAME AGENCIES.

The only difference between Elva Bottineau fostering Jeffrey or having been able to adopt him was one sheet of paper making her his owner.

She would have been able to change his name - a legal right that adopters have, and she would have been able to make his surname "Bottineau" to really finish the deal.

And the CCAS would have said she was all that more "forever safe" in her "forever family", as well.

Adoption to these agencies is the magically Band-Aid cure for all social ill's, and the great social ill to them is poverty and being single.

But white, rich men in Richmond Hill that buy children WILL NEVER abuse the child. They are safe, they are "forever families", they are infertile strangers with loads of money and business suits, in occupations where one does not suspect them to be abusers. Only the poor abuse children right?

Anonymous said...

How many "forever safe, forever families" were "built" by the idiot social worker that gave Jeffrey to that monster?

How many "forever safe, forever families" did that worker orchestrate in her ivory tower at the CCAS?

Where are the foster kids that Elva was given? How are they faring, and where are their families? Were they removed as their mother was poor and single so that a desperate infertile couple would be satisfied?

But as they built a case against someone that could not defend themselves against the vulture they were in "care". In care with Elva Bottineau? And you can bet that if they ever attempt to find out where they were in 20 years from now the CCAS WILL NOT TELL THEM ANYTHING PERIOD.

Secrecy of most sorts, almost always hides something that is bad.

Secret organizations built on secrets and lies.

Anonymous said...

The murderers and the CCAS are a match made in heaven, but it is very sad that Jeffrey was sent to heaven after being so abused.

Anonymous said...

The only foster children Bottineau had were her grandchildren. She was approved for temporary care but according to the court records she only had her grandchildren and she babysat the neighbors son.

the neighbors son took the stand and said nothing hapenned to him while being babysat. His parents were with him and seemed concerned--their biggest mistake was trusting Bottineau.

Anonymous said...

According to the article by Christie Blatchford the murderer did take care of other people's children as a paid caregiver for the CCAS, that was not in the court records perhaps, but none the less I do believe this to be true. This was in the 70's I think from the article.

It shows the overall negligence of the CCAS and it does not surprise me at all.

It is really scary to think of what other foster care arrangments and adoptions that worker did. It is chilling.

I really hope that people get out of the glorification lie that all foster homes and adopters are safe as if we could burst that ridiculous illusion more kids might not be as abused.

Anonymous said...

I am glad that the little boy was not abused by her as in the neighbors son. You know if the murderer was a foster mother in the 70's or at any other time it explains why that Godforsaken agency will not let people see their files who were in foster care and who were adopted.

I am glad that she did not have other kids along with her 4 victims in that house of horrors.

It really shows the magnitude of negligence over a long period of time though - she was a former foster mother, and then a murderer of her own grandson. Either way that agency needs to be held to account. Thanks for clarifying more information.

There are so many secrets with the CCAS.

Does anyone know if that idiot social worker is still working at the CCAS?

Anonymous said...

I wonder if the neighbors didn't suspect her as she gloated that she had saved Jeffrey and his siblings somehow. If the CCAS awarded her custody and one knew that, it would prompt the average person to not ever suspect anything.

They give people a "social license" that is deemed as being safer, better and glorious.

Someone said ......Not until... parents who abuse/neglect stop will the entire CAS system collapse.

I agree and we cannot have a total anarchy of the system either.

They need a massive overhaul, oversight and some level of reality. The Minister is working with people that glorify breaking up families, while supposedly "building" others. It's insain. The very least of changing the system should not start with more lies in that we have such a thing as "forever safe, forever families".

Anonymous said...

he was the expert, he is why her child is adopted, and she is alone, they all need oversight, and this sucks.

To whoever said this - absolutely, but she is a villian, she is horrible, she is the mother with bad blood, to be hated and reviled by all of society because of this doctor. But the medical field has a long history and a dark one at that with the CAS. Another dirty little secret.

And the super hero adopters who got the child will be glorified forever more, "forever safe, forever families"?

I have no doubt that someone did have MSBP at one point, that there was a totally mentally unstable person that did this to her kids, but to create a new problem to take children away is very sinister. I don't think a massive realm of MSBP is going on either.

The next thing that they are going to do is swoop down upon the smokers and take their children to, next it might be junk food, then it might be anything.

Someone compared them to crystal ball seers - very well said.

Anonymous said...

Here's a real novel idea why don't we actually spend some time trying to help people. Today I saw Oprah which I do not often watch and they had an alcoholic Mom on it. She got treatment and recovered. But no the Ministry does not want to treat anyone, they want to take children for infertile couples and anyone else that wants the child. Making the chances of the child who was in foster care and adopted have 100 times more of a chance of being an alcoholic. But then if that happens they can just blame it on bad blood and the genes, not the child being taken to start with.

The next great experiment will be "open adoption" - do baby brokers really care if a child ever sees their family - NO and do they care if the family ever sees the child - NO all they care about is finding a product for the stranger.

Permanent open foster care, where the child pretends the stranger is "Mommy" and the mother is reduced to a family friend. Insain all of it.

How much more are we going to do to children under the guise of help?

And if the so called "forever safe, forever family" has any problems with the child they will simply blame it on their genes and never the fact that they are unrealistic about a child being "just like them" to start with.

Anonymous said...

I hope everyone watches Primetime tonight. I am glad that ABC news is not catering to the filthy billion dollar adoption industry - and that they are covering real problems with adoption and foster care and discussing real solutions.

Long may the days be over that we ever deem people as being safe based on one "variable". Children are worth more then such lies.

Anonymous said...

And for some more trivia in the infamous Internet twins case where two beautiful babies were bought and sold by numerous strangers in adoption one of the buyers was also a pedophile.

Anonymous said...

The only people that defended the buyers were baby brokers and adopters.

Anonymous said...

I watched Primetime and Kentucky has it right in helping the overall family. I hope it gets adopted across the United States. The social worker helping the father and his boys is a real social worker.

Anonymous said...

In Kentucky they are taking all the money that they spend on sending kids to foster care, on working with the family with some real help and honesty. It makes more sense.

Anonymous said...

Bottineau was approved as a child care provider but it was for relief or temporary care. Either way she did not foster any other children besides her grandchildren. Thank God!

The social worker involved with Jeffrey is still employed by CCAS. Her name is Margurite Quintana (not sure of the spelling). She and her employers dicked around the court case and ultimately did not take the stand. That was very shocking. Every day that I headed to the court I longed to hear her excuse for not knowing of Jeffrey's starvation. I could not fathom how this hapenned. I can only pray she gets cross examined to no end at the inquiry. She should not have been allowed to hide behind CCAS skirts.

As for the program about foster children last night it was very very sad. I didnt think it reflected well on the natural parents (exception man with 3 boys). But I also believe alcohol is easier to kick than some drugs. Alcoholics cannot be compared to drug addicts. These children's lives depended on their parents sobriety and it never came.

Some drug addicts cannot be helped--it is easier said than done. Did you see what methaphetamine (spelling?) did to these women , did you see the distortion of their faces? Most of all they have to want help.

Unfortunately it is easier to take drugs than quit. Very very sad.Those that work in the fiel know the low sucess rate--alcoholics is much higher.

All of these kids had something in common--they wanted to be adopted and had given up on their natural parents. Very very sad.

Anonymous said...

Bottineau was approved as a child care provider but it was for relief or temporary care. Either way she did not foster any other children besides her grandchildren. Thank God!

Reply - even if that vile bitch had children in her care for even 3 hours it is chilling. Let alone overnight, and the CCAS are such total liars that she may well have had them for longer. Who knows though as they are allowed to do whatever they want to.

The social worker involved with Jeffrey is still employed by CCAS.

Reply - Good GOD, how many "forever safe, forever families" is this idiot creating? It is sickening.

Her name is Margurite Quintana (not sure of the spelling). She and her employers dicked around the court case and ultimately did not take the stand.

Reply - not suprised, as they dick around with everyone.

That was very shocking. Every day that I headed to the court I longed to hear her excuse for not knowing of Jeffrey's starvation. I could not fathom how this hapenned. I can only pray she gets cross examined to no end at the inquiry. She should not have been allowed to hide behind CCAS skirts.

Reply - I hope she does as well but their putrid, pit bull lawyers will no doubt defend her. After all she let a child be tortured and starved in "good faith".

As for the program about foster children last night it was very very sad. I didnt think it reflected well on the natural parents (exception man with 3 boys).

Reply - I think so as well, and the stories were really awful but no doubt such stories do exist which is why we have to have something for kids.

But I also believe alcohol is easier to kick than some drugs. Alcoholics cannot be compared to drug addicts. These children's lives depended on their parents sobriety and it never came.

Reply - I think it must be harder to quit drugs, but I would also bet the most hardened drug addict was almost always very abused as a child themselves.

Some drug addicts cannot be helped--it is easier said than done. Did you see what methaphetamine (spelling?) did to these women , did you see the distortion of their faces? Most of all they have to want help.

Reply - yes I did, and they must be totally broken down to inject such poison .... it is very sad. I think some can be helped, but it would not be easy. I also think they should not be in jail but in treatment centers.

Unfortunately it is easier to take drugs than quit. Very very sad.Those that work in the fiel know the low sucess rate--alcoholics is much higher.

Reply - that is likely very true, but again we should ask what happened to them to start this. Check out drug treatment centers, prisons, and mental health facilities for the numbers of those both fostered and adopted. It is obvious that destroying families is not the answer overall.

All of these kids had something in common--they wanted to be adopted and had given up on their natural parents. Very very sad.

Reply - actually I think these kids wanted someone to love them, but I don't feel that they wanted to be adopted as I would bet that NONE OF THEM KNOW that their original birth certificats will be altered to have the adopters on it as giving birth to them. For the young boy who was adopted by 2 men isn't it ridiculous that 2 men gave birth to a child? Moreover, if the kids ever have any medical problems their files are sealed "forever more, in forever families" and it would be a miracle for them to ever see their own records within their lifetime. Kids that have no hope that way need guardians not adopters. They also need ongoing help with their trauma. But adoption cures all doesn't it? It will magically erase the pain and trauma as the strangers parade around celebrating that they adopted a broken down child - as they are a gay couple, an infertile couple, or anyone that wants a child.

It is sad, there is nothing to celebrate in the decay of families, which makes it all that more perverse that the Ministry is working with a boatload of baby brokers that glorify this type of pain. None of them CARE PERIOD ABOUT CROWN WARDS, AND NEVER HAVE. They care about hunting down a single mother and convincing her that total strangers will be better and "forever safe, and forever families". They care about making fees of $10,000 a head, and they care about finding a PRODUCT FOR THEIR RICH, MENTALLY ILL CLIENTS.

It is refreshing to hear that someone does not think of adoption as being glorious, as it is not. And it is to me also putrid that one would be in the business of buying and selling babies.

And most of the parasites that are in the business are 1) adoptive parents that want to find products for their friends who are infertile and or 2) former or even WORSE current CAS workers?

Quite the experts that the government is working with these days. It is insain.

Keep close watch over your children and study the laws, as the brokers and the vultures are coming under the guise of child protection - in a wild caravan of people that do not give a damn!

The only hope is the Ombudsman in stopping the next witch hunt.
Friday, June 02, 2006 6:17:15 AM

Anonymous said...

What type of a nutjob buys a baby when adults are not for sale? But the mentally ill are those who sell babies, and those who buy them too.

Anonymous said...

I agree these children wanted someone to love them and if their parents were on the way to recovery they would prefer them over others. Of course they want to be with their natural parents but they appeared realistic also.

I also feel these women should not be in jail but in treatment. The problem is the cost, shortage of treatment centres and the low sucss rate. Methadone works for heroine although it is only a band-aid it allows some addicts to go forward with their life. Unfortunately there is nothing as of yet for methaphetamine--it just destroys people. The other problem is it is cheap and affordable for many unlike heroin.

Anonymous said...

Good to see reality in that someone knows that children do not want to be raised with strangers. In extreme cases like some of the one's on ABC news they do need a guardian. But I wonder about a number of things.
1) where are the fathers of these kids and their families
2) where are the mothers families (and I don't buy the bad blood theory, I think it is hogwash all too often by the industry to get children for the market, but true in some cases).
3) other then the girl removed from a horrible situation why were the other kids removed to start with?
4) have they ever tried to do what Kentucky did in working with the families at all?

They have brain-washed these kids that adoption will save them. A guardian that is supportive will help them but no one just saves a child. The other thing is that these kids do need help overall long-term. Sending them into adoption is a cost saving measure by governments very often.
Also what is really disturbing is that it assumes and paints a picture that all these kids needed to be taken, and I bet a lot of them didn't to start with - some yes, but a million children with absolutely no one in the family that wants them? I think that part is a total lie by child welfare. And the problem is that as there are bad cases of abuse - the social workers lie and suggest all cases are like this. It is a guise in many ways. And because people are horrified about child abuse, and don't want to see kids being abused they get away with taking thousands not in need of protection - the fear that children will or are being abused enables society to blindly in some ways support the abuse of power by these agencies.

None have oversight and that enables them to take children who are not in need of protection to fuel the filthy billion dollar adoption business, while doing so with the cloak of child protection. And that is as dirty and as old as the CAS is.

They snatch and grab, they make it impossible for parents struggling. I think some kids in Ontario now may be removed for actual cases of child abuse, but it is not the numbers that the CAS wants us to think without question. They want society to hate natural parents and their families. They want us to blindly trust them ...... but anyone that knows about them at all do not trust them. They have proven to be totally dishonest.

I know of cases where someone needed a bit of help, but nothing in what to me would justify snatching and grabbing a child and sending them away forever. Someone said you can't or shouldn't take a thousand children to save one, and I think this is accurate. They want Leave It To Beaver idealogies, and make-up families that they create by the latest theories. In addition the workers are often young, they have studied child abuse in textbooks, they come from higher incomes and they go out and cast everyone as being unsafe. They are stuck up, arrogant, and totally unrealistic about anything. 23 year old workers that become as someone said "crystal ball seers" with no basis other then social bias to take the child......... they think they know it all.

I hope one day that the governments makes treatment centers for addicts and puts real criminals like the vile murderers of Jeffrey behind bars not addicts. I think you are right the drug meth must be cheaper and more accessible. It is a horrible drug, but underneath it may well be fairly good people overall.

Anonymous said...

2) where are the mothers families (and I don't buy the bad blood theory, I think it is hogwash all too often by the industry to get children for the market, but true in some cases).

What I mean by this is that it is not actual bad blood, but for some reason some people do repeat being abused due to the way that they were raised. Again though this is highly distorted by the CAS to induce fear, which gives them more power. I know a lot of people abused as kids who are great mothers and fathers. The CAS assumes that no one can raise above abuse - they are fatalists, as it keeps their wheels of business in motion to destroy everything - including hope very often.

Anonymous said...

The other thing is when they falsely accuse people based on the automatic assumption that someone will be just like they are raised, what they end up doing is re-abusing a survivor. They do it without evidence, they do it without trials, they do it because they can. They use what the reality of some people that may be stuck in a sick pattern of abuse to cast everyone as being the same. They go on massive witch hunts, they always have.

Anonymous said...

And for anyone that has posted here falsely accused do I believe that they have falsely accused you - and that they have made your life a living hell with their barbaric tactics - absolutely. Just a repeat of again old tricks.

They are corrupt.

To be cast as a villian without merit by these agencies is a crime, and another reason why they must have oversight. They are witch hunters that all too often find very few witches.

Anonymous said...

It's pretty bad when so many people consider CAS social workers to be spawns of Satan.

Anonymous said...

Merry meet they be,They are creative writers, for the most part, just don't know where the truth begins and where it ends, its almost like a form letter they fill in the blanks.
I have seen enough of it to be sure, that there are more out right lies in the reports, then even perhaps differing opinions, or misunderstandings,Its what they are taught, scary lot, like the psychologist.

A Letter From A Third Grade Teacher Sent Home To Pagan Parents

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Thomas,
I write this letter in concern of your daughter, Aradia Moon. Please
don't take this the wrong way, however, although she is a straight A
student and a very bright child, she has some strange habits that I
feel we should address.

Every morning before class, she insists on walking around the room
with her pencil in the air. She says she is "drawing down the moon."
I told her art class is in an hour and to please refrain until then
to do any drawing.

And speaking of art class, whenever she draws a night sky, she
insists on drawing little circles around all the stars and people
dancing on the ground. And that brings up dancing, I had to stop her
twice for taking off her clothes during a game of Ring Around the
Rosey! By the way, what does "skyclad" mean?

Aradia has no problem with making friends. I always find her sitting
outside during recess with her friends sitting around her in a
circle. She likes to share her juice and cookies. It is nice how she
wants no one to ever thirst or hunger. However, when I walked over
to see what they were doing, she jumped up and told me to stop,
pulled out a little plastic knife and started waiving it in front of
me. I thought this a bit dangerous, so I took her to the Principal's
Office. She explained to the Principal that she was "opening the
circle" to let me in. She also said that her Mommy and Daddy always
told her not to play or run with an "athame" in her hand, that she
could put someone's eye out. I don't know what an "athame" is, but
I'm glad she keeps it at home.

As for stories, your daughter tends to make up some whoppers. Just
yesterday while I was talking sternly to Tommy Johson and shaking my
finger at him, he started screaming and ran from the room. When I
finally caught him, he told me Aradia told him and the rest of the
class that the last time I shook my finger at someone, they caught
the chicken pox. I explained to him that the Sally Jones incident
was just a coincidence, and that things like that don't really
happen.

One of the strangest things that happened was when I asked the
children to bring in Halloween decorations for the classroom. Aradia
brought in salt, incense, and her family album. I see she has quite
a sense of humour.

One of Aradia's worst habits is that she is very argumentative. We
were discussing what the Golden Rule was (Do Unto Others as you
would have them Do Unto You), she firmly disagreed with me and
stated that it was "Do As you Will, but Harm None" and she will not
stop saying "So Mote It Be" after she reads aloud in class. I try to
correct her on these matters and she got very angry. She pointed her
finger at me and mumbled something under her breath.

In closing, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, I would like to set up a
parent/teacher conference with you sometime next week to discuss
these matters. I would like to see you sooner, but I have developed
an irritating rash that I am quite worried about.

