Legally Kidnapped by Child Protective Services

[Valley Oak]

Child Protective Services (CPS) is a contemporary version of the KGB in the United States for children and families. Thousands of innocent people every year are unnecessarily victimized, their reputations destroyed, publicly humiliated, families disintegrated, and their lives turned upside down by this out of control public agency, CPS. CPS needs to be reigned in if not dissolved or replaced. But perhaps more important, is the public's hysteria that gave way to the long leash given this dangerous agency in the first place.

Edward

Legally Kidnapped: A Look at Child Protective Services | attorney.org

Legally Kidnapped: A Look at Child Protective Services
Written by admin, Nov 5, 2009

The Legally Kidnapped blog is dedicated to exposing the Child Protective “Industry” for what it really is. It also has a state-by-state directory of resources – The Legally Kidnapped Help Desk - for parents who are accused of child abuse or neglect, families fighting to get their children out of foster care, and family rights advocates who are working to fix the mess known as CPS.

Each week, child protective agencies (CPS) in the United States receive more than 50,000 reports of suspected child abuse or neglect. In 2007, approximately 5.8 million were involved in an estimated 3.2 million child abuse reports and allegations. Of those, a purported 1 million are false reports. More than half of the victims experience neglect, 20% experience physical abuse, 10% experience sexual abuse, and about 7% experience emotional abuse.

The child protective industry is failing to combat child abuse at its roots. An estimated 8.5 million children in America live in poverty and another 5.5 million in extreme poverty. Nearly 35 million Americans live in hungry or “food-insecure” households.

Child protection needs to go beyond attempting to protect the estimate 1000-plus children that are killed every year. It involves more than responding to allegations of child abuse, which some estimates place at are 20% malicious and false alarms, and focus on the reasons why there is such instability in households across America. More focus needs to be put on family preservation services such as food and housing assistance or services to help parents of children with special needs so that the children can stay in the home or be placed with a relative.

“The foster care system is no better or safer than an abusive home. Often times, it’s much worse.”

Visit Legally Kidnapped to find out more about CPS’ shortcomings.

[Clancy]

My experience with CPS has been just the opposite. Twice in the 25 years I've lived in Sonoma County I've had neighbors who were terribly abusive to their kids. Constant yelling, belittling, so called spanking and sometimes outright hitting, and that was just what I saw, no telling what went on behind closed doors.

In both cases, it was obvious that the children were being emotionally tortured, physically abused and otherwise neglected by their alcoholic, drug addicted completely dysfunctional parents.

In both cases I called the police several times, and I called CPS and described the conditions those poor kids were living in.

The police AND CPS visited several times - since no laws were obviously being broken, nothing as far I knew ever came of it.

The parents were free to essentially destroy these kids lives before they ever had a chance.

I think the threshold for intervention is too high, not too low.

And finally, I have no doubt that the dysfunctional parents involved saw themselves as innocent victims of over-zealous neighbors, police and CPS.

Child Protective Services (CPS) is a contemporary version of the KGB in the United States for children and families. Thousands of innocent people every year are unnecessarily victimized, their reputations destroyed, publicly humiliated, families disintegrated, and their lives turned upside down by this out of control public agency, CPS. CPS needs to be reigned in if not dissolved or replaced. But perhaps more important, is the public's hysteria that gave way to the long leash given this dangerous agency in the first place.

[Valley Oak]

Thank you to the person who gave me gratitude for my post; you have courage. The community needs to know that I do not speak alone.

There are resources available to people who are in a legal battle with CPS, either for the custody of their child(ren) or because of false accusations, such as the following link. This site also reveals more of the ugly truth about CPS that others don't want you to know or act upon because they have an agenda:
Child Protective Services “CPS” False Accusations — Family Rights v. Child Welfare

Edward

Child Protective Services (CPS) is a contemporary version of the KGB in the United States for children and families. Thousands of innocent people every year are unnecessarily victimized, their reputations destroyed, publicly humiliated, families disintegrated, and their lives turned upside down by this out of control public agency, CPS. CPS needs to be reigned in if not dissolved or replaced. But perhaps more important, is the public's hysteria that gave way to the long leash given this dangerous agency in the first place.

Edward

Legally Kidnapped: A Look at Child Protective Services | attorney.org

Legally Kidnapped: A Look at Child Protective Services
Written by admin, Nov 5, 2009

The Legally Kidnapped blog is dedicated to exposing the Child Protective “Industry” for what it really is. It also has a state-by-state directory of resources – The Legally Kidnapped Help Desk - for parents who are accused of child abuse or neglect, families fighting to get their children out of foster care, and family rights advocates who are working to fix the mess known as CPS.

