Kay Henson released from Wisconsin jail

From: "Suzanne Shell"
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 11:58 AM
Subject: Kay is released


> Kay Henson was released from Walworth County jail yesterday afternoon.
> Her first act as a free woman was to go out for Chinese food. She
> continues to be on probation.
>
> With the generous assistance of Leonard Henderson, we will be posting
> the judge's order to not revoke Kay's probation at
> http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/members/wisconsin/henson.html
>
> The Janesville Gazette also published an article at:
> http://www.gazettextra.com/henson010403.asp
>
>
> I apologize for the brevity of this message. I will post more later.
>
> Suzanne
>

posted by Linda for FightCPS.Com at 2:54 PM   

 
Another Foster/Adopter charged with sex abuse in California

Burkleo is the third person within the recent past charged with sexually molesting a child placed in a Siskiyou County home for foster care. In 2001, Harry Bruce pleaded guilty to annoying or molesting a child in foster care in his home and Richard Wood is currently serving a prison sentence for molesting two McCloud girls initially placed in his home in foster care.

Why so many? Siskiyou County has less than 50,000 people.. but pursues sex abuse cases like they are gold. Maybe they are.

Convicted fosterers in Siskiyou County, California:

Harry Bruce in 2001 (pled guilty but now is saying it was a false accusation?)
I found this on the web

Richard Wood in 2002 (former foster "father" of the year; possibly falsely accused)
McCloud Man Found Guilty of Sex Crimes

Jesse David Burkleo in 2003?

What's going on here?

Interesting case! The wife of the accused molester is a CPS social work supervisor! According to this article, she may have known about the molestation, and tried to justify it!

The criminal complaint lists as corroborating evidence verbal admissions by Burkleo that the events occurred to his wife and admissions in a letter to the alleged victim which was delivered by Burkleo's wife. The complaint also mentions another letter from Burkleo's wife to the victim describing him as a "situational offender" and not a "pedophile."

The alleged victim is also reported to have told friends and a pastor at a Grenada church about what was going on in the home, but no report was ever made to law enforcement by any of those people. It was not until just recently that the victim made her first report to law enforcement.

Burkleo is retired from Siskiyou County as a probation officer and his wife, Kathy Burkleo, is a supervisor with Child Protective Services. County officials said this week that Kathy Burkleo was an employee of Child Protective Services when these events are alleged to have occurred and has been placed on administration leave.

posted by Linda for FightCPS.Com at 5:55 PM   

 

More about Kay Henson

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Dec. 28, 2002
Family & Youth Institute


After reviewing all evidence in her probation revocation hearing, the
Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) has ruled in favor of Kay Henson and refused to
revoke her probation as demanded by Walworth County Probation Officers Eileen
Haffey and Catherine Kozminski. Kay is the Walworth County, Wisconsin pastor's
wife who pled no contest to simple battery for spanking her disobedient 10
year-old son on the bare bottom with her left hand. She was placed on eighteen
months probation with a recommendation that probation be terminated after six
months of no violations. There were no violations during this period of time.

After Kay was invited to appear on a Warner Brothers talk show to reveal
government abuses associated with her criminal and civil cases that arose out
of the spanking, Walworth County probation began to seek reasons to revoke her
probation. Kay was jailed three times while she was investigated for probation
violations. She has been in jail for more that three months awaiting her
probation revocation hearing.

"This is nothing more than the state exerting legal force to control adult
political behavior through the removal of children or through incarceration on
trumped-up charges," said Suzanne Shell, Director of the American Family
Advocacy Center. Shell believed the children were at risk of unnecessary
removal and advised Kay's husband, Slade, to go into hiding with them. When the
state was unable to seize the children, who have remained safe and well-cared
for with their father, agents began to escalate their efforts against Kay by
denying her access to a law library and legal materials; by blocking her calls
to her advocates, attorney and other supporters; by denying her needed medical
attention; and by attempting to coerce her into revoking herself. Additionally,
her revocation hearing was delayed four times.

