| Nazis And CPS by Suzanne Shell |
We are all aware of the Nazi eugenics programs. What we aren’t aware of are the chilling comparisons between the Nazi Lebensborn program and contemporary American Child Protective Services (CPS) programs. Simplistically, it can be described as follows: In the U.S. parens patriae is the legal principle used to justify state sanctioned kidnapping of children from their families in order to ‘protect’ them. In Nazi Germany, the Lebensborn program was legally used to justify the kidnapping of ‘Aryan’ looking children from occupied territories to be Germanized’; to be raised as good Germans (younger children) or designated as breeders for the German race – to produce 2 – 3 racially pure children then be killed (older children). But, in reality, the comparison is more complicated – and more horrifying – than that. PARENS PATRIAE is a legal term in American law that is defined as – The right of the government to take care of minors and others who cannot legally take care of themselves.
In a Nazi booklet published by SS Gruppenführer Rediess, The SS for Greater Germany – with Sword and Cradle, speaking about the recently Nazi occupied country of Denmark as it related to the Lebensborn program, the German position is stated as, “This people is a Germanic people, and hence it is our duty to educate its children and young people and to make the Norwegians a Nordic people again as we understand the term.”
The similarity between these two principles is that a government has assumed a certain authority, either by law or by fiat, over the population. This authority can be as extensive or limited as the government chooses and as the population will endure. In both stated instances, the governments assumed authority over children.
Pseudo-Sciences
The majority of reasonably intelligent people today recognize that Nazi attempts to designate one race as superior to others based on physical racial characteristics was nothing more than superstitious bigotry unsupported by science. The Nazis actually created a ‘science’ of racial studies, endorsed by ‘experts’ and supported with manufactured ‘scientific evidence,’ in order to support their pet theory that the so-called Aryan race was superior to all others. They had panels of experts, advisory councils, college courses, and specially trained bureaucrats to develop and implement their ‘racial hygiene’ policies. This cadre of ‘experts’ would devise, implement, oversee, evaluate and propagandize the various racial hygiene programs, including Lebensborn. Nazi society abounded with popular literature, textbooks, and manuals touting this most important Nazi platform. Nazi Germany was inundated with racially based propaganda which extolled the virtues of the Aryan and justified the ‘solutions’ imposed on inferior races.
Of Pure Blood by Marc Hillel and Clarissa Henry is a 1976 book detailing the Nazi Lebensborn program. “Doctors specializing in ‘racial knowledge’, all members of the SS or the police, were out in charge of racial testing at the reception centers. . .The children’s heads, bodies, arms and legs were measured, as well as the pelvis in the case of girls and the penis in the case of boys, and they were then divided into three groups: a – those representing a desirable addition to the German populations: b – those representing an acceptable addition to that population, and c – the unwanted. . .More than 200,000 Polish children were thus declared . . to be ‘racially useful’.
In the United States, the state cannot legally evaluate a person based on their race, or use physical or racial characteristics to judge them. CPS agencies use something much more subtle, but no less specious than Nazi racial hygiene measurements; they use psychological measurements to determine how defective (dangerous to his own child) a parent has been or is likely to be. Under the mechanism of court ordered or coerced ‘voluntary’ psychological evaluations, many parents are being ‘diagnosed’ as a ‘risk’ to their children based on psych eval findings from service providers who are paid for by the state; who conduct their evaluations based on a tainted family history provided by the state; and who, by their own admissions, stand to lose their contract with the state if they submit any findings that are contrary to what the caseworker has ordained.
American law has already established protections for persons who are disabled by virtue of their psychology. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, ( 42 U.S.C 12101, 12102, & 12131 et seq), disability is a physical or mental impairment the substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual; having a record of such impairment; or being regarded as having such an impairment. Caring for, nurturing and raising their children is undoubtedly on of the most important major life activities of a parent. This country, through CPS, has raised psychology to the exalted status of Nazi Racial Studies on no more scientific evidence than the Nazis had to support their theories and programs. This pseudo-science is used to demonize parents and justify the legal kidnapping of their children in order to satisfy the state’s need for adoptive children.
For example, the most popular psychological test given today is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Index (MMPI II). According to one whistle blower evaluator, the completed test is fed into a computer that analyses the responses and returns a list of diagnoses to choose from. It is then up to the evaluator to decide which diagnosis applies to the subject. This is not a scientifically-based, measurable, objective diagnosis if it is left up the subjective interpretation of the ‘expert.’ The selected diagnosis is based on a gut hunch, intuition, or maybe wishful thinking, or perhaps a state-contracted fee. Whatever it is based on, it is not based on measurable science in any instance; nor even the most rudimentary common sense in the hands of many self-serving psychological evaluators.
Psycho-sexual evaluations for allegations of child sexual abuse are used by caseworkers as tool of making a determination whether or not the accused was a perpetrator. Many psychological experts will assert that these tools are not designed to be used on anyone who has not admitted guilt. However, caseworkers continue to use this tool inappropriately to validate allegations.