Each week, child protective agencies (CPS) in the United States receive more than 50,000 reports of suspected child abuse or neglect. In 2007, approximately 5.8 million were involved in an estimated 3.2 million child abuse reports and allegations. Of those, a purported 1 million are false reports. More than half of the victims experience neglect, 20% experience physical abuse, 10% experience sexual abuse, and about 7% experience emotional abuse.

The child protective industry is failing to combat child abuse at its roots. An estimated 8.5 million children in America live in poverty and another 5.5 million in extreme poverty. Nearly 35 million Americans live in hungry or “food-insecure” households.

Child protection needs to go beyond attempting to protect the estimate 1000-plus children that are killed every year. It involves more than responding to allegations of child abuse, which some estimates place at are 20% malicious and false alarms, and focus on the reasons why there is such instability in households across America. More focus needs to be put on family preservation services such as food and housing assistance or services to help parents of children with special needs so that the children can stay in the home or be placed with a relative.

“The foster care system is no better or safer than an abusive home. Often times, it’s much worse.”

Visit Legally Kidnapped to find out more about CPS’ shortcomings.

[theindependenteye]

>>Child Protective Services (CPS) is a contemporary version of the KGB in the United States for children and families. Thousands of innocent people every year are unnecessarily victimized, their reputations destroyed, publicly humiliated, families disintegrated, and their lives turned upside down by this out of control public agency, CPS. CPS needs to be reigned in if not dissolved or replaced. But perhaps more important, is the public's hysteria that gave way to the long leash given this dangerous agency in the first place.

Friends--

We had intimate contact will a huge range of people involved in all aspects of this issue from 1975 thru 1984, touring a play dealing with family abuse all over the US, for audiences of community groups, social workers, police, churches, prisoners, self-help groups, military, foster parents, doctors, you name it, with the post-show discussions usually lasting longer than the play itself. This was, of course, during the time when the referred-to law was passed and child abuse was big in the media.

I agree, as the article says, that domestic violence of all sorts has become an "industry." One could say the same of cancer, environmentalism, education, just about any social issue. And I agree that, as in everything else, there are vast, painful over-reactions by authorities. And I certainly agree that the root causes of child abuse — as of crime, war, addictions, etc. etc. -- are barely, if at all, addressed, as we focus our resources on bigger & better garbage collection, with human beings just another ingredient in the heap.

But the public "hysteria" that brought government programs into being wasn't manufactured. It was based on real and vast human suffering. The causes are many and complex: it's not all an issue of poverty. The article speaks only of "loving parents": I've spoken to the loving parent who held her child's hand over the stove so his third-degree burns would teach him not to play with matches. And you know what? In a sense, she was indeed "loving" -- just incredibly isolated, ignorant, and desperate. I could go on for hours.

So what do you do? Yes, eliminate poverty, ignorance, unwanted pregnancies, social isolation. But what do we do while we're waiting for the Revolution?

The article quotes (I think without attribution) a figure of 20% false reports. What about the 80% of reports that have some serious basis? Now I grant that a social worker with a caseload of 100 families (the situation in many communities we visited then, though I don't know what the average is now) probably doesn't have the superhero powers effectively to investigate, prescribe, bring all available community resources to bear, and follow up the results. But that, plus whatever resources exist in various communities, is all we've got.

I'll guarantee, though, that that CPS worker isn't going out looking for every chance to add to her caseload. She's much more likely just to burn out from frustration at a lack of time and resources, plus being whip-sawed between right-wing accusations that she's breaking up all God's loving families and the nightmare of a screaming headline about a kid's death despite repeated reports of abuse. KGB? She should only wish she had the resources of the KGB.

By the same spin of this article and the cited website, I could argue that women's shelters or laws against spouse-battering, hate crimes, etc., are Nazi/Commie plots to undermine our basic freedoms. I agree totally that it's all a shitty system, and that CPS is just a band-aid. But I don't see that ripping the band-aid off is going to help much either.

Peace & joy--
Conrad

[Neshamah]

My only experience with child protective services involved a roommate. She was a single mother struggling to make ends meet, and because of her ex-husband's parents, she was, in addition to all her other stress, living with the fear of having her child taken away. So scarily enough, I have to agree with Edward on this one.

I realize CPS came about for a reason, and that everyone there has the best intentions. No one wants to break up families. So in the seven minutes before work starts, here are my suggestions:

End foster care. Children should have a stable home, and if not with their biological parents, then with adoptive parents.

Second, what about group homes where suspected abusive or neglectful parents can get supervision and guidance from professionals? Parents love their children even when they don't know how to treat them. Housing is the single biggest expense most people have to face anyway, so this would leave struggling families with more income for food and clothing. Just the decreased financial stress will make a huge difference.

~ Jessica

[Valley Oak]

CPS is actually a scary thing to confront because of the overwhelmingly intense and emotional support CPS has from both the right wing and the left wing, as you can see from the posts (Conrad is radically liberal, as I am).