The basis of this revocation hearing was a video tape of her children playing
in the neighborhood, filmed by neighbor Marcia Koehler. Ms. Koehler has been
described in the court's order as having purchased her video camera for the
sole purpose of video taping the Henson children and commenting "there you are,
you stinker" when Aliyah appeared in view of her camera. Ms. Koehler filmed the
Henson children from behind bushes. Supporters of the Henson family suggest
that Ms. Koehler was engaged by Walworth County Probation officers to 'catch'
Kay 'neglecting' her children.

"Walworth County has demonstrated a pattern of abuse and harassment, under the
color of law, against this mother and her children," said John Welker,
Executive Director of the Family & Youth Institute, who has been assisting Kay
and her attorney on this case. "They have held her on trumped-up allegations
because she has been outspoken in her criticism of the abuses she and her
family have endured by Walworth County employees and because she has refused to
buckle under their threats and intimidation."

The Family & Youth Institute, whose national headquarters is in Shakopee,
Minnesota, was instrumental in obtaining competent legal representation for
Kay's revocation hearing. Jack Hoag, Kay's attorney, commented that 95% of
these hearings result in revocation of probation.

The ALJ refused public or media access to the hearing, which was held in the
Walworth County Jail in Elkhorn.
Kay remains in jail and there is no word on when she will be released. It is
unlikely that she will be released until the Department of Corrections has
exhausted their appeals, if they choose to pursue an appeal. If Kay is
released, she will remain on probation until February.

The entire chronology on Kay's case is available at
http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/members/wisconsin/henson.html

For further information, contact the Family & Youth Institute at 952-445-2590
or at http://www.fyionline.org

The mission of the Family and Youth Institute, FYI, is to provide educational
and other resources to family members who feel that their constitutional and/or
civil rights are being, or have been, violated by governmental authorities
during domestic dissolutions where child sexual abuse has been alleged and/or
during child protection interventions.



posted by Linda for FightCPS.Com at 5:38 AM   

 

Sun-Sentinel: Missing foster kids often turn up dead

By Sally Kestin and Megan O'Matz
Posted December 29 2002

Workers unloading a refrigerated Tropicana freight train in Bradenton in April 1996 made a startling discovery: wrapped in a sheet and bound with a chain was the body of a young girl.

Her head was covered with a pillowcase and a garbage bag. For five years, she was known only as "Boxcar Jane Doe."

Then by a fluke last year, a Pennsylvania detective and a Florida FBI agent, comparing notes on cases at a conference, stumbled onto her identity. She was 15-year-old Latayna Reese, who ran away from a Philadelphia foster home in March 1996.

Until recently, Florida and other states did not track children who disappeared from state care or actively look for them, downplaying the dangers they faced. Across the country, those children are dying -- victims of murders, car accidents, the cold calamity of the streets or suicide.

Social workers cannot say how many of the youngsters who have slipped from their care have ended up dead. However, a national missing children's clearinghouse says 1,500 bodies of unidentified children lie in morgues or unmarked graves, many of whom, experts say, were likely foster children. Another 400 children nationwide, including some missing from state custody, have been gone for decades, raising fears that they, too, are dead.

Deaths of missing children are difficult to count for a number of reasons. Overburdened police and social workers say they don't have time to round up runaways, caseworkers do not always file missing person reports when foster children disappear, privacy laws keep details of the children's deaths secret, computer and medical problems can thwart police and medical examiners working on missing children cases.

"What all of this indicates is how we are really throwing away these children," said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children's Rights, a nonprofit agency that has sued to reform social service systems in several states, including Florida. "This is the ultimate end. They're preyed on or they can't go on and they kill themselves."

In Florida, Department of Children & Families officials repeatedly said that the August murder of Marissa Karp, a 17-year-old runaway from Broward County, was an anomaly. But the South Florida Sun-Sentinel has learned that at least four other children under DCF supervision have died in recent years while missing: Arieale Daniels, 15, a Broward County runaway who died when she crashed a car in Naples in 1999; runaway Lamar D. Greene, 16, who drove into a tree in Jacksonville in November 2001 while stealing a car; runaway Cynteria Phillips,13, whose naked body was found in a Miami alley in August 2000; and runaway Donte Woods, 16, who accidentally shot himself in the throat while jumping a fence after breaking into a West Palm Beach home.

