By: Sandra Ami
How would you feel to see a child’s face terrified with fear, with tears flooding their cheeks, arms reaching out for help “MOMMY! MOMMY! DADDY! DADDY!” The child is being pulled away by strangers, the pain and pure agony of fear. The screams so piercing they draw a crowd. It not only breaks your heart but makes one think.
Where is the compassion and where was the law?
I’ve seen this far more often that I would have ever liked, more often than I would have ever chosen, far more often than I could have ever imagined possible. But it happens every day. Each day thousands of children and parents are going through this same painful torture.
It all starts with a report made to Children and Family Services. Perhaps a neighbor that you’ve gotten into an argument with over a barking dog, or the methods of a teacher you challenged or you showing your disapproval of the teacher locking the children in the classrooms during school hours. Maybe it’s because of your husband’s new wife who doesn’t like you or doesn’t like having to pay child support to your children. Or even a mother who files a complaint against the father out of anger or jealousy. The reasons are endless but the results are the same.
When a mother calls in to report the father (or visa-versa), she’s cutting her nose off to spite her face. She doesn’t realize that not only are they writing up reasons to alienate the father, but they are also writing up reasons to take the children from the mother for “Neglecting to protect the children.”
CPS, DHS, DCFS, DYFS, whatever name they go by in a particular county, they are still one in the same. Their only intention upon any report is to put children up for adoption. When a call comes in it is handled just as a sales call. If any one of you have ever worked as a sales person, or owned a business, you know how valuable a call in to place an order is. The “department” is no different. Each call that is made into their offices is a valuable financial, incoming call.
The Social Workers are not interested if there was any actual abuse or neglect, they get a bonus to place children up for adoption. They use the calls as their guideline, on how the reports will be written up. But, those reports will also have added allegations, accusations and almost always the SW will put in the report that one or both of the parents have “mental issues that prevent the mom (or dad) from parenting their child(ren).” The mental statements on the reports are to cause the parents more obstacles to prevent them from getting their children back and are rarely ever mentioned by anyone. The parent may never have seen a psychiatrist or therapist, and may never have been diagnosed with such conditions.
This is how it works.
A call comes into Social Services; you are completely unaware there is even a complaint. You get a knock on the door within a few days, or it could even be as simple as a phone call, with a Social Worker asking you a few questions. You know there is nothing you have done to justify any reporting, and the Social Worker tells you “don’t worry it’s just routine, we have to investigate each report we get.” So, you don’t worry.
A day or so later, at 6:30am, time to get ready for school. You tickle the children out of bed, and if that doesn’t work, tell them you will “sprinkle them with LOVE KISSES” to which they know a cup of water is coming that you will dip your fingers in and flick them with it to wake them up, as you’ve done before.. “LOVE KISSES.. LOOOVE KISSES” the giggles are just enough to wake them up. Now that the children are awake and sitting up, you give them the option.. “Do you want to dress yourself today? Or do you want ME TO??” They know that if you do it, you will dress them in that nice green, stripped, button down shirt with the green Levis you love them in, but if they dress themselves, they will get to wear their cool Black Dickies and the Black shirt with the cool skateboarder on it. So, just the mere mention of Mom dressing the children is just enough to get their butts in gear. In the kitchen, you fix sausage, eggs and toast and while the children are eating breakfast you jump in the shower. After breakfast, there’s no time to do the dishes, so you save it for your return. Just before you drive them off to school, there’s Teeth Inspection Time where you play Dentist after they’ve brushed, and as you comb their hair, creating several different hair styles, the Mohawk look, then the bangs, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, just before making them presentable for their teacher. One last thing before they walk out the door, you squirt them with some Smell Pretties, a man’s cologne you bought them for their last birthday or Christmas time. Now all the homework’s in order, their lunch has been made, and you’re off to school. Kiss them good bye and tell them to “Have a great day, I love you” as you hear the little voices “I love you too”.
Driving back up your driveway, you see a strange car and someone standing in the driveway. You approach the stranger as she identifies herself as Kim the Social Worker, she’s dressed casually and looks rather harmless, in fact, she looks like she could be one of your nice new neighbors from down the street. She says “hello, how are you doing? I love your flowers, you have a nice house. Did you plant that flower bed yourself?” As you engage in a casual conversation, she sounds rather normal, you then invite her in. She looks around, but not so much as to inspect the home or look suspicious. “You have a very nice home” she says. You show her the family pet Duck you have (in diapers) who is quite friendly and as docile as a well tamed cat. She then proceeds to ask questions after explaining why she is there. “I just want you to know, I’m here to help you, I know this all sounds so silly, but I just have to make sure I have the paperwork done right, in order to close the case” She asks you if you have been under any doctors care, or if the children have. Puzzled you think to yourself “is this a loaded question?” Searching for the best answer for this question, you think if you say “yes”, they may perceive that the children have a problem, however if you say “no”, they may think you don’t take them when needed. So you answer the question, “yes, I take the children or myself whenever we need to go”. You also inform the Social Worker that you have insurance, and the children have been seeing the same doctor all their lives, pretty much. The Social Worker isn’t at your house for very long, maybe a matter of 3 or 4 minutes. She thanks you as a friend would do as she gets in her car. Again, you don’t worry.