With deep concerns,
Mrs. Livingston

P.S. Blessed Be. I understand this is a greeting or closing from
your country that your daughter informs me is polite and correct.
speaking of witches,

Anonymous said...

good funny above,
however this is not
We are tearing families apart

Today the Citizen's Dave Brown begins a five-part series taking a critical look at Canada's family court system.

Family courts, he writes, have moved far beyond protecting children from abuse. They deal now in terms such as "a child in need," and "best interests."

That means the court can decide a child needs better parents, even if the child has not been abused or neglected. By creating courts that undermine parents' rights to a fair trial, he argues, families are being torn apart.

Every day in North America, thousands of people are judged in courts that don't offer the protections of burden of proof, reasonable doubt, hard evidence or presumption of innocence. These courts operate in virtual secrecy.

They're called family courts, and they dispense judgments far more heartbreaking than criminal courts. Because they operate under different standards, they can have the effect of removing the right to a fair trial. In the climate of our times, that's seen as the price of protecting children.

These courts are very busy and rapidly increasing in number and power. They will likely get even busier after a recent Supreme Court decision written by Justice Claire L'Heureux-Dube, giving child protection workers the right to apprehend a child without a warrant.

She wrote: "A wrongful apprehension does not give rise to the same risk of serious, and potentially even fatal, harm to a child, as would an inability on the part of the state to intervene promptly ... "

Hers was the majority view from a five-member panel that voted 3-2. Justice Louise Arbour filed the minority opinion, arguing: "Harm may come to the child from precipitous and misguided state interference."

That's already happening.

There are sections of the Criminal Code of Canada that call for harsh penalties for persons who abuse or neglect children. In the past two years in Ontario, 2,168 children were made Crown wards.

If they were being abused or neglected, there should have been an equal number of parents punished. In fact, virtually no parents were punished. In the past year alone, 133 of those children were processed by family courts in Ottawa, again without parents jailed or fined.

Once Crown wardship is in place, child protectors turn children over to foster parents. If adopted, they become new persons with new names. Who they were becomes a package of sealed records.

The absence of corresponding punishment of abusive and negligent parents begs a question: Why not?

The answer is that family courts have moved far beyond protecting children from abuse. They deal now in terms such as "a child in need," and "best interests." That means the court can decide a child needs better parents, even if the child has not been abused or neglected.

Are children safer in foster homes? In its Nov. 13 issue, Time Magazine observed that many foster parents act selflessly to help at-risk kids, but "a quagmire of child-swallowing bureaucracies plague the system ... The incidence of neglect, physical and sexual abuse of children in foster care systems is feared to be significantly higher than the incidence in the general population ... Nobody bothers to keep an accurate count."

Is the situation any better in Canada? Who knows? Children's Aid Societies are arms-length agencies. Their books aren't open and their accountability seems to be questioned only when news leaks out that a child in care has been hurt or killed.

Criminal courts must deal with matters in a timely fashion. To make a criminal wait too long for closure is considered cruel and unusual punishment, and can result in the case against him being dropped. The same time limits aren't enforced on family courts.

In October, family court Judge Jennifer Blishen handed down a decision making three sisters, now aged seven to 10, Crown wards. They had been in the system, in custody in foster homes, for three years and four months. for short visits, they were kept apart from their parents and from each other for most of that time. Neglect or abuse (by the parents) were not issues. Parenting skills were on trial.

About the same time in another courtroom a few doors away, family court Judge Jennifer Mackinnon permanently removed a two-year-old from her mother. The mother was in family court because of an allegation of child abuse made against her when she was a foster mother, before her own child was conceived. Back when she had no children of her own, the child protectors pressed criminal charges. The case didn't go to court. The Crown Attorney said there wasn't enough evidence.

When she became a mother, though, she became vulnerable. Lack of evidence is not a problem to a family court. It uses created evidence, such as psychological profiles and projections that almost always support the side that pays for them.

I monitored these trials and in both cases needed a lawyer to argue me into the courtrooms. The law says the courts are open to the public, but CAS lawyers frequently argue that public attention would not be in the child's best interests. was the only uninvolved witness to proceedings, and by law must protect the identity of the families. In both cases the parents would love to be identified, and scream that they are victims of an unfair system. The child protectors would consider that an embarrassment to the children, and therefore child abuse.

Details of these cases will come later in this series.

It's important to understand the lengths we, as a society, are prepared to go in an attempt to do the impossible -- shield all children from all danger. By creating courts that undermine parents' rights to a fair trial, we are tearing families apart. Most of us, remembering our childhoods, can understand that being separated from one's parents would be terrifying. To be kept in limbo while a court process ground endlessly on would be torture.

Beyond a doubt there are children in need of protection, and court processes to protect them are needed. Our ancestors knew that when they built child protection into the Criminal Code. Somehow it became accepted that protection under the code was handicapped by the requirements of a fair trial, so family courts were formed. They have now evolved to the point where we can lose our children if we fail to pass parenting tests. The rules are unclear, but the testers will be social workers, psychologists, or psychiatrists.

Courts accept those specialists as experts. They don't deal in ballistics or poisons, but in theories. The view seems to be that they practise a science. Psychology is not a science. Its practitioners are fallible, but free from accountability.

If these views sound harsh, they aren't just those of this writer. They are shared by family court Judge Robert Fournier, quoted in a case I reported in April, 1999. After ruling an Ottawa couple were good people and good parents and could keep their baby twins, he had to explain why in previous family court hearings they were vilified as violent drug-addicted perverts, and lost four children to Crown wardship and adoption.

Three were taken into custody on allegations of child sexual abuse, made while they were out of the country and the children were with a babysitter. By the time they got back, the babysitter was the paid foster mother of their children. The fourth child was a newborn removed by protection workers from the nursery of the Ottawa Hospital, Civic Campus.

Judge Fournier explained that evidence allowed in family court is anything from an observation to an opinion to an impression. He said the mother's appearance contributed to the loss of her children. She's a bodybuilder with a penchant for tight clothing, high heels and big hair. To child protectors, she gave an impression of a wrong mom, said the judge.

As a result, some of the analysis/opinion/evidence became less than objective, she lost her children. Judge Fournier also made it clear there's no reverse in the child protection system. "I know it leaves a hole in your heart," he told her, "but c'est la vie."

While Judge Fournier was making that statement, the CAS was continuing with the adoptions of the first four children. Heidi Polowin at the time was chief in-house counsel for the society. She said: "The cases aren't connected. Once a court makes a child a Crown ward, other processes start. There's a normal flow." Mrs. Polowin has since been made a judge.

It wasn't my first close-up look at family courts in action. In 1991 I reported on the case of baby Joshua, handled by Lanark Child and Family Services. There was no allegation of abuse or neglect. The mother came under the agency's scrutiny when she asked for its help.

Over the next few months, authorities slowly pulled her baby from her through a series of access-reducing court orders. She came to my office frequently, and I watched her turn into an emotional wreck. Eventually a judge granted Crown wardship, but with a condition. The baby was only to be adopted if no member of his extended family would take him.

The adoption happened quickly. The extended family was in New Brunswick and had a room waiting. I know because I phoned. The child protecters didn't make those calls

Wednesday 13 December 2000

When love isn’t enough - Part two of a series

There’s clarity in brevity, and lawyer Lynn Keller was brief when she told her clients’ wishes to an Ottawa family court in early summer this year. Her clients were three sisters aged seven to 10, and they wanted desperately to go home to their parents.

She pointed out they had been in custody for three years. During that time, they were separated not only from their parents, but from each other. Two of them had been in and out of six different foster homes each. They had been in and out of several different schools and had been treated for mental and emotional problems at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, all while in the care of the child protection system.

Ms. Keller said the children loved their parents and their parents loved them.

There was no evidence of neglect or abuse.

“Let my clients go home,” she pleaded, not the first time this plea has been made on behalf of the children during the three-year ordeal.

Children in these trials are represented by a lawyer from the office of the province’s Official Guardian.

When family court Judge Jennifer Blishen wrapped up the two-week trial, she said there would be a further delay. She would be on vacation for the month of July. It was almost four months later when her decision was delivered, not in open court, but by messenger to the lawyers involved.

The answer to the plea to go home was no. The children would stay in state care as Crown wards.

There are many kinds of abuse, and that was what Judge Blishen had to deal with. The father abuses alcohol and his attempts to beat his addiction during the last three years have not been impressive. That’s the heart of the issue, but over the years it has become surrounded by a body of complications packaged in caseworker reports and psychological assessments.

Mother is a product of a state upbringing. She was a Crown ward. She saw child-protection workers as family. Early in her relationship with the father, she turned to that family of child-protection workers when she wanted to vent, complain, or seek help. She didn’t realize social workers were keeping records that would eventually be presented in court.

The pivotal point was in May 1997, when a social worker assigned to the family made the decision to apprehend the children. Mother was in hospital and father was the caregiver. He was drinking. He wasn’t falling down drunk, but was obviously under the influence. Tiny details would find their way into the court record. It was noted he wasn’t keeping up with the laundry.

It was clean, but piled on a bed unsorted, and the children were being dressed from the pile.

Lawyer Andrew Fobert represented the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa-Carleton. His job was similar to that of a prosecutor—to win the state’s case. He amassed an impressive pile of material to do that. There was little in the lives of the family that wasn’t exposed to opinions from social workers and psychologists, and worked into court records. Between the mother’s instability and the father’s preference for maintaining a constant low-grade buzz, their lives were messy.

An assessment of the family was ordered, and that task was turned over to psychiatrist Dr. Gregory Motayne. He completed one in April 1998. The major problem was the father’s drinking, and he concluded the man was “unlikely to maintain abstinence” if the children were returned.

Dr. Motayne said he couldn’t get a solid read on the mother, because she was trying so hard to impress him that she was skewing the results. That part of his report weakened the CAS argument for permanent Crown wardship.

In June 1999, another assessment was ordered, again from Dr. Motayne. By now, the CAS had drawn up a plan of care for the children. When Dr. Motayne’s second assessment came in, in February, it seemed to not only support the CAS plan, but follow it almost point by point.

The couple’s parenting skills were flawed in several ways, he reported, and each flaw had been “observed.” Lawyer Wendy Rogers, representing the parents, zeroed in on that word. Dr. Motayne said the observations were not his, but reported to him by caseworkers. This appeared to be using a psychiatrist as a typist, and when asked to justify that style of expertise, Dr. Motayne answered, “Accuracy is not as important as consistency.”

The children’s paternal grandparents sat through the trial and Judge Blishen told them they could ask questions of witnesses. This was the only time they accepted the invitation to question. The grandfather said: “I’m an old surveyor, and I know if you don’t have accuracy, you get a lot of inconsistency.” He didn’t end his statement with a question mark, so there were nods and the trial moved on.

The circumstances of the grandparents show an odd bias in the child-protection system. There are children’s aid societies, but there are no parents’ aid societies.

The grandparents tried to care for the girls while the protection system made a decision, but being in their 70s, they found keeping up with three active children too difficult. They tried so hard, the grandmother was hospitalized. They asked for, but could get no, financial assistance, in-home help or respite care.

The public purse opens wide to strangers (foster parents) in times like this, but families are expected to provide for their own.

The parents of the children separated in early 1999. Mother said she was advised her only hope of getting her children back was to get the father out of the picture. Although they lived apart, they were “sneaking” back together. Finally they gave up, and in February this year, got married.

Mother had an attitude: “I think it’s probably the most important thing, that children have parents who love each other.”

But if you run that kind of attitude through psychology, you come up with words like “co-dependent.” That’s how her view of love appeared in reports to the court.

“There is no question that both parents dearly love their daughters,” the judge observed in the judgment. She noted that access visits with the children showed “spontaneous mutual affection.” The children, she noted, “continue to have a fantasy wish to return to their parents’ home.”

In the three years since the apprehensions, the parents’ relationship seems to have stabilized and the judge made note of that too. Her concern, expressed in her judgment, is would children be safe in a home with an alcoholic father who also admitted to past drug use?

On the witness stand, mother was asked by her lawyer if there was a threat to her children, would she protect them? She gave the impression she definitely would. She wanted her children home and if there were concerns, she was willing to agree to frequent visits from CAS.

Judge Blishen said no. She recommended the children be allowed to see their parents at the discretion of the CAS, perhaps four times a year, and held out a faint hope they could some day be reunited.

Protection workers recently drew up a plan for the children’s Christmas. They will be allowed to spend the day with the grandparents, but the parents can’t be there. Mom and Dad will see the children on Dec. 21. Grandfather says he doesn’t understand why he can’t see his son at the same time as his grandchildren, and have the extended family together. CAS doesn’t have to explain. It is now the official parent.

There is a wide door opening here. If we, as a society, take all children out of homes where alcohol is abused, where are we going to store them? Odds are good at least one of the girls will be in a foster home where alcohol is a problem.

The judge’s decision is the safe one. If the children were returned to their parents and harmed, the whole child-protection system would be in disrepute. If harm were to occur in a foster home, that’s a new case.

Removal of children from families should be treated like a death sentence. A family court judge should face parents, like a criminal court judge faces a condemned prisoner, and deliver the bad news.

They should see the pain.

Thursday 14 December 2000

Mother presumed guilty by court - Part 3 of a series

A two-year-old child, never abused or neglected, has been taken from her mother. Expert evidence purchased from psychologists by the child-protection system won out over expert evidence purchased from psychologists by the defence.

Mother was launched on her personal voyage of the damned in January 1997, when she was accused by child protectors of abusing two children who were not her biological children but who were in her care.

They were brothers aged three and five who were wards of the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa-Carleton. The CAS pressed criminal charges but allegations didn’t get past the Crown attorney’s office. There wasn’t sufficient evidence for an appearance in a criminal court.

Had the allegedly abused children been her own, she would have appeared in a family court, where the burden of proof is not much of a burden. As it was, the two were in her home on an adoption-probation basis. She found them too difficult to handle and wanted to return them.

In the minds of the protectors, those stopped charges against her were still hanging. In their minds, just because a criminal court wouldn’t hear them didn’t mean she wasn’t guilty of something.

After quitting the adoption program, she and her husband split up. She became pregnant with a new partner, who was never part of these proceedings.

When she gave birth to a daughter, she immediately had something to lose, and so qualified for family court. Seven months after the birth, child protectors appeared at her door and took her baby into custody, weaning her in the process.

The mandate of every state-funded child-protection agency is to enforce child protection laws. In Ontario, it’s called the Child and Family Services Act. By definition, that makes them something like police departments. Like police in the criminal system, caseworkers are not held accountable if they push into the courts persons who shouldn’t be there. They may not have the power to arrest parents, but neither are they subject to the same kind of review and second-guessing that police are.

In the criminal system, there are safeguards, such as presumption of innocence, to protect the accused. Hard evidence is needed. In family courts, judges make decisions based mainly on opinions. They could be called trials by psychology.

An obvious case of child abuse with broken bones or bruises, goes to criminal court. “Maybe” cases, or “it-might-happen” cases, go to family court.

In this case, Judge Jennifer Mackinnon, in her judgment released Nov. 6, made mother’s baby daughter a Crown ward to protect her from a mother who may have abused children in the past, and therefore, presumably, could do it again. Psychologists paid by the state to support the CAS case said those were real possibilities. Psychologists hired by the defence said otherwise.

There was hard evidence of injury in the case of the two children who had been temporarily in the mother’s care as possible adoptees. The three-year-old required eye surgery for an injury experts said was caused by shaken baby syndrome. That injury is usually associated with babies not developed enough to support their heads. But experts said it could happen to a three-year-old if the shaker was strong enough. Mother said the boy fell down stairs.

There were burns from an iron on the older child. Children don’t testify in court, so he said through interviews, reported to the court by experts, that the marks were punishments inflicted by mother. She said he was a strange and damaged child and had burned himself.

The boy made other accusations that became part of the record: She held his head in the toilet. She flushed his brother’s head in the toilet. She made him iron. She put him in the washing machine while it was running. He was forced to sit on the toilet while the family ate, and he wasn’t fed. She made him eat feces and drink urine. She wrapped a chain around them in the garage and was going to pull them. She kicked. Hit. Pushed.

Those accusations were presented along with an expert opinion that the child did not suffer from “attachment disorder.” There were no signs “whatsoever” of self-mutilation. In the final phase of the two-year ordeal, that same expert under cross-examination by lawyer Frank Armitage saw “some partial aspects of attachment disorder.”

The words “post-traumatic stress disorder” were added to the psychological soup. A child can get that from being separated from his birth mother. There was agreement that the disorder can result in “a vivid sense that terrible things exist which don’t exist.”

CAS lawyer David Elhadad presented the court with an impressive profile of mother as a dangerous person. It was painted mainly by opinions from a variety of experts, most of them using psychology.

Journalists in court can’t ask questions. Here I can. Why wasn’t the woman assessed before two children were left in her care for more than a year? If they were abused, did the protection system not fail them? Where’s the accountability?

As a skeptic, I see psychology as a spooky craft too open to error. Its application can be too easily turned and tuned to the needs of lawyers.

For the third time, I saw a twisted test turn up in evidence. It’s called the Child Abuse Potential Inventory. You may not have abused a child yet, but maybe you will. In none of the three cases did the mothers pass the test, and always for the same reason.

The way it was worded this time: “(Mother) gave socially desirable responses, perhaps in an attempt to hide negative personal characteristics. Moreover, she wished to present herself in a favourable light to create a positive image. Consequently, the results of the test were invalidated.”

In other words, you fail by trying. In the other two cases, they lost their children too.

It smacks of Salem in 1693, and a test for detecting witches. Suspects were bound and thrown into a pool. If they knew how to relax and stay afloat, they were condemned because it must be the Devil holding them up. If they sank and drowned, they weren’t witches after all.

In this year’s case, there were other tests deemed unreliable because the mother has multiple sclerosis.

What Judge Mackinnon was faced with here was not hard evidence, but opinions on which she had to build a balance of probabilities: Had the mother abused those CAS wards? If so, was she likely to abuse her own child?

There’s no room for reasonable doubt. If there is a chance a child may be abused, it’s a chance family courts won’t take.

Every child is at some risk of abuse, more so as the definition of what constitutes abuse expands. This latest child taken into state care is still at risk -- but any hurt the baby daughter gets won’t be from her birth mother.