Search ends at age 18

In addition, an infant, Caprice Scott, died in 1999 from birth defects brought on by the cocaine use of her 14-year-old mother, a Miami runaway who had been in and out of 30 foster homes.

Other children missing from DCF supervision also might be dead, unknown to agency officials, who close cases of missing children when they turn 18.

Virginia Cotter was 17 when she ran away from a foster home in Dover, on Florida's west coast, in May 2000. No one has heard from her since. DCF is no longer looking for Virginia, now 19.

Unlike other teens, she had no history of running away.

"What we have is a failure in tracking youngsters who are supposed to be cared for and supervised by child welfare," said David Stoesz, associate professor of social policy at Virginia Commonwealth University and a former child welfare director. "As kids get older, 13 or 14, the perception is they will take care of themselves."

DCF has never surveyed its databases to determine how many children have died while missing, although, at the request of the Sun-Sentinel, officials are doing so now, said the agency's death review coordinator, Jim Spencer. He said he will now ask that the department provide the figures on a routine basis.

"I'd like to sift through the data to see if we can identify any particular trends and see whether there are concrete interventions that could be taken to lower the risk of these children dying," he said.

Florida not alone

The scope of the indifference became clear last summer, as Florida's child welfare system struggled to account for 500 missing children. This included Rilya Wilson, of Miami, who was 4 when she was last seen in January 2001. DCF did not learn that she had vanished until 15 months later, and she is still missing.

Other states soon admitted that children under their watch had vanished, too. In Los Angeles alone, the figure is 700. Almost 100 are missing from Texas, and 227 from Illinois.

Government leaders have set up task forces to investigate and Web sites to post pictures of the lost children. Yet no one is focusing on how many already might be dead. The Sun-Sentinel found dozens.

>In Michigan, a hunter found the body of Heather Kish, 15, in October. She had been murdered. She was one of 200 children on the state's Web site for missing foster children. Another child, 6-month-old Jersey Arnett, is missing and presumed dead. On Aug. 15, her mother snatched her from a relative's home where a judge had placed her. Authorities think the woman jumped off the Mackinac Bridge with the baby.

>In Massachusetts, two runaways from the Department of Social Services, Kelly Hancock, 14, and Latasha Cannon, 18, were murdered. A jogger discovered Kelly's skeleton in April 2001 in woods near Hooksett, N.H. Latasha's body was found the same month in Bedford, Mass. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck. Police also fear that 5-month-old Marlon Santos, who vanished from his Worcester foster home in November 1998, is dead.

>In the Bronx, the body of Christal Jones, 16, a habitual runaway from foster care in Vermont, was found in January 2001. A Burlington woman was convicted of luring and transporting girls, including Christal, to New York to work as prostitutes.

In New York City, at least eight children have died while missing from the child welfare agency since 1998, according to Children's Rights, which examined the deaths. Most were teenage girls who were murdered. Their names are confidential under New York law. A 14-year-old girl was strangled in February 1998 after running away from her foster home. It took police eight months to identify her body.

>In California, Desiree Collins, 14, was shot to death in February. A chronic runaway from the child welfare system, Desiree was "hanging around some gang members in what we call a crash pad, run-down places," said Los Angeles Police Officer Jason Lee. Witnesses told police she was in a fight and her body was tossed into a trash bin. Detectives found her blood at the scene but have not found her body.

On Aug. 9, 2001, the naked and battered body of Tiffany L. Mason, a 15-year-old foster child, was found in a lake near Sacramento. She had been running away and prostituting herself since she was 13, said her mother, Lorilei Torres, of Redding, Calif. Tiffany's caseworker told Torres the agency "did not want to find her because it makes them liable," Torres said. "It was easier to just leave her out there."

At least four Los Angeles area foster children also have died since 1996, according to Find the Children, a Santa Monica, Calif., organization.

Never reported missing

Children's advocates worry that many more deaths go unrecognized by social services agencies.