There are volumes of tests employed against parents. This process is inherently flawed based on the fact that once the children have been taken, the parents are depressed, suspicious, angry, anxious, traumatized, worried, frightened, and more. Requiring any person to submit to any psychological evaluation under these horrendous emotional circumstances is clearly setting them up for failure. There is no hope they could present as being ‘normal.’ Naturally, psychological ‘deficiencies’ will show up, and those deficiencies are effectively used by the experts against the parents.
However, none of the findings from psychological tests were ever designed to indicate that the parents actually are mentally impaired or that they legitimately justify the application of any psychological label upon the parents. Experts will admit that the findings of the parents’ tests show that they share some of the same characteristics with others who are so psychologically labeled does not mean that any findings are proof positive that the diagnosis is scientifically accurate.
The United States has a powerful industry backing up this ‘science.’ There are schools and seminars that teach and accredit the psychology of child abuse/child abusers; advisory councils against child abuse that advise powerful political figures and who lobby for intrusive and offensive legislation that undermines the sanctity of the family; cadres of ‘experts’ who analyze, devise, implement, oversee, evaluate and propagandize child abuse and prevention programs in the private and public sector and whose livelihoods depend on the perpetuation of this pseudo-science; and millions of service providers who provide ‘voluntary’ or court ordered services and whose livelihoods literally depend on the removal of children from their homes. There are many ‘expert’ tomes on the subjects of the psychology of children, parents, child abuse, risks of abuse, and prevention of abuse. Parents have no credibility in the face of this multi-billion dollar industry.
These people take this pseudo science very seriously, sometimes with deadly consequences. The May 24, 2000 Rocky Mountain news reported about a therapy technique used on a troubled child in Evergreen, Colorado. The 10 year-old child had been adopted in 1996 and died as a result of this ‘therapy.’ “Sheriff’s investigators say Watkins and Ponder, both therapists, wrapped Candace in a flannel blanket to simulate a womb that the girl should be “born” from. Then, in an attempt to mimic birth contractions, all four allegedly pushed against pillows Candace was lying under.
“Rebirthing is a controversial technique Watkins has used for about a year. It is used to treat children who suffer from attachment disorder, which prevents children from bonding with their [adoptive] parents. Critics of the technique call the treatment radical and say it hasn’t been researched well.” However, these ‘experts’ fail to acknowledge what anyone with common sense can see – that perhaps removing this child from her mother precipitated the attachment disorder in this child; that they caused this child’s psychological problems by employing this pseudo science in the first place.
Traditional parenting practices are under massive attack with responsible parents being targeted for their refusal to conform to this pseudo-science. The ‘virtuous’ parents are those who do not spank or punish or subject their children to any undesirable circumstances such as an argument; and who casually inflict their consciousless brats on decent society saying, “Oh, isn’t my darling so cute?” when he’s really too bratty to bear. Conspicuous by its absence is any expert acknowledgment for the self-evident consequences of this pseudo-science – as demonstrated by offensive childhood behavior from the regular cacophony of temper tantrums in department stores; to bratty kids running out of control in inappropriate places; to children’s complete lack of respect for others; all the way to the extreme of kids mowing down their classmates with guns because they were ‘teased.’
Demonstrating a callous lack of common sense, the practice of this ‘science’ is based on the premise that removing a child from his parents presents less trauma to the child than being merely ‘at risk’ of future abuse if he remained with his family in a dirty house. People often say, ‘They don’t remove a child for a dirty home!” shocked that anyone could even suggest such a vile act. But there are volumes of documented cases where not only were the children removed for a dirty home, but parental rights were terminated based on that initial removal and the resultant, non-scientific ‘risk assessment’ administered by the intake caseworker.
Legalizing Kidnapping Of Children
In Of Pure Blood, the authors report “ . . . many Norwegian women were trapped into going to Germany against their will. The kidnapping process was given a semblance of legality by a Nazi ruling that defied the fundamental laws of a sovereign nation and legalized the separation of mother and child against the mothers’s will.”
Heinrich Himmler, in a speech to officers of the Deutschland division, November
8, 1938 stated, “I really intend to take German blood from where it is to be found in the world, to rob and steal it wherever I can.” Orders were issued to implement this ‘stealing’ of children. These orders had the force of law in Nazi occupied territories.
A Top Secret order, no. 67/1, 1941 from SS Gruppenführer Ulrich Greifelt, head of the Central Office of the SS and SD in Poland ordered: “The children who are recognized as bearers of blood valuable to Germany are to be Germanized. . . .between the ages of six and twelve in state boarding schools, and between ages of two and six with families to be indicated by the Lebensborn society.”
“ . . .the Lebensborn Society will see to the distribution of these children among the families of childless SS men with a view to subsequent adoption. The Lebensborn Society will assume guardianship of the children accommodated in the Lebensborn Children’s homes.
In a Reichsfürher circular dated June 14, 1941: “I think it right that young children of especially good race belonging to Polish amilies should be gathered together and brought up by us . . .health reasons should be given for taking the children away. . . .After a year consideration should be given to handing such children to be brought in childless families of good race.”