I very much appreciate your posting your opinion in support of my view because of the grossly uneven odds. People have a very strong, knee-jerk defense of CPS without knowing the facts or having been personally affected themselves.

Thank you,

Edward

My only experience with child protective services involved a roommate. She was a single mother struggling to make ends meet, and because of her ex-husband's parents, she was, in addition to all her other stress, living with the fear of having her child taken away. So scarily enough, I have to agree with Edward on this one.

I realize CPS came about for a reason, and that everyone there has the best intentions. No one wants to break up families. So in the seven minutes before work starts, here are my suggestions:

End foster care. Children should have a stable home, and if not with their biological parents, then with adoptive parents.

Second, what about group homes where suspected abusive or neglectful parents can get supervision and guidance from professionals? Parents love their children even when they don't know how to treat them. Housing is the single biggest expense most people have to face anyway, so this would leave struggling families with more income for food and clothing. Just the decreased financial stress will make a huge difference.

~ Jessica

[Clancy]

Grossly uneven odds? What are you talking about, this is not a competition. It's hard to imagine people at CPS malevolently trumping up charges of child abuse against innocent parents when they're overwhelmed by real child abusers. Why would they bother?

It's a fact that millions of children are badly abused and neglected, both emotionally and physically. Our jails, mental institutions, 12 step programs, homeless facilities and suicide statistics are overflowing with the legacy of child abuse.

It's also a fact that an estimated 7% of the adult population are what used to be called sociopathic
Antisocial personality disorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
That means literally millions of parents simply have no capacity for empathy, have very short fuses and little self control. Combine that with the extreme narcissism and chemical dependency that is usually part of the package and by definition you have an abusive situation.

Children are helpless, protecting them from abuse has very little to do with politics, and don't assume we haven't been personally affected.

CPS is actually a scary thing to confront because of the overwhelmingly intense and emotional support CPS has from both the right wing and the left wing, as you can see from the posts (Conrad is radically liberal, as I am).

I very much appreciate your posting your opinion in support of my view because of the grossly uneven odds. People have a very strong, knee-jerk defense of CPS without knowing the facts or having been personally affected themselves.

Thank you,

Edward

[Valley Oak]

Thank you to yet another person for their support to my denouncing CPS.

As you can see from the strong, knee-jerk reactions against my thread, challenging the excesses of the current laws is like an African-American fighting for their civil rights in the 1950s or before.

Edward

Child Protective Services (CPS) is a contemporary version of the KGB in the United States for children and families. Thousands of innocent people every year are unnecessarily victimized, their reputations destroyed, publicly humiliated, families disintegrated, and their lives turned upside down by this out of control public agency, CPS. CPS needs to be reigned in if not dissolved or replaced. But perhaps more important, is the public's hysteria that gave way to the long leash given this dangerous agency in the first place.

Edward

Legally Kidnapped: A Look at Child Protective Services | attorney.org

Legally Kidnapped: A Look at Child Protective Services
Written by admin, Nov 5, 2009

The Legally Kidnapped blog is dedicated to exposing the Child Protective “Industry” for what it really is. It also has a state-by-state directory of resources – The Legally Kidnapped Help Desk - for parents who are accused of child abuse or neglect, families fighting to get their children out of foster care, and family rights advocates who are working to fix the mess known as CPS.

Each week, child protective agencies (CPS) in the United States receive more than 50,000 reports of suspected child abuse or neglect. In 2007, approximately 5.8 million were involved in an estimated 3.2 million child abuse reports and allegations. Of those, a purported 1 million are false reports. More than half of the victims experience neglect, 20% experience physical abuse, 10% experience sexual abuse, and about 7% experience emotional abuse.

The child protective industry is failing to combat child abuse at its roots. An estimated 8.5 million children in America live in poverty and another 5.5 million in extreme poverty. Nearly 35 million Americans live in hungry or “food-insecure” households.

Child protection needs to go beyond attempting to protect the estimate 1000-plus children that are killed every year. It involves more than responding to allegations of child abuse, which some estimates place at are 20% malicious and false alarms, and focus on the reasons why there is such instability in households across America. More focus needs to be put on family preservation services such as food and housing assistance or services to help parents of children with special needs so that the children can stay in the home or be placed with a relative.

“The foster care system is no better or safer than an abusive home. Often times, it’s much worse.”

Visit Legally Kidnapped to find out more about CPS’ shortcomings.

[Clancy]

It's extraordinarily bizarre that you are casting yourself as a victim in this thread. Have you been falsely accused of child abuse?

My reaction is strong, but it's not 'knee jerk'. Would you have us eliminate laws against rape because there are some false accusations of rape?