A week later, the same routine, 6:30am, breakfast, shower, comb the hair, lunch and off to school. “I love you honey, have a great day” “You too mommy, I love you too.”
This time, you come home, you start the dishes, take something out for dinner, moping the floors, bathing the duck; it’s the regular routine.
THEN A KNOCK ON THE DOOR.
“Oh Hello Kim, don’t tell me, let me guess, you took my kids” in an extremely naive and friendly voice you say to the woman, jokingly.
“Yes, I did”
”WHAT? You’re kidding me right?”
”No, we took your son from School”
”Where is he now? Where did you take him, OH MY GOD! He knows never to get in the car with strangers, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD” as the tears bellow down your face.
”WHY? WHY? Why did you take him?”
”Well, we called a Doctor who said to detain the child”
”What? Who?”
”Dr. Granet”
”But he only saw my son once when my son was a few months old??!! He knows nothing about my son”
”Here’s the address, you will need to attend a TDM (Team Decision Meeting) meeting tomorrow, and you will have a court date the following day”
Now, you pick up your phone, you call your husband, even though you are not living together (thank goodness your still very close friends), where he shows up within minutes from across town; he speaks with the SW and tells her the “mother is a good mom”, a call to your attorney who speaks with the SW for a few seconds only to return back to you with “She’s a BITCH”. A frantic call out to your mother, sister, brother, friends anyone and everyone you know. CRYING, feeling like someone has just taken a hatchet to your knees. You feel the blood draining out of your body as though they clipped off your extremities. Tight wrenching pains from the middle of your torso with one single laceration from the tip of your chin to the farthest end of your body. As if you were dissected like a fish. Even these words are not harsh enough to express the feeling. It is beyond one’s self, a painful death in a living state.
The next day you go to this “TDM” (which stands for Team Decision Meeting) where you take your adult son, your teenage son, your mother, sister, husband, and his brother who are all willing to take the child home with them “just in case”. The purpose of the meeting, as they tell you, is to “agree on a placement for the child”. Well everyone in the meeting agrees that the child should go home, everyone except the Social Worker that is. The Social Worker says she will do an “investigation” on the relatives, asking if any of them have ever been arrested, asks what they all do for a living, what their lifestyles are like, and then constructs a list of Strong Points and Weak Points.
It is actually about 3 days after that that you go to court where you meet your Public Defender for the first time and get handed a “report”. The Public Defender after handing the report, gives you a few moments to read it over before he speaks with you. You read the report where you learn you are just about to be “raped”.
The report reads: “Mother is under a doctor’s care for Mental Conditions that prevent her from parenting her child… Mother neglected to take the child to the doctor for over 3 years, placing the child in immediate or immanent danger” “NO FAMILY AVAILABLE REQUEST CONFIDENTIAL FOSTER HOME” “father has agreed with the child’s mother, despite knowledge that such actions could have potential negative effects on his well-being” “several dirty dishes were in the sink, and the children were living in dirty conditions” (never mind the fact that you took him to the doctor 3 months before for a cold, and even as soon as 2 ½ weeks ago he was released from the hospital where you took him for Strep Throat). Never mind the fact that your son has been to the doctor every time he was sick, and/or anytime there was even the slightest possibility of danger. The report makes allegations that the Social Worker pulled out of her butt, and got from nowhere else. YOU’RE SHOCKED! And looking up at the court room doors where you are going to be entering to answer for such allegations. No problem you think, I’ll just tell the
attorney to fight for me. Right?
WRONG!
Your Public Defender (Bob) comes back to speak to you, he tells you to “plea in the case”,, “WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING?? NO! I WILL NOT! I’M NOT GUILTY OF ANY OF THIS” you tell him. Bob then says to you “Yeah, yeah I’ve hear that all the time, I’m telling you, you will lose your children to adoption if you do not plea”. “ADOPTION?? WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT ADOPTION?” “But Bob, I’m not guilty and I can PROVE every bit of it.” “Well, let’s just push the hearing up a few weeks and give you some time to think about it”.