Of Pure Blood – “ . . .the Lebensborn organization was the obvious agency for Germanizing the children abducted from Eastern Europe. The program was initiated as early as 1940 . . . .it was decided, in agreement with the Reichsfürher, that it was preferable for the organization to deal with children under six. There was a simple reason for this: Whether Polish, Russian or Yugoslav, at this age they would be more receptive to Nazi indoctrination than the older children . . .Because they were so young, they would remember less which would enable Dr. Tesch, the Lebensborn legal expert, to falsify their identify the more completely. . . .By 1941 in Germany, Party and SS members were falling over themselves in their wish to adopt a child of good blood . . .and so demand had outstripped supply. Withing a few months the round-ups of children in the occupied territories would make it possible to satisfy the demand of childless couples. . .
Who were children targeted by the Lebensborn Society? “. . .all places were children were assembled; children of Polish adoptive parents or unmarried mothers; children having Polish guardians; children of mixed (Polish-German) marriages; children whose parents opposed Germanization; children of mixed marriages whose parents had divorced; children of deported, liquidated, or banished parents (the great majority); children picked up at random; children born in concentration camps, women’s labor camps or children of mothers deported for forced labor; abandoned children; children to whom special orders applied, children sent to Germany for forced labor.” Danish, English, Russian and other eastern European countries all lost children to this legalized kidnapping campaign.
Abducted children were ‘skimmed’ or evaluated according to racial purity, and the acceptable ones, approximately 10%, were Germanized. The others became slaves of the Reich.
“The technique of approaching children in the street did not vary greatly. A hungry child would be offered biscuits (cookies), sweets, sometimes even a bar of chocolate or a slice of bread, thus creating an opportunity to question it about its parents, its home, the color of its brothers’ and sisters’ hair. That same evening they submitted their list of names and addresses to special teams of kidnappers . . .Several days would elapse, and then the child would be taken, the abduction generally taking place at night. The child’s parents would never see it again.
“The kidnapping game does not seem to have been played in accordance with any fixed rules. The decision whether a child was to be sent to its death or back to its parents depended on the whim of a medical examiner or even of the SS man on guard at the door.”
“. . .in 1942, and 1944 . . .kidnappings [in Russia] grew steadily more numerous. In the street, at school, at home, at kindergartens and even in public parks children were the victims of raids which nobody dared oppose. A climate of terror prevailed. . . .[Kurt Heinze, head the Oberweiss home] escorted whole train-loads of children whom the Lebensborn organization rapidly placed in State schools or families.”
One account was remembered by a kidnapped child, “The chief of them immediately insisted that the women, who had a long and tiring journey to a labor camp ahead of them, should let the children go first by bus. . .He also insisted that the mothers should hand over their children voluntarily. Obviously none of the them were willing to be parted from their children. To show he meant business, he fired a shot in the air with his revolver. This of course caused panic among the mothers and children. The Germans took advantage of this to go for the mothers and snatch us from their arms.
“Believe me, that was a moment that none of us will ever forget, even in forty of fifty years’ time. It’s like a horrible, brutal film that keeps on passing before our eyes.”
According to recent government statistics, 67% of child abuse reports are false right off the top. As much as 60-90% of the ‘substantiated’ reports do not meet the statutory definition of abuse or neglect according to anecdotal data. This happens because parents are poorly represented by counsel and threatened, intimidated or coerced by their attorneys and caseworkers into falsely admitting guilt as a condition of seeing their children. By this action, the parents are forced to give the state legal authority to kidnap and keep their children. Once this occurs, the state does not have to prove the child was abused or neglected in order to terminate parental rights. Parents who do resist find themselves having to prove their innocence in order to win their children back, and it often takes months to accomplish.
In America, the presenting incident, which is the report of abuse or neglect, becomes the mechanism to gain access to the child and the family. This is the contemporary ‘skimming’ process. The American CPS ‘skimming’ tool is called a risk assessment. Under the Adoption and Safe Families Act, the primary concern is now the ‘safety of the child.’ Thus, the mere, speculative risk of abuse or neglect satisfies the legal requirements to take custody of children without any evidence of abuse or neglect. This country has effectively legalized the separation of parent and child against the will of both parents and children.
There is a virtual army of people out there looking for children to target. Under mandated reporting laws, anyone who has regular contact with children (teachers, counselors, doctors, dentists, etc.) are required to report suspected child abuse or neglect. The schools are especially effective at reporting suspected child abuse or neglect – not based on statutory definitions but on subjective assessments. They will also provide caseworker access to the children in the school and allow the caseworker to legally ‘kidnap’ the children from the school without notifying the parents, no questions asked. Hospital emergency rooms also provide many children for CPS.
There seem to be no fixed rules for determining which children are taken and which are not regardless of statutory requirements. It depends on the whim of the caseworker, many of whom falsify reports in order to support her claims. The children are subjected to intimidating and often professionally incompetent questions by the caseworkers. They will use coercion, threats, leading questions and even lie in order to validate the report of abuse. They excuse these tactics by rationalizing that a child often is unwilling to disclose abuse and they must use pressure to extract an accusation. They also object vehemently to having all interrogations video taped stating that it would traumatize the child. What it would do is expose their incompetence and predispositions.