The US is ranked lowest among industrial nations with respect to the wellbeing of children and highest in the prevalence of child abuse, according to UNICEF.

Please read that again.

The US is ranked lowest among industrial nations with respect to the wellbeing of children and highest in the prevalence of child abuse, according to UNICEF.

Child abuse statistics are off the chart. Many thousands of victims of child abuse get no protection or intervention at all.

Thank you to yet another person for their support to my denouncing CPS.

As you can see from the strong, knee-jerk reactions against my thread, challenging the excesses of the current laws is like an African-American fighting for their civil rights in the 1950s or before.

Edward

[Hot Compost]

i think what so many issues come down to is -
* consideration for other people's feelings
* consideration for other people's time
* consideration for other people's health.

personally, i have only been on the side of encouraging a friend to call CPS, because her husband was abusing their children.

many, maybe most, organizations, get carried away with their own importance, mission, & survival, and forget completely about basic old-fashioned consideration.

also, there is an angle that is promoted by anti-gay-rights groups, to bludgeon a gay parent with that fact, as a tool to take away their children.

so in other words, i'm glad there is a CPS - but they still need to answer to individual community members for their actions.

[theindependenteye]

>>As you can see from the strong, knee-jerk reactions against my thread, challenging the excesses of the current laws is like an African-American fighting for their civil rights in the 1950s or before.

Dear Edward--

I'm surprised that you characterize the responses, mine and others, to your post and the attached article, "knee-jerk reactions." I might -- equally unfairly -- smear your note by equating it with the nuts screaming about death panels. Neither promotes healthy discussion.

You feel very strongly about this issue, and so do i. But the only proposal i read in the article you posted is to abolish CPS or somehow reduce its powers. Another commentator made suggestions, e.g. group homes, that make sense, that have been tried, and like most other attempts at community involvement in support of healthy parenting, have fallen by the wayside because of funding, etc. We've mandated an agency to do a job that ought to be done with loving support & involvement on a "village" level. But it's not been. And it won't be.

So where do you draw the line at government intervention? And do you believe that child abuse is -- as others would argue about global warming -- an insignificant issue blown up by the "child abuse industry" to reap the big bucks you think they have?

You make an analogy to the civil rights struggle. I'll follow that train of thought. At one time, children in this country had virtually no legal rights; an early popularly-reported abuse case had to be brought under a law forbidding cruel treatment to animals, the prosecutor arguing that since a child was technically an animal, it too should be protected.

Prior to passage of child-protection legislation and agencies set up to implement it, there was no recourse for intervention except the police. How many girls being molested by their fathers, or kids being beaten or driven to suicide by incessant, humiliating verbal abuse, are going to risk the entire destruction of the family by making a criminal complaint? Especially when it's been drilled into them that *they're* the ones to blame? And how many neighbors or other family members are willing to do that rather than just let things go and hope it'll get better? "None of my business" until the kid goes criminal. Check the statistics.

I said before, and I repeat, that CPS often makes the kinds of icky, blundering, bureaucratic, tragic mistakes that your article describes. They're on the firing line of what's been a national debate since our inception as a nation: individual rights (in this case, parental rights) vs collective responsibility expressed through government. Remember that it took Federal troops to get those kids into Little Rock HS and that sonofabitch Lyndon Johnson to get the laws passed that were the fruits of the grassroots struggle.

So I hardly think that CPS is the solution to the jungle that passes for "family life" in many American households, any more than I think that the police can solve the problem of drunken driving. But to abolish CPS and the police -- or going further, as the tea-baggers would, just about any other governmental regulation -- well, I'm not in favor of that unless you're proposing something much more concrete and achievable than "abolish the causes." I'm all for abolishing the causes of crime, violence, addiction, all that, but I don't have the remotest idea how that's going to be done. Do you? Meantime, yeh, pass the band-aids.

Peace & joy--
Conrad

ps - If this is a knee-jerk reaction, well, it's taken me more time to write than I can really afford right now, so I guess my knees jerk pretty slowly.

pps - Nowhere do I know of a circumstance where a CPS has final authority over the status of a child. They are mandated to investigate and report, and they may have emergency powers if they believe there's imminent danger, but it's the court that ultimately decides. I believe that inadequate staffing, vastly overloaded court dockets, a public & media that goes racing out after the flavor-of-the-day Social Issue and gives minimal support to community-support groups, and the general percentage of ignoramuses that are part of any human social system -- these, I think, are responsible for the failures of CPS systems, both where they might rightly be compared to the KGB *and* where the kid winds up dead.

ppps - Someone went on to say that "a foster home is even worse" and implied that all foster parents are just in it for the money and maybe worse. That implication is just plain stupid. I've heard Mother Teresa similarly "debunked," as if any one person of group of people is either utterly perfect, utterly free of mixed motives, or else a criminal fake. Bullshit. I don't believe in saints, but some of the foster parents I've met -- and I've met dozens and dozens -- are the closest things to saints that I've encountered in my own weird odyssey.

pppps - Nuff said.

