I have been researching the abuse in the Child Protection Services for a while now. I have talked to many parents who have had their children snatched by Child Protection Services. I find the main theme that runs through our conversations is this “Please don’t use my name. They told me it will hurt my case.” My own daughter Alice Samantha Thomason who had her three children, Shawna, Carly and Sara snatched by Jackson County DFCS was told by her Public Defender Crandell Heard to tell me the basicly same thing. He told her that the blog was hurting her case. This was just a ruse to keep the world and me from knowing how they were running over her and abusing her. It was also a ruse to keep the public from knowing how they operate under the guise of “the best interest of the children.” They don’t want anyone to know what they do. They don’t want the public to know they prey on the poor and uneducated. They don’t want the public to know they make money off the backs of the children they snatch and put on the action block.
There is something terribly wrong with this picture. Child Protection Services don’t want parents to tell their story, they don’t want their corruption and greed exposed. Forcing these families to stay quiet under the threat of “it will hurt your case” is tantamount to emotional and mental blackmail. Child Protection Services and even the lawyers who are supposed to work for the parents don’t want their dirty little secret out. It would create problems for their world. It would create questions they would rather not answer i.e. “why don’t they spend the money they pay foster parents to help the parent into housing, child care and jobs and transportation (if the parent doesn’t have such). It would create questions such as “why are children snatched becasue the parent is poor and lives in “substandard housing” when that is the best they can afford with the resources they have?” It would raise the question of why Child Protective Services and Judges hide behind the “Secrecy” and refuse to allow parents due process.”
However, once they pull the plug parents parental rights, they immediatly put these children on several adoption websites. The most famous one is Wednesday’s Child. They also hold “Adoption Fairs” where these children are paraded in front of prosepctive adoptive parents. These parents have the opprtunity to talk to these children who have been coached to be on their best behavior and to answers questions certain ways. Once the prospective parents have “viewed and interviewed” these children they go back and put in their request. This secrecy is exacerbated when the parental rights are terminated and these children are posted on the Wednesday Child adoption site and the children are touted in front of the TV Camera’s- with coached words and happy smiles. What happened to the” best interest of the child”? Some of these same children wind up murdered at the hands of their adoptive parents. Some of these same children have problems that the adoptive parents are not informed about.
Child Protection Services does not and will not give full disclosure to the “new family”, Why? because the perfect picture is flawed. Who really wants a child who is damaged? So they bury it along with the lack of evidence of “deprivation and neglect” just so they can sell their product.
Now understand these children have already been abused by the system. They have been in some cases shuttled from foster home to foster home. They have in some cases “special needs”. They have been snatched from their birth parents, torn from their birth extended family and tossed about like so many assets for profit. Then they are adopted out by unsuspecting “new families” with dreams of a beatiful. The lies continue. The abuse of these children who were never abused by their families continues. In some cases not only does it continue it results in them being tossed aside by their “new family” or worse, abuse and death by the “new family.” All because Child Protective Services says “It is in the best interest of the Child.”
No One really wants children who have truly been abused and harmed. That is why Child Protective Services has to wrap them in a shinny package to sell them. That is why they are shuttled from foster home to foster home until they age out and become part of the criminal justice system. In order to fill the “desire, and want” of those wonderfully perfect – middle class families Child Protective Services has to find children who whose parents are poor and uneducated. Parents who don’t have the resources to fight back. Parents who can be abused by the system. Parents who are frightened and don’t know how to fight back. Who blieve the lies from CPS when they say “if you work the plan you will get your children back. We believe in reunification. No Ms. Katie Bice – you don’t. You are part of the lie. You only believe in snatching children and selling them. You along with Judge Guidry, Crandell Heard, Mary Mahoney and others in the Jackson County DFCS. All of you are the problem. It is your jobs on the line if there is no money for your salaries, your vacations and your sick days. It is your job on the line when the numbers don’t come out right. It is your job on the line when Governor Sunny Perdue says “we have to cut because the State is Broke.” Yes, it is all of you who have made the system what it is. There is no accountablity, no epathiy and certainly no attempt at “reasonable efforts” to reuinfiy familes. These are your words. It plainly states in your manual that you are not to worry about it in front of the parental rights termination hearing because “most parents don’t work the plan any way.”
These children who wind up dead, even more harmed, and in the system after they have aged out are the blood on your hands and yours alone. It is not the parents fault it is not anyones fault but yours. You took them on a “tip”. You didn’t do all you could to help that parent – you instead gave blood money to the foster parents and the adoptive parents. You and you alone will have to answer to this children some day.
Do NOT and I repeat DO NOT- make Shawna, Carly and Sara one more of your statistics. DO NOT keep them in the system return them to their mother. Help her get housing- help her with a job. Be part of the solution and stop being the problem.
Just to comment…the two states that I have experience in DO help with housing, jobs, etc. – and also have family preservation programs that work with families in-tact unless the situation is too severe. I agree that the system is not perfect by any means – but if you work with enough of the kids who are in foster care, you’ll realize it is needed.
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Maggie- I agree children who are really in harms way have to have a place to go- That is not my beef. My fight is with those states who make it a practice to snatch children simple because they can. Simply becasue the have the “authorit”y to do so- then spend the money for foster homes when it could be best spent on the natural families to help them with a hand up. I agree- if there is “Accountablity” and if the Watchers are watching- the protection of “abused” Children is needed. However, there is no accountablity- the manuals are written to best serve the coffers of the system. There is no hold their feet to the fire- orders and parental terminations are rubber stamped by judges. I have the interviews from judges. I have the research. So until the corruption is stopped families who are just poor and uneducated will still be as much of a victim as those children who are really abused.
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