The laws do not allow a caseworker to take a child without a court order. Only police can do that. However, under the color of law, they will often take the children by force. Parents routinely report their children being dragged, screaming, from their arms without having been presented with any evidence of abuse or neglect. Midnight raids on unsuspecting, sleeping families are not uncommon.
If an agency suspects the parents might resist their requests to question the children, S.W.A.T. teams have been used to circumvent the fourth amendment in Utah and other states. Michigan is actually considering legislation that allows force if a parent asserts their constitutional rights – which is being defined as uncooperative. One Arizona mother held a police S.W.A.T. Team off for 24 hours until they jumped her and took her toddler by force. All criminal charges were dropped but she never got her daughter back. Her frantic initial phone call to an associate, audio taped before her phone lines were cut, demonstrated her fear as the police kicked their way into her home and pulled weapons on her as she was nursing her baby.
Turning Children Against Their Parents
We must remember that an important element in brainwashing anyone involves trauma. It’s pretty easy to traumatize a youngster simply by denying him his mom and dad.
From Of Pure Blood – “When children were taken for Germanization, “ . . .Psychological methods were used to make a child forget or even hate its parents. He would be told they were dead, and there was nothing honorable about the way they died. The mother would be said to have been of doubtful morality and to have died of tuberculosis, drink or other shameful disease, while the father had died of cancer or drink, or been killed by Polish bandits. The object was to give the child a sense of inferiority about its origins and of gratitude to the Germans who had rescued it from the degeneracy of its home environment.
“In the German Federal Republic we met a young woman who, at the age of five, had been taken to a church by the Germans and shown a bishop’s coffin and told it was her mother’s. Some years later the child was traced, but she refused to go back to her mother, who had survived deportation. ‘I had stood by my mother’s coffin once,’ she said, ‘and I did not want to do that again.’”
Sigismund Krajeski, born in Poznan on April 17, 1933 told Hillel and Henry, “I was taken by force from my family on 20 May 1943.” He went on to describe what they were told by the Nazis, “. . .The child would be told his parents were dead and that he was going to get new ones.”
Mrs. Witaszek, survivor of Auschwitz, whose 4 and 6 year-old daughters were adopted when she was arrested. “Years afterwards my younger daughter told me she had often been kept awake at night, wondering why I had sold her to a foreign family. Did I have so little money that I had to sell her? Children at that age were simply incapable of understanding what had happened to them.”
Kidnapped Aryan children would be subjected to intensive German language classes and were forbidden to speak their native language after a couple of weeks. Discipline was described as ‘very, very strict.’
Children who refused Germanization had to stay in the chapel “ . . .in the dark on their knees with their arms crossed for hours. They wept, and soon fainted. They were punished like that for saying something in Polish or talking about their parents. They were beaten and deprived of food. But even apart from that, the children were always sad. They lived in fear and were homesick . . .”
Many don’t believe we would treat our children so harshly in America. To those I suggest that they talk to the children who have been ‘protected’ by CPS agencies.
I have interviewed many former and current foster children. In the most benign cases, the children are often punished by exasperated foster parents when they cry for their mom and dad by being sent to isolation in their rooms. Children report being punished with isolation and withholding food for praying to be returned home. They are denied affection and understanding and feel depressed and homesick and frightened. When they see their parents, they often act out after the visit out of their natural frustration and impotence to change what they perceive to be unfair and cruel. As a result, they are punished by being denied their next visit with their parents.
They describe being told that their parents aren’t able to take care of them because their parents are ‘sick’ and need help. That it isn’t safe for them to live with their parents. Many children are told that their parents aren’t trying hard enough to complete the case plan and the children live in uncertainty as to what their future holds for them. They are actually told that their parents don’t want them or can’t afford to keep them. Children report that they are told their mothers are prostitutes, or drug users when they know it is false. They are psychologically manipulated until they begin to believe. They begin to resent their parent’s failures and imperfections that prevent reunification. But many of them are ultimately diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder and others similar emotional problems as a direct result of state efforts to undermine their bonds with their parents.
One young boy in Elbert County, Colorado, under the supervision of caseworker Holly Sielaff, was repeatedly forced to deal with the ‘issue’, under the guise of therapy, that his mother had cross-dressed him. The child had no memory of that event, and mom denied doing it. He reports he was verbally abused by his therapist during his court-ordered therapy sessions for his refusal to admit that his mother forced him to wear girl’s clothing. Sielaff then reported to mother in this reporter’s presence and on tape, that they were addressing this issue ‘because it was the child’s reality’ and whether or not it was true, it must be treated as if it were true. Since mom was forbidden to speak of that allegation to the boy, she never learned that he consistently denied it until he was returned home. Many children are not strong enough to resist this kind of abusive psychological pressure.
Many of the children I have spoken with have been runaway foster children. They report being told that they must accuse their parents in order to return home. They are promised that if they accuse, they will be allowed to return home and the state will provide ‘help’ to their parents. If they do make a false accusation based on these promises, they are often denied all access to their parents. This isolation from their parents is used in the vast majority of cases. Besides being used to emotionally traumatize the children to make them more receptive to state suggestions, it also has the effect of preventing the child from reporting to his parents any problems, lies or abuses that are being covered up by state agencies under confidentiality laws and ‘in the best interests of the child.’