[Hotspring 44]

 But then there are things like this that happen to the poor folks that don’t have enough $ for a decent Lawyer.Judges Accused of Jailing Kids for Cash Judges Accused of Jailing Kids for Cash - ABC News

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled late Thursday that almost all juvenile delinquency cases heard by an indicted former judge must be thrown out. The ruling means cases heard by former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella from Jan. 1, 2003 to May 31, 2008 are in question for fairness and impartiality.
Ciavarella faces criminal charges that accuse him of taking millions of dollars in kickbacks from owners of private detention centers in exchange for placing juvenile defendants at their facilities, often for minor crimes
Pa. Supreme Court Throws Out Thousands of Juvenile Delinquency Cases | School Survival Blog

Wallace’s daughter, Bernadine, 15, was incarcerated in a wilderness detention camp in 2007 after appearing before Ciavarella without an attorney on charges of making terroristic threats on myspace.com.
Class action suits filed vs. judges | The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, PA

The legal system is essentially pretty much a broken and lopsided leaning towards the rich and the privileged and against everybody else!
It's a shame that the legal system uses children as pawns, albeit that it may be unintentional; unfortunately that is what is happening in far too many cases.
I have a friend that had her kids temporarily taken away from her by CPS and they were almost sent to some kind of facility similar to the ones that that Judge got accused of favoring for money because of something that somebody else did to her kids that she did not even know about.(the kids were not criminals. They were very good kids. They did not do nor were they accused of doing anything illegal or wrong, somebody did harm to them in the first place. Nor was my friend abusing them or using any illicit drugs or alcohol or anything like that either.).
She was charged with a crime of not notifying the authorities of something that she did not even know about in a "timely matter". They call that a form of "child abuse". can you believe that!

Meanwhile CPS did not even allow her to see her kids until she got an attorney, a private attorney, that did her case on a pro bono basis. The public defender was useless at best, harmful is more likely!
Then her first visits with the lawyer and children together (which by the way the CPS fought against that too) were only under their (the CPS's) supervision so that there was not any attorney to client civil rights allowed to the family.
Her children both had excellent attendance records and were getting good grades in school, but they accused their mother of “social neglect” anyway; mostly because she was a single mom on welfare; and also because the person that did actually do harm to her kids out of vengeance lied about things just to make things difficult for her.

Just because there is a need; and there is a need, going overboard, and giving free rein is not working. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
People that are not even elected have been granted way too much power within the legal judicial system; at least here in California.
There needs to be limitations such as for example; hearsay should not be allowed to be used, as it was at my friend's case. The CPS social worker in my friend's case actually made up a story and almost got away with it lock, stock and barrel and virtually (did scar however) ruined my friend's whole single mom family.
Her two children now continue to suffer from PTSD, even though they are now over 18 years old, because of that overall experience they had. Now they have a strong lack of trust of authorities, even when it may actually benefit them to utilize them.
Certain individuals within a program like CPS can ruin the whole program because of their prejudicial usages of the system to hurt the types of people they don't like; or like in the judge's case (as mentioned and linked above), to help friends that they do like or political reason or financial gain.
So I say this for those who think CPS is nothing but a bunch of do-gooders: for whatever reasons, you’re grossly misinformed.


Hotspring 44.



[Dram]

"Parents love their children even when they don't know how to treat them. "

The sad and bitter Truth is that the above statement is prevalent...even in successful families. Its a matter of role playing most easily seen in the public educational systems.

A person spends time to become qualified as a teacher and then they play the part even when students are available they can learn from...

A parent plays the part falling back more often on familial styles when tasked beyond capacity to provide for something that can only be done through tribal structure, All the pressure to make ends meet are the end points of a bankrupt system. " It takes a village to raise a child" It takes a village to make happy parents

[handy]

Another interesting variation...

Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan by Dahr Jamail -- Antiwar.com

Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan
by Dahr Jamail, November 14, 2009

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas.

Hutchinson, of Oakland, California, is currently being confined at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, after being arrested. Her son was placed into a county foster care system.


Hutchinson has been threatened with a court martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan on Sunday, Nov. 15. She has been attempting to find someone to take care of her child, Kamani, while she is deployed overseas, but to no avail.

According to the family care plan of the U.S. Army, Hutchinson was allowed to fly to California and leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes of Oakland.

However, after a week of caring for the child, Hughes realized she was unable to care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister.

In late October, Angelique Hughes told Hutchinson and her commander that she would be unable to care for Kamani after all. The Army then gave Hutchinson an extension of time to allow her to find someone else to care for Kamani. Meanwhile, Hughes brought Kamani back to Georgia to be with his mother.

