posted January 14, 2014 08:05 PM            

Senator Schaefer will be happy to know that I was forced to live with Mom. Mom had some "feminist lawyers" that tried to get me to lie about Dad, blatantly wanting me to exaggerate the physical abuse and hinting they'd like more (but not to share that Mom was just as bad to me and him both). I wouldn't, I said I'd tell the truth on the stand but also how Mom was just as bad (and Dad not as bad as they wanted me to paint him as) and that I wanted to live with Granny rather than Mom or Dad so they instead assigned a "court advocate" for me (as they lied about me being "too traumatized" to speak for myself as originally planned) who lied about how Dad abused me. 'Course Dad's lawyer was smart enough to figure out what happened and said as much but I wasn't allowed in court to speak for myself.

More importantly, no investigators asked me for my side of the story to see if I needed to be helped (despite that "attempted murder" was described in court for the record by my "advocate"!) or if charges needed to be pressed. I was simply placed with Mom. Where was the hypervigilant CPS Gestapo for me?

I heard a lot that kids shouldn't have a say where we'd live because kids aren't mature enough and will choose where they have the least rules. That certainly wasn't true in my case, I tried hard to live with Granny who wanted me, and she actually disciplined me for the most part, she was far less permissive than the neglect of Mom who made me go hungry so she could have her booze and smokes with the child support she got for having me (the ONLY reason she wanted me).

My best friend at 15 even went for help after she had some of her hair torn out with bruises on her face and the counselor tried to call her father "as what they need is communication." Luckily he hadn't paid his phone bill so he instead called her grandparents who asked him if he was insane in trying to call her dad, and they'd been trying to get custody over her for years to no avail. She never went for help again. Where was the feared CPS Gestapo then?

As a runaway I met plenty fleeing "foster hell" as well. While there are good foster parents out there and some children become very grateful for the system (take that, Senator Nancy Schaefer who says home is always the safest place and that children always want to be there, which millions of runaways in the US will deny at any time along with countless other victims), a great many are exploitative and/or abusive, sometimes extremely so, and I could post even more links explaining that. And I've met plenty of kids who fled abusive foster homes as runaways but nearly all had been removed from their homes because of felonies (typically involving drugs) by parents without acceptable extended families to step in as opposed "removed over allegations of abuse." (The couple who wanted to go back to their real family couldn't because their families were in prison, one for drug crimes and another for the father killing the mother.) Still, the important part here is that children who are abused or neglected are typically left to rot by child protective services, not removed.

On the streets I met kids who couldn't get permission to stay at C-House because that made the parents look bad but were willing to send kids to teen gulags because that made the parents look good, and that's what this is all about, how the parents look, screw the kids. Sometimes literally as one mother came by to try to get her daughter off the streets who openly talked about how the 13-year-old was sexually abused at home (no CPS for her) but also scared her husband would leave her and neighbors would talk if she didn't come back. Also, the ONLY reason my mom got me was so she could collect child support which was how she, like some other women, got the booze and cigarettes that their other welfare bennies didn't get for them. And that's why Mom didn't report me gone (she said so herself) because she was scared her child support payments would stop if Dad knew I wasn't living at home anymore.

It's one reason Senator Schaefer rubs me the wrong way when she says what happened to me and all the other kids I knew had what SHOULD happen to us...as long as her voting base aren't inconvenienced and feel she's looking out for them then screw the kids (they can't vote).

When I got back 6 months later I was put through tests at school but no one asked me why I ran away from home or cared. I was placed in an "adaptive behavior class" in school where I met many other abused and neglected kids abandoned by the system. Some, like me, had been put into a teen gulag in which violent sexual abuse took place (there was at least one out of court settlement over a pregnancy inflicted by a guard raping a teen locked up there) but other than civil lawsuits, what did they get in trouble for? Insurance fraud! Screw the kids.

The system simply didn't care, not with me nor countless other kids. And that makes me skeptical of those who think the government is constantly looking over their shoulder looking for an excuse to seize their kids without just cause. It's actually annoying because they act like they have it hard and kids are little tyrants who can sick CPS on them for taking away their phone when it's quite the opposite.

posted January 14, 2014 08:21 PM            

Can't recall the name of the true crime book but it included a speech by a public prosecutor who admitted a girl had been abandoned to be raped repeatedly by her father but if all she and the hitman she hired to kill her dad got was probation then all the "other women abandoned by the system" might do the same thing. Sounds like that one girl abandoned wasn't just a fluke.