If children in state custody are fortunate enough to see their parents, it is usually under supervision, where their every word is scrutinized. They are forbidden to hug, to whisper, or to display too much affection. They are forbidden to speak about what happens in their foster home, and to even report any abuse they suffer there. Many parent-child bonding rituals that have been established in the home, such as singing favorite songs or tickling games are forbidden between the parents and children during these visits for specious and/or undefined reasons.
There are documented cases where the psychological experts and caseworker not only actively subvert the parent-child bond, but actually employ dubious and traumatic methods in order to brainwash the child to bond to his foster parents. In once instance, a five-year-old child in Weld County, Colorado, was forcefully ‘regressed’ to infancy by being placed in diapers and forced to break potty training, forced to crawl rather than walk, fed only from a bottle and denied all access to her mother in an effort to make this child bond to her foster parents. The mother’s act of abuse? She fell asleep after major surgery with her toddler at home, having been denied daycare assistance by Social Services until she recovered, and the child got into a bottle of Tylenol in mom’s purse. No treatment was provided at the hospital for the alleged overdose in spite of mom’s timely response to the emergency.
The most heinous of tactics is to place the child in residential treatment. This often happens to children who are resistant to caseworker indoctrination and especially where there is a risk the child will divulge a truth that is damaging to the caseworker, the CPS agency, the Guardian ad Litem (GAL) or other service provider. Often, caseworkers will predetermine a ‘diagnosis’ of the child in order to facilitate this placement. They can find an ‘expert’ who will validate the diagnosis and present this information to an unsuspecting court or a court who acts with complicity. The court will order the child to the residential treatment facility were they are often drugged. This drugging renders them more susceptible to suggestion and compliance at the expense of the emotional well-being of the child. Since the facility is only provided with the state’s version of the child’s history, the treatment is based on that tainted information.
In Pueblo County, Colorado, there is a story of a young boy who has been institutionalized for four years at La Junta Boys Ranch based on a caseworker diagnosis of psychotic behavior. Mom has been unable to obtain a release for the child, and all reports of the brutality he suffered at the hands of the staff are covered up. He finally had endured all he could and killed some of the turkeys on the ranch. He was shipped to the State Hospital in Pueblo, where for over a month the doctors there insisted he wasn’t psychotic and that he had been misdiagnosed and improperly medicated. The caseworker began lobbying for the original diagnosis because, ‘she would lose the funding for him if he weren’t psychotic.’ The doctors at the State Hospital finally began to capitulate under funding pressure. Meanwhile, this child, now 15, clings to his mother during visits and the doctors are telling him that is inappropriate and denying him this only comfort in his life. This child has been sacrificed on the alter of psycho babble disguised as child protection. Too many foster children would never have been forced to endure such levels of psychological abuse at the hands of their parents from whom the state was ‘protecting’ them.
Social Work
The women charged with kidnapping children in Nazi occupied territories were called the “Brown Sisters.”
“Actually these women belonged to the NSV, established in 1933 to devote itself to the welfare of the German people. . .To those who suffered under them, these fanatical Nazi women, totally dedicated to the Fuhrer, were perhaps even more loathsome than the killers of the SS or the SD; stony-hearted robots was one description. The sight of these women . . .brutally snatching from its mother’s arms a baby who was smiling at her remains an intolerable memory to those who experienced it.
“The special training of the ‘Brown Sisters’ included intensive courses in which they were taught the racial criteria by which Nordics could infallibly be distinguished, and they were instruct in how to observe a child without being noticed themselves; they were also taught ways of abducting it in the street, at home or at school. . .” Of Pure Blood.
Caseworkers in America also receive highly specialized training pertaining to popular culture parenting techniques, child abuse, child abuse prevention and more, all based on theory rather than science. They are trained on the job to put pet theories into practice, with children and families being the guinea pigs. The good ones become disgusted in short order and leave for greener pastures.
Many ‘protected’ children actively hate the caseworkers who control their lives and their access to their parents. Once free of caseworker control, they often vent their anger in very expressive ways. I have one pair of sisters who opened up in front a video camera with threats and gestures all directed at their Arapahoe County, Colorado caseworker, Dawn Shields. They accused Shields of lying in order to obtain the court order terminating their parents’ parental rights. All of the children I have spoken to express the highest level of disdain, distrust and anger toward their caseworkers and GALs.
Parents universally describe caseworkers as heartless, soulless, evil, deceitful, arrogant, two-faced and more. I have personally seen caseworkers utter the most vicious false statements against a parents on the witness stand in court, then embrace the numb parents in the hall with apologies for what she ‘had’ to do to them. This feigned concern for the parents is abhorrent. At least the Nazis were honest about their bigotry and evil plans.
I have had one caseworker tell me, “I’m sorry for [your son being taken] but that was years ago. Get over it.” It is incomprehensible to a parent that anyone could be so callous and hardhearted to even consider they’d ever ‘get over’ having their child kidnapped by the state for whatever length of time, but especially if the parent-child relationship was destroyed as a result. This attitude clearly demonstrates their lack of understanding of the depths of the bonds that exist between parent and child and how their meddling is, too often, more destructive than helpful.