However, only a few days before Hutchinson’s original deployment date, she was told by the Army she would not get the time extension after all, and would have to deploy, despite not having found anyone to care for her child.

Faced with this choice, Hutchinson chose not to show up for her plane to Afghanistan. The military arrested her and placed her child in the county foster care system.

Currently, Hutchinson is scheduled to fly to Afghanistan on Sunday for a special court martial, where she then faces up to one year in jail.

Hutchinson’s civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, told IPS, "The core issue is that they are asking her to make an inhumane choice. She did not have a complete family care plan, meaning she did not find someone to provide long-term care for her child. She’s required to have a complete family care plan, and was told she’d have an extension, but then they changed it on her."

Asked why she believes the military revoked Hutchinson’s extension, Sussman responded, "I think they didn’t believe her that she was unable to find someone to care for her infant. They think she’s just trying to get out of her deployment. But she’s just trying to find someone she can trust to take care of her baby."

Hutchinson’s mother has flown to Georgia to retrieve the baby, but is overwhelmed and does not feel able to provide long-term care for the child.

According to Sussman, the soldier needs more time to find someone to care for her infant, but does not as yet have friends or family able to do so.

Sussman says Hutchinson told her, "It is outrageous that they would deploy a single mother without a complete and current family care plan. I would like to find someone I trust who can take care of my son, but I cannot force my family to do this. They are dealing with their own health issues."

Sussman told IPS that the Army’s JAG attorney, Captain Ed Whitford, "told me they thought her chain of command thought she was trying to get out of her deployment by using her child as an excuse."

Major Gallagher, of Hutchinson’s unit, also told Sussman that he did not believe it was a real family crisis, and that Hutchinson’s "mother should have been able to take care of the baby."

In addition, according to Sussman, a First Sergeant Gephart "told me he thought she [Hutchinson] was pulling her family care plan stuff to get out of her deployment."

"To me it sounds completely bogus," Sussman told IPS, "I think what they are actually going to do is have her spend her year deployment in Afghanistan, then court martial her back here upon her return. This would do irreparable harm to her child. I think they are doing this to punish her, because they think she is lying."

Sussman explained that she believes the best possible outcome is for the Army to either give Hutchinson the extension they had said she would receive so that she can find someone to care for her infant, or barring this, to simply discharge her so she can take care of her child.

Nevertheless, Hutchinson is simply asking for the time extension to complete her family care plan, and not to be discharged.

"I’m outraged by this," Sussman told IPS, "I’ve never gone to the media with a military client, but this situation is just completely over the top."

(Inter Press Service)

[Neshamah]

This may belong in a new thread, but why are we still in Afghanistan?

I believe in a strong national defense, and I supported the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, but that was eight years ago. The Taliban recently claimed they would not be a threat to Western interests. Of course they are lying, but why didn't we take that as an opportunity to declare victory and come home? Our continued presence is seen by the world as approval of Karzai's corrupt administration.

The way I see it, there are, at most, two viable options:

(1) Withdraw now and send a message that the U.S. will no longer support corrupt foreign governments just because they are supposedly less evil than the alternative.

(2) Declare war on Al Qaeda, sell war bonds, and commit the resources to finish it now rather than doing what Bush (and Johnson and Nixon) did by adding as few troops as possible every few months thus dragging it out indefinitely.

Option 1 looks a lot better to me. I'm not sure option 2 is viable. The worst Obama can do is try to split the difference. I know that's what the media is predicting, but Obama strikes me as someone much smarter than that.

~ Jess

Another interesting variation...

Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan
by Dahr Jamail, November 14, 2009

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson...


...this situation is just completely over the top."

(Inter Press Service)

[Valley Oak]

I agree, this situation is completely over the top! This is just another example of a grotesque abuse of people's rights by the government (federal, as in this case, and CPS in the case of local government). This travesty is horrifyingly hypocritical because it destroys families 'for their own good.'

(Incidentally, in the side issue of Afghanistan, we need to get the hell out asap, especially if we're are going to legally kidnapping patriotic parents' children, as in the example below.)

Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan
by Dahr Jamail, November 14, 2009

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson...


...this situation is just completely over the top."

(Inter Press Service)

This may belong in a new thread, but why are we still in Afghanistan?

I believe in a strong national defense, and I supported the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, but that was eight years ago. The Taliban recently claimed they would not be a threat to Western interests. Of course they are lying, but why didn't we take that as an opportunity to declare victory and come home? Our continued presence is seen by the world as approval of Karzai's corrupt administration.

The way I see it, there are, at most, two viable options:

(1) Withdraw now and send a message that the U.S. will no longer support corrupt foreign governments just because they are supposedly less evil than the alternative.