And parents the most loving? Then why are there children killed every day from child abuse, the vast majority by parents? And why, where it's legal, do so many parents send their children to sweatshops even though they're horribly abused and risk death and permanent crippling? (Btw, fun fact, it wasn't people concerned about the children who stopped that in the US but rather the Unions who couldn't compete with them.) Sounds awfully like the parents who care what their neighbors think even if their child must be abused in the process or like the mothers who exploit kids as cash cows to fund their addictions so I'll believe what I saw and experienced first hand over people playing up to the hypocrisy of others who never want to be brought under scrutiny even if it means children (especially not their own) must be beaten, mutilated, tortured, burned, raped, and murdered. That is, things like this:
http://www.denverpost.com/failedtodeath

quote:

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Since 2007, 175 children in Colorado have died of abuse and neglect beaten, starved, suffocated and burned. Deepening the tragedy is that the families or caregivers of 72 of them were known to caseworkers whose job was to protect them.

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For more:
http://www.denverpost.com/failedtodeath/ci_21957329/abused-childrens-cries-help-we re-ignored

quote:

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Day 1: More than 40 percent of children who died of abuse and neglect in the last six years in Colorado were known to child protection workers.

Day 2: Caseworkers are the backbone of the system but often fail to follow state policies.

Day 3: Some children never get a chance for help because their cases were "screened out."

Day 4: Too often child welfare workers and law enforcement fail to work together.

Day 5: Funding inequities have plagued Colorado s child welfare system.

Day 6: People who kill children serve much less prison time than those who kill adults.

Day 7: Abused children often suffer from a long-term psychological impact.

Day 8: There are answers to the problems that face Colorado s child welfare system but they require political will and often money.

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And not just CO, that's the norm. For example, Washington:
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Failure-to-Protect-232727371.html

And also Illinois:
http://www.wbez.org/news/illinois-losing-more-children-child-abuse -and-neglect-any-time-last-30-years-109155

Totally fits with my experience and observations and therefore I don't dismiss my own real life experiences and observations as "anecdotal."

(ETA: Meanwhile, CPS was probably correct when it labeled this girl who alleged abuse by her family as spoiled, described here, and I'm glad the social workers were sacked who allowed this child to remain with the parents who tortured & beat him for months until dead.)

(ETA II: another winner here: "Broward County child protection investigators discounted the possibility of abuse, and left him with a father who had a lengthy rap sheet and a history of alleged drug use. The Broward Sheriff's Office had one last chance to save Ahziya in December, when the state's abuse hotline was told his stepmother had beaten his bottom, and he had bruises and abrasions on his face. But that call, too, went unheeded.")

(ETA III: though finally helped, Jen Betz claims that a child help line didn't take the call seriously here )

(ETA IV: grandparents took pix and reported abuse of their granddaughter, but CPS determined she was abused...the girl would be tortured to death a year later by her heroin-high mother Jeri Quezada and boyfriend as described here )

(ETA V: this sex slave had a similar experience with her school counselor as my friend did, described in Authorities Don't Help Us here and includes why CPS didn't get involved. As someone who has spent time as a runaway on the streets around sex slavery and victims of it, I find this wholly believable. In many cities, the government makes money off of it themselves indirectly, but with enough self-awareness that I consider them child pimps.)

That's not looked at too often, however. Nor are teen gulags or where kids are abducted by the will of their parents to be taken out of the country (such as described in kidnapped for Christ) or even places exempt from child abuse laws such as those found in Florida. That's because parents don't want to hear about themselves and they're the paying audience (either for the magazine or to get advertisers to pay more money). They'd rather hear of things that bother them personally and don't care about who else gets hurt in the process. Going after child abuse scares them because they just might come under scrutiny (even if wrongly). Yet Russia doesn't like to send kids here for adoption due to abuse (not that they should be talking but still), and though a lot of that was over lethal beatings (never stopped by CPS) it also includes such as the so-called hot-sauce mom, and despite the child screaming while forced in a cold shower among other things she was only given probation and a fine (and told to heal her family as opposed have it destroyed) and it appears the judge was mostly angered that the mom did this to seek publicity--as many other parents have exploited their kids for in various ways--and it's agreed she'd have never been charged at all had she not appeared on Dr. Phil and garnered a huge public outcry.