For an indication of the state of mind of the affected families decades after the children were taken, let’s look to Of Pure Blood, “. . .Parents did everything possible to trace children who were unaware of their existence and will never know the distress the absence still causes. In some Polish villages the grief is still so vivid after thirty years that one ends by wondering how such a thing can be possible.” It is not unreasonable to presume that the pain inflicted by contemporary caseworkers will be comparable and equally unforgettable for millions of American parents. This pain is compounded in many cases by the caseworkers’ casual use of deceit and manipulation of their undeserved credibility with the court in order to win their cases. Many parents not only despise caseworkers, but hate the people they themselves have become as a result of their constant, unpleasant and threatening contact with these toxic bureaucrats. As a result of these abuses, there is little sympathy from victimized families for caseworkers who are assaulted and killed in the course of their work.
Abuse In State Custody
In one indoctrination home, where children were taken before being sent for adoption to Nazi families, there “ . . .is a cemetery in which most of the graves are of ‘victims of Nazi barbarism’. Tadeus Martyn, a member of the Polish commission for Hitlerite Crimes . . .told about the authors about a child named Zygmunt Swiatlowski: ‘He was taken from his parents against their will at Poznan and brought here. . .He felt himself to be Polish and would not be Germanized. . .One day, after refusing to greet a German in German, he was killed on the spot by the woman in charge of the invitation, Johanna Sander. The children who died in the home were buried anonymously, but the German who buried Zygmunt revealed his name to the Polish woman caretaker of the cemetery. So this grave remains the only memorial to the martyrdom of Polish children and Kalisz.’”
Alycia Sosinka, born at Lodz in 1935, taken from her mother in September 1942. “ . . .for months, when my [adoptive] mother came to tuck me in at night I used to jump out of bed and stand at attention . . .” due to abuses suffered during her indoctrination period.
When a Lebensborn home tended by SS ‘nurses’ was liberated by allied forces, a nun who was subsequently charged with caring for the children observed, “These children did not know what tenderness was. They were used to being in bed or living in groups, and were frightened of any grownups who approached them. . .The older children, the three and four-year-olds could not even talk. They merely expressed them onomatopoeically, like young animals. That is typical of children brought up in institutions. Also they were very backward in Mental development in comparison with other children of the same age.
According to Department of Health and Human Services statistics, approximately 50% of the children who die of child abuse, die in foster care. Children in foster care are also subjected to more severe abuse in foster homes than they ever endured in their own homes. The Denver Post began a five part series of articles exposing the unsafe nature of foster care on May 21, 2000. They report that abuses are perpetrated by foster parents, biological children of foster parents, and other foster children. This finding supports the overwhelming number of reports of foster care abuse nationwide received by parents and family rights advocacy groups.
In the summer of 1999, Colorado Governor Bill Owens commissioned a task force to look into the foster care and child welfare issue due to the deaths of four children, three of whom were in foster care. The task force returned their findings if0.20early in 2000, months prior to the Denver Post series, but nothing has been done by Colorado Department of Human Services (DHS) to insure that children are safer in state custody than in the homes they were removed from. Foster care providers are not held to the same standards of safety as parents are. In fact, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) applies only to parents. CPS agencies, foster care providers, and institutions do not fall under the jurisdiction of CAPTA even though they are charged with keeping children safe under CAPTA. The standards of care and safety that foster care providers are required to keep are only defined vaguely in CPS policy manuals.
Abuse of children in foster care is drastically under reported because there is no independent investigative body to whom foster care abuse or neglect is reported. The CPS agency places the children; and chooses, licenses and oversees the foster homes. Reports of foster care abuse and neglect are made to CPS agencies. Abuse and violations of standards of care are investigated by CPS agencies. As a result, most reports are determined to be ‘unfounded;’ after all, how good would it look if they were to expose the level of abuse that occurs in their own foster homes and contract institutions? Even if abuse is substantiated, the providers do not lose their own children or their foster care license, and the abused children will often remain in the foster home. Occasionally, the alleged abuse will rise to the level of a crime, but even then it is not consistently prosecuted and foster care providers openly acknowledge that any penalties imposed on them will be minor at most.
An Adams County, Colorado mother reported that when her children were returned home after over a year in foster care, she caught her 7 year-old son humping her 5 year-old daughter. She was terrified that the children would be removed again. Since she had never been accused of sexually abusing her children, they could only have learned of this in the foster home. An El Paso County, Colorado, twelve year old had his arm broken in a group home while being restrained. He was lucky. Some restrained children die. A youth in DHS custody who resided at the Colorado Boys Ranch was locked up in his room for 23 hours a day, and during his recreational hour, he was shackled and chained. He had not been charged or convicted of any crime. 13 year-old Veronica from Larimer County, Colorado was repeatedly coerced to falsely accuse her father. Upon her return home, she was unable to fall asleep without her bedroom light on and her mother by her side for six months. She’d hide in a closet whenever someone knocked at the door.