(2) Declare war on Al Qaeda, sell war bonds, and commit the resources to finish it now rather than doing what Bush (and Johnson and Nixon) did by adding as few troops as possible every few months thus dragging it out indefinitely.

Option 1 looks a lot better to me. I'm not sure option 2 is viable. The worst Obama can do is try to split the difference. I know that's what the media is predicting, but Obama strikes me as someone much smarter than that.

~ Jess

[handy]

Here's another:


Leviathan’s Orphans

by William Norman Grigg




Her son needs her at home. The Empire demands her services in its war on Afghanistan. Since nobody is able to provide the child with a suitable home while she's away, the mother quite sensibly decided that her first duty was to her child.

So Alexis Hutchinson of Oakland, California, an Army Specialist – and, what's infinitely more important, a single mother to her 11-month-old son, Kamani – may wind up in prison. Her son, who was kidnapped and briefly detained by Child "Protective" Services – may wind up in foster care.

Alexis, who (unfortunately) is not a Conscientious Objector and is willing to be deployed abroad, initially left her toddler with her mother Angelique, who was already tending to a sick mother and sister, and caring for a physically handicapped daughter. Thus it's not surprising that Angelique found it impossible to provide adequate care for Kamani as well. So Alexis was left, once again, with the choice of either abandoning her child, or going AWOL.

To her considerable credit, Alexis chose to defy her orders and look after her child.

In their demented drive to regiment the world, those at the helm of the all-devouring Leviathan State ruling our country aren't content merely to destroy families in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. In the service of their murderous designs they're more than willing to rip them apart here on the home front as well.

Alexis Hutchinson is just one of many enlisted mothers – most of whom joined the military out of economic desperation – who have seen their families become collateral damage in the Empire's "Long War."

According to a report compiled by the group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, more than 30,000 single mothers have been deployed to those countries since 2001. In what it probably regards as a gesture of sacrificial generosity, the Army permits new mothers to spend four months with their newborn children before returning to the business of killing other peoples' children abroad.

Many enlisted mothers become single parents due to the Army: The divorce rate for female soldiers is triple that experienced by male enlistees. The pressures are particularly acute for those families in which both parents are in the military.

In 1990, shortly before the first phase of the endless Iraq War began, there were an estimated 65,000 single parents in the U.S. military, and – according to Newsweek – an even larger number of two-soldier families. By 1998, two-soldier "service couples" accounted for an estimated 140,000 active-duty military personnel.

Most of the two-soldier married couples appear to be part of the National Guard and Reserves, which are bearing the brunt of the prolonged deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. This wasn't the case in either Vietnam or the 1991 Gulf War.

In late 2003, Army Spec. Simone Holcomb of Colorado Springs, who had already served a tour in Iraq, learned that she was to be deployed there again, this time with her husband Vaughn serving in the war zone as well.

This created an impossible situation for the couple's seven children, two of whom were the husband's by way of a previous marriage.

With both parents scheduled to be sent abroad, Vaughn Holcomb's ex-wife filed for custody of his children. If both Vaughn and Simone obeyed their deployment orders, they would lose not just those two children – which would be bad enough, of course – but all of their children, who would be declared wards of the state because of child abandonment.

As Simone's attorney Giorgio Ra'Shadd pointed out, "when mom gets on the plane [for Iraq], they'll be waving goodbye, turning around, and going into the hands of Colorado state troopers or Denver police because there's no one to care for them."

Accordingly, Holcomb – in order to defend her children from the evil intentions of the government that employed her – went AWOL. Owing chiefly to PR calculations, the Pentagon backed down, reassigning the medic to stateside duty at Ft. Carson.

Holcomb's dilemma was the product of a policy decision made more than a decade earlier.

In 1992, the first Bush administration, immediately after what it depicted as an unqualified victory, "appointed a commission to study the issue of deploying parents, especially mothers, to war zones," reported the March 9, 2005 Sacramento Bee. "The panel recommended that single parents with preschool-age children not be allowed to deploy in times of armed conflict, and that in two-soldier families, only one of the parents be allowed to go overseas."

That recommendation, notes the Bee, was defeated by the Bush 41 administration:

"In a letter to congressional leaders, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell said that barring single parents, or one parent in a military couple, from war zones would 'weaken our combat capability by removing key personnel.... It's important for us to remember that what we are asked to do here in the Department of Defense is to defend the nation. The only reason we exist is to be prepared to fight and win wars. We're not a social welfare agency.'"

Actually, a good case can be made for the proposition that the U.S. military is the nation's largest social welfare agency.

A little more than a decade ago, Allan Carlson of the Howard Center on the Family, Religion, and Society pointed out that each day the military bureaucracy is responsible for the care of "some 200,000 children in some 800 centers, making the Pentagon the nation's largest child care provider."