You go home and spend every waking moment researching what is going on, how this all works, why this is happening, and how can they get away with this. You give up your business for the chase to get your child back from the clutches of such evil people, to protect him! Your business suffers, therefore your house payment suffers and soon it will be all gone! You learn some statistics like a child in Foster Care is 7-10 times more likely to DIE than if kept with the parents. You learn that Child Protective Services gets anywhere from $12,000 to upwards of $20,000 “PER CHILD” “PER MONTH”, and only has to pay out approximately 10% to the caregivers. You learn that in your county alone more than 3000 children are taken away EVERY MONTH. You become scared, very scared.
(oh and I forgot to mention, when the Social Worker took your child they placed him immediately into the hospital, putting him on I.V.s and giving him all kinds of other medications.. with NO PARENT allowed there, no familiar person to your frightened child.)
Afraid? You can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you can’t do anything but research, investigate, think of some kind of strategy, but.. you’re not an attorney. What to do?
You try to make sense of it all, speaking to as many people as you can, only to find out that the mere mention of your children being taken away, feeds an immediate judgment that YOU ARE GUILTY “what did YOU do WRONG?”. The conversation ends there, as no one will listen. They all believe you are guilty. No one will help. You start to speak with other parents, moms and dads who have also been put into the same situation. Parents fighting for their children, parents who also were lied about in court, and many were “FORCED” to give their children up for adoption.
Two weeks later, you go back to court. Bob tells you to “the Social Worker has agreed to let the child go home with his father if you plea in this case, if not he WILL go into a Foster Home TODAY!” You then ask him “is it true that a child is 7-10 times more likely to DIE in a foster home?” He answers “YES!”
Oh my god, Oh MY God! You are given no other choice, you must plea guilty.
Your attorney, along with the father’s attorney, the child’s (appointed attorney), the Social Worker’s attorney, clerk and judge are in the courtroom, where, YOU are not allowed. After they discuss your case, they sometimes call you into the courtroom, they read their agreement, and ask you if you agree. Then, 30 seconds later, it’s over and you are walking out.
Only, as agreed in court, they DO NOT return your child, as the judge ordered. They make excuses not to. You call your attorney, and he says he’ll talk to the SW, and call you back. He may, and he may not for a few days. (and that’s if you’re lucky enough to have an attorney that actually takes your calls, or calls you back)
During the time your son is in the hospital, you are allowed to see him the next day. You ask the doctor there; “why is my son in here?” the doctor replies “Oh it’s just routine maintenance, your child is NOT SICK”.
After asking the doctors several questions, and staying with your son, every day and every night while he’s in the hospital, the Social Worker gets nervous, this does not look good for her case against you, so she must get rid of you. One day, a security guard comes to your child’s room and tells you “you must leave”. WHAT? Why? You later learn that someone somewhere said you “want to slay the doctor and take your child out of state” (that in later reports turns into “slay the doctor and his family”) NONE OF WHICH IS TRUE (but you aren’t so surprised by now, because none of it is true, NONE OF IT!)
There is another court hearing to put you on “monitored visitations” for such allegations, and you are now only allowed to see your son 2 times per week for 2 hours at a time, only there is NO ONE to monitor your visits, so you are lucky if you get them.
Monitored Visitations: The Social Worker will set up a schedule they have no intention of keeping. Say your schedule is Tuesday and Thursday from 10am – 12pm. Well they will call you at 9 on Tues. and tell you they have to go to a meeting and need to reschedule. So they will ask you if Wednesday at 9am is ok. Being one of the lucky one’s that doesn’t actually work for someone else, you are able to accommodate any time schedule, only that makes them change it up even more, to find out what WILL BE the most inconvenient schedule they can come up with. (the purpose is to get you to say “no” so they can write up in their report “mother missed scheduled visit” or “mother unable to make visitation schedule” or “mother canceled visitation” (even if the Social Worker was the one to cancel)
The day you walked out of court (a Wednesday) the SW (a new one, because they have already changed Social Worker’s 3 times by now) tells the father “you can not take your child home, until you meet with the doctor (the same one that told the social worker “if you take the child I will get him a room at the hospital”. You know the one that only saw your child ONCE?!) You along with the father and your adult son go over to this doctors office to get “education on the medical needs of the child” (which there ARE NONE) per the Social Worker. They tell you you can not get an appointment for a month. The father fights and fights for several days to get a sooner appointment, so he can bring his baby home.