It's like bullying or countless other issues, they want to speak a few words against it and how they'll never tolerate it but then come down hard on any kids, teachers, or adults who actually try to walk the talk (especially if it's something "sacred" like say when revered jocks rape a special needs student) and sometimes even support it (like the brutal high school hazing in Chicago in which some parents actually supplied alcohol to underage teens involved while officially everyone condemned hazing and it was against the law). And that ties into the time of child labor in Victorian sweatshops when children were massively exploited in brutal ways while politicians and the press romanticized childhood as a time of innocence and love. To maximize profits the media must know their audience and cater to their hypocrisy, they did it then and they do it today. Politicians work the same way.

And that's what articles like this does. Like so many news stories it leaves a lot unsaid, for example why was the hospital holding her, they can't hold someone mentally ill unless they present a danger to self or others. And how does one get charged with "medical child abuse"? Again, they don't say, and that makes it questionable as so many news stories (many of them wrong and outright deceitful) are, and the trying to tug at the heart strings ("miss another holiday" and "locked up and tortured" without even defining what that means, let alone answering objective questions) makes it even more questionable to me.

Don't get me wrong, I know hospitals can be abusive and know how to manipulate the system to their benefit, but using Occam's Razor I'm gonna go with that we're not getting the whole story here but rather some piece designed to draw in viewers with drama to sell advertisement space and that if we had the entire story then it would look completely different...in any case it certainly isn't PROFESSIONAL (ie, objective and informative) journalism, though not much is anymore. In contrast, THIS is much more acceptable to me, and I agree it is an outrage:
http://reason.com/archives/2001/02/01/doctors-orders

There questions were objectively answered and the sitch explained (also note that suspected use of illegal drugs were also involved). THAT actually happened. But for the other news story as I have no idea what to think of it because the information is unprofessional and spotty at best, which I've learned to be suspicious of.

Yet the more unprofessional news stories sell in part because people care more about how they feel rather than wanting to think critically and also because no one likes to be judged as a bad parent (while then complaining when a child is murdered by an abusive or negligent parent in which the typical reason given for why the child was left or returned there is because "child should be with biological parents, mom first, dad second"). And this only encourages politicians to bind CPS even further resulting in more child fatalities and abused children abandoned by the system just because voters don't want to think they might judged by how they treat their own children.

ETA: and given how many like to say kids are doing worse today because "they're not spanked or CPS will grab them," that's also BS.
http://www.vox.com/2014/5/25/5748178/todays-teenagers-are-the-best-behaved-gene ration-on-record

quote:

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The Centers for Disease Control released a monster report in May on the state of Americans' health. The 511-page report makes one thing abundantly clear: teens are behaving better right now than pretty much any other time since the federal government began collecting data

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More from an earlier source:
http://reason.com/archives/2002/02/01/teen-demon-tracts

quote:

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Kids these days. We all know the basic jeremiad: They're media-addled, affectless, nihilist, subliterate, a Clockwork Orange-style army of "superpredators," teen gunmen, and garden-variety sociopaths waiting to happen. Advertising has hypnotized them. Video games have conditioned them to kill without feeling. And pop culture has hammered every conceivable kind of coarseness -- from anonymous sex to Satanism, from glorified violence to Internet passivity -- into their poignantly echoing little craniums. Is it any wonder that most of them are but a bully's slight or a chatroom flame away from raining hot-lead vengeance on schoolrooms or playgrounds?

Well, yes, actually. It is, indeed, a considerable wonder that any part of this hysterical caricature should command serious discussion in the first place. As almost no media outlet is going to tell you, kids these days are astonishingly well-adjusted, nonviolent, educated, and polite. Nearly all the leading indicators of social ills among American adolescents -- drug use, violent assault, teen pregnancy, drop-out rates, you name it -- have been declining for at least 10 years now. More teens are graduating high school and attending college than ever before. A record number of American teens volunteer their time to charitable causes -- twice as many as their counterparts of 20 years past. Math SATs are at a 30-year high. Hell, even teen literacy is increasing: A recent survey conducted by the National Education Association found that 41 percent of teen respondents said they read 15 books or more a year. How many adults can claim a comparable intake?

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posted January 14, 2014 08:33 PM            

And I challenge you to remember your hatred of social services getting involved (as if they did) next time you read another outrageous story of a child who was ignored or returned to be murdered by parents (though the vast majority will never taken in the first place, again unless illegal drugs are thought to be involved). But if you hate them regardless then this might make you feel better because it's not about the kids:
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/18/nyregion/social-workers-tar gets-in-a-violent-society.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

quote:

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Ms. O'Neil's grieving co-workers were dismayed by the harsh public reaction to her death.