Taler Barnes, was taken from his mother at birth due to a false hospital social worker report. While in Kansas foster care, he suffered broken ribs, broken hip, constant bruising, his eyes were gouged until he is legally blind, and he suffered shaken baby syndrome resulting in brain damage. He was emaciated and starving when he was finally returned to his family at 22 months old. During the course of her visits, his mother would photograph the injuries, but the judge ordered her to stop and to remove her web site that documented her case and the abuse her son suffered at the hands of the state. Even the courts cover up foster care abuse.
At the very least, parents report that the children who are returned to them from foster care are not the same children that were taken. They are easily frightened, clingy and needy, they act out sexually or are physically and verbally abusive, they wet the bed, they test their parents’ love and violate established rules, schoolwork suffers, they are haunted and distrusting, and more. Evidently, foster care is not the warm and fuzzy panacea it’s cracked up to be.
Throwaway Children
Of Pure Blood – 21 September, 1942 – Notes on an SS discussion “ . . .after the sifting has been carried out the children will be separated from the mothers. . .so that no irresponsible hatred will develop among these children. . .children with a good capacity for Germanization will be handed over to the Lebensborn Society, which will arrange for the adoption of these children by pure German families.”
Himmler, recognizing the threat posed by children who were not properly conditioned against their parents, said to Max Sollman, on June 21, 1943, “The children of good race, who obviously could become the most dangerous avengers of their parents if they are not humanely and correctly brought up, should . . .be admitted to a Lebensborn children’s home for a probationary period, where as much as possible about their character should be discovered, and then be sent to German families as foster-children or adopted children.”
“ . . .Children who passed the tests were taken to a Lebensborn reception center; the others generally disappeared without trace, often being dispatched to a concentration camp. Luckier children might be returned to their parents without explanation.”
“ . . .many children became ‘orphans’ when they were taken from their parents . . .”
Leo Twardecki, 11, roused from sleep and kidnapped by three SS men with Alsatian dogs, were herded to a train observed. “I was never adopted. I was too big and too Polish, and no one wanted me.”
German Nazis who adopted the Lebensborn children were told that the children were orphans of German parents and if it was found out that they had a child of inferior race, they would often refuse to keep the child.
Lebensborn children came with a monthly government payment to subsidize their care and upkeep. Their records were falsified and their names Germanized; new birth certificates were issued to support the stories told to the adoptive parents. The Nazi occupied countries never knew about the Lebensborn program until after the war. They all presumed that the children were exterminated or enslaved. In fact, the vast majority were. They were the Nazi’s throwaway children.
CPS agencies, in taking children who do not meet the statutory definition of abuse or neglect from loving homes is creating more throwaway children than they are legitimately saving. Anyone who doubts this only has to look at the adoption web sites, adoption fairs, and adoption catalogs sponsored by CPS agencies. These listings present huge quantities of children available for adoption who have problems that make them difficult to adopt. Virtually all of them are on medications to treat behavioral or emotional problems, they are generally over six years old, and they are not blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Some of them are sibling groups that shouldn’t be separated. Their birth certificates are altered to remove their birth parents names. Sometimes their names are changed making it impossible to trace them. These children come with adoption subsidies – a monthly check from government – medicaid, food stamps, a hefty tax break and intensive support services. Just think what the biological parents could have doh those resources. Since the vast majority of the children are taken due to poverty related issues, the money provided to foster parents and adoptive parents could have prevented the removal of the children in the first place.
Under the Adoption and Safe Families Act, the Federal government pays a $4000 bounty for every child adopted out of foster care who exceeds the 1997 baseline. If the child is ‘special needs’ – and most of them are by virtue of the psychological trauma they suffer at being separated from their parents – the bounty goes up to $6000.
There are many childless couples and others who desperately want to adopt. CPS is the legalized adoption mill. With the law requiring permanency planning in twelve months for children under six, most of these children become adoptable within a year and a half of being taken. Is it coincidence that the Nazi Lebensborn program advocated placement of the children within a year of their abduction and focused on blond-haired, blue-eyed children under six?
In taking the younger children, many older siblings are left to languish in foster care. The real tragedy is that many of these children were very much loved and wanted by their biological parents. These parents fought with everything they had in too many cases only to lose their children. Since the state saw fit to take these children from these loving parents, these children are now alone, unloved and unwanted by the rest of the world. They are the throwaway children, and don’t think they don’t know it.
The two sisters from Arapaho County, Colorado reported that their foster mother told them she wanted their baby sister but didn’t want them. Nobody wants the older, troubled child who knows they were kidnapped. Even the children who are adopted often know that they should never have been taken from their parents. All adopted children exhibit some of the same issues to resolve; abandonment or the fantasy that they were, in reality, kidnapped against their loving parents’ wills. The kidnapping fantasy is, in fact, the truth in many of these cases anymore. And when these children grow up and learn their real parents fought tooth and nail to keep them, they will resent their adoptive parents as being willing participants in their abductions. This is too obvious to deny.
But worse, 25% of state adoptions disrupt. This literally means the children are returned like defective merchandise, creating even more throwaway children. When an adoptive parent returns a child, CPS will offer higher subsidies or threaten to take all other children in order to prevent the adoption from disrupting. Our children are treated like commodities, to be bartered and sold by CPS agencies.
