Child Protective Services, CPS, has devastated and destroyed hundreds of thousands of families in America during the last thirty years leaving a trail of broken hearts, broken dreams, and shattered childhoods.
Rather than helping families, government agents have used unconstitutional laws in Juvenile Court to rip children away from their loving parents, break asunder God-given, natural, parent-child bonds, and adopt the children of the grieving out to others who profit financially with large monthly adoption subsidy payments.
Child Protective Services must be stopped! The law that started this, CAPTA, must be repealed. We must work tirelessly to inform the public of this very dangerous travesty of justice. We must keep faith knowing that if there is a God, there is an answer and a way to end this heartache.
Child Protective Services Agents - please come to your senses! Family destruction on false or trivial grounds is wrong, reprehensible, and inhumane.
Fosterers - be aware that for the money you get you are holding much-loved children away from their grieving families while the parents are forced to perform a service plan that is anything but a service to them. I call this hostage holding for the government. This is not kindness - to help misguided government agents destroy family relationships and break loving bonds.
CPS workers and fosterers - I ask that you now give up these unworthy professions and find something more dignified to do with your lives. Let the children of the innocent return to their homes where they are truly valued, adored, and loved by the parents God gave them.
Family rights are God-given rights. And they should not be ignored or postponed. Every moment these loving parents and children spend separated from one another is a torment beyond what anyone should ever have to bear.
It is unworthy of human dignity to allow this terrorism and torture of families to go on without saying something, speaking out, and trying to make a change.
Site mission: To provide information and support for families attacked by Child Protective Services and child welfare agents, especially those families facing false or trivial accusations of child abuse or neglect; and for researchers working to protect natural family rights.
The road to the final termination of parental rights is long and
winding. The Chicago Reporter examined court files, medical and
police reports and Illinois Department of Children and Family
Services case files to retrace the five-year saga of Joanne and
Jerry Nicholas:
1993 June 30 An anonymous caller reports that Jerry Nicholas, then 27,
threatened to kill himself and his six children, ages 1 to 7. He had
twice been charged with domestic violence. DCFS investigators arrive
at their Englewood home and determine the children are at
substantial risk of physical injury "due to statements made by the
father and behavior of father."
July 16 The Cook County State's Attorney files a petition in
Juvenile Court, alleging the children are at risk.
July 26 A judge grants a motion for temporary custody, finding
probable cause of abuse and neglect.
July 27 The court orders physical and psychiatric evaluations for
the children. DCFS moves the children to Columbus Maryville, a
shelter at 810 W. Montrose Ave., and on Aug. 24, they are placed
with relatives and foster parents.
Aug. 23 A genital exam of one child indicates an "injury consistent
with vaginal trauma." Medical records show that in 1989, the girl
had surgery in the vaginal area. The family argues the scars are
confused with sexual abuse.
Aug. 30 DCFS sends the Nicholases a letter, stating that "credible
evidence" identified Jerry Nicholas as the "perpetrator" of child
abuse or neglect.
Sept. 1 DCFS presents the couple with a plan for psychological
assessment, marital counseling, individual therapy and parenting
classes. Its goal: to return the children to their parents.
Sept. 15 Jerry Nicholas begins a nine-week class at Parental Stress
Services at Bethany Hospital, 3435 W. Van Buren St. While
Nicholas "cooperated," class facilitator Denise Orzel later
wrote, "he seemed only concerned and preoccupied about the immediate
return of his children."
Nov. 5 The couple undergoes a psychiatric evaluation. Subsequent
examinations determine they are "mildly" or "moderately retarded."
Nov. 10 The Nicholases file an appeal refuting DCFS' abuse and
neglect finding.
1994 May 3 The couple refuses to sign a revised service plan designed by
DCFS and ChildServ, an agency at 9415 S. Western Ave. Joanne
Nicholas recently told the Reporter, "I considered signing that
service plan was giving up the rights to my kids."
Sept. 13 A judge finds that four of the children were physically
abused, three were sexually abused and five were subjected to
excessive corporal punishment.
Nov. 2 The court finds that the Nicholases are unfit and prohibits
any contact with the children.
1995 Nov. 22 The state's attorney petitions to appoint a guardian with
the right to consent to adoption.
1997 July 24 DCFS recommends that "parental rights need to be terminated
ASAP." Since 1993, five lawyers representing the couple have
withdrawn from the case, one citing "irreconcilable differences" and
another after learning that the case involved "10 boxes of
discovery."