"We got no sympathy from the public on this," said Donna Edwards, president of Maryland's Social Services Employees Union, to which Ms. O'Neil belonged. "We got callers who said: 'We got one of you. Now we're going to have to take more of you social workers out of there.' It was as if we had caused this incident because we were treating people badly."

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Yeah, that's really helping the kids.

Though just to be clear I'm not fond of CPS either...but for the exact opposite reason as many others and because I care more about the kids than I care about adult convenience. All too many would rather see desperate kids suffer and die and left with abusive parents rather than face the possibility that they themselves might one day be inconvenienced rightly or wrongly (either one very unlikely though in the realm of possibility). Screw the kids, literally if it must be, just so as long as the voting adults can feel safer personally. And for selfish garment rending ******** like that kids like me and many others were, and continue to be, abandoned by the system, and yet even that's not enough for them, even more must be sacrificed so that they can feel safer themselves, adults matter more than kids.

They like to say it's about the children because they know that's the right thing but they do the wrong thing (screwing the kids over) in the false name of doing the right thing because that's what people are like, they never can think they have enough power or advantage so they push for as much as they can (be they parents or politicians) while pretending it's actually necessary and sometimes also can't tell the difference between their fearful imaginings and reality (ironically the same flaw that was behind the Satanic Panics when kids really were taken from homes all the time for the most absurd reasons based on the same irrational fears as today only instead of thinking of Satanists they're thinking you can go to jail or lose your kids for taking a kid's phone away, and injustice comes from it all the same, kids are harmed by both delusions).

posted January 16, 2014 07:41 PM            

I've been away from LL since the 11th. Wow, I was surprised (and sorta hurt) to find that a member here thought that you and I had 'derailed' her post? Perhaps members who do not wish to have their topic under "discussion" should indicate their topic as "Read Only"?
( Sorry, still a bit shocked here... just wondering...)

You and I have had much to say on this subject in the past few years here at Lindaland. We have angled our perspectives through several forums regarding this SERIOUS social topic.

Pixie Jane, personally--- you know how terribly sad and angry I feel about the things that have happened to you. I believe you. I have "witnessed" things first hand. I have personally "seen" these kinds of abuses that you have described over threads here. I think we have BOTH deleted our long discussions, but my heart remembers.... and I'm glad we can do that whenever we feel we need the privacy. Courage-- it waxes and wanes... but important to exercise.

My feelings run very deep as I regard all my own years of life experience, and specific observations gathered-- about how widespread and chokingly "iron", how impossible and immoveable the whole matter of abuse of human beings appears to be.

(I've read this thread, but have yet to explore your urls.... Will do by the weekend... My computer-access is limited this week.)

(Reminds me right now of an old solo X-Files episode of the giant fungus that trapped, wrapped, anesthesized, and digested "people" who 'fell down through the cracks'...)

PJ, If you want to run this thread "***without interruption***" please let me know? You are building here, and this is awesome!! Please continue if you wish, and I would be willing to EDIT this post for you. I'll leave my final sentence below.

Unfortunately for the two "locked threads"-- this prevents me from being able to 'clean up' for that particular user... so she can have it 'for reference only' or 'read only'... O my, & yikes!~~ We live and learn, huh? Keep telling myself, *It's okay to make mistakes*...

Pixie Jane ... My admiration for you, for your Courage in sharing, and for your speaking outloud about this taboo subject, is immense.... You're a shaker and a mover. You rock!!

posted January 16, 2014 08:21 PM            

There doesn't seem to be any clear-cut answer to the problem, though. Foster home abuse is pretty common, like you said.

Obviously, CPS does some good, and I don't mean to underplay that.

But it also makes mistakes and goes in with overkill sometimes. The growth of the medical mafia does disturb me; parents being forced to make medical decisions under threat of having their children taken away ought to be reserved for the most drastic cases of neglect, but instead I'm getting the impression this is now commonplace procedure. Like my friend's daughter had a migraine and the hospital they went to forced her to take an ambulance 160 miles away for a CAT scan, even though the doctors told her they were 99% sure it was just a migraine. And they had a CAT scan machine at their hospital...they just wanted it done at a better hospital. This under explicit threat of CPS intervention and physical intimidation (a wall of hospital case workers blocked my friend from seeing her daughter when she was deliberating about what to do.)