The last time I talked to the mother, after the decision was delivered, she proved one part of her psychological assessments correct. She’s a strong woman with impressive self-control. (Some experts thought those traits were good.) Others said it showed she may be capable of masking her true cruel self.) She was making arrangements for a private polygraph test. She said she will appeal.

Friday 15 December 2000

‘Why did somebody decide she couldn’t be my mother?’ Daughter sees her mother, adoptive parents and herself as victims - Part 4 of a Series

Dora Bieber disappeared into the child protection system and was adopted 12 years ago. She’s now 19, and has been living with her birth mother for two years. She wants answers.

“There’s nothing wrong with my mother,” she said of the woman sitting beside her. “Why did this happen to her? Why did somebody decide she couldn’t be my mother?”

She’s looking to me for answers because my name appears as the writer of many stories that for many of those years tracked her mother’s one-woman war against the powerful child protectors.

First Dora wants assurances that nothing will be done to harm or embarrass her adoptive parents, for whom she has respect and admiration. To protect them, she doesn’t want her photo taken, nor does she want her adoptive, and now legal, name used. She says they, like herself and her birth mother, are victims.

It’s 8 p.m. Nov. 29. We order supper at a west-end steakhouse, and settle in for a long talk.

First, some truths for Dora. Her mother was indeed arrested 10 times because she refused to accept family court decisions that took away her child, made that child a Crown ward, and made her disappear into adoption. Yes, mother really did at one point spend 10 months in jail, refusing an offer of early release by refusing to agree to conditions.

Yes, I saw her brought into courtrooms wearing jailhouse jumpsuits, chained hand and foot, raising her handcuffs over her head and shouting defiance: “I love my daughter!”

I have long wondered how she managed to locate her daughter so many times, and how she came within a whisker of pulling off an abduction.

After a slow meal and a long talk, we had some answers. But there’s still a gap between mother and daughter. There’s something unusual about their interaction. In the parking lot, Dora was waiting in the passenger seat of her mother’s car, looking straight ahead at nothing. Like her mother, she’s a small woman, and seemed to be trying to make herself disappear between her own hunched shoulders. The body language was clear. She needed a hug.

“I know,” said her mother, still standing outside. “I just can’t. It would be fake and she’d know that. It would make things worse. I don’t fake. It’s part of the damage. I can’t forget the look on her face that day (of the near abduction). She recognized me, and she ran. She was afraid of me. That hurt so much. How could she have believed I would ever hurt her? How could she have believed them?”

Maria slid in behind the wheel, backed the car out, and paused for a moment to adjust the wipers to clear the cold drizzle. Mother and daughter were pushed against their own sides of the car. Both needed a hug, but mother was still too angry, and daughter too frightened.

- - -

Citizen, Dec. 3, 1987, Brown’s Beat: “Woman says justice system failed her after husband walked out.”

It was the first time Maria Bieber appeared in one of my columns, and it was intended to show a needed repair to marital law. Three years earlier on an October night, Ms. Bieber, after a lengthy visit to her home in Hungary, arrived back in Ottawa with her three-year-old daughter and ailing mother. Her husband, a bankrupt casket salesman, didn’t meet them at the airport as promised. He was gone, along with all their belongings. She was a self-employed hairdresser and he had disposed of her equipment. Everything was gone, including her home and her means of supporting herself and her family. He hadn’t kept up the mortgage payments.

For three years, Ms. Bieber knocked on justice’s doors demanding he be tracked down, charged with theft, and brought back from Alberta, hogtied if necessary. She was in a fury, and once managed to get into the office of Perth Crown attorney John Waugh. When he said he couldn’t help, she left her child, saying she couldn’t afford to raise her, so Mr. Waugh would have to. She returned later to get her daughter, but it was an incident that didn’t look good years later in front of a family court judge hearing a Children’s Aid Society application for custody.

In that first story, her lawyer, Ted Masters, was quoted as saying the kind of theft she experienced was a gap in law that should be closed. It still isn’t. Although marital property is supposed to be joint property, if one partner steals it, police will tell the other party to take it to a lawyer. It’s a civil case.

To Maria Bieber, theft was theft and she couldn’t put it behind her. Her anger was further fuelled by the realization he was planning his moves before she left for Europe. That he was still sharing her bed while planning his betrayal was the greatest theft of all. “He stole my love.”

The social safety net was keeping the small family barely afloat when she arrived at my office in 1987. She had her small daughter with her and the child seemed placid when mother gave a temper-filled account of her circumstances. The girl found things to play with while mother downloaded. She seemed accustomed to mother’s emotional high-tension wiring.

- - -

Brown’s Beat, Oct. 26, 1988: “Group aims to judge lawyers, fight bad law.”

It was a story about people who had paid much money to lawyers and felt they had been burned. They believed they had been little more than raw material for an industry that didn’t care. Over the next few years the group would grow to a membership of 170, and then fade away. Shortly after it was founded, Ms. Bieber showed up at a meeting. She became the cause celebre for the group, which called itself CABL—Citizens Against Bad Law. She told how she had been watching television at a shelter for the homeless in 1988, and saw a commercial about the services of the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa Carleton. The main theme of the ad was: We’re here to help. If you’ve got problems, call.

She called and talked to a caseworker and signed an agreement placing her daughter in foster care for three months. She extended that twice while she waited for rent-to-income housing. She frequently visited her daughter and thought she was lucky to be in a country that offered such fine services. Her daughter was in a nice home being cared for by good people.

After getting an apartment and decorating a room for her daughter, she contacted her caseworker and said it was time to bring her daughter back. The child had been in care for almost nine months.

She says now: “I knew I was in trouble the minute the new caseworker walked in. Up until then, I had been dealing with a woman who had become a friend. She was 62, and I thought of her like a second mother. The new worker was younger. She said she wasn’t running a babysitting service and accused me of taking advantage of the system.”

Maria Bieber has a hot temper and a low flashpoint. Treated to a view of the eye of one of mother’s storms, the social worker decided to apprehend Dora for the child’s protection.

The fight was on.

In family courts in child protection cases, the steps are painfully slow. As Maria’s access to Dora was slowly reduced, she became more angry and distrustful. She fired lawyers and eventually the only people she would trust were CABL members. They turned out at hearings to show support, and some of them at some points represented her. One of them kept count of her court appearances, but stopped counting at 147.

- - -

Brown’s Beat, Nov. 22, 1994: “Woman seeks trial to get back ‘lost’ child.”

Maria Bieber had been in jail for six months at this point. A judge offered her instant freedom if she promised to stop her attempts to abduct the child the system was now referring to as her “former daughter.” She had been caught with passports and within a few feet of the girl.

She said no to the judge’s offer, and went back to jail for another four months. She was demanding her case be heard by a criminal court, and she wanted a jury “with mothers on it.” It didn’t happen.

Watchers, including police, were impressed by mother’s investigative skills. That she managed to track her daughter and find her, frequently, through a series of foster homes was impressive. At the steakhouse she explained: “I drove all the time, all over the Ottawa and St. Lawrence valleys. I would watch schools.

“Garbage was best. Once I knew where one (foster) home was, I would pick up the garbage and go through it, mainly for phone bills. I would call the numbers and sometimes connect with the next foster home. If I suspected a house might be a foster home, and found a lot of calls to the CAS, I would know I was on the right track.”

During dinner at the steakhouse, she focused more than once on the day in 1994 when she almost abducted her former daughter. “I’ll never forget the look on Dora’s face. I was so close, but she ran. She was afraid of me. They lied to her, and she believed them. She believed I would hurt her. That’s what I can’t forget.”

Dora asked for help making her mother understand. “When they told me I’d never see my mother again (she was seven), I think I cried for three months. But the surroundings were nice and people were nice and I was just a kid.

There were lots of distractions and I started to change. I started to forget.

“When I was 10, I remember we (she and her foster parents) got all dressed up and went to the courthouse and I was adopted. The judge told me I was lucky and I thought so too. We went out and had a nice dinner, and it was a happy day.”

Over the years, the caseworker who took Dora into custody maintained contact. “She told me my mother had gone crazy and was looking for me to kill me. She said my mother wanted to burn my house down. I was terrified. I couldn’t sleep. I recognized her running towards me that day, and I ran for my life.”

At 13, things were changing in Dora’s life. “I didn’t feel close to my (adoptive) parents any more. They were, they are, wonderful people. But I started to feel alone. Even when I was with my parents or my friends, I had the feeling of not belonging. I started to smoke. They didn’t like that. Did I tell you they even spent a lot of money on riding lessons? I’m a good rider.

“They didn’t deserve what happened. I started to feel there was something wrong and I started to rebel. I wouldn’t co-operate. I started skipping school. My marks fell. I used to tell them all the time that the minute I turned 16, I could legally make my own decisions. I would be legal. I would get away from them. I was going to do it. I’m so sorry. They really tried, and I hurt them.”

She left in April 1996, the day after her 16th birthday.

Within a few days of her flight from her parents, an anonymous caller told me the girl I knew as Dora was on her own, and where she could be found. She was at a home in a valley town about an hour away. I drove there and left a brief letter for her in the mailbox. If I never heard from her, I wrote, that was her business. But if she needed help, use the number on the business card.

For the next year she drifted, often waking up not knowing how she would get through the day or where she would go to bed that night. She held onto the card and after a year, made the call. She was brief. She wanted her former mother’s telephone number. I didn’t hear from them again.

On Nov. 27, just a couple of weeks ago, I was at the Elgin Street courthouse and passed them in a corridor. I didn’t recognize them. Ms. Bieber called out. We talked. Did Dora want to tell her story?

“Hell yes,” she said. She is angry at the system that took her away from her mother.

Dora made the call to mother in late 1997. The Red Lobster Restaurant on St. Laurent Boulevard was chosen as the meeting place. They didn’t recognize each other for several minutes.

Dora (laughing): “Suddenly I had this crazy woman jabbering away at me in a language I couldn’t understand. She switched languages and I still couldn’t understand. I thought, oh damn. They were right. She’s crazy.”

Maria: “When they took her away, she spoke English and Hungarian and Italian as well as I do. I was so afraid she would lose her languages. And she did. At least she didn’t get fat.”

How did they decide to live together? “I didn’t have a choice,” says Dora. “She told me to get in the car. We were going home. It just felt right.” Mother is a fitness fanatic, and now daughter is too. They work out regularly together. No smoking.

Dora is attending an alternate school, maintaining a 90 average, and expects to earn her high school diploma by April.

In an attempt to show the child-protection system as, in her word “stupid,” Ms. Bieber borrowed a niece from a sister in Hungary. The girl was the same age as Dora. From 1989 to 1994, she played mother to the child, sending her to school as her daughter, using Dora’s name and paperwork. She also continued to collect support from social services as a mother of one.

She wanted to force the child protectors to make a move, and get the issue back into court. “If I was such a bad person they took away my own daughter, how could they possibly allow me to have another child in my care?”

CAS didn’t bite, and her niece was left in her care.

After the niece returned to her mother in Hungary, speaking excellent English, Ms. Bieber was charged with fraud. She was accused of defrauding the taxpayers of Ontario to the tune of $55,000. She appeared in front of a criminal court in 1998, unrepresented and offering an explanation. Whether the child in her care was her daughter or somebody else’s, she was a child in need of support. The court agreed and lowered the amount of the fraud to $7,000, found her guilty and the sentence was two years probation. She will complete the sentence in July.

- - -

Dora’s question: A mother loves her child and the child loves mother, and there’s no abuse or neglect. Why would anybody tear them apart?

One answer is that it’s because there is a Children’s Aid Society, but no parents’ aid society. Her mother was suffering from depression and was being treated for it. When she signed over temporary custody of her daughter, she was admitting she was flawed. Most of us are, but we don’t put it in writing. The request for help put child protectors in the position of having a child to protect, and they had some difficult choices to make.

Mother was depressed and her anger at the system made her appear irrational. With the interests of only the child in mind, the protectors decided mother’s healing time was up, and started separating child from mother. Once that process starts, it doesn’t back up.

Maria Bieber has a different answer to the why question. She calls it false advertising. “If I had never called that number, they would never have been in our lives.”

December 16, 2000 Saturday

We need protection from the protectors

Ottawa parents are 19 times more likely to lose their children to state care than are parents on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. The risk that parents will be taken to court by child protectors in the first place is three times higher in Ontario than across the river in Quebec.

Either Quebec authorities are leaving children at risk, or Ontario child protectors are being over-protective. Take your pick, but there has been no noticeable epidemic of child abuse in Quebec.

For Ontario parents, the risk of court challenges by child protectors skyrockets if they’re poor. Ottawa lawyer Ross Stewart has been practising at the family bar for 11 years, and is a veteran of protection cases. Among those clients over the years, he can’t remember one that wasn’t a legal aid case. Only the poor qualify for legal aid.

There are 448 Crown wards on the rolls of the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa-Carleton, which serves a population of 780,000. In Quebec, where Les Centres Jeunesse de l’Outaouais serves a population of 325,000, there are 10 children for which the agency is “tutor,” the Quebec equivalent of a Crown ward. Put those figures through a calculator and the number of Crown wards in Ottawa-Carleton is 19 times greater per capita.

In Ontario the decision to remove a child from its family is made by family court judges. In Quebec those decisions are made by judges in juvenile courts. In 1999, according to Attorney General Department figures, Ottawa family courts were asked to decide the fate of 2,151 children. For the same period in the Outaouais, child protectors asked for court decisions for 302 cases. On a per capita basis, that’s puts the Ottawa figure three times higher.

Why are the Hull-side figures so low? Luc Cadieux is director of the Outaouais child-protection agency. He says one possible answer is oversight. He has powerful people looking over his shoulder to make sure his child protectors don’t abuse their power. His peers in the Ontario system don’t. “It makes you cautious,” he says.

Parents in Quebec who believe the protection agency has overstepped its authority, or acted improperly, can complain to the Quebec Human Rights Commission. That agency will investigate, even if the case is being pushed to court.

In Ontario and the rest of North America, rights agencies stand back. They take the view that any involvement in a court-related issue would be interfering with justice.

Family courts are classed as courts of justice, but are they? They do not review hard evidence and scientific fact. If there’s any of that, the case appears in a criminal court.

A family court makes decisions it believes to be “in the best interests of the child.” Evidence is mainly opinion and theory from social workers and psychologists. There is no requirement that those who put parenting skills on trial—including judges—must themselves be parents. Frequently they are not.

The “best interests” principle has been called, by some legal experts, the vaguest principle in all of statutory law.

For Ontario parents who think they are being abused, the complaints desk is in the same agency they want to complain about. Children’s Aid Societies are arms-length organizations. There are more than 50 in Ontario. There is no oversight.

Regional councillor Alex Munter hears enough cries for help at his office that he has called for a complaints process. Ontario’s new ombudsman, Claire Lewis, former commissioner for public police complaints, believes child protection agencies are enough like police services to require oversight. He has offered to take on the role of CAS complaints reviewer—if the legislature will give him the power.

In a family court, the most dangerous accuser parents will face is a psychologist. There are reasons to fear them and their spooky craft. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, multiple personality disorders (MPDs) were all the rage in the psychology industry. Many got rich writing about patients they said had several different personalities inhabiting the same body. Since then, the existence of MPDs has largely been discredited.

In the ‘70s, evidence taken from children by psychologists and presented in courts sent dozens of daycare operators to jail for involving children in satanic rites and sexual abuse. Oops again. It didn’t happen. Massive lawsuits are still going on.

Now on the block is suppressed memory syndrome. Reports suggest that those memories are often planted by psychologists’ repeated, leading questions.

A new breed of psychologist is emerging, dedicated to exposing junk psychology. One of them is Dr. Tana Dineen of Victoria, author and frequent contributor to this newspaper.

The title of her 1996 book leaves no doubt where she stands; Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People. For more information visit her Web site at www.tanadineen.com.

Recently I watched three different family court trials in which mothers failed a test called the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP). In each case, psychologists, paid by the prosecution, reported that the mothers were trying so hard to fool the tester by being nice that they were masking their true feelings and invalidating the test. They didn’t pass. They lost their children.

I asked Dr. Dineen for her expert opinion of that test.

“Psychologists are the inquisitors of the modern age witch hunts. They control the uncovering of child abuse and thrive from identifying perpetrators. The tests they use, including such questionable instruments as the CAP, are useful to them for two reasons: The tests sound clinical and scientific, and they cast such a wide net that they identify a significant number of innocent people as potential child abusers.”

Family courts provide abundant grazing for psychology. Not only are practitioners highly paid for producing the reams of material that will be logged in as evidence, but there’s more good grazing on the periphery. Courts routinely order people to take parenting courses, marriage counselling, anger management courses, addictions counselling and the list grows.

Courts buy psychology as science and the media buys it as sexy. Hardly a week goes by that a new psychological discovery doesn’t make a splash in the media.

A new affliction discovered recently in California is called affluenza. The discoverer, with a book bearing that title already on the U.S. market, promises to make nice people of the children of the affluent. The diagnosis is rich kids grow up to be arrogant snots, but don’t worry, a treatment has been developed.

The perfect life is living rich in California where you can hire experts to give you angst-free love, guilt-free sex, and snot-free kids.

Psychology is a hard sell in a Quebec child protection case, because judges run courts that require more of a burden of proof. Of the 1,237 files opened in 1999 in Hull juvenile court, 876 were under the Young Offenders Act. The remaining 302 were child protection cases under the Loi de la protection de la Jeunesse.

Parents who truly abuse their children and cause injuries or leave marks, appear in criminal courts. There are harsh penalties.

For the kind of abuse psychologists describe in family courts, though, the aim is not to incarcerate the parents, but to take their children into custody. They go into a foster-care system that regularly turns out adults with a high failure rate. In March, the latest month for which figures are available, there were 14,200 children in the care of all Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario. It will cost taxpayers $650 million for their welfare, including foster care.

When we created family court with its reduced burden of proof, we established an institution. Institutions grow and, to do that, they need numbers. This institution is served by dedicated professionals in the child-protection system who, through no fault of their own, provide the system with what it needs to keep growing—a body count.

The problem is the system, not the people in it.

Only public pressure is going to bring about change. Politicians are locked into the idea that more power for the child- protection industry means more protected children. What’s needed is protection from the protectors—accountability—and that’s not going to happen until the public demands it.