On Friday, two days after the court ordered your child to his father, you decide to move your other two boys into their father’s as well, so that when your little guy comes home he will have his entire family back, minus you. While moving your other children in, a Second and Third Social Worker show up to check on your one son that is has not been released by the social worker yet. You inform them that you know you are not supposed to be there after he comes home, however he’s still in the Orphanage. The very nice lady says “I’ll check with the first Social Worker to find out why they didn’t tell me” The next day, the first Social Worker leaves a message on the father’s voice mail stating “the mother is to be OUT OF THE PICTURE COMPLETELY.. I CAN HAVE HIM PULLED AND THERE WOULD BE NO CHANCE OF RETURN” threatening yet again, for approximately the 30th time by now “ADOPTION”.
Once the father does bring the child home, the following day, the Social Worker calls and says that now the adult son needs such training or the child will be taken again, she also demands the adult brother take CPR training. (Though you research and the WIC codes state 362.04 (a),(e),(f) that they can not demand such training (paraphrased).
You call the Social Worker’s Supervisor and ask that he look into what the Social Worker is doing, and explain there was NO INVESTIGATION made, and the allegations are all false. He says back to you” I will not investigate the case, that is her job, I will not check to see what she is doing” You learn that he too is aware, as though this is common practice.
You know, you have this gut feeling, they are going to take your child again. You just know.
Two weeks after your son went home with his father, there is a doctor’s appointment where the second Social Worker and your adult son and the father attend, you have been banned from all appointments. During this time, the father asks the doctor attending, “we are here to give my adult son ‘training’. The doctor says “do you know how to read a prescription bottle?” “yes” your son says. “that’s all the training you need”.
The following day, the first Social Worker comes to take you son again, stating “the adult son didn’t have training”. (Oh but now.. we know this is not true, and there was even a Social Worker there, unbeknown to the first Social Worker) Your child is put back into the Orphanage. While you are on your monitored visits, you are told “don’t kiss your son, don’t hug him for any amount of time, and don’t let him (though very despondent, depressed, confused, crying, and scared) sleep on your lap. If you do it will not look good in the reports to the court. (you later learn, through more research, that this is how they try to separate the “bond” between you and your child.
Each statement by Social Workers, each report, each action is to set the ground work for Adoption.
Why? Money!
The process goes on. You are told if you accept “services” you will get your son back within 6 months, however the court hearings are continued each time, to extend the process out longer. You are NEVER allowed to defend yourself, your child’s attorney never even meets the child. AND KNOW THIS: after 12-18 months (no longer than 18 months) the child MUST BE ORDERED TO A PERMANENT PLACEMENT and you can pretty much guarantee it will NOT be with you!
The services they tell you to go to, are not even ordered for several months, so you will not be able to complete them by the time the case must be decided on. The hours of the “classes” and the “therapy” and the visitations, make it almost impossible for you to complete. The visits are sometimes scheduled during your other appointments they put you through, and if you can not do ‘both’ at the same time, then it is written up that you are either missing them, or “refused”. You know this is not true. But this is what the reports say. Upon the 6 month review, they tell you they will ‘drop the monitor and allow you to be with your child, if you agree that all reports against you are correct” now, you haven’t seen your child much in the past 6 months, so you are at the mercy of these evil people. You make another coerced decision, for the sake your son, your family, yourself. Only to, yet again find you were lied to. They took off the monitor, that is also a Social Worker, but placed you on monitored visits with the father being the monitor (remember you are very good friends, so this is not the worst thing that could happen). The Social Worker tells you, they will lift the monitor completely if “you attend a doctor’s appointment to be trained”. Two months go by, and you attend the doctors appointment (by now you have realized to take a digital tape recorder with you were ever you go, and tape the entire time.. thankfully). During that doctor’s appointment, your Social Worker says “your monitor is now lifted completely, aren’t you happy? I will send it to the courts so that it will be reflected on the record”. Great! Now you are able to see your son (after 8 months) any time! The next hearing, 2 weeks later, you get the report (they are always handed out minutes before your hearing … that again you are not allowed to be a physical party to). The report states “16 hours per week of liberal unmonitored visits”.
ANGER?? Can you say ANGER?
The above events are true, don’t think this can’t happen to you, because this is exactly what happened to me.
Now what?
In my next post I will uncover the truths of Charities and Foundations involved in this corruption. I’ll discuss how the Judges are on the Board of Directors to the Adoption Agencies. How Social Services does Fund raisers for United Way, where the money comes back to Social Services. I’ll tell about how the Social Workers get bonuses for each adoption they force, and how Federal taxes are are being used to take children from their homes.
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