1998 Sept. 8 At the termination hearing, Nicholas represents himself and
his wife.
Sept. 11 Cook County Circuit Court Judge Carol Pearce McCarthy
terminates their parental rights.
Oct. 6 The HOPE Foundation, a community group at 510 E. 92nd St.,
helps the Nicholases file an appeal.
Dec. 17 Status hearing in preparation for adoption proceedings; the
Nicholas appeal is pending. The children have been in foster care
for more than five years.
Joanne and Jerry Nicholas are among the more than 9,000 Cook County
cases in which parental rights have been terminated since 1993. The
Nicholases have appealed the court ruling.
Life stopped for Joanne and Jerry Nicholas at 10:30 a.m. on July
27, 1993. Investigators from the Illinois Department of Children and
Family Services knocked on their door and took away their six
children, ages 1 year to 7 years.
A recent visit found the couple sitting in their home, contemplating
their loss. Their three-bedroom house, once full of activity, is now
silent.
"I can't let go of the baby bed," said Joanne Nicholas, 31, standing
in her living room in Englewood on Chicago's South Side as she
recalled the day officials took the baby away. "It feels real empty.
I watch them on the family video. I just sit there and pray."
"I felt helpless. I felt like they had a gun on me," said Jerry
Nicholas, 32.
Though they feel victimized, the Nicholases are not unblemished.
They have had marital problems, and Jerry Nicholas was charged with
domestic battery in 1990 and 1991. Case files show the children were
removed from their home because they were at "substantial risk of
physical injury," and investigators later found evidence of physical
and sexual abuse, though some of it was conflicting. Jerry Nicholas
had threatened to kill himself and his children, an investigator
reported.
The Nicholases deny the charges, and say they have done what the
state asked of them, including counseling and parenting classes. But
it was never enough, they said.
On Sept. 11, the couple's worst fears came true. Cook County Circuit
Court Judge Carol Pearce McCarthy terminated their parental rights.
In Cook County, 9,164 parents lost permanent custody of their
children between 1993 and 1997, show records obtained from the Cook
County State's Attorney's Office and analyzed by The Chicago
Reporter. County prosecutors filed 5,990 petitions for termination
in 1997, a nearly fivefold increase from 1993. Terminations grew
from 958 to 3,743 in that period, meaning that three out of every
five cases ended with parents losing custody.
Through an examination of court records, DCFS documents and police
reports, the Reporter assessed the termination process in Cook
County.
Black families in Chicago and suburban Cook post the highest removal
rate of children from parents' homes, the Reporter found. And
studies show they have the lowest family reunification rate in
Illinois. And while many terminations may be justified, critics say
DCFS policy is unfair to African Americans and terminates the rights
of parents whose worst problem may be that they are poor.
DCFS cannot provide statewide termination figures, making it
impossible to evaluate how Cook County fares compared to the rest of
the state. But they do report that 95 percent of Chicago children in
the DCFS system are black, compared with 83 percent in suburban
Cook, 58 percent in the collar counties and 45 percent downstate.
Children are often removed because of "substantial risk of harm," a
catch-all category that essentially means poverty, said Maisha
Hamilton-Bennett, a psychologist and executive director of the
Hamilton Life Institute, a non-profit social service agency at 2100
S. Indiana Ave. And DCFS sometimes fails to distinguish between
child neglect and poverty, critics say.
"When you have an open-ended definition of neglect, you increase the
risk that the child will be taken away for poverty and not neglect,"
said John Bowman, project director for the Poverty Law Project, a
non-profit whose attorneys work on welfare rights and housing.
DCFS officials say that even in cases like the Nicholas family, the
state has a duty to try to help reunite families. Still, while the
Nicholases did attend some counseling sessions, an independent
evaluator determined that they were uncooperative, which prevented
them from making progress, said DCFS Chief of Communications
Maudlyne Ihejirika.
Ultimately, the agency must serve the best interests of children,
and can no longer tolerate them languishing in the foster care
system, said DCFS Executive Director Joe Loftus.
The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 required state
child welfare agencies to move quickly to find permanent homes for
children in substitute care.
"There's a sense around the country that we are entirely too loose
about the time lines that we had established in the child welfare
community," Loftus said. "If parenting was something they wanted to
do then they couldn't go for very, very long periods of time and not
respond to requests for rehabilitation, not go into treatment
actively and so forth."