Anonymous said...

March 12 When a couple seeking to adopt a white baby is charged $35,000 and a couple seeking a black baby is charged $4,000, the image that comes to the Rev. Ken Hutcherson's mind is of a practice that was outlawed in America nearly 150 years ago — the buying and selling of human beings.

The practice, which is widespread among private adoption facilitators, of charging prospective parents different fees depending on the race or ethnicity of the child they adopt is one that Hutcherson is fighting to change from his Redmond, Wash., church. The Antioch Bible Church has established its own adoption agency, and is lobbying state legislators to change Washington's laws.

"I've got championship Rottweilers. I sell them by supply and demand," Hutcherson said. "I raise thoroughbred racehorses. I sell them by supply and demand. I'm not going to let people sell children by supply and demand. What's the difference between that and slavery?"

The campaign to change the law is directed at Washington state legislators, but Hutcherson said he would prefer to see the federal government step in and create one set of regulations governing adoption, rather than leaving the issue to the states to decide.

Current Washington law bans payments to a birth mother for placing a child for adoption, but does not address payments for arranging an adoption or the fees that may be charged.

"I think it's an issue that Americans have not looked at closely enough, because if they had, things wouldn't be the way they are," he said.

He hopes to get attention around Washington with a billboard campaign as soon as he can raise the $70,000 to $80,000 he needs. The billboards will feature a white baby, a latino baby and a black baby and next to each, the fees some adoption facilitators might charge for them: $35,000, $10,000 and $4,000.

He said that besides putting a price on children, the practice discriminates against white babies and people who seek to adopt them — an issue he said has been overlooked because white people, particularly those who can afford the high adoption fees charged, are not used to considering themselves victims of discrimination.

"I know about discrimination," said Hutcherson, who is black. "I don't care who it's against, it's wrong. Tell me that if it was black babies that cost $50,000 and white babies that cost $4,000, people would be screaming their heads off."

Disparity in Fees

Some adoption professionals said the reason for the difference in cost for adopting white babies as opposed to babies of other races or ethnicities is that there are fewer white infants available and there is more demand for them.

"Often the justification may be that children of some ethnic groups are more difficult to place," said Gregory Franklin, an attorney who said that 90 percent of his business is providing legal representation for people involved in the adoption process.

"Obviously, any time that somebody brings up the word discrimination, everybody's going to take notice and draw attention to the issue, whether or not there's an issue there," said Sean Lance, the director of American Adoptions, which has a fee structure that results in prospective parents paying more to adopt white babies than to adopt black babies. "It's not set up as discriminatory. The difference is in the cost of the process — living expenses, medical expenses. Our agency fee for all adoptions are identical."

He said that minority mothers often qualify for Medicaid or other financial support that pays their expenses while they are carrying their babies, and sometimes will cover the cost of the delivery, whereas white mothers often do not, so those costs are paid by the prospective parents of the baby.

In some states the birth mother's living expenses can also be passed on to the adoptive parents, and that can create a disparity in cost for different adoptions. If a birth mother does not have other support, laws in some states allow the cost of her rent, maternity clothes and food to be passed on to the couple seeking to adopt her child.

One Web site for a licensed, non-profit adoption agency says it will wind up costing prospective parents about $19,000 to $35,000 to adopt "non-African American (i.e. Caucasian, Hispanic, Native American etc. or any non-African American combination of races) healthy newborns and infants" through the "Traditional Programs."

In the "Minority Program," prospective parents can expect to pay an average of $8,000 to $15,000.

The difference between the costs for black and non-black babies is explained by the "subsidies to help offset the costs of these adoptions" and because more advertising is needed to find non-black babies.

There is also a difference in cost depending on whether a family is willing to wait nine to 18 months for a non-black baby ($19,000-$24,000) or wants an infant in three to nine months ($27,000-$35,000).

"The fee difference results from higher living expenses and medical expenses for the birth parents," the site explains. "Also, because there are fewer familes that can afford these higher cost adoptions, the waiting times are significantly reduced."

Hutcherson and some adoption experts said the range and disparity of fees seen on the site are representative of the fees of many private adoption agencies as well.

‘Money Should Not Be Driving Factor’

Every state prohibits the buying and selling of children, but agencies and facilitators are allowed to charge fees that are deemed to be reasonable.

Only four states — Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts and Minnesota — ban adoptions by independent facilitators or attorneys, though Connecticut, Massachusetts and Minnesota will all waive the requirement that adoptions be done through an agency if the child's interests are better served by an independent adoption.

"It is interesting that states have never looked at why the fees for a white newborn might be $30,000 and why the fee for a black 5-year-old with slight retardation should be $2,000," Adoption Insitute executive director Cindy Friedmutter said. "The costs of adopting either child shouldn't be any different.

"The laws are in some cases not strong enough and in some cases are not enforced well enough," she added. "Money should not be the driving factor."

Some states allow independent adoption agencies, facilitators or even families who want to adopt to place advertisements in newspapers, magazines, on the Internet or other means to find birth mothers who want to give up their babies. Unscrupulous facilitators will sometimes try to pressure pregnant young women into giving up their child for adoption by holding out the promise of money for their "product," Friedmutter said.

"For poor families, for young, unwed mothers, that creates untoward pressure," she said. "That's not the way adoption is supposed to work.

"When money's involved, ethics go out the window," she added.

Is High Cost a Guarantee?

Friedmutter said she draws a distinction between facilitators or agencies that charge prospective parents more or less depending on the race or ethnicity of the baby that they want to adopt, and those who charge on a sliding scale based on the family's income.

She said charging people according to what they can afford is a way for agencies to make adoption a viable choice for more families, and still let them balance the books.

But she rejected the argument put forward by some facilitators that charging higher fees for healthy white babies — who are in short supply and high demand — allows them to charge less for youngsters who are not in such high demand.

She said that practice could create a sense in parents who spend more money on an adoption that they are buying a product with an implicit guarantee — that this child will be everything they want in a child.

"The thing that is scary to me is that children aren't perfect," she said. "People who are willing to pay high fees for healthy kids don't always get perfect children. If you pay $50,000, it doesn't mean that child is going to be healthy, gorgeous and smart."

According to Hutcherson, the answer is to take money out of the equation. The adoption agency he started at his church is run by volunteers and funded by contributions, and that is the model he would ultimately like to see adopted nationwide.

"When it comes to adoption, America needs an enema and I'm hoping God made me the chocolate laxative," Hutcherson said.

how sick is this?

Anonymous said...

Only public pressure is going to bring about change. Politicians are locked into the idea that more power for the child- protection industry means more protected children. What’s needed is protection from the protectors—accountability—and that’s not going to happen until the public demands it.
Dave Brown Ottawa Citizen reporter

Anonymous said...

supply and demand Makes me more sick to read that crap.

Anonymous said...

Is anyone on this guy's side? I don't know how he does it.

Marin seeks new power, not glory; Ombudsman says many areas need critical eye Expanding tasks 'catch-up, not empire building'
The Toronto Star
Sat 03 Jun 2006
Page: A12
Section: News
Byline: Kerry Gillespie
Source: Toronto Star
Ontario's Ombudsman regularly uncovers injustice, cruelty and stupidity in the delivery of government services and he wants sweeping new powers to expose more wrongdoing.

Andre Marin says municipalities, hospitals, school boards, children's aid societies - any public or private body that gets provincial money to deliver services - should be subject to his oversight.

But does this make Marin a publicity-seeking empire-builder - as critics suggest - or should the ombudsman have more power?

Marin is more willing to splash government misdeeds on the front pages of newspapers than most of his predecessors, but he is not the first to ask for greater power.

In 1975, Ontario's first ombudsman, Arthur Maloney, also wanted to oversee school boards, universities, hospitals and municipalities.

"Because these bodies have important decision-making powers and take actions which affect the lives of all of us ... it is my intention to recommend to the Legislature that I be given the requisite jurisdiction to investigate complaints respecting these institutions," he said.

The government didn't listen to Maloney (he, too, was called an empire-builder), and the calls for expanded powers quieted down until Marin, Ontario's sixth ombudsman, was appointed a year ago.

"There's nothing I have put on the plate which they don't do in other provinces," Marin said. "It's catch-up, not empire building."

British Columbia's ombudsman can investigate municipalities, child protection services, school boards, universities and hospitals. Ombudsmen in Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the Yukon also have most of these powers.

Marin is limited to investigating complaints about provincial departments.

"For 30 years there have been holes in the (ombudsman's) mandate big enough to run Mack trucks through," Marin said.

The ombudsman, appointed by the Legislature and independent of all political parities, helps citizens who think the government has mistreated them. His staff fielded 23,000 complaints last year.

But many doors are shut to Marin because services have been privatized and downloaded, which he complains has shrunken his office's ability for oversight.

Today, some 80 per cent of provincial tax revenues are turned over to bodies like hospitals and school boards.

And Marin notes the government has expanded powers for the Auditor General, who investigates whether government money is properly spent.

"It puts us in a ridiculous position where the Auditor General can audit whether the Children's Aid Society bought a certain photocopier and got proper value for money ... but no one can come in and say, 'Listen CAS ... you've neglected this situation,'" Marin said.

Many Liberals, particularly cabinet ministers who have borne the brunt of bad publicity because of Marin's investigations, aren't keen to give him more power.

"His table is quite full at this time so it is interesting that he would want to look to expansion. I'd like to see the responses for my constituents come a little bit quicker (from his office)," said Education Minister Sandra Pupatello, who was community and social services minister when Marin began his investigation into disability support payments.

This week, Marin released a scathing report saying the government had unjustly and cruelly withheld millions of dollars of support payments from thousands of disabled Ontarians.

Many MPPs quietly call Marin a publicity hound but few are willing to say anything critical, on the record.

It's not just what Marin uncovers, but how he publicizes his findings that has ministers hoping to stay off his radar.

In March, he said the government corporation that determines property tax assessments has a "superiority complex" and engages in "cutthroat manoeuvring around property owners."

Last September, after investigating why the government refused to pay for an expensive life-saving drug for a Barrie teen, Marin said "The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care should be both embarrassed and thankful that it is not too late. (The teen's) family is not yet bankrupt and he is not yet dead."

Marin fills his reports with heart-wrenching stories, putting a human face to the numbers - something rarely seen in government circles. That makes it all the harder for government to ignore him, which also rankles some.

"Elected governments are being dictated to or highly pressured by people who are in independent positions who at the end of the day do not have to pay the bill," said one MPP.

Government is not just here to "serve those who complain, but those who pay the bill to quiet the complainant," he said.

Even the opposition - which benefits when Marin exposes government mistakes - shies away from dramatically expanding the ombudsman's powers.

Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory says it's worth looking at, but adds that he doesn't want the ombudsman to duplicate oversight that already exists for some bodies.

NDP Leader Howard Hampton supports Marin being given oversight of children's aid societies but not the other bodies he wants, like school boards and hospitals.

"You raise questions of resources, you raise questions of having such an expanded mandate you start to lose expertise because you're spread too thin," Hampton said.

Marin doesn't know how much more money he would need - his budget is more than $9 million now - to oversee new areas, but says the benefit would outweigh the cost.

He points to one investigation that resulted in the dramatic expansion of Ontario's program to screen newborns for severe genetic diseases.

The investigation cost $45,000, but the new screening program will save 25 lives a year, and save another 25 babies from being severely disabled and costing the health care system millions of dollars in specialized care, Marin said.

"There's no doubt that an ombudsman's office is tough love. We're a hard pill to swallow in the short term but I like to look at the bigger picture," Marin says.

"We're here to strengthen government. For $9.3 million a year ... it's a phenomenal deal."

Illustration:
• Steve Russell toronto star Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin wants expanded powers, but is not asking for anything 'they don't do in other provinces.'

Anonymous said...

Ken Hutcherson no doubt enraged the adoption industry when he told the truth. And is is to me slavery, and not only that the price differences to me are an overt form of racism, no matter what is explained in the grand manipulation. All babies are beautiful, all babies are equal, and all should be cherished. But if we cherished them they would not be sold to anyone either.

But I find it disturbing that he would see creating more adoptions as an answer. If one could raise $35,000 it would be better spent addressing the problems - supporting single mothers, creating accessible and quality childcare, creating funds for education, creating mentorship programs for mothers and fathers from others that want to help them to be better parents.

If International adoption was abolished and people really started spending massive amounts of money like $60,000 they could donate that money to a lot of villages in poverty stricken areas of this globe to build for one clean wells, schools, irrigation systems that enable the growth of food to feed poverty stricken masses, vaccines, etc.. to me that is real love, not buying one baby for any amount of money.

Thankfully good organizations like World Vision sponsor children in their countries instead of removing them. Thankfully they have not catered to removing children for someone else.

If the CAS agencies would take the money that they are throwing into foster care to actually help people like Kentucky is doing it would be better overall.

Governments that think more money and more power to child protection is an answer are dead wrong.

Maybe if people spent the time they could help more then they think they can. While not all parents can be safe, too many are seen as being unsafe in child welfare. As well it is unfair to brush entire families as being incapable.

This horrible story about Jeffrey is not the norm, many loving grandparents want to help to raise children, and many loving families want to help with family preservation.

Why should we support family preservation - well I think the outcome of the great experiment by the CAS is something that speaks for itself. It has been a disaster and it has hurt numerous people. It is not normal to be raised with other people, and it is not something people should glorify.

It is pathetic that so many foster kids are in jail, have drug addictions, alcohol addictions are completely broken down. All too often they were taken from poor families, and instead of helping the families they were all too willing to give strangers a monthly pay cheque to care for them. But the care was not care, nor is it now. That a young man can be drugged the way "J" was in a group home is more then scary. That it took his grandparents their savings to help him is a travety.

Accountability is the least of what should happen in response to Jeffrey, and in response to the history of the CAS.

I hope that the public does band together to demand Bill 88 in being passed. Parents deserve it, and above all children deserve it.




What Dave Brown said is very true.

Anonymous said...

"Letter to a Caseworker"

They think that they're God; What gives them the right

To decide for you If you're living wrong or right.

You must do this, you can't do that

And don't dare mess up because they know where you're at.

You're afraid to speak, You're afraid to say

That they are wrong: All you can do is pray.

So in your head you write them this letter,

At least you might feel a little bit better:

Why are you so powerful with the place that you're at?

You're just another person, with an authority hat.

You're not perfect, you make mistakes!

But I'm the one you watch from the time I awake.

Any little thing, you'll twist and distort

To make it how you want when you take me to court.

Sitting there in your authority place,

You openly smile at the grief on my face.

I hope that someday you too will discover

There's someone for you with an authority cover.

Someone to show you all you've done wrong;

Someone to say, "Oh, this won't take long.

And while you're waiting, you have to do this,

This is the punishment for the crime you didn't commit."

Maybe then you'd learn how it is.

Maybe you'd think twice before taking our kids.

Maybe you'd look at what's really going on,

Instead of saying to yourself, "Oh, the father is gone.

The mother is young, so she must not know

All the right ways to help her child grow.

I'll find it a home with someone more stable."

Knowing damn well that mother was able.

Then you find a 'nice' home Where they have lots of money.

Now you're driving a new car- Isn't that funny?

You took THAT child because the mom got high.

But that rumor about you, THAT one's a lie!

You act like you're God because you have a high position,

But look in the mirror: you'll see the real villian.

You condemn others for things you do as well

But you need not worry-your coworkers won't tell.

You prey on people in bad situations

The ones who work 2 jobs.

The ones who don't have a college education.

You look for victims of circumstance

And then you take away their only chance.

I hope that someday it'll come back to you.

They'll acuse you of neglect--it doesn't matter if it's true.

They'll take YOUR child, and find a 'nice' home,

Hey, what do you know?

That worker got a new cell phone.

Then they'll smile, as they watch you cry

And explain to you how they validate that lie.

It doesn't matter if you're black or white;

It doesn't matter if you're wrong or right.

Because once you encounter that authority face,

It doesn't matter: You're just another case.

For those of you with a lot of money, you need not worry

Just hire a bigwig lawyer

and they'll leave you alone in a hurry.

I don't know how you can go through your day

With your job choice--taking kids away.

It started out as a way to save

All the innocent, taken too early to their grave.

But unfortunately, somehow money became involved,

And thus, child adoption scams evolved.

What's really sad and makes me cry

Is all the children that have to die.

It seems the cases that are truly severe,

You let it go on, year after year.

You seem to ignore the real abuse

Until one day it's in the paper and on the news.

How can you let kids stay in homes like that?

I guess that's not where the money's at.

You find the cute kids that are really nice,

Then you take them away for having head lice.

You want the kids that are well-behaved;

The ones who are loved; the ones who are praised.

The kids who HAVE been hurt are always sad.

They don't understand why they're always bad.

They cry a lot and have bad dreams,

It's harder to find homes for them, it seems.

You're supposed to help, Instead you harm.

The family has a good attorney? No need for alarm.

Just return THAT child and find another,

This time find one with a low-income mother.

Find a little girl who's as pretty as a flower

And then take her away with your authoritive power.

Make sure she's sweet, and her temperament's mild,

Then tell the court, "it's what's best for the child."

It doesn't matter if the reason is lame,

Because the judge, too, is in on the game.

I hope that someday you can walk in my shoes;

That they take your child for false abuse.

Then maybe you can look back and see

All the families you've destroyed just to collect a fee.

And when that day comes and it happens to you,

You'll know in your heart that what I'm saying is true.

This poem was written by a woman in Oklahoma.She has had her children taken and kept away for three years by child protection services.The reason? They said her house was messy.Her name is Joy.

Anonymous said...

Loving grandparents like the grandparents of J should have been able to consult the Ombudsman to get their drugged, sexually abused, ignored and hurt grandson out of that group home. They lost their savings fighting the system?

Is that fair? If it was you in that position how would you feel? If it was you in that position as a young boy how would you feel being drugged out of your mind, sexually abused in a group home, and denied to live with your own grandparents who you know love you?

Is the system child oriented or oriented to others?

Anonymous said...

The Toronto Star article is very telling. John Tory and his cronies don't want the Ombudsman in there as they do not support anyone other then rich, white men on Bay Street.

Howard Hampton is the only leader that supports what is long overdue accountability from the CAS.