In words that would thrill any totalitarian social engineer, Maj. Gen. John G. Meyer, Jr., former Commanding General of the U.S. Army's Community and Family Support Center, describes the transaction at the center of the military's child care philosophy: "Supporting the care and development of children is a responsibility the military readily assumes in exchange for the loyalty of their parents in uniform."

Appropriately, Meyer spoke those words in the presence of then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, perhaps the most famous exponent of the view that children are best raised by the State and only incidentally the concern of their parents. As Dr. Carlson points out, the "collectivist tone" of Pentagon rhetoric regarding child care is entirely appropriate:

"Since the first Army Family Action Plan, issued ominously in 1984, the focus has been on dissolving real, autonomous families in the DOD's employ and blending the human parts into 'The Total Army Family.' This vaguely totalitarian notion actually assumes the primacy of post-family or non-family bonds. As one Army document explains: 'We want soldiers, of all ranks, feeling they belong to a " family".... Building the "family" requires a professional sensitivity toward and caring for one another.'"

As is the case with any other collectivist welfare state, the Total Army Family – with the State acting as both "breadwinner" and "caregiver" – is designed to abet early marriage, early divorce, and illegitimacy. An estimated 40 percent of military pregnancies involve unmarried personnel; single mothers qualify for superior housing and medical benefits.

While "it is true that our military social engineers have not quite yet achieved the grand sweep of the Lebensborn program of National Socialist Germany, where state child-care workers tenderly raise the illegitimate offspring of SS troopers," they "have achieved something very close to the family policy goals of Swedish socialism," comments Dr. Carlson. The military has operated as an instrument of social change, "in particular … eradicating belief in differences between the sexes, and building new family forms under complete control of the state."

Just ten years ago, social conservatives loudly declaimed against putting women into combat roles. Now little if any protest comes from that quarter as single mothers are dispatched to the front, and children are left without parents as "service couples" are sent on simultaneous deployments abroad.

One of the first casualties of the current Iraq conflict was Private First Class Lori Piestewa, a single mother who was driving the Humvee that was ambushed by Iraqi troops.

Although nowhere near as famous as the woman sitting next to her at the time of the ambush – Jessica Lynch – Piestewa meant the world to Brandon and Carla, the two small children she left with their grandmother at Arizona's Hopi Indian reservation.

"Grandma, my mom has been in heaven too long," Carla, at the time three years of age, said a few weeks after her mother was killed. "It's time for her to come home."

With the possible exception of the Battle of Midway, nobody presently among the living can recall a U.S. military conflict that involved the actual defense of the united States. It's difficult to see how a government – how a country – capable of sending mothers into combat zones could be considered worthy of defense.


In May 1997, I spent the better part of a week at Ft. Bragg in the company of several friends who were active-duty Green Berets. During my first evening there I stayed up until an obscenely late hour listening as my friends commiserated with each other over the institutional insanity they dealt with every day. One of them made a passing reference to dealing with a female military bureaucrat "in a maternity BDU."

It was my misfortune to be drinking something when mention was made of a "maternity BDU," and the term induced an explosive spit-take.

The following morning I tagged along with one of my friends to an auditorium to attend an "Equal Opportunity" (read: affirmative action) lecture. Midway through that tedious event, a young woman about three rows in front of us wearing what appeared to be a standard-issue BDU stood up and left, apparently in search of the rest room. As she passed I noticed that she was visibly gravid – easily six or seven months along – and that her attire had been designed to accommodate the condition of impending motherhood.

Nonplussed, I turned to my friend.

"Is that a maternity BDU?" I asked, astonishment dripping from every syllable. After he wearily nodded in affirmation, I exclaimed, "I thought you made that up."

My friend assured me that his imagination wasn't sufficiently perverse to invent such a thing. And my imagination is inadequate to the task of devising an explanation for the fact that there are people in this country still willing to fight on behalf of the government that rules us.

November 20, 2009

William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.

Copyright © 2009 William Norman Grigg

This sentence is worth repeating:

It's difficult to see how a government – how a country – capable of sending mothers into combat zones could be considered worthy of defense.

I agree, this situation is completely over the top! This is just another example of a grotesque abuse of people's rights by the government (federal, as in this case, and CPS in the case of local government). This travesty is horrifyingly hypocritical because it destroys families 'for their own good.'

(Incidentally, in the side issue of Afghanistan, we need to get the hell out asap, especially if we're are going to legally kidnapping patriotic parents' children, as in the example below.)

[pnicholson]

off the topic of afghanistan but on the topic of power and corruption: a link to the documentary "conspiracy of silence". recommended viewing.
conspiracy of silence - Google Videos

Here's another:

Leviathan’s Orphans

by William Norman Grigg
{snip}