The Illinois General Assembly passed the Illinois Permanency
Initiative, effective in January 1998. The
state law reduces from 12 to nine months the time parents have to
make "reasonable progress" to correct conditions that led to the
removal of their children. If they don't make enough progress, the
state's attorney can petition the court to terminate parental
rights.
The federal law allows state's attorneys to file termination
petitions when a child has been in foster care with non-relatives
for 15 of the last 22 months. It also permits states to exclude
children from that provision if they are placed with relatives
currently 56 percent of Illinois children in the DCFS system, said
Mark Testa, DCFS research director.
While the termination period has shrunk, the cases remain
complicated. One pile of documents paints the Nicholases as
cooperative, caring parents. Another stack describes a family in
turmoil. DCFS officials, prosecutors and judges must evaluate a
substantial body of evidence before making a momentous decision.
As a practice, DCFS investigators visit homes in response to
complaints to the agency's hot line. If they conclude there is
substantial risk, they will remove children and place them in other
arrangements.
In abuse or neglect cases, DCFS creates service plans, outlining the
steps parents must take such as parenting classes or drug
rehabilitation to regain custody. Within a year, a permanency
hearing determines whether families can be reunited.
(photo) Staff instructor Linda Bell teaches mothers like Tahira Muhammad,
23, how to be better parents through parenting classes in a unique
residential program at an Abraham Lincoln Centre site at 1649 E.
50th St.
High Profile
That system might have failed Tina Olison, who recently took one
step closer to winning back her 2-year-old boy, known as "Baby T,"
in a widely publicized battle with Chicago Alderman Edward M. Burke
(14th) and his wife, Illinois Appellate Court Justice Anne M. Burke.
Olison, 37, lost custody of her newborn in 1996 when the hospital
reported to DCFS that he was born with cocaine in his system.
Olison's two other children were already living with relatives.
After her mother refused to take custody of Baby T, Olison, an
African American, decided to kick her nearly 20-year habit with
drugs and alcohol.
The Burkes have been Baby T's foster parents since he was 8 days
old. In August 1997, DCFS and the state's attorney's office asked
the court to terminate Olison's parental rights, and the Burkes
moved to adopt the child. At that point, the state's goal was not to reunify Baby T with his mother but to find the child a permanent home, said DCFS Deputy
Chief of Communications Maureen Squires.
An agency hired by DCFS described Olison as "rageful," and a
caseworker testified that Olison once failed to stop her 6-year-old
from going head first down a slide, and fed Baby T a Cheeto at 13
months.
Kane County Circuit Court Associate Judge Judith M. Brawka was
assigned the case because Olison argued she could not get a fair
hearing in Cook, where Anne Burke presides. On Nov. 4 Brawka threw
out the report, ruling that the state failed to prove that Olison is
an unfit mother.
Olison and her supporters criticized DCFS for moving ahead with the
adoption even though she had successfully completed the agency's
rehabilitation plan. "The rush to place children in permanent homes
has prompted DCFS to fast-track the termination of the parental
rights of the mother," said Hamilton-Bennett, who served as an
expert witness for Olison. "The best interest of the child is being
sacrificed primarily in order to streamline the DCFS budget and to
satisfy a political agenda to shrink a cumbersome and ineffective
agency."
But state Rep. Thomas J. Dart, the South Side Democrat who helped
draft the new law, said the goal is to "expeditiously get the cases
through the system so the children could be put in a permanent
setting."
Still, it is "astounding" that DCFS could not provide statistics on
terminations statewide, he said. "We need to evaluate how we are
doing here. It's very difficult to get records from them. Sometimes
I sit there and say the reason that they don't have the numbers is
because they don't want you to know."
Even DCFS' Testa is concerned. "It needs to be a priority that we
need to get better information on the termination of parental
rights. We haven't been able to work out a way to put it into the
computers and produce a report."
Substitute Care
Without termination statistics by region, it's difficult to assess
claims that DCFS is unfair to poor, African American parents. But a
look at other areas of the child welfare system suggest that
predominantly minority areas of Chicago and Cook County stand apart
from the rest of the state.
Between 1994 and 1997, an average of 27,017 children per year were
under DCFS supervision in counties outside the Chicago metropolitan
area. Nearly seven out of every 10 children were allowed to stay
with their parents while receiving DCFS services, the Reporter
found.