If you are falsely accused by the CAS you can complain right now to the following
1) the social worker that hates your guts
2) their supervisor encouraging them to do their job in removing children
3) their board that supports them
or
4) the Ministry that funds them.

They DO NOT HAVE OVERSIGHT. And if anything I hope that the Jeffrey Baldwin tragedy does educate people about those agencies. I hope that the media continues to listen to CAS victims and that they continue to report the truth.

How would you like to lose your child "forever more" and be hated and reviled by all of society as the CAS has said that you are "unfit".

How would you like to lose your family and be sent to strangers to be "forever sad".

I love the poem that Joy wrote as it is the TRUTH. It encapsulates the very essence of child welfare, and it depicts the huge suffering of parents and their children.

Why the fear? If CAS is not corrupt then why do they fear oversight so much?

The police have oversight, and you don't see them protesting about it as good police officers want to help people, and they also don't want corrupt police on their forces. You don't see politicians afraid of police oversight do you?

Why the fear here?

Anonymous said...

EVERY SINGLE POLITICIAN AGAINST CAS OVERSIGHT SHOULD HAVE A PICTURE OF JEFFREY BALDWIN. They should look at him in their offices, in their cars, and in their homes. They should see that beautiful angel before he was murdered, and then watch the Fifth Estate to see the final outcome.

How dare anyone say we don't need CAS accountability. The CCAS placed him into a hell hole, and allowed him to be massacred.

To me this is an election issue, and it will be a hot issue. I think if politicians want to be elected the one's that are willing to stop the tyranny of the CAS will be in office.

We've just see the worst failure of the CCAS in Canadian history, a beautiful child is dead, three others are traumatized for the rest of their lives, a trial that cost tax payers a bundle over this horrible case is soon to be completed, and an inquest is being called. For Christ sake if this case does not BEG FOR OVERSIGHT THEN WHAT WOULD!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Who cares about Masha Allen, who cares about men like John Dunn, who cares about children like J, who cares about the victims of the industry? Does the industry?

Or might it be the true victims of child welfare, those already taken, and those already cast as being the villians.

It should disgust any loving person on this earth that little girls are being bought online by rich pedophiles, and sold to strangers under the guise of safety. It should disgust people that every week more dead children are being reported in the news as having been murdered by foster parents and adoptive parents.

It should wake people up to a giant beast, that has 8 heads, and that is out of control.

And it should awake people to stop the abuse of children.

How dare anyone say that strangers are forever safe. How dangerous, how chilling. How many more abused and dead children will come out of the dark tunnel of child welfare?

God help us all, but more then that God help all children in a system that is out of control and that answers to no one.

Anonymous said...

And the industry does not want sites such as this to even be available, nor do they want anyone to hear the reality of their experiments.

http://www.amfor.net/KillerAdopters/

Forever safe, forever families is a load of crap!

Anonymous said...

If the social worker responsible for the brutal death of Jeffrey Baldwin had case meetings with an evil piece of crap, who had a marginal intelligence to start with then how in the name of God are they going to be able to "screen" other so called foster families, and worse those "forever safe, forever families".

How many children did that worker arrange to be sent to foster care and adoption and how many are they arranging now?

If someone is so inept as to not do a police check, not check files, and not check into anything then why do they have the power to continue to still arrange so called "care".

It should be enough to keep people awake at night, it is terrifying. It is also enraging. Why are the only people on earth that are responsible for child abuse happening protected from responsibility?

Yes who is protecting people from the protectors. God help us all!

Anonymous said...

I wonder what the social worker really "sees" who was responsible for Jeffrey, as she gazes into her crystal ball, in her ivory tower, and her castle like walls surrounding her office, with her pit-bull lawyers on guard to defend her?

Anonymous said...

Here is this week's horror story.... doesn't it remind you of little Jeffrey and his siblings? And the list goes on, every week is another dead child taken by the protectors and given to strangers....

Saturday, June 3, 2006


Ex-foster mother charged
DeLeon faces mistreatment count in case of boy, 8
Benjamin Shors
Staff writer
May 2, 2006

The Stevens County prosecutor has charged a former foster mother with criminal mistreatment of a young boy in her care but did not announce whether she would be charged in the death of a second boy in the home.

County Prosecutor Jerry Wetle charged Carole Ann DeLeon, 51, with a felony for the alleged mistreatment of an 8-year-old boy, identified in court documents as "S.M.M."

The documents allege that DeLeon limited the food and fluid intake of the boy, who had "marked retardation in height and weight" but thrived after leaving DeLeon's foster home.


If convicted of second-degree criminal mistreatment, DeLeon could face five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Her attorney, Carl Oreskovich, was out of the state Monday and could not be reached for comment.

DeLeon, a former paralegal with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Spokane, and her daughter, Christina Burns-DeLeon, have been the subject of an ongoing investigation into the death of another boy, 7-year-old Tyler DeLeon.

Tyler, who weighed 28 pounds at his autopsy, died of dehydration on Jan. 13, 2005, at his adopted mother's home.

In a report issued this past February, the state's child welfare agency said it had failed to protect the boy despite a "significant pattern of suspicious injuries throughout his life." The report said Carole DeLeon perpetuated the "myth" that Tyler's injuries were due to drug exposure during pregnancy – even though a toxicology screening at his birth did not find drugs.

The Stevens County Sheriff's Office forwarded a homicide-by-abuse case to Wetle last year, but no charges have been filed and detectives have continued to investigate.Wetle refused to comment on the status of the investigation into Tyler DeLeon's death.

Kenda Bradford, Tyler's 27-year-old biological mother, said the lingering investigation has been a frustration to her.

"They still haven't done anything about Ty, and he actually died in her care," Bradford said.

DeLeon received a foster care license in 1996, despite two founded incidents of child abuse in 1988, according to the state's Child Protective Services. Founded reports are those in which the agency determines that "more likely than not" the alleged abuse or neglect occurred.

Last year, the state removed four children from DeLeon's home and revoked her license.

In October 2004, S.M.M. left DeLeon's care. The court records say that the boy has improved dramatically since leaving the home.

"He's great," Wetle said. "He's just coming out of it."

The court documents say that S.M.M. and Tyler became "buddies" in DeLeon's rural foster home. But DeLeon isolated the boys from the other children; one adopted child said DeLeon was "just mean" to the two boys, according to the court filing.

DeLeon reported that the two boys had "voracious appetites, but both would drink until their stomachs were distended and would drink out of bathtubs, puddles and toilets," according to the documents.

The documents allege that both boys failed to grow and gain weight at a normal rate during their time in DeLeon's care.

But S.M.M. began to thrive after he was removed from the DeLeon home in October 2004 and demonstrated "remarkable catch-up growth," according to the documents.

In four months, he gained 18 pounds and grew 2 1/2 inches.

His rapid growth led a physician to say, "I would be suspicious that his poor growth in the past was due to calorie deprivation or psychosocial short stature or a combination thereof," according to the court documents.

According to the documents, a second physician found "substantial reason" to believe that both boys were maltreated in DeLeon's care.

Anonymous said...

The abuse was bad enough in the past, now the strangers are killing them!

Anonymous said...

I read the news today, another child is dead.
Another child took a ransom on their head.

They said he would be better off, and safe forever more,
They said his mother was unfit, to them she was a whore.

Her greatest crime was poverty, their greatest crime is lies.
Depending on your verdict, depending on your eyes.

They said he would be safe, for every single day.
But then again, their pay cheque is telling it this way.

A child he was forever, and dead forever more.
And all because they judged his mother, if we’re keeping score.

His father was invisible, forbid that he was found.
As if the man had right’s, an industry in the ground.

I read the news today, another child is dead.
Another child took a ransom on their head.

The stranger is forever, and safe forever more.
And all upon the lie, their mother was a whore.

Real families, are no better, not safe forever more?
Based upon the theory, the mother is a whore.

The families all extended, are neither safe as well.
In child protection services a modern wicked hell.

But none of them will answer, to anything above.
The children were all taken, for someone else’s love?

I read the news today, another child is dead.
Another child took a ransom on their head.

But they have all the answers, the crystal searing ball.
Never held responsible, the greatest crime of all.

They said he would be happy, in all that is above.
And be forever grateful, they thought that this was love.

And as he passes forward - onto the other side.
He’ll be greeted by dead children, their arms are open wide.

And many of them are angels, sent from well above.
To try and maybe tell us, strangers are not forever love.

Before their brutal fates, they ached for something more.
Their mothers, and their fathers, if we’re keeping score.

And in between the darkness, and what is wrong and right.
Do not give up on children, and never stop this fight.

By anonymous, with love - and written for all the dead children who are anonymous who died in care of child protection agencies.

Anonymous said...

I am in favor of ombusman oversight.

However someone suggested the police did not objct to oversight. That is wrong wrong wrong. The police have objected all along but they had no choice. Often they do not cooperate with investigations either when the SIU is involved. This is every time a civilian dies or is seriously injured during a police arrest or pursuit etc.

All public bodies should have oversight if death has occured or is likely to.

The police union have complained adamently all along. They have soemthing to hide too?

Anonymous said...

Removal of children from families should be treated like a death sentence. A family court judge should face parents, like a criminal court judge faces a condemned prisoner, and deliver the bad news.

They should see the pain.

Reply - BRILLIANT but the Minister is working with baby brokers, and so called experts - that glorify destroying families.

Anonymous said...

The Ministry here should be contacting people in Kentucky to work with them in changing child protection, and not be in bed with a band of baby brokers.

Anonymous said...

> ORDERS OF THE DAY
>
> CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES AMENDMENT ACT (CHILD WELFARE REFORM), 1999





ask the parliamentary assistant perhaps to explain about the



actual
> change in threshold that is being suggested here, where a motion can be
> brought to court on notice to the person affected for access to records
> under the existing system that might be relevant to consideration of
whether
> a child is suffering. In the new system, the person does not need to be
> notified. The matter of records: It can be for all records regarding that
> person. It isn't the same threshold of relevancy to the actual issue of
> consideration.
>
> With a society that has developed fairly strong mores around
> safeguarding of privacy, I hope the courts will implement this
judiciously,
> but it is an extraordinary leap from where we are today. It is important
> that we ensure timely access to the appropriate and relevant records. Is
> this the right way to do it? We haven't had the benefit of any discussion
on
> this. We haven't even had the benefit of having the privacy commissioner
> come before us and comment on this section of the bill, because there
> weren't the hearings. So we don't know whether there are concerns the
> privacy commissioner would have with respect to that and whether or not
the
> appropriate balance has been struck. It would have been useful, would it
> not, for us as legislators to at least be reassured that the government's
> course of action on this is the appropriate one with respect to achieving
> its goals?
>
> Duty to report: a change in terms of the obligation on professionals
> and the attachment of a penalty for failure to report. One of the
questions
> I would have liked to know about that is why there is a prohibition on a
> professional, having made the determination and recognizing the need to
> report that, being able to delegate it to a staff person within their
> operation to do the reporting. It seems to me that many professionals
would
> probably, in most cases, pick up the phone and do it themselves; there's
not
> a problem with that. But there may be occasions when that becomes very
> problematic. What was the reason for the prohibition? There is probably a
> really good reason. I don't know the answer, though, because we haven't
had
> any kind of opportunity for exchange or discussion.
>
> I want to talk a little bit about an area of significant concern on
> the part of members of our caucus and of my leader, Howard Hampton - we
will
> be moving an amendment to this effect tonight - and that is with respect
to
> First Nations. I know last week when Howard mentioned, when asked by the
> media, that he had some concerns about the bill, there was a flurry of
faxes
> that came in. I have to say to people that sometimes it would be good to
> pick up the phone and ask, because I want to tell you what led to that
> expression of concern. I think it's something we should all be concerned
> about in the province.
>
> Let me read to you from a letter from James Morris, who's the deputy
> grand chief of the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation.
>
> "As you are aware, the First Nations child welfare agencies were not
> adequately consulted; therefore it is inaccurate for the minister to state
> extensive consultations were conducted." Once again First Nations were
left
> out of the process, and they have a right to be angry. They have a right
to
> feel that they have been overlooked yet again.


But when it comes to First Nations, the section on cultural
> sensitivity finds itself lower down in the bill, in paragraph 5 or so. We
> would like to suggest -
>
> Hon Mrs Ecker: A whole bunch of sections.
>
> Ms Lankin: Minister, you don't need to heckle. You could just listen
> for a second and see whether there's any merit in even giving
consideration.
> I know at the last minute you just need to get it done, but maybe, given
> that you've spent so much time refusing to listen, you could for a moment
> tonight listen and see whether you could give any consideration to this.

On balance, I support the passage of this legislation, but I hope
that
> comments we have been able to put on the record tonight, comments about
the
> inadequate discussion and debate of certain legal thresholds, of what the
> intent of the Legislature was, won't prejudice appropriate determination
of
> that down the road by the system, by the courts, by judges. Comments have
> been put on the record with respect to the need for adequate funding, not
> simply for the increased caseload and the increased time with which to
deal
> with the caseload through the new risk assessment but for prevention
> measures as well, the need for children's aid societies to find out what
> their budgets are, which we still don't know, and what the funding formula
> really means, which we still don't know, but those are corollaries to
making
> this legislation work.


> The remaining time I will leave for other members of my caucus who
> want to participate. I appreciate having had the opportunity. I say again,
I
> think it is shameful that there wasn't the appropriate process and the
> opportunity to hear from the public. I hope that after passage of this
bill
> and some experience, long before the five-year review period is up, we
will
> come back together as legislators and give this public policy the kind of
> hearing, and have the discussion with those in the field, that I believe
is
> warranted.


in terms of the ongoing implementation of this legislation, and yet what
we
> heard most was more questions about why we didn't have more opportunity to
> discuss this.

> If we go to Hansard, we will see in Hansard, time and time again,
> valuable time wasted in this place that should be used for constructive
> debate by members opposite saying, "We haven't had enough time to talk
about
> this legislation." Perhaps, in the next session of Parliament this place
can
> actually get to discuss some of the positive aspects of legislation,
rather
> than the continual rhetoric that does no one any good

A CAS would be allowed to apply for a
> warrant or telewarrant to obtain information during the up to 21 days
> allowed for a protection investigation. In addition,
CASs would be allowed
> to make an application to a court where the information may be relevant to
> monitoring certain court orders.


I'll be sharing my time with my parliamentary assistant, Frank
Klees,
> and, time permitting, with the minister responsible for children, Margaret
> Marland. Margart Marlands granddaughters, do not go to school, they are home schooled, do not go see medical doctors, they see chiro, and no vaccines, and mommy spanks and believes its necessary, perhaps she took her mother inlaws advice and keeps her children out of reach.

While the child protection system our government inherited in 1995
had
> some significant strengths, it also had some very troubling weaknesses.
When
> I attended a meeting for provincial social services ministers in 1996 I
saw
> that other provinces were facing similar challenges, and it helped to flag
> for me the need to examine our own system here in Ontario. In addition,
the
> inquests into the deaths of children involved with children's aid

societies


> Our first conclusion was that by simply throwing more money at the
> child protection system, while certainly needed, we couldn't do that
without
> a plan and without priorities, because it just did not make sense. Second,
> we recognized that there was little to be gained from tearing everything
> down and starting over. Instead, we recognized that we need to build on
the
> existing strengths to create a stronger child protection system.


In addition, we put in $15 million in new funding in 1997-98 for an
> extra 220 front-line workers and supervisors to improve other front-line
> support, such as the new database and better staff training. A commitment
of
> $170 million was made in the 1998 budget to be spent over three years for
> CASs to support the hiring of an additional 760 child protection workers
and
> supervisors to continue to move forward with better staff training and
also,
> very importantly, to revitalize foster care

The threshold for triggering the protection of a child would be
> reduced from the current "substantial risk" to "risk that the child is
> likely to be harmed." This should result in earlier reporting and, where
> appropriate, earlier action taken to protect children.
>
> To remove the uncertainty that exists in the current legislation
> concerning neglect, the words "pattern of neglect" would be included in
the
> grounds for protection.
>
> The amendments would improve protection of children in cases of
> emotional harm and the risk of emotional harm by lowering the threshold
for
> that definition of emotional harm from "severe" to "serious." This means
> that the child would have to experience serious anxiety, depression,
> withdrawal, self-destructive behaviour or delayed development, and the
child
> would either not be receiving treatment to alleviate the harm or the harm
> would have to be caused by the parent.
>
> I would also like to make clear that all the rules in the Health
Care
> Consent Act would continue to apply concerning decisions about medical
> treatment and the parents' authority to make those.

BUT NOT true, if that was true, then why did they call when I took my child out of a hospital, her life was in no danger, and on the advice of her treating allergist, just not the resident in the hospital, if true, then why are children being removed for the so called MSBP, if the so call doctor shop, and to them that means a second or third opinion, you cant take your sick child to the ED if you have concerns, that will be questioned, this is the law but not respected. they are confusing the fake MSBP with parental rights to make health care decisions for their own children,


The fourth priority is the need to improve what is called
"permanency
> planning" for children in the care of a children's aid society. The
proposed
> amendments would encourage earlier planning of permanent arrangements by
> reducing the time children may remain in the temporary care of a CAS.
>
Getting ready for Bill 210, 12 months and adoption, into pre screened homes. they had already been practicing this with out legislation, so why bother,



Finally, Bill 6 provides for a mandatory review of the Child and
> Family Services Act at least every five years and for that report to be
made
> public.
But it was not, and like this Bill was done in secrecy late at night, and with huge arguments and left the aboriginals out again, more power. more money, and less LESS accountability, and NO oversight.

but we are also laying the groundwork for future necessary improvements to
> this very important legislation.
Bill 210 . so they admit it, laying the ground work all right, the numbers of children in care sky rocketed, ready to be adopted, and the torture began, more children dies or where harmed in care, and more are homeless to day as a result.



In closing, I would like not only to thank the members of the
ministry
> staff for their work on this, but I would also like to recognize that we
> have in the gallery here this evening with us many of the individuals who
> helped us prepare these amendments: Mary McConville, Sandy Moshenko, both
> from the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies; Terry Daley,
with
> the Toronto Catholic CAS; Melanie Persaud, who is also with the
association;
> Bruce Rivers, who is with the Toronto CAS; Kristina Reitmeier, with the
> Toronto CAS; and Marv Bernstein, with the Toronto Catholic CAS. Also, from
> the expert panel, we have with us tonight Professor Nico Trocmé, and I
> understand his son Paul is with him in the gallery tonight; also, Theresa
> Ortiz and Dr Harriet MacMillan, who were very instrumental in helping us
> move forward in our reforms.