Gerry Nance, who oversees unidentified bodies and long-term missing children's cases for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, says the center knows of at least 1,500 bodies of unidentified children nationwide. His investigators have been unable to put names to the faces of 100 of them.

"What this means is these kids were never reported missing," he said. "It could indicate they were a throwaway kid, possibly a runaway from foster care if social services didn't report them, or [it could mean that] the person taking care of the child is the one who killed him."

Law enforcement and coroner's offices across the country do not regularly check with child welfare systems to determine whether an unidentified body might be that of a missing ward of the state. Officials say such inquiries would be futile because the child welfare systems are too vast and numerous.

"It would be like calling a wrong number," said Mark Guilbeau, senior investigator for the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office in Georgia. "They can't keep track of people they know about."

Guilbeau's office has 26 unidentified bodies, including three teenagers.

"We know nothing about them," he said. "It could be [foster kids]. Juveniles, with records not being available, are less likely to be found if they do end up dead."

Investigators say missing persons reports are not always made on foster children, or not made in a timely fashion, making it impossible to match entries of missing people with descriptions of bodies in the National Crime Information Center, a database the FBI maintains that links more than 16,000 state, federal and local law enforcement agencies.

Some police agencies also delete files from NCIC when youths turn 18, reasoning that they are now adults and "emancipated."

U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., has introduced a bill, the Prevention and Recovery of Missing Children Act, that forbids police from removing a missing person entry from NCIC "based solely on the age of the person."

Even when reports are made and retained, some foster children's bodies go unidentified because medical examiners have a difficult time estimating the age and ethnicity of decomposing bodies.

Unidentified bodies

Sarah Jane Forrester, 13, ran away from a foster home near Baltimore on Feb. 20, 1999. Her body was found in May 1999 near a Maryland playground. She had been beaten and stabbed. It took authorities more than a month to identify her in part because a forensics expert told police the body could be that of a black or Hispanic girl. Sarah Jane was white.

In the case of Latayna Reese, 15, the child found in the boxcar, a dentist called in to examine her teeth estimated she was 19 to 24.

When police entered into NCIC the description of her body with the inaccurate age, no matches came back. They sent descriptions to police in every town where the train stopped, including Philadelphia, but because of the error in the estimated age, detectives filed the case in their adult missing persons division.

"If there were parents around [applying pressure to find the children] this wouldn't happen," said Gerard Glynn, a professor at Barry University School of Law in Orlando. "We are the parents for these children, and we need to behave like parents."

Other children have been missing for decades, leaving their families to wonder whether they are dead or alive. The bodies of 400 children nationwide have never been found, including youths who long ago ran away from foster homes or group homes, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Christie Lynn Farni was 6 in December 1978 when she vanished while walking a few blocks from her foster home to school in Medford, Ore. She has not been found.

Foster child Michael Hughes was 4 when he was kidnapped from school in Choctaw, Okla., in September 1994. A man who had reared him, Franklin Floyd, was arrested and convicted in the kidnapping, in which he also handcuffed the school principal to a tree. Michael was never found. Floyd, who was sentenced to die in Florida for the murder of an exotic dancer, allegedly told three people, including his sister, that he killed the boy.

"Did he kill him or didn't he? We don't have any closure at all," said foster mother Merle Bean.

Norma Denise Sahm was 17 when she disappeared from a group home in Albuquerque, N.M., in June 1987. A truant and drug addict, she was last seen in a park with two adolescent boys. "Every family member is convinced she would have called by now," said a sergeant on the case.

Joshua Bryant, then 10, has been missing since May 2001 when he and his grandmother, Lillian Martin, disappeared from her home in northeast Florida. A judge had placed Joshua with Martin after his mother died. One room of the house appeared to have been ransacked.

"I wouldn't call it foul play, but they're certainly gone under suspicious circumstances," said Sgt. Bob Kelley of the Volusia County Sheriff's Office.

Racheal A. Martina was 16 when she excused herself to go to the bathroom at a DCF office in Lakeland and disappeared in March 1999. She had a criminal record, including charges of stealing a car, but police have found no trace of her. "I've checked with her mother, father, everyone," said Lakeland Officer Elaine Dallas. "Her prints are on file. I'm sure she would have turned up. I'd really like to know what happened to her. She could be dead. Who knows?"