And then CPS can take kids out of the pan and put them into the fire. I think there's just no way of systematizing how children are handled. I mean, hypothetically, I'm sure some kids would be happier with their loving (but drug dealing) parents than with the apathetic ones CPS assigns them to.

posted January 16, 2014 09:54 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by mirage29:
PJ, If you want to run this thread "***without interruption***" please let me know? You are building here, and this is awesome!! Please continue if you wish, and I would be willing to EDIT this post for you.

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Everything you said is fine, and thanks.

And I wouldn't have put it here if I was unwilling to be challenged on it. Actually, I welcome people to add their experiences, be they like mine, or be it where they were personally confronted by the "CPS Gestapo." By that I mean personally involved, not hearsay or something they heard on a talk show but don't really know (as opposed to believe) how likely it is to be partially or wholly true.

posted January 16, 2014 10:11 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Faith:
parents being forced to make medical decisions under threat of having their children taken away ought to be reserved for the most drastic cases of neglect, but instead I'm getting the impression this is now commonplace procedure. Like my friend's daughter had a migraine and the hospital they went to forced her to take an ambulance 160 miles away for a CAT scan, even though the doctors told her they were 99% sure it was just a migraine. And they had a CAT scan machine at their hospital...they just wanted it done at a better hospital. This under explicit threat of CPS intervention and physical intimidation (a wall of hospital case workers blocked my friend from seeing her daughter when she was deliberating about what to do.)

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That would be absurd, and it would deserve a PROFESSIONAL exposure by the media to bring attention to the problem. That said, I wonder why the insurance companies weren't raising a fit about it, they usually have a lot of clout with hospitals as well and try to keep services to a minimum. And that teen gulag I mentioned that got prosecuted for insurance fraud was part of a psychiatric hospital busted by the insurance companies themselves (who hired private investigators that exposed them), btw.

An example of a professional report was "Doctor's Orders" which I linked to above. It blows my mind when social workers can't use any common sense. I don't even think that was corruption (at least not the primary incident reported on) but rather just being unthinking gears in the machine, perhaps following protocols over common sense to cover their own butt. Even the doctors who initially called CPS told them "never mind" but by then it was too late.

And a story that's very hard to find (though Project Censored sums it up here) is about AZT itself being forcibly tested on children who were wards of the state (and also a Catholic orphanage). Granted, these children had AIDS and it was hoped that the tests would allow them to live but it was a gamble and the children were put through extreme agony and terror through these tests which also doubled as free human lab rats (even convicted felons get paid for tests like that, or are supposed to!) and which a corporation sponsored the tests using these helpless wards of the state then marketed for profit (as the saying goes, in the US they socialize the losses and privatize the profits, and America has "the best democracy money can buy"). The children forced to serve as lab rats got no say, of course. I'd have loved to have seen the people involved in those AZT experiments (in both the government and corporation as well as the Catholic orphanage and John Hopkins, who have similar scandals to their history) brought up on charges for that with penalties that would strongly discourage similar horrors from happening again.

quote:

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Originally posted by Faith:
And then CPS can take kids out of the pan and put them into the fire. I think there's just no way of systematizing how children are handled. I mean, hypothetically, I'm sure some kids would be happier with their loving (but drug dealing) parents than with the apathetic ones CPS assigns them to

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The one I mentioned who wanted to return to her biological family (and an extended one at that!) but couldn't as they were in prison for drug trafficking was actually placed in horribly abusive homes that scarred her mind and body both. Her biological family may have dealt in illegal drugs but they never abused their kids. And adding to that CPS ignored most of the abuse...they did open an investigation on the one foster parent who was insanely, horrifyingly brutal to her but as she was a runaway who saw the entire system as her enemy there was no one to testify, the case was dropped, and he was allowed to get more kids...

posted January 17, 2014 12:17 AM            

Not to be lazy but ditto to what you wrote, it's a crap shoot.

One thing...

quote:

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Originally posted by PixieJane:
That would be absurd, and it would deserve a PROFESSIONAL exposure by the media to bring attention to the problem.

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Hmm. Everyone in my friend's circle knew what was happening because she was emailing updates, and she is just an honest person, normal Christian mother, not the type to exaggerate. (She has a Cap moon.)

Another friend who's a journalist for the local newspaper could have written about it, but she didn't. Seems it wouldn't be politically correct...maybe a career gamble she didn't want to take?

I don't know, but the media didn't get involved.

quote:

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Originally posted by PixieJane:
That said, I wonder why the insurance companies weren't raising a fit about it, they usually have a lot of clout with hospitals as well and try to keep services to a minimum.

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