Mary Mc Conville could not keep Jeffery Baldwin alive with all that money, and extra workers, she had more children die from placements then any other agency, she could not keep pornography out of her building, and so much more.

Bruce Rivers, wanted to go into the Chiness baby adoption business.

Nico Trocme, have you read any thing this guy writes, scary stuff, and babble,

Harriet Mac Millan Mc Master, she does not know how to even define risk, was in a scandal for using foster children and crown wards in studies at the hospital it made the medical journals, no matter how they spun it , it was unethical. but hey they know nothing about morality. And all this is based on some theory, neglect is forgotten mittens, or no lights, as hydro bills are do high the fading middle class take on second jobs to pay them. poverty is not neglect, but it is the reason most children are in care. Home school . educational neglect, I don't think so, just look at that last spelling B, most of the kids where home schooled, and we know they learn far more, and have a higher rate of success,
Medical neglect, well that's any time you ask your children's doctor two many questions, refuse to vaccinate, or make a decision about your child's own health care, which above in law was not to be part of child protection at all,

Under threat to report, well what does that say,doctors and hospitals and schools better meet the quota, or CAS will come along and make threats.

>
We were very disappointed to see that once the bill had been
> introduced it was gone, never to be seen again until the 11th hour before
> Christmas, when suddenly it was revitalized and discussions ensued about
how
> on earth we were going to finish discussion, debate and approving of this
> bill, and would we then start consideration of no hearings, no travelling
in
> Ontario, no meetings with other groups. It occurred to us then that the
> government probably never did have any intention of allowing appropriate
> debate with this bill.

This is the way it is always done, who is incharge the agencies, or the people that put the government into power to represent Us and OUR families, who pays for all this? we do.
The only groups consulted is always those with vested interest, given the laws passed that night, they should have in fact all been closed down as it reads any past contact, / abuse or neglect of children could be help against people, and children protection has been nothing but a hot bed for years of deplorable treatment of children, as far as we can go back in time. And is still today.

specifically on
> children's aid and the clients and families those associations service, in
> every community across Ontario, both through children's aid societies and
> through children's mental health agencies that deal with these children
and
> in the other part of the mandate of the children's aid society, which, for
> the most part right across Ontario, it has yet to fulfill in this term of
> government, and that is a prevention factor. The children's aids are also
> required to be operating in the area of prevention, so that families never
> get in crisis, so that children never are taken into care through
children's
> aid.
the Harris cuts,
At that same time, families across Ontario became
more
> in crisis than ever in the history of Ontario, and intake numbers at
> children's aid went through the roof.

The number of cases that children's aid societies have seen in
Ontario
> has skyrocketed. That is not something this government can be proud of,
> because a number of policies brought forward by Mike Harris today in
Ontario
> have caused that to happen. We have more financial crises in families
today
> than ever before and in particular with families that were vulnerable to
> begin with. We have services that have been cut in the school system,
where
> identification often happened and intervention also happened. We have
fewer
> psychologists who work for boards of education today in Ontario than ever
in
> the history of our province. That is not something this government can be
> proud of. We have fewer sociologists, fewer people who work for boards of
> education to do the kind of intervention they used to.

Poverty, parents left with no special ed, and mandated reports, at schools parents get angry, report. medical cuts, parents get angry, CAS gets called, cant find a place to live , or apt is to small, there was no way out, how many people lost children, well is sky rocketed, and we know that a huge percentage of cases are false.

special children
> need. The result is that families move along that continuum into crisis
> faster than ever before.
>
Between a rock and a hard place the ombudsman's report, they took the children and made up concerns, so ugly it will go down in history,

I asked the people who represent the people from children's aid, the
> workers, "If you cannot support the law and enact it and make sure it is
> working for kids the way it is now, a weaker law, how will the children be
> better protected because you have better words in black and white, in law,
> tomorrow, so that at the end of the night tonight we can all stand proudly
> and say, `Look at the strong law' that has nothing to do with the
> implementation of this on the front lines for those families that are in
> crisis today?"

Those are the kinds of circumstances that are out there today with a
> weaker law, so let's not pretend that all of a sudden tomorrow morning we
> can all get up and feel good about ourselves because we've done better for
> the kids in Ontario. You have a record that you cannot run from in the
area
> of children.
How true and how sad.

When you introduce those things, as
good
> a tool as they are, a computer is useless if you don't have enough workers
> to work the system. Your caseloads have gone through the roof, and you
> haven't addressed the funding issue. What is the point of having a
Cadillac
> on the highway if you don't have the keys?

Yes so many refer to children as cars, how nice, but this statement by a MPP was right on,
was he referring to brains, morals, or money and the so called services.

so that when the Toronto Star launches
its
> next edition for a coroner's inquest, you can stand up and say, "Well, we
> have a great new, strong law"? These people have told you this from the
> beginning of time, and you haven't listened.

Did it save any children, no more died in care. and Jeffery was not the only one, so what are they all afraid of, inquiry's, and the news, so gag the press and gag the families.


He has the gall now to talk about junior kindergarten and its importance, because sometimes that can be the first intervention that a
> professional has to see that there may be a child in need. Now he wants to
> talk about funding of junior kindergarten, after 22 school boards,
equalling
> 60,000 children, have lost junior kindergarten under this government. That
> is your record.
Good OLD OLD Sandra Pupatello, not a mother of course, but look why they want JK to look for abuse, its insane, not really to help child socialize, and learn, to look for profits for CAS, same with the day cares, Harper knew that, that is why he told us all MOM AND DAD ARE the experts.

Mrs Pupatello: For the first time, in 1995, the Ontario Liberal
Party
> announced a critic for children's issues, and after a year or so, the
> government responded by enacting a mere figurehead position of a minister
> without portfolio for children, responsible for something or other; we
> haven't figured out what. The fact of the matter is, it was for show

LOL this is the government to a T


good thing she does not have children,

The truth of the matter is that
> with no public hearings, all we can do is read the final report of the
> expert panel the government put together. Here is a government with no
> respect for Her Majesty's loyal opposition or the role that an opposition
> plays in the House. We need to see, through a public hearings system, that
> people come forward to speak openly and freely about what they feel is
wrong
> with a bill that will then affect all of our lives. Why can we not have
the
> comments -
>
> Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): Why didn't you let it pass in
> December?
>
> Mrs Pupatello: The member for Kitchener ought to know better,
because
> this government, even in December, would not have allowed hearings. I
think
> you should get your facts straight before you shoot your mouth off. There
> are comments here from the -
>
> Interjections.
The work is gruelling. These are the kinds of individuals
who
> go into their own pocket to buy the special prom dress for the little girl
> who just doesn't have the money. These are the kinds of people who go home
> thinking about these cases night after night, to see that those kids
they're
> really worried about are going to be safe.
>
> How has the government responded to that, and what allowance is the
> government, through its funding models, measures or levels, giving to the
> children's aid so that they can make sure we don't just push them all
right
> over the bridge? So many of them are on the edge now. I must read this
> letter - just a portion - from Leah Casselman of OPSEU. I think you need
to
> understand how critical the workload issue is, and it's not new just this
> term. It was the same case under the NDP government as well.
>
> "The workload crisis in children's aid societies across Ontario has
> never been more critical as agencies struggle to comply with new standards
> and guidelines for investigations, new recording expectations and the
> dramatic increase in reports of child abuse and neglect. As a result, our
> members are deeply concerned about their ability to properly protect
> children in their communities and are concerned that children are now more
> at risk than ever."
WE HAVE A CASE RIGHT NOW FROM HALTON THE SUPERVISOR WAS JUST ARRESTED FOR STEALING MONEY FROM CHILDREN,

The crown ward, slept under bridges, many still do, they did not care, who is being pushed to the edge, THE PARENTS THAT LOVE THE CHILDREN, ,
And if social workers are at that kind of stress level to jump off bridges, they should NOT be near children.

>When the bill is passed tonight, I don't want the minister or
> ministers breaking open the champagne because you managed to get a bill
> through. You hurried us through with no hearings, a horrible process for
> probably the most important bill the government has had in the last four
> years. Even in this important matter, you couldn't get it right when you
had
> all-party support for this topic. You failed these children.

Mr Gerretsen: Nobody cares. Why don't you fix whatever the problem
is
> now?
True why did they not fix it, the MPP are use to getting calls for help from families, CAS abuse of power, but there is no help.
So true also the sneaky ways they pass the Bills, and the bickering, makes them look like children in need. Who raised those people anyway?
>
> The Acting Speaker: Member for Kingston and The Islands.
>
> Hon Mrs Marland: You see, you can't stand a debate. We didn't
> interrupt your member, and I think in fairness it would be nice for you to
> show some graciousness, which I hope you're capable of.
>
> For the member for Windsor-Sandwich to get up with such a vitriolic
> style that is so personally attacking of people in the government is one
> style of debate. Another style of debate is to do your homework. I'm quite
> sure that whether or not you agree with the member for Beaches-Woodbine,
you
> will find a difference in the calibre of debate. The member for
> Beaches-Woodbine does her homework and she, I'm quite sure, has read the
> Early Years Study.
>
> The member for Windsor-Sandwich said that since Dr Fraser Mustard
and
> the Honourable Margaret McCain released the Early Years Study, and I
quote,
> "The Premier found religion
How productive

Mrs Pupatello: You should thank me for your job, Minister. You
> wouldn't have had a ministry -
>
> The Acting Speaker: Member for Windsor-Sandwich, you had your turn.
>
> Hon Mrs Marland: What it means is that I had no strings tied to any
> encumbrances of ministries in terms of allegiance or a loyalty. I could
look
> very closely at everything that came to the cabinet table in terms of
> whether there was an impact on the children in Ontario, and that is the
best
> part.


That's a program that for the first time will screen every newborn
> baby, and on average, for the last two or three years, that has been
> 150,000. Every newborn baby is screened at birth as to whether they will
be
> at any kind of risk. From that screening, they are then referred to the
> intervention and prevention program. Whatever they require, they are
hooked
> into those local community-based programs

What lies, that just happened, they have crystal balls to and its not even up and running, this is 2006, this lie was told in 1999, and it should have been done years before that, as is when a baby dies, from a inborn error of metabolism. or other they did not screen for, mom and dad, have there children taken away, while the mourn the loss, of the infant, they have to fight to prove there innocence, and it never happens till the children have been adopted, and all other future children are taken, THEY SHOULD SEE THE PAIN.
and the so called experts are the likes of Dr Charles Smith, HSC, and a mom behind bars, and child adopted, and he put everyone in jail for child abuse that did not happen,
Its still going on and mistakes are being made. Its sick this legislation has no foresight at all, and its more the cruel, to families and harms children, they have the blood of every child's on there hands. That they lowered the risk and Baby Matthew Reid went in so called protection, because his mom had a messy house and history of depression, herself an ex crown ward, so no wonder depression, Matthew Reid was murdered in care, by another foster child, ruined by the years of tortured. Why do we allow it.

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): I find it truly unfortunate that we have
a
> bill before us here that did not go to committee hearings. This is yet
> another slam in terms of how this government feels about northern Ontario.
> There were a good number of people, a good number of my constituents, in
> northern Ontario who were looking forward to making comments, making
> recommendations in terms of this particular piece of legislation, the
Child
> and Family Services Act, and the amendments to it. They certainly were
very
> disappointed that they did not have a chance to do that.
>
> As has been mentioned earlier, the Ojibway Tribal Family Services is
> an agency that services a good number of communities in my riding. They
are
> truly very upset that their concerns, their traditions and their
background
> were not taken into consideration when it came to this bill. They make a
> very strong statement. I think this is one of the strongest statements I
> have ever heard against any government that has drafted a bill. They say:
> "To suggest that these proposed amendments promote `cultural genocide'
would
> not, in our belief, be an improper statement. How else does one
characterize
> a child being forcibly removed from their First Nation community and thus
> being deprived of their rightful heritage and First Nations family
> entitlement." That's one of the strongest statements that has ever been
> directed to a piece of legislation in this Legislature.
>
> A good number of those agencies are feeling that this government had
> no respect, absolutely no idea of their cultural backgrounds, how they
could
> fit into the legislation. They're extremely upset. They go on to say: "We
> sincerely believe that the proposed amendments...do not acknowledge the
> predominant role the First Nation must assume in intervention and support
> for our children. It is our urgent recommendation that, rather than giving
> additional and intrusive powers to the CASs,

Giving additional and intrusive powers to the CAS, and they just gave them more.

It is a genocide, but not only of the First Nations, we have a worse history then Hitler did, with concerns to the first nations, we took there children there land, polluted there waters and fish,
They were not told about Bill 210 till the last min, and are not happy.
Today its a genocide of the poor, they call it neglect, its about normalizing families, now what the heck do you think they mean by that???? Normal to whom.? and sounds a great deal like Orwell, Big Brother, nanny state, tolitarian, repression, and now take way the Human rights Tribunal, time to burn Ontario down, but we don't have to, its so polluted it will burn its self out, and they think people are over reacting when many call social workers the SS, and the nazis, not to far off, and its being said in Queens Park that this government is big brother,

Again, it's truly uncalled for in terms of not allowing not
only
> people from northern Ontario and First Nation communities, but people from
> across the province, to have had input into this very important piece of
> legislation. There's a lot of distrust of this government,

what they have
> done in terms of this particular piece of legislation, and a lot of real
> concern among First Nation communities throughout Ontario.
Many people in this House know my thoughts and my concerns about how
> the government has handled this bill in terms of process, and how many
> people, unfortunately, well-intentioned people in various stakeholder
> groups, bought into the government's agenda on process. I think that's
> shameful, but I'm not going to waste the precious time we have tonight in
> this House to talk about a matter of such important public policy and a
bill
Waste time with public policy???? do they also need to remember we the parents are the true stakeholders

People we do not live in a democratic society at all, so why on earth on Peace keepers/ troops dying trying to enforce democracy, when none exist at home.
Why, then, in the last minutes of a government, would we agree to
such
> an abysmal process, taking a matter of such public importance and allowing
> it to be rammed through the Legislature in one evening sitting, without
> proper attention being given to the details in the bill and without proper
> hearings from members of the public who have points of view?
Some politicians understood the shame.
The expert panel, for example, talked about extending child
protection
> to 16- and 17-year-olds. The government chose not to do that. Why?
Shouldn't
> we have that discussion? Shouldn't we know, at the same time the
government
> has cut support to social assistance programs to 16- and 17-year-olds and
> placed tremendous restrictions on them? We're saying: "You're on your own.
> You can't have government support if you're leaving a situation unless you
> can prove it's a situation of abuse, but we're not going to give you the
> tools legally to prove it's a situation of abuse, because children's aid
> society child protection workers don't have the right to step in and make
a
> finding." Why? What's the contradiction? That was a recommendation of the
> expert panel. Why was that ignored?

> The panel recommended including exposure to domestic violence and
> significant substance abuse by a parent or another person having charge of
a
> child as grounds for protection. Why did the government refuse to
implement
> that recommendation? What were the reasons behind that? What was the
> concern?
the government did not give them the authority and its not in either Bill so how can they take children out of drug homes, or have the police call CAS if called for an argument, and not violence, when ITS NOT EVEN IN EITHER BILL??? Because the MPPs to many have DUI, and children, and may have marriage problems, and a few Premiers have been alcoholics. hummm
And well now so many children killed themselves or others on the streets, could not finish school. lived in shelters, and had to beg the squeegee kids, remember, trying to get money for food, they forced them into prostitution drug dealing. and I don't think it was an accident.
take a baby, make lots of money, moving that child from place to place, don't listen to them when they cry real abuse, sexual abuse, after all they are making money, then at 16 kicked out, what parent would do that??? and all the more reason the CAS should have been scraped , abuse of humanity.
But no law allows them to take children of people with substance abuse problems. but they do, and domestic problems. they do, this is why Jeffery Baldwin is dead.

I can imagine there might be some concerns that would be raised by
> those who are working in the women's shelter and family violence sectors
> about whether or not there would be a chilling effect on reporting of
> situations of family violence if there was a fear that children might be
> removed from the family as a result of that. We might have heard that if
we
> had been allowed to have some discussion about this very important
> recommendation; we might have been able to weigh the thoughts and concerns
> of thoughtful, concerned people on both sides of the issue and make a
> decision as legislators. But the government made that decision, for what
> reason we do not know.

Here it is again, it was not in the Bill

promised those in the community who have been looking for adoption
> disclosure changes that when the bill, the Child and Family Services Act,
> was opened up for any amendments, that issue would be addressed. Of
course,
> we know that whole set of provisions and any amendment to it and any
debate
> about it has been swept under the rug. We don't know why. We don't know
why
> the government is refusing to move on that, particularly when there have
> been resolutions and private members' bills passed by all three parties in
> the House, but that's not here.
Because the plan was not complete, they needed the risk and MAYBE at risk, and neglect that the dear Dr Mac Millan cant even define, to bring lots of children into hostage care, to be adopted, they were not ready yet.
>
However, despite those shortcomings, many people who are involved in
> child protection would argue that, on balance, the changes are important
> enough that the bill should go ahead. In fact, they have argued that,
> vociferously. I wish they had been as vociferous in their argument with
the
> government that it deserved public hearings, but so be it.

I want to talk about some of the concerns we might also have heard
on
> a range of issues if hearings had been held. One of the things we would
have
> heard is how the bill doesn't address, at all, issues of prevention.
> Granted, the expert panel's report was around issues of child protection
and
> the bill follows in the line of those recommendations to a certain degree.
> I've noted some exceptions already. But the whole area of prevention, the
> whole area of positive support to parenting, is something that lies
outside
> of the bill and has been failed abysmally by this government's actions in
a
> whole range of areas.
>
> I note one of the additional grounds, one of the definitions that
has
> been added to the legislation, along with severe psychological harm, for
> example, is delayed development. Well, what about the supports to the
> associations for community living, the way in which the funding has been
> cut, the way in which families dealing with children with delayed
> development are scratching everywhere they can to try to put together the
> services to meet their family's needs?