In Chicago, however, an average of 51,299 children were in the DCFS
system each year. Only four out of 10 children stayed at home.
Children removed from the home live with relatives, in foster homes
or under other arrangements. Children in suburban Cook and the
collar counties remained at home 50 percent and 60 percent of the
time, respectively.
"The department is not targeting homes at random and walking in,"
Testa said. "These are calls being made by the community to the hot
line saying that children's safety are in jeopardy. Unfortunately,
most of these phone calls come from the most impoverished
neighborhoods in Illinois because poverty, child neglect and drug
use are all interrelated."
But critics say that these families cannot meet DCFS's high
standards. "What's not taken into account is what you can afford at
$4,000 a year versus the $40,000 a year that white people get," said
EvAngel Mama Dee, founder of Yhwh Nation of Obedience, a community-
based group at 1940 W. 59th St., which assists families in the DCFS
system.
Tearful Separation
Substantial risk of harm, environmental neglect, injurious
environment: These technical terms bounced off the walls of Faith
Lutheran Church, 8300 S. Sangamon St., in the Auburn Gresham
community, at a meeting last fall.
"It's an octopus with its tentacles out. It's a dismantling of the
family. DCFS is creating trauma," the Rev. Anthony Williams told the
Reporter. The South Side minister said he organized the meeting to
air concerns about the agency's intervention in the black community.
Children are often removed because of "substantial risk of harm," a
catch-all category that essentially means poverty, said Maisha
Hamilton-Bennett, a psychologist (photo by Jerry Gholston).
The evening meeting became heated as parents reflected on losing
their children. But Tahira Muhammad, 23, sat silently biting her
already ragged nails, tears running down her cheeks. The single
mother had just lost her four children, ages 8 months to 6 years,
after DCFS determined they were suffering from environmental and
medical neglect. They had been living with Muhammad and her parents
at the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the South Side,
court records show.
On Aug. 18, DCFS investigators and Chicago Housing Authority police
came to the family's four-bedroom home without notice.
DCFS "wrongfully" took away her children, according to a petition
filed by Muhammad's attorney, James L. Glass.
The family first came to the attention of DCFS in 1996 after a
health clinic worker reported that Muhammad had not kept
appointments. Muhammad's father, Kareem, said he told DCFS that she
had switched clinics. The court ruled one child was neglected based
on "lack of care."
Tahira Muhammad had been attending counseling and parenting classes
at Lutheran Social Services of Illinois, 3220 W. 115th St., since
1996, and later received housekeeping services. In May 1997, an
intern working at Lutheran wrote: "Tahira has made no significant
progress towards becoming a more responsible adult and/or parent."
The intern added: "More importantly, Tahira has no viable job skills
that would allow the establishment of a secure home for her
children."
DCFS removed Muhammad's children because they were living in
unsanitary conditions, and because the agency said one child's foot
was cut by glass, and had not been treated, court records show. But
according to hospital records, on Aug. 8 Muhammad took the child to
Jackson Park Hospital, 7531 S. Stony Island Ave., where the wound
was treated.
The grandfather, Kareem, 58, drives a taxi and teaches part time in
a taxicab certification program at a Chicago city college. He said
the family had followed DCFS directives. "The kids and home were
dirty so they took the kids?" he asked. "It's unfair. They brought
an embarrassment on us. The neighbors were looking at us."
"I was sad," Tahira Muhammad recalled. "I didn't go back to work. I
stayed in the house looking at their pictures."
The family hired attorney Glass, who asked that DCFS pay for
Muhammad, a public aid recipient, to be placed into a program for
developmentally disabled mothers at the Abraham Lincoln Centre, 1649
E. 50th St.
On Dec. 13, Cook County Juvenile Court Judge Eddie Stephens ordered
Muhammad and her children to move into the program's four-flat.
Muhammad now shares the Hyde Park apartment with two other families,
and the adults take parenting classes.
During a recent visit, Muhammad was reading a Dr. Seuss book to her
oldest, talkative daughter. When the children moved in, Muhammad
said, she bought them new clothes and toys.
Complicated Cases
In the early 1990s, Illinois children were in foster care from four
to five years, compared to the national average of two, said DCFS
spokeswoman Ihejirika. The new state law will cut that time
significantly.