Returning Children Home
The U.S. obstructed the repatriation of kidnapped children. June 11, 1948, Zycie Warszawy reports, “ . .the attitude of the British and American occupation authorities. . .These authorities are not satisfied when a child is tracked down, when evidence of its identity is produced and even its parents (if they are alive) claim it. All that is not enough for them. They do their best to insure that the child is not returned to Poland . . .”
“ . . .there was the ‘interest of the child’ to be considered, that famous interest in the name of which they had been taken from their families in the first place. The British, American and French investigators, often motivated by the most generous feelings, hesitated to create new dramas in the minds of young children who could remember only their adoptive parents. . .No one knew whether children who were being brought up in comfortably-off families would find similar conditions if they were sent [home].
“Thus, the post-war files contained a multitude of reasons why [kidnapped children] stayed in Western Germany.” “Dr. Roman S. Hrarbar, a lawyer who in 1945-7 was head of the Polish mission responsible for repatriating Polish children “It was also claimed that is would be a shock to the child to be returned to its real family. That turned out to be false. . . .[the military authorities in the Western Allied occupation zones] took the view that it was preferable to leave the child in its present surroundings – in the interest of the child – instead of making it get used to new surroundings, unknown to the child. These were humanitarian explanations which covered essentially politically motives.
“Reactions [of children who were identified] varied. Younger ones, who remembered nothing, were surprised. They had to be prepared for the change. The others, the older ones . . .accepted the situation with delight, particularly when we were able to tell them that their parents were still alive and waiting for them.”
This sounds suspiciously like today’s CPS excuse for whatever they do: “The best interest of the child.” While they trot that phrase up at every opportunity, they never define it or describe exactly why a recommended action is in the child’s best interest. They are not even qualified to judge what is in an individual child’s best interest since they don’t know the children as individuals; they don’t know anything personal about the children they kidnap. Many of them even admit that they act for the best interests of children in general, not necessarily for the individual.
The best interests of the child has become the equivalent of the Nazi’s ‘Final Solution;’ a phrase that sound good and justifies their destructive and abusive actions. Clearly, the U.S. has an extensive history of plugging other people’s children into whatever slot they feel is best, the child’s and the families needs notwithstanding, placing political expediency above the humanitarian issue of truly protecting children.
CPS will also say the children need a ‘reunification’ process before being returned home. Why was it acceptable to remove children precipitously from their parents, but they can’t be returned in the same manner? Could this be reverse brainwashing time? Or is it merely a mechanism to extend more control over the family? Whatever it is, CPS is extremely reluctant to allow foster children to return to their birth parents even if they haven’t proven abuse or neglect.
Evaluating The System
As far as the Nazi’s were concerned, the Lebensborn program was a great success. They were evaluated by their experts and their superiors. They were rounding up and distributing valuable Aryan bloodlines. As far as they were concerned, the end justified the means.
It is important to note, that at no time during the Nazi regime, were the subjects and victims of these programs ever consulted for their assessment, evaluation or input into the effectiveness and reliability of the racial hygiene programs; the effects of those programs upon the individuals and families involved; or the moral implications of what was occurring in Nazi Germany and the countries it occupied as it implement its master plan.
Today, CPS agencies undergo the same kind of evaluations as to the effectiveness and efficiency of their programs. The same experts who devise and operate child protection also evaluate it. There is no mechanism whereby an evaluation is conducted by an independent agency or that the clients of this system are ever contacted for their input.
Client complaints are often covered up. David Berns, Director of El Paso County DHS reported to the county commissioners that his agency had received only one complaint for the year ending June, 1999. This reporter knows of seven that were filed during that time. When I protested his report, he amended it a few weeks later to two complaints. He stated that the second complaint had not been filed on proper form, forgetting that their complaint process did not require filing in writing and not knowing that all seven complaints that were unreported were filed in writing.
Later, a Denver paper reported that most counties in Colorado had no complaints against DHS; that the citizens review panels had only heard three complaints for the entire state in the previous year. They speculated that either DHS was virtually perfect, or more likely, that they were stonewalling complaints.
Many family advocacy groups are demanding independent investigations into CPS agencies nationwide. These agencies respond by requesting an internal investigation, or failing that, an outside ‘expert’ in the field. The advocacy groups are resisting, saying that’s like having the Gestapo investigate a concentration camp.
Until there is independent public oversight over CPS agencies; until the confidentiality laws are eliminated; until caseworkers are held accountable and liable for abuses against families; until child abuse is treated like a crime and investigated by law enforcement; our children will continue to be more horribly abused in state custody than they ever were in their own homes. if0.00
Our population of legal orphans will continue to grow and we will produce more human fodder for prisons and mental institutions as a direct result. If we don’t learn our lessons from history, we are doomed to repeat the failures. American CPS agencies are well on their way to becoming the Nazi child kidnappers of the new millennium.
Story copyright 2000, Suzanne Shell –
http://www.profane-justice.org
Daniel Weaver
Amiablyme - Knowledge Is Power 