THEY did not need services the intent was to apprehend more children, and that they did, if they had services for helping families and children it would defeat the real agenda, money, and adoption bonuses.

>
> What about children with multiple developmental problems, physical
and
> emotional, who seek help through children's treatment and rehabilitation
> centres, where the budgets have been frozen for over six years now,
> promising a review which is just being completed and they're being told
> won't be implemented until some time in the year 2000, after the
government
> sorts it out with other reviews of other children's sectors?
>
> What about the growing waiting lists and the need for early
> intervention? There are over 3,600 children on waiting lists for
children's
> treatment centres right now. The delay in getting treatment is somewhere
in
> the six- to eight-month range. How does that accord with legislation that
> will allow child protection workers - or not allow, will suggest that they
> need to move in early to protect a child who is at risk of likelihood of
> suffering delayed development because of situations in the home when the
> services aren't there to help? The whole prevention side is missing.

NO NO they did not care, warehouse them later, but took away parental rights, if the child needed help, it was a good plan, the Ombudsman heard, ruined the plan, but its still going on today.

Let me talk about children's mental health. There are over 7,000
> children and youth on waiting lists for services for children's mental
> health. Many of those families are stretched beyond their own resources,
not
> just financially but emotionally, to be able to cope, to be able to
provide
> the kind of loving support for a child who is troubled. Many of those
> parents recognize the early warning signs. They are crying out for help.
they did not care and still dont about the children and familys crying out for help. its child protection for profit, not real concern, some of the MPPs still did not understand, or did and made sure it was on record.
There's a concern about the change in the threshold in the
definition
> of a child in need of protection. As the minister referred to earlier, the
> existing legislation talks about "substantial risk" that a child will
> suffer, and then there are a number of categories of definition of harm;
for
> example, physical harm, or that "the child has been sexually molested or
> sexually exploited" due to the acts of a parent or a failure of a parent
to
> adequately care for, provide for, supervise or protect the child. The
> threshold, though, is the first part of that phrase that I read out,
> "substantial risk that the child will suffer." Those words, as the
minister
> again pointed out, are being changed to "a risk that the child is to
suffer
> harm." Some people in the area of family law are asking: "What is the
> definition of `risk'? Of what proportion is the risk? Is it any risk? Is
> there a threshold in the definition of `risk'?"
>
what is maybe MAYBE at risk, the palm readers of child protection

Anonymous said...

Evidence: MEDLINE, PSYCINFO, ERIC and several other databases were searched, experts were consulted, and published recommendations were reviewed. Original research articles and overviews that examined screening for or prevention of child maltreatment were included in the update. No meta-analysis was performed because the range of manoeuvres precluded comparability.

Benefits, harms and costs: Because of the high false-positive rates of screening tests for child maltreatment and the potential for mislabelling people as potential child abusers, the possible harms associated with these screening manoeuvres outweigh the benefits. Two randomized controlled trials showed a reduction in the incidence of childhood maltreatment or outcomes related to physical abuse and neglect among first-time disadvantaged mothers and their infants who received a program of home visitation by nurses in the perinatal period extending through infancy. It is expected that a reduction in incidence of child maltreatment and other outcomes will lead to substantial government savings. Evidence remains inconclusive on the effectiveness of a comprehensive health care program, a parent education and support program, or a combination of services in preventing child maltreatment. Education programs designed to teach children prevention strategies to avoid sexual abuse show increased knowledge and skills but not necessarily reduced abuse.
Harritte Mc Millans wonders!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Clinical Implications

Few evidence-based treatments are available. There is some support for the effectiveness of resilient peer treatment and imaginative play training, for multisystemic therapy, and for a specific therapeutic day treatment program to increase neglected children’s self-concept.


Interventions that focus either on reducing the recurrence of child neglect or on treating the impairment associated with exposure to neglect require evaluation.


Clinicians need to address a broad range of factors when working with children exposed to neglect. Taking into account the family system and contextual issues is important in implementing treatment programs.


Limitations

Defining child neglect has been difficult, and there is currently no consensus on its definition. This has led to challenges in measuring neglect and associated outcomes.

HEY then why are they taking all the children away for so called neglect, every thing is neglect to the CAS,

How can the study something there is no definition for, this is right from the people that test you to see if you abuse or neglect your children and I love this, they crystal ball of all, future risk of neglect, we cant define it, ( its most likely poverty) but we know how to tell if your child is in need of protection and services for family, because in the future something we cant define might happen, THIS IS IT FOLKS the psychobabble of Harriet Mac Millan,,

NOTHING in this is evidenced based its all theory and make work, to get grants to publish and make more work, to take children away, and harm them forever.

EVERY lawyer we spoke to for a little unfunded study,

Methodology. got on the phone and called several family law lawyers in Ontario,
Questions asked, do you practice family law, do you take CAS cases. how many clients have you seen for MSBP and all the other names its now called allegations.
Results , shocking, after some giggles by a few, they all have cases, must more prevalent in the vicinity of the teaching hospitals. How did this syndrome begin? in lawyers opinion, based on knowledge of history and medical record. What we found the most common cause of the MSBP syndrome, is 1, mother is knowledgeable, 2 ,Chart request
3. doctors cant figure out what's wrong with child, and all have varied opinions, ( but that's normal) that's medicine.
4. doctor error, parent found out. 5. a complaint to hospital ombudsman, or like role.
6. a serious case,Dr, scared of lawyers, involves a medical malpractice or negligence,threat or report to the governing body, ( but that's a joke) 7, to many questions and doctors don't get paid for answering questions, and ego thing do as I say, and don't ask,
8 Dr, is a repeat offender, makes this allegation often.because it works to get rid of pesky parents, and gets paid for filling out the report and needs some extra cash. 9, doctor induced illness, or failure to diagnosis. 10 because they can, and it protects there butts.

Out comes. MSBP is an epidemic. working towards vaccine, but who will get it, parent. child ,or doctors has yet to be detrmained.
But in my opinion it should be the psychobabblers,need it most, the ones that have yet to even read Hinterland, and see what any parent that is even a tiny bit of anything can, the error are all right there. Its funny not one doctor has seen it yet, or published.

Objective to stop the abuse of families, in the name of child protection, submit to medical journal what Meadows missed. That anyone today should not.there is no such thing as MSBP. makes for good movies though. It came out of the UK they tell great tales.
Limitations , we shall see.
more from the impressive Dr, Harry below.

Most studies excluded from this review evaluated treatments that did not target victims of child neglect. Study samples often focused on children who were abused but not neglected. In other cases, we could not determine whether neglect was included in the category of child maltreatment, and studies often lacked a comparison or control group. We excluded additional studies because they did not separate prevention effects from treatment effects in the intervention assessment. These samples included both children at risk for neglect and those who had experienced neglect.
H Mc Millan again, this is the so called experts that write what the child protetion laws should be, when they cant even define risk, or have any test that really work, to see who might be in the furture at risk or might abuse a child, to many false positives,well you know that meant the family went broke in court, Please, its so bad its funny.

Anonymous said...

They should just call Keen, get a reading, lol

Anonymous said...

Shawna’s Bill”—one that legislators throughout the nation should vie to patron and sponsor—is that child’s lasting legacy. It supports justice for defrauded taxpayers as well as for wrongly prosecuted families and terrorized children.

Ordering Professional Payback

Simple tenets of Shawna’s Bill require professionals (medical or mental health doctors, social workers, counselors, school employers, any volunteer or “mandated reporter”) who make serial “mistaken” or malicious reports be flagged in the system (as are alleged offenders, parents, caretakers or others).

Prosecutors are required to pursue repeat offenders to regain misspent tax money: for needless investigations, wrongful removals, unnecessary foster care, inappropriate court time and agency administration, as well as costly prosecutions and payouts due to wrongful reporting and personal injuries.

Anonymous said...

And look at J for instance - the evil CAS WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE THAT NO ONE IN HIS FAMILY WAS SAFE?

Yet his grandparents lost their savings in advocating for that child.

EVERYONE IS BAD BLOOD aren't they?

They are liars, thieves, and criminals they always have been.

Anonymous said...

Bruce Rivers, wanted to go into the Chiness baby adoption business.

YES HE DID. AFTER RANDAL DOOLEY WAS MURDERED. THE SYSTEM IS ABOUT INFERTILE COUPLES HUNTING DOWN PRODUCTS. It is purtid, evil and corrupt.

Who is Minister Chambers working with?

And it is absolutely supply and demand which is why most of the brokers are ALL connected to infertility networks.

It makes me sick that anyone would deny this reality.

To the poster that sent the information about these agencies thank you, the more people understand the corruption the better.

How sick is it when NO ONE CARES ABOUT DEAD CHILDREN. They care about finding products for others that are sold for 10 grand a head.

Anonymous said...

Shawna’s Bill”—one that legislators throughout the nation should vie to patron and sponsor—is that child’s lasting legacy. It supports justice for defrauded taxpayers as well as for wrongly prosecuted families and terrorized children.

Ordering Professional Payback

Simple tenets of Shawna’s Bill require professionals (medical or mental health doctors, social workers, counselors, school employers, any volunteer or “mandated reporter”) who make serial “mistaken” or malicious reports be flagged in the system (as are alleged offenders, parents, caretakers or others).

Prosecutors are required to pursue repeat offenders to regain misspent tax money: for needless investigations, wrongful removals, unnecessary foster care, inappropriate court time and agency administration, as well as costly prosecutions and payouts due to wrongful reporting and personal injuries.

Anonymous said...

Benefits, harms and costs: Because of the high false-positive rates of screening tests for child maltreatment and the potential for mislabelling people as potential child abusers, the possible harms associated with these screening manoeuvres outweigh the benefits.

so why even have the test, Dr Mac Millins own words above, how many parents lost children because of this babble, how many children lost much more.

Anonymous said...

Benefits, harms and costs: Because of the high false-positive rates of screening tests for child maltreatment and the potential for mislabelling people as potential child abusers, the possible harms associated with these screening manoeuvres outweigh the benefits.

so why even have the test, Dr Mac Millins own words above, how many parents lost children because of this babble, how many children lost much more.

Anonymous said...

Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services

Inquest in the death of Jeffrey Baldwin announced

TORONTO, April 7 /CNW/ - Dr. Barry McLellan, Chief Coroner of Ontario,
today announced that an inquest will be held in the death of Jeffrey Baldwin.
Five-year-old Jeffrey died on November 30, 2002, while under the care of
his grandparents. They were subsequently charged and the verdict arising from
their criminal trial was rendered today. The announcement about calling an
inquest was deferred until the criminal proceedings had been concluded.
The circumstances surrounding Jeffrey's death have been a matter of
public interest. Issues to be addressed at the inquest include the Toronto
Catholic Children's Aid Society's involvement in Jeffrey's placement and the
role that agency, and others, had in monitoring his well-being prior to his
death.
Section 20 of the Coroners Act allows for an inquest to be called when
there is desirability for the public to be informed of the circumstances of a
death and where there is a likelihood that an inquest jury might make useful
recommendations aimed at preventing deaths in similar circumstances.
The date, time, location and presiding coroner for the inquest will be
announced at a later date.

Disponible en français

www.mpss.jus.gov.on.ca



-30-

For further information: Dr. Barry McLellan, Chief Coroner of Ontario,
Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, (416) 314-4100

Where is the inquest for Matt Reid?
oh right he was murderd in an exeallant foster home, and J was almost killed over dose or fall in bath or face plant onto a road instead of his food, with staff laughing, sexually abused, but hey so waht thats normal for kids in care. So the social worker wrote it down but did nothing more. while his grandparents went broke fighting CAS to save the child, like so many others, parents grand parents uncles and aunts, while little children loss there pants. but hey its buisness, as usuall, and I am so sure anyone will really care in the gov. to ensure someone is held accountable for Jefferys placement, and tragic death.

Anonymous said...

McGuinty Government Strengthening Ontario's Child Protection System

Legislation Improves Accountability And Provides Stability To Vulnerable
Children And Youth

QUEEN'S PARK, ON, March 27 /CNW/ - Ontario's new child protection
legislation will help more children in the child protection system grow up in
stable, caring homes, and make children's aid societies stronger and more
accountable to the families and communities they serve, Children and Youth
Services Minister Mary Anne Chambers announced today.
"Our goal has always been to build a child protection system that works
exceedingly well for vulnerable children," said Chambers following passage of
Bill 210, the Child and Family Services Statute Law Amendment Act, 2005, in
the Ontario legislature. The legislation is part of the government's broad
reforms to improve the lives of vulnerable children and strengthen Ontario's
child protection system by expanding adoption options and improving safeguards
for children and youth referred to a children's aid society.
"This legislation will clearly place the interests of children first,"
said Chambers.
Ontario's 53 children's aid societies represent children and youth who
have been or are at risk of being abused or neglected. Children's aid
societies receive approximately 160,000 calls reporting child abuse and
neglect each year and there are about 9,000 children in their permanent care
(Crown wards). Only about 10 per cent of those children are adopted every
year. On average, young people in foster and group homes move every 22 months.
"Through no fault of their own, they have faced incredible challenges,"
said Chambers. "We want them to have the opportunity to thrive and have bright
futures."
When fully implemented, child protection reform will:

- Increase the accountability of children's aid societies through a
stronger, more timely complaints process. Under the new changes,
families could bring complaints forward to a neutral third party,
the Child and Family Services Review Board, over which the
Ombudsman will have jurisdiction. CFSRB decisions will be binding.
This process builds on existing safeguards, including the Auditor
General and the Coroner's Office
- Allow more children to be adopted while keeping important ties to
their birth family and community through open adoption agreements
- Provide more options for children who can't be adopted so they can
grow up in caring, permanent homes. For Aboriginal children and
youth, customary care arrangements that allow them to keep
important cultural and family ties will be emphasized
- Bring consistency to the adoption application process, making it
simpler and easier for prospective parents
- Create a provincewide registry to help match available children
with prospective parents
- Where needed, provide support to parents after an adoption is
complete
- Help resolve child protection cases outside of the courtroom more
quickly through collaborative solutions such as mediation
- Provide children's aid societies with the tools to support and
strengthen families facing challenges, so they can take better
care of their children
- Make children's aid societies more sustainable and accountable
through a new funding framework.

"We are encouraged by the steps taken by the government to promote
greater stability for children and help them grow up in permanent, loving and
supportive homes," said Pat Fenton, Executive Director of the Adoption Council
of Ontario.
"The changes we are making in our child protection system reflect this
government's priorities of health, education and strong communities," said
Chambers. "By helping the children and youth in our communities who truly need
our support and protection, we are providing hope and opportunity to our most
vulnerable young people."

Disponible en français

www.children.gov.on.ca



-30-

For further information: James Ip, Minister's Office, (416) 212-7157;
Anne Machowski-Smith, Ministry of Children and Youth Services, (416


I think this makes it very clear why they want OUR children.
They must think we are as stupid as they.
Increase the accountability of children's aid societies through a
stronger, more timely complaints process. Under the new changes,
families could bring complaints forward to a neutral third party,
the Child and Family Services Review Board, over which the
Ombudsman will have jurisdiction. CFSRB decisions will be binding.all Dec

No one ever gets to that board, and its there is not even such a board yet, and GET IT, it does not matter, ALL THE CFRB, thats the board she is speaking of, decisions will be binding, LOL, maybe they thought the public could be fooled by the CFRB, instead of spelling it out.
this Women is an ass

Anonymous said...

Date for inquest in the death of Stephanie Jobin announced

TORONTO, Oct. 15 /CNW/ - Dr. Bonita Porter, Deputy Chief Coroner of
Inquests, today announced the date of the inquest in the death of Stephanie
Jobin.
Stephanie, 13, died at Digs for Kids, a residential group home for
children in Brampton in 1998. Stephanie was under the care of the Peel
Children's Aid Society at the time of her death.
The inquest will review the events surrounding Stephanie's death
including the use of restraints and the training and staffing of residential
homes. The jury may make recommendations aimed at preventing similar deaths.
The inquest will begin at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, November 18, 2002, in
Courtroom H-9 at the Land Registry Office, 7765 Hurontario Street, Brampton.
Dr. William J. Lucas will preside as inquest coroner and Mr. Tyler Shuster
will act as counsel to the coroner.

She was under there care, as well

Anonymous said...

I think this makes it very clear why they want OUR children.

YES ISN'T IT OBVIOUS. And on that so called council of experts is a former CAS supervisor as well also part-time baby broker.

And in the bill it will make mothers and fathers who will have their kids taken by vulture social workers to be given to infertile couples called "birth parents", a vile term used by baby brokers to insult them. It will make mothers incubators and fathers invisible sperm donators.

But the experts know best don't they? The whole thing is putrid!
You should read the bill and the terms that the broker came up with you're not even mothers and fathers in Ontario anymore you're now a "birth mother". And all because a mob of infertile couples WANT YOUR CHILDREN.

Workshops that are called How To Find a Child? How frigging sick is that?????????

Anonymous said...

But we shouldn't be the least bit suspect no? No not even a tad, though they are REFUSING TO GIVE CAS OVERSIGHT, and well and firmly in bed with a broker?

The next witch hunt, watch your children closely the vultures are coming...........

Anonymous said...

Oh and what group supported Bruce Rivers when he wanted to arrange selling Chinese babies?

Anonymous said...

the frigging clients of the broker are not going to be seen as being of any risk period because they are forever safe, forever families and ALL BECAUSE THEY ARE RICH INFERTILE STRANGERS?

it is so devious this whole thing that it is off the scale.....
sorry Chambers NO don't ask the public to support or not see this godawful plan, they must think people are stupid.

Anonymous said...

i think people have trouble swallowing that you are not arranging a mass kidnapping for the adoption industry when you are that in bed with a broker. give me a break.

Anonymous said...

Read this crap - it is so scary. After the CAS has deemed you as being a Munch mother with no basis that's okay the brokers will find a nice, infertile couple and a forever family for your child. and don't believe the crap that you will still see your child as no one ever does almost always in these so called open adoptions.