"If you lose a sense of crisis, you lose the ability to galvanize
that person around the crisis," said Loftus of DCFS. "We've had in
the past, moms entering drug treatment 1 1/2 days before their court
hearing, leaving drug treatment three days later and not entering
again until the next 18 months. We've got to tell people that's just
not going to work." Since 1994, "we've reduced the number of
children entering care," he said.
Still, "I've seen a termination case be completed in 20 minutes,"
said Cook County Assistant Public Defender Darron Bowden. "There's a
perception in this court that mothers can get off drugs in six
months, and everything will be OK. I call that the dandelion
approach: You see a weed growing and you just pull it, but if you
don't get to the root of the problem, it's just going to come back.
This court system wants to make these families the Cleavers. And
it's not going to happen."
Today, 70 percent of families involved with DCFS have drug problems,
especially with crack cocaine, Testa said.
"Most judges and workers feel uncomfortable about returning a child
home to a household where drugs may be used. So when you hear people
saying parents aren't having enough opportunity, it's sometimes that
we should be giving parents second, third or fourth chances. While
others are saying one chance is all they get. That's the real
political conflict."
Grateful House, a non-profit drug rehabilitation center for women in
west suburban Oak Park, gets frequent DCFS referrals. Executive
Director Janet Piper Voss said many women regain custody upon
completion of the program.
Women spend three to nine months at Grateful House, she said. Still,
it's hard to gauge how much time they need to overcome addiction and
become fit mothers. "Time is not a good measure," she said. "There's
no hard and fast rule."
Community Response
A custody battle with DCFS can feel like David vs. Goliath, pitting
a low-income single mother against a $1.3 billion child welfare
agency, parents say. Some in the black community are beginning to
question that relationship.
Jornell Holley, 37, is one of them. She lost custody of her 2-month-
old last February when she brought him to the hospital for digestive
problems. A recovering substance abuser since the fall of 1997, she
is allowed supervised visits with the boy.
Holley's living room is lined with red crates full of red and purple
folders. Six months ago, she started a support group of families who
are in the DCFS system. "I ain't got no rights," she said. "I'm
poor. I'm black. There's going to be some kind of neglect when
you're on a fixed income."
And as termination cases rise, more parents are using the courts to
fight to keep their children. In 1993, Cook County judges ended
custody rights in 958 cases. But 790, or 82.5 percent, went
uncontested, records from the state's attorney's office show. In
1997, about 60 percent of 3,821 cases were uncontested.
Public Defender Bowden predicts that termination petitions will
reach 7,500 in 1999, and he expects actual terminations to double,
he said.
And white children are more likely to be reunited with their
families than African Americans in both Cook County and downstate,
according to a May 1998 study by the Children and Family Research
Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In Cook,
for example, 46,717 black children were in substitute care between
1990 and 1997. Of those, 36,616 children, or 78.4 percent, were not
returned to their parents' home. By comparison, about 63.9 percent
of 4,981 white children in substitute care in Cook County did not go
home.
All children fare better downstate. One reason: The Cook County
court had been inundated with paperwork. "The practice of having so
many court orders for the reunification" had slowed down the system,
said Nancy Sidote Salyers, presiding judge of the Child Protection
Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County. Several years ago, she
instituted reforms to streamline the system, she said.
Still, there is a racial gap: 51.8 percent of African American
children do not return home, compared to 38.8 percent of whites.
Jerry Stermer, executive director of Voices for Illinois Children,
an advocacy group, said the new state law helps DCFS stay focused on
its most important goal: to find safe and permanent homes for
children.
"Prior to this law, with no pressures on the system to make a
decision, children were left in foster care limbo," Stermer said.
"What the system was allowed to do was hedge its bets so that the
professionals were comfortable but we weren't acting in the best
interest of the children. There's a long way to go, but we're moving
in the right direction."
Contributing: Natalie Moore and Karen Shields. Michael Rohner and
Terris R. Tiller helped research this article.
Copyright Notice: According to US Copyright law, copyright vests initially in the author(s) of the work. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have an interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: Title 17, Sec.107. If you are the copyright holder and choose to have your work removed from this website, email the webmaster and it will be done. However we here at fightcps.com hope you prefer that our researchers continue to benefit from access to your work.
Broken Links: Because many old news articles are taken offline you will find broken links in the archives of this weblog. There's nothing we can do to prevent this problem.
I have used Barrie Konicov's recordings to stop smoking, write better, gain confidence, and much more. They are very effective and affordable and I recommend them highly. - Linda Jo Martin of FightCPS.Com