Overburdened police officers in Florida and elsewhere say they don't have enough manpower to treat every case of a runaway like that of a child abducted by strangers.

"Unfortunately we can't chase kids down that do not want to be found all day long," said Plantation Police Detective Steve Geller. "It would exhaust our resources."

But some families say children presumed to be "just runaways" may be victims of foul play or tragic accidents.

Bill Cordes was 15 in March 1984 when he and several other boys ran from the Children's Home Society, a group home in Auburn, Calif., to go to a party. On the way back, they ran out of gas. The other youths returned. Bill hasn't been seen since.

"I believe my brother, if he was alive, would contact our family, for sure," said Kevin Cordes, Bill's younger brother.

Today, police are stymied because an initial missing persons report was canceled and authorities did not begin investigating the boy's disappearance until years later.

What's more, the group home refuses to turn over documents regarding the night in question, citing confidentiality laws. Without evidence of a crime, police can't get a warrant.

"I don't even have a copy of the interview of the boys back then," said Lorrie Lewis, investigative assistant with the Placer County Sheriff's Office.

No tracking system

Rarely do citizens get the opportunity to learn whether state officials did the right thing, especially when foster children go missing only to turn up dead.

No federal accounting is kept of children who die while missing from state custody. Such statistics, if available, could define the scope of the problem and guide policymakers.

The cases seldom make headlines, or if they do, the children's ties to social service systems are not always evident.

Spencer, DCF's own child abuse death review coordinator, was unaware that a 16-year-old runaway, Lamar Greene, died in November 2001 in Jacksonville while trying to steal a Chevrolet Camaro.

According to police reports, the car's owner grabbed onto the door to stop him.

"Lamar floored it and ran head first into a tree," said Tammy Horn, chief executive officer of the Jacksonville Youth Sanctuary, where Lamar lived for a time.

Police found a toy gun coated in black tape in his pocket.

Under DCF's operating policies, the deaths of all children receiving services from the agency must be reported to the state's child abuse hotline and to Spencer.

"That doesn't always happen," Spencer said

In Illinois, the Department of Children and Family Services is aware of three teens under its care who died while missing since 2000, but has not released their names.

Officials will say only that a 14-year-old runaway was murdered in Chicago in July 2000, and two 18-year-olds stole a car after running away from a group home in Springfield in March 2001 and died in an accident.

In Massachusetts, a spokesman for the Department of Social Services said he could not release internal investigations into the deaths of teenagers Kelly Hancock and Latasha Cannon because the reports are not public records.

"The people who are sworn to protect children are effectively engaged in a cover-up," said Stoesz, the Virginia Commonwealth University professor. "Many of these kids end up being the casualties."

Such a level of incompetence "probably wouldn't be tolerated in the Department of Motor Vehicles," he said. "But we value cars more than kids. The situation is intolerable."

posted by Linda for FightCPS.Com at 5:58 PM   

 

Missouri DSS director can't take the heat - resigns under pressure

I found this posted to a mailing list:

Monday, December 23, 2002

Social Services director resigns

By DAVID A. LIEB
Associated Press Writer

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - The director of the Missouri Department of
Social Services has resigned, one week after Gov. Bob Holden ordered a
reorganization of her agency because of troubles in the state's foster
care system.

In a resignation letter Monday to the governor, Katherine Martin said
she supported Holden's restructuring and was going to work for a
national foundation that focuses on social services and child welfare.

Martin was not asked to resign, said Holden spokesman Mary Still.

The governor appointed deputy director Steve Renne to serve as the
department's acting director.

The Social Services Department is Missouri's largest agency, receiving
about 28 percent of the state's budget while overseeing its Medicaid,
welfare, foster care and child support enforcement programs.

A department spokeswoman said Martin was not in the office Monday and
was unavailable for comment. Her resignation letter indicated she would
aid in a transition for the director's position during the next few
weeks.

Last week, Holden announced a reorganization of the department intended
to boost its focus on children's services by removing that function from
the current Division of Family Services.