The Adoption Council of Ontario urges the Ontario Government to implement its proposed changes to the Adoption system without delay
TORONTO, June 7 /CNW/ - The Adoption Council of Ontario is pleased with
the changes proposed to the adoption system by the Ontario Government on
June 6. When implemented, these changes will help ensure that many more
children in the child welfare system have the benefit of a stable, permanent
family, and are part of that family more quickly.
These changes address a number of the issues that members of our
organization have been troubled about for some time. The announcements, made
Monday by the Minister for Children and Youth Services, include a new funding
formula for adoption that more adequately supports adoption services,
amendments to legislation to speed up the adoption of certain crown wards with
access and to create more legal options beyond traditional adoption, and a
standardized, simplified application process for adoptive parents. We are
particularly pleased that the Government has proposed to partner with the
Adoption Council of Ontario and AdoptOntario to leverage the benefits of the
AdoptOntario website to more easily match adoptive parents with children who
are available for adoption.
Our members know first hand the frustrations that are brought about by
the challenges inherent in the current system. The adoption system in Ontario
has been fragmented, under-funded and has suffered from inconsistent standards
across the Province. While the Province's adoption workers are incredibly
professional and hard working, they have not been given the tools necessary to
make the adoption system as responsive and effective as it could be. The
changes announced by the Government should go a long way toward addressing
these issues.
"This is a very good day for adoption," says Patricia Fenton, Executive
Director of the Adoption Council of Ontario, "but it is essential that the
Government move quickly to implement these changes. Every child deserves a
forever family and every day that we wait to make these changes, thousands of
children in Ontario have to wait longer for their family".

The Adoption Council of Ontario believes that every child deserves a
forever family. Our mission is to educate, support and advocate on behalf of
those touched by adoption in Ontario. The Adoption Council of Ontario is a
membership based organization for all parties to adoption in Ontario - adopted
persons, adoptive parents, birth parents, professionals - as well as anyone
interested in adoption. The Adoption Council of Ontario is a registered
charity and a province-wide organization based in Toronto.

Anonymous said...

only real mothers and fathers will be at "risk" not infertile couples, gay couples or ANYONE that wants a child........ a massive factory of babies and children for sale. If Rivers can't sell Chinese babies for $35,000 a head for his clients well don't despair they'll just kidnap realms of children for their clients the cas the brokers the lot of them...

Anonymous said...

PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE FOR EVERYONE AS IT IS TOTALLY TRUE, AND IT IS TOTALLY CHILLING AS THE AUTHORESS IS DEAD ON WITH IT.

Proposed adoption law raises many questions
Family Practice
Written by By Carole Curtis
Sunday, 24 July 2005
The provincial government established a Child Welfare Secretariat in April 2004, and hired Bruce Rivers (then executive director of the Toronto Children's Aid Society, the largest CAS in Canada) to head up a law reform initiative. The initiative had many goals, but was intended, in part, to evaluate the changes made to the Child and Family Services Act in 2000, following the report of the panel of experts chaired by Justice Mary Jane Hatton. The Child Welfare Secretariat prepared a report with 40 recommendations, which was submitted to the government, but has not been made public.

Bill 210, Child and Family Services Statute Law Amendment Act, 2005, was introduced on June 6. The bill amends the act to (among other things) permit courts to make openness orders for Crown wards who are the subject of a plan for adoption.

The number of children in the care of children's aid societies in Ontario has gone from 10,000 to about 19,000 in the last five years (these statistics may be slightly out of date, but are not exaggerated).

In Ontario, there are roughly 9,000 children (called Crown wards) in the permanent care of a children's aid society. Seventy five per cent of them can't be adopted because their family has a court order for access. The government says that majority of those access orders are not used by the parents (i.e., the parents do not see the children). One of the problems in this area is the lack of reliable data about the children in the government's care.

Crown wards with access live in foster and group homes. On average, children in foster or group care are moved every two years. That means a child moves her belongings, leaves her friends, changes schools, lives in a new house, and lives with a new family, facing different rules and new expectations. No one doubts this kind of instability permeates and affects all aspects of the child's life and well-being.

Children's aid societies' budgets went from $500 million to $1.1 billion in less than five years in Ontario. How-ever, currently, children's aid societies are carrying about a $70-million deficit.

Although I have acted and continue to act for all sides of the child protection equation (parents, children, and children's aid societies), my observations on this bill are from the perspective of parents' counsel. I refer to the parents as "the parents" and not as the "biological parents" or the "birth parents" as has become fashionable in this area of practice.

These amendments are a little complicated, and not intuitive. If you work in this area, you will need to read the bill closely.

In the bill, openness is not access. It may mean contact, communication, a card or letter, information, knowledge and for the child, may result in a greater sense of identity.

Before an adoption, only a children's aid society may apply to a court for an openness order (s. 145.1). The test applied is the best interests of the child. The order can only be made on consent of everyone, including the possible adoptive parents. The court can only change or terminate the order before an adoption, based on a material change in circumstances, applying the best interests test, and the children's aid society must agree.

After an adoption, the court can also change an openness order (s. 153). However, the child cannot apply for this change, and the parents cannot apply without leave. Openness can also be the subject of an agreement.

This law reform initiative raises mostly questions. Initially, there is a concern that the focus of law reform not be at the end of the process (at the Crown wardship/adoption stage) when it is too late to help this family stay together. Why isn't the energy and money being put into the front end of the process, in keeping families that need help together?

What is the philosophy behind this initiative? What is intended by this initiative? And for whose benefit? Is there any empirical data about this? Is this meant to benefit the parents? Is it meant to free up more kids for adoption? Who is the client here? (i.e., whom does the government identify as the client?).

Don't tell me the child is the client: that has never been the case. Parents and their lawyers will tell you that the government has always seen the adoptive parents as the real client.

What results are intended or expected? Is this meant to reduce the number of kids in care at the early stages? Is this meant to reduce the number of kids in long-term foster care (Crown ward with access, in foster care)? Will there be applications to court to terminate those several thousand access orders that are now not being exercised, and replace them with openness orders?

What is the structure really intended to be? What sort of contact is envisaged? Remember that the word used is "openness," not access or contact. What rights accrue to these children during minority and at age 18 — are there any different rights than now? Is the contact envisaged by the parents different from the contact envisaged by the adoptive parents?

Why does the government cling to the use of the term "adoption?" What about permanent placement? Adoption itself is not a panacea, particularly in an evolving multi-cultural society. Like fostering, adoption is a concept quite foreign to some cultures.

What will the court order look like? What will the "usual" terms be? Will any retroactive orders be permitted? Who are the parties to these orders?

What about enforceability? Who will these orders bind? Who are the parties to these orders? What, if any, is the continuing role for children's aid societies after adoption? Who will enforce these orders?

And finally, from the parent's perspective, what do parents think this means? Do they think it means access? Will parents think this a better solution? What is really being offered to parents here? Will this make settlement of Crown wardship cases easier?

There are many bad names one can call a woman in our society, but there is nothing as horrible to a woman as calling her a bad mother. This is really what these cases are about. Losing your child forever is the worst thing that could possibly happen to a parent. A Crown wardship case is the capital punishment of family law.

While there may be research which supports the validity of reform in this area, it has not been made available. It is a great skill that lawyers are taught, to take something nearly everyone thinks is a good idea and pick it apart until almost nobody thinks it is. There is much in this bill to consider.

Carole Curtis is a family law lawyer in a three-lawyer firm in Toronto. She can be reached at carolecurtis@carolecurtis.com

Anonymous said...

also the Toronto CAS was SUED for lying to someone about their medical information under the care of dear old Bruce, a man that wanted to sell Chinese babies for $30,000 a head through that agency - yet he was elevated to the position that he is in now? Yet his former adoption supervisor is on the board that supports bill 210 and is also a private broker?

No conflict, no? interesting stuff that only blood relatives and real families are at "risk" and have everything it seems from FAS to Munch. but infertile, rich strangers have NO RISK AT ALL???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Anonymous said...

there is only one enemy in Ontario and that is flesh and blood.

Infertile couples do not become alcoholics, they don't beat their wives, they don't lie, they don't cheat, they don't beat their adopted kids or foster kids, they don't rape them, they don't abuse them, and they don't use them period.

They are safe they are glorious infertile, rich....... strangers. forever families in a bill that is forever putrid.

i hope the liberals lose the next election over this as it is so corrupt this nutty plan that it screams corruption.

Anonymous said...

The adoption industry DOES NOT SUPPORT FAMILY PRESERVATION ANY MORE THEN THE TALIBHAN SUPPORTS DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM.

They are in the business if DESTROYING FAMILIES. And they'll do it any way possible, from Munch to now smoking.

evil parasite child thieving monsters.

Anonymous said...

And the other HUGE LIE IS THAT THE ACO DOES NOT SUPPORT ANYONE OTHER THEN ADOPTIVE PARENTS, BABY BROKERS AND INFERTILE COUPLES.

Anonymous said...

risk is their gain in building forever families and robbing people of their children. we are at risk though and so are every single person in Ontario with a child, especially a cute one or a baby...... the vultures are coming.

Anonymous said...

The bravery of
PENNY MELLOR
A modern day suffragette
Fearless and showing enormous courage this lady took on the British establishment. Fighting charlatan members of the medical profession who have invented a theory that would have done those who burnt and hung people for witchcraft proud, she just had to be silenced. We are used to facts being twisted and hidden by those running the British hate, spite and vengeance industry and this case was no different.

Emmerline Pankhurst (herself imprisoned more than once) and the girls back in the early 1900s would have been very proud to have recognised Penny as one of their own. The spite of the people in control of our so-called justice system becomes so apparent when you realise that Penny is the mother of eight children and is still breast feeding her youngest child who was just five or six months old when they imprisoned her. So her baby has now been deprived of its mothers's milk and is now being artificially fed and Penny has milk that she needs to dispose of. Cruelty to both mother and child!

The spiteful male judge (sitting without a jury?) would not be concerned with that though - would he? His only interest was in making sure she was suppressed having declared her a danger just like those suffragettes who also dared to fight those in authority several decades ago. The Judge, Guy Whitburn QC, had commented BEFORE the trial, "Ms Mellor is a dangerous eccentric" proving he was already biassed. Not unusual in Britain. Those words, "Ms Mellor is a dangerous eccentric" tell us all. They are by a man who fears his power is being undermined. This man is obviously not a lover of children, unlike Penny Mellor. Someone should ask her children what they think of Guy Whitburn QC.

- Suffragettes chained---------Suffragette being force-fed

SUFFRAGETTES CHAINED TOGETHER AND A SUFFRAGETTE BEING
FORCE-FED IN PRISON BY THE LOVELY BRITISH. LITTLE HAS CHANGED
PUTTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
A message from a journalist to the British Medical Journal

From: Brian Morgan
To: Richard Smith
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 12:44 PM
Subject: Reference letter in BMJ

Dear Dr Smith

I am concerned to put the record straight in this case - see BMJ letter below.

Mrs Mellor was sentenced to two years imprisonment on Thursday 21st March 2002. This term was imposed despite Mrs Mellor having a 5 month baby at home, as well as other young children needing her care. The roll call of children (in my opinion) needlessly separated from their parents as a result of these controversial Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy allegations continues to rise (indirectly as a result in this case of course).

Without wishing to go over old ground in respect of this case, could I just say that in November 1998 I was contacted for assistance by the family involved. Reporting was virtually impossible because of care proceedings in the index child's case, the sibling of the child allegedly abducted. I'm a journalist not a campaigner, so I put the family in touch with anti child abuse campaigner Mrs Penny Mellor, well known for her support of victims in the North Wales care homes scandal.

Care proceedings were instigated in the index child's case following an allegation of Munchausen's by Proxy by Professor David Southall, after an admission of the said child to North Staffordshire Hospital. You see, Professor Southall and North Staffs are at the heart of this as they are at the heart of so many other cases.

I can support this statement with documentary evidence.

And complaints currently laid before the GMC in respect of the above named doctor, so far as I am aware from earlier discussions with Mrs Mellor, did not originate from her (as has been claimed in the current issue and previously in the BMJ). How the BMJ thinks it can know otherwise given the confidentiality of the GMC disciplinary process puzzles me.

Conflict of Interest
Arrested, charged with conspiracy and cleared, just for being in contact with this family. My name provided to the police by Professor David Southall, along with the names of a number of parents of former patients of his, evidence for this disclosed during the above proceedings and available for inspection.

Brian Morgan

http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7339/693/a
BMJ 2002;324:693 ( 23 March )
News

Anonymous said...

WHO SUPPORTED GUTTING THE COMPLAINT PROCEDURE FROM THE 53 CAS AGENCIES OF ONTARIO - a baby broker, and in this information note who is against it - a real expert, someone who was in so called "care". Of course they wanted to gut the complaint process, after all it would just assist them in building families wouldn't it. You know what, they didn't count on Jeffrey though or the public outrage about him in the wicked plan to capture children. The same worker at the CCAS is arranging foster care and forever safe, forever families? The VERY WORKER responsible for Jeffrey!!!


http://www.juliamunrompp.com/spdetails.asp?id=77&pr=2

Patricia Fenton of the Adoption Council of Ontario echoed some of the same sentiment when she said, "We also support the use of alternative dispute resolution methods as proposed, as we see this provides an opportunity to move the process out of an adversarial kind of arena and helps to avoid the lengthy disputes that may hold the child back from moving into a permanent family as quickly as possible. The proposed act acknowledges that this method of resolution can be used at various times throughout the childs life to vary openness orders as needs shift and change."

1650

John Dunn of the Foster Care Council of Canada outlined his concerns with dispute resolution in the way that follows:

"One thing Ive learned about dispute resolution is that everything in dispute resolution is to be confidential and cannot be used in court. I dont know if thats the same with this proposed legislation or if this child welfare mediation process will be a little different, if it could somehow be customized, but as a former crown ward myself, one of the largest issues I have is confidentiality-not the fact that theres not enough confidentiality, but that theres too much. Ive been trying for about five years, personally, to obtain copies of my own records from the childrens aid society, the Catholic CAS in Toronto, and theyve been refusing me from the start. They wont give me dentists names, doctors names, any of my medical records. So this is something that I think needs to be opened up."

Anonymous said...

and i still wonder if they killed him on purpose? meaning the CCAS.

Anonymous said...

and how did a section gutting the complaint procedure ever get into Bill 210 if we want to explore this wicked conspiracy - by good old Marv Bernstein who submitted a proposal to make the 53 CAS agencies even more unaccountable, but Marv was the former chief legal defense expert of the Toronto Catholic Children's Aid Socity for 20 years or more. so the liberals adopted his proposal and tried to build in a clause to protect their workers forever more................

section 68 bill 210 read betweeen the lines.........

Anonymous said...

yes they are wonderful those forever families like Chris Stockwell an alcoholic former conservative mpp who bilked tax payers out of at least $30,000 in his term - but he is glorious, forever safe, forever more - he too was touched by adoption .. an adoptive father as well......

Anonymous said...

what a plan - arrange more adoptions, work with a broker, and gut any complaint process what so ever...... and try and convince all of society that every child in care needs to be there?? how convenient for people hunting down children ........ how to find a child indeed!!!!

Anonymous said...

this is the brokers website

http://adoptontario.ca/

notice - it is supposed to be about finding homes for crown wards but it isn't the whole site is about promoting adoption and the head of the ACO is a private licensed baby broker. as well look under news on the site about Bill 210 - if this is about crown wards then why does the broker talk about international adoption? does that anything to do with crown wards at all? no.

so use a guise of crown wards to increase brokering babies it is very manipulative and quite sick. yet the minister is allowing it with no oversight from the cas at all. so is bill 210 about crown wards or hunting down children for the baby broker and co?

quite obvious what this is about. very devious....

Anonymous said...

Minister Chambers cares more about finding products for infertile couples, and cares more about keeping baby brokers in business then she does the care, safety and well-being of children in care.

I hope she is voted out in the next election. Should the Ministry of child and youth be more concerned about finding babies for brokers - or should they be concerned that Jeffrey was killed in care.

And if she did care about safety and the cas she would have oversight wouldn't she.

Anonymous said...

one has to wonder how many kids are on that site that do have families that can and that want to take care of them. I think J is more the norm then the exception.

Anonymous said...

It is disgusting beyond words that Minister Chambers is refusing to give CAS oversight, she deserves to be FIRED IMMEDIATELY!!!

Anonymous said...

Jeffery Baldwin was allowed to happen, so family would not be allowed to have their own children, when you look into it enough, its clear what is happening, read the minutes of the legislator, What they fail to understand is more children die in care, are abuse in care, are neglected beyond words and designs ( not to get attached to the children, and not to even touch the children, in foster homes) no hugs because an allegation could be made, against them so they know not to even hug the children.

YET AS WE ALLOW BIG SISTER TO TAKE OVER, AND WATCH CHILDREN BE REMOVED, AND DO NOTHING TO STOP THIS, WE ARE AS GUILTY AS THE PEOPLE THAT DID NOTHING ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST, because its real, because far to many people for generations have been harmed in this system, then ever by any family, lot at it, open your eyes, the rapes of boys, in Catholic orphanages, the high numbers of homeless and in prison, that grew up in foster hostage care, apprehend means arrest. The children are taken from all they know and love, and because of Jeffrey and surly they knew, and once they did they ran for cover,his siblings wounded for LIFE,

YES the government legislated any one that has harmed a child in the past can be used against that parent in court, that harm may have come from a hydro bill a mother could not pay, do you understand that.
The law should not only apply to parents, it should apply to the system that with EVIDENCE of mass crimes against children and youth in there care. Do you really think children are safer because we have CAS, No they are not, and you do not take 100 children to maybe save one, and the one you thought they saved along with the other 99 is now at real risk of much more then they were removed from. IT MUST STOP.
AND GOING INTO THE ADOPTION BUSINESS, AND USING THERE ERRORS OF THE CROWN WARDS, THE FILM THEY NOW USE TO JUSTIFY THE ADOPTIONS AND REMOVING INFANTS AND YOUNG CHILDREN. AND WHY GAY MARRIAGE IS ALLOWED ,BECAUSE THERE ARE NOT EVEN CLOSE ENOUGH INFERTILE COUPLES, THAT WILL TAKE ALL THE CHILDREN TAKEN FROM FAMILIES THAT WANT AND LOVE THEIR OWN CHILDREN.
enough. read below, just the norm of the day, for child protection,

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