He also created an ombudsman position to handle citizens complaints
about children's services and announced that he had requested and
received the resignation of Robin Gierer, the state's associate director
of child welfare who had been with the state for 24 years.

Martin, while discussing Holden's reorganization last week, expressed
her support for the changes, some of which she had unsuccessfully pushed
before the Legislature earlier this year.

She reiterated her support in her resignation letter, even outlining
some additional changes scheduled to occur over the next few months.

She said the agency would adopt a "structured decision-making" system to
better assess tips coming into its children's services hot line. Local
social services workers will have better access to data, which should
help in their decisions, she said. And the department plans "improved
dialogue" with the judiciary to better coordinate children's cases,
Martin said.

"I am pleased to see these efforts moving forward," Martin said in her
letter while adding that she also would help finalize Holden's budget
proposal for the department.

"I wish you well as you face these turbulent economic times," Martin's
letter to Holden concluded.

The governor, in a brief statement, wished Martin well and said: "I am
confident that the agenda of reform and improvement, already underway in
the department, will continue to move forward."

Holden's reorganization plan for the department stems from a report by a
pair investigators he appointed after the death of a 2-year-old foster
child in Springfield in August.

The boy's temporary state care provider, John Dilley, 34, of Willard has
pleaded
innocent to a murder charge in the death of Dominic James, whose brain
trauma was consistent with severe shaking, according to prosecutors.

Dominic already had been treated once at a hospital before his death,
and some in the child welfare system had expressed concern about
returning the boy to his foster home.

The investigators appointed by Holden concluded that state social
workers were overloaded and lacked supervision and training,
contributing to a "complete breakdown in the child welfare system."

In an interview last week, Martin said she did not fully agree with that
conclusion.

"By and large, we have a very effective and useful program," she said
while adding that some changes were necessary.

Holden appointed Martin director of the Social Services Department on
March 1, 2001, after she had worked for several years as a private
consultant for a Washington, D.C.-based think tank on social services
issues.

Martin had served as the chief operating officer for the department's
Caring Communities program from 1995 to 1997. She also directed the
department's budget division from 1991 to 1994 and was the budget
division's deputy director from 1989 to 1991.

When appointed, Martin said she would bring a results-oriented approach
to the department. She said then that there was always room for
improvement in state child welfare programs.

---
On the Net:
Social Services Department: http://www.dss.state.mo.us
Gov. Bob Holden: http://www.gov.state.mo.us

posted by Linda for FightCPS.Com at 4:22 AM   

 

New York - Fear causes unfair CPS abductions

I found this article posted on a mailing list. Families At Risk activists are featured:

Child deaths put officials on alert
Increased scrutiny pushes family court filings up 72%

By Anthony Farmer
Poughkeepsie Journal

It started with a knock at the door.

It was a knock many families in Dutchess County have come to dread. Its sound still echoes in Poughkeepsie resident Elizabeth Isaacson's thoughts some six months later.

It was Child Protective Services and the city police were with them. The caseworker said they needed to come in and see her 17-year-old daughter.

She asked to see a search warrant and tried to block them from entering the house.

''They said 'CPS doesn't need a warrant' and arrested me,'' Isaacson said.

Isaacson spent the night in jail and her children ended up in CPS custody.

''I don't think they had a right,'' Isaacson said. ''They took everything away from me.''

Isaacson's problem is not unique and has become more frequent in the past year, a recent report said that examines the county's child welfare system.

The report found evidence of a ''panic'' in the county's child welfare system following two high-profile fatalities and extensive media coverage. There has been a 72 percent increase in court filings within the last five months, said the report, released last month by a commission formed by the county Legislature.

Such panics often involve lawyers working for the county, Family Court judges, as well as the child welfare agency staff, the report said.

The county Department of Social Services' Child Protective Services unit has been scrutinized for the past year after workers were faulted for their handling of two cases where children were killed by their guardians even though county workers had been in each home and were aware of potential dangers to the children.

The whole community starts to change their perception of what's appropriate and not appropriate in light of such tragic cases, said Barry Salovitz of the Child Welfare Institute, the commission's consultant. Judges, attorneys, caseworkers and supervisors all get worried a child may be at risk and basically yank them from their home, he said.

''There's a lot more court activity related to foster care than ever before,'' Salovitz said. ''Without clear policies or standards in regards to decision making, it's easy to go that way because you don't want to make a mistake.''

But it is the wrong way to go, he said. It's just the latest misstep in what has been a tumultuous year for the county's child welfare agency.

The legislative commission was formed after a state investigation revealed county caseworkers were aware of abuse involving a 2-year-old Hyde Park toddler before he was killed in 2001 by his mother and her live-in boyfriend.

Welfare workers faulted

Another state review faulted county child welfare workers for their handling of a 1999 case in which a 7-week-old Hyde Park infant was killed by his mother. In that report, the state criticized county child protective workers for failing to monitor properly the family's situation after being made aware of concerns.

Child welfare officials and workers are prevented from speaking about individual cases because of confidentiality concerns.

The workers face hair-raising situations on a daily basis and have a difficult job to do, even most critics of system will admit.

But the increase in CPS cases in Family Court shouldn't necessarily be viewed as a negative, county Social Services Commissioner Robert Allers said.

''We view that as a positive, in line with direction from the state,'' Allers said in his written response to the commission's report. ''The fact that petitions/cases we bring to court are upheld in court also shows that the increased petitions have merit.''

But it's not that easy.

The Family Court judges are reacting out of fear, the same way the caseworkers and supervisors are, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va.

''They are terrified what will happen to them in the media if something happens to the child if the child stays in the home and something goes wrong,'' Wexler said.

Such panics -- Wexler called it the ''take-the-child-and-run ap-proach'' -- frequently occur after a community reacts to a case where child protective workers decide to leave a child in a home and the child is killed, he said.

The more common problems, Wexler said, are situations where children that could be helped with family services are unnecessarily removed from their homes.

''The key to fixing a problem like this, when everybody's horrified by deaths of children known to the system, is listen to your gut instinct and do the opposite,'' Wexler said.

He wasn't kidding.

''Not only are children being devastated by wrongful removal, workers are almost certainly missing other children in real danger because they're so overwhelmed with these new cases,'' he said.

Numerous parents have come forward to the Poughkeepsie Journal and in hearings and at grass-roots meetings during the past year to tell of their experiences with CPS. Most paint a similar picture, where children are pulled out of their homes without evidence, often not even an accusation, that the child is being abused.

Allers has maintained throughout the past year his department does not remove a child just because a home is dirty, only if the child is unsafe or in danger.

Isaacson said her daughter had behavioral problems and she sought help for her through government agencies, with little luck. She said the county took her children because her house was cluttered, but officials never accused her of abusing them.

Isaacson offered extensive documentation -- copies of reports from caseworkers and court documents -- to support her claims.

Her children are now suffering in foster care, she said.

''They went and ripped my life apart,'' Isaacson said. ''They took my rights, my children and my dignity away.''

posted by Linda for FightCPS.Com at 4:01 AM   

 

Woman abused as child can sue state 11/28/02

A Jacksonville woman who police said was beaten, burned and malnourished in foster care while state child welfare workers looked the other way can sue the state even though the abuse was reported 23 years ago, the Florida Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

The ruling opens the door for other children abused in state care to sue for their injuries after they become adults, said victims rights attorney Jay Howell, who represents the woman identified only by her initials S.A.P.

S.A.P. was 4 years old and weighed only 22 pounds in 1979 when Clay County deputies were called to her Orange Park foster home by neighbors who heard her and her sister screaming. Deputies found the girls "bruised over their entire bodies, burned, beaten, choked [and] malnourished," the woman's lawsuit says. The girls weren't even living at the foster home where the department had placed them.

The lawsuit also alleges that the department obstructed the police investigation, falsified reports, altered records and concealed the abuse.

The woman sued in 1995 after she turned 18, less than three years after the department released its internal investigation report documenting the abuse, the Supreme Court said.

posted by Linda for FightCPS.Com at 2:11 AM