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 The law that started this, CAPTA, must be repealed.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.
In this article Christy Edgar is incorrectly identified as the slain child's mother. She is not. She's an adopter. All the abused children mentioned in this article were adopted.
By ROBERT A. CRONKLETON
The Kansas City Star
Wyandotte County District Attorney Nick A. Tomasic today announced child-abuse charges against seven people relating to the investigation of 9-year-old Brian Edgar's slaying.
Tomasic said he filed the charges late Wednesday against Brian's mother, Christy Edgar; a family baby sitter, Chasity Boyd; and five other women who are associates of Christy Edgar and Neil Edgar Sr., Brian's father.
Besides Boyd, 19, and Edgar, 46, those charged are Julia Edgar-Montgomery, 54; Renita D. Allen-Jackson, 40; Idella A. Horton, 22; Patricia A. Walker, 44; and Barbara Clark, 45.
All are Kansas City, Kan., residents except Christy Edgar, who was living in Overland Park before being arrested Dec. 30.
Tomasic said all seven defendants are members of God's Creation Church, a Kansas City, Kan., storefront church run by the Edgars.
Boyd and the Edgars already stand charged in Johnson County with murdering Brian late last year by stuffing a sock in his mouth, taping his lips shut and binding him tightly around the chest. Boyd and the Edgars also are charged in Johnson County with abusing two other Edgar children, a 12-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy.
At a morning news conference, Tomasic said that the child abuse involved two of the Edgars three other children -- a 12-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl -- and a 12-year-old boy who was a friend of one of the Edgar children.
The Edgars had adopted four children -- Brian; the 12-year-old boy; the 9-year-old girl; and a 16-year-old boy. None of the abuse charges relates to the 16-year-old boy.
The abuse of the three victims allegedly took place between Oct. 11 and Jan. 3 at five different residences owned by the Edgars or the church.
The members of the church lived at those residences. Those members who worked, Tomasic said, surrendered their paychecks to the church as rent.
Tomasic said that when the children misbehaved at the Edgars' home in south Overland Park, they would take their children to one of the various residences to be punished. Tomasic said that the children were disciplined for disrespecting adults and not paying attention at church, among other things.
The punishment, Tomasic said, took several different forms. For example, the children's hands were tied behind their backs and then tied to their feet with black, plastic flex ties. Scarves were put over their eyes, and they were left that way all night, Tomasic said.
Tomasic said that the Edgars' 9-year-old daughter once was hog-tied and placed in a dry bath tub for the night and that Brian once was tied crucifixion style to a bunk bed and left overnight.
He said the children were tied up with such things as extension cords and belts. Duct tape and clear, packing tape also were used to bind the children, and the defendants also placed tape over the children's mouths to keep them quiet, he said.
Tomasic said church members were not cooperating with the investigation.
NEWARK, Jan. 15 � The unceasing turnover of caseworkers at New Jersey's child welfare agency has caused hundreds of open investigations of abuse to go unattended for weeks and sometimes months at a time, caseworkers and supervisors with the agency said in interviews this week.
The New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services, which is charged with protecting the state's most vulnerable children, says it loses eight caseworkers every two weeks on average, as part of near-constant defections from its field office staff of 1,300 workers. Under agency policy, those cases should be immediately divided up among co-workers.
In practice, however, because the remaining caseworkers already have high caseloads and supervisors are already overtaxed in overseeing new trainees, it often takes weeks to reassign the files of those who have left, the agency workers said.
Cases that go unattended while they are slowly being transferred can involve serious allegations of abuse or neglect.
"There is a lot of pressure to close these cases because it is like the trail has gone cold," said a veteran caseworker with more than 20 years of experience in Essex County, N.J., who insisted that his name be withheld because he feared retaliation. The worker said that this fall, when he was on sick leave, a newly transferred case was left on his desk involving sexual abuse allegations that were already a month old. "It makes me sick," he said.
Laurie Facciarossa, a spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, which oversees the family agency, said there were policies in place to handle transferring files. "We would like to think there is always a seamless transition," she said, "but we certainly don't know that that is always the case."
The problems with the cases left by departing workers have emerged as caseworkers from the agency have begun to speak out about the inner workings of the state's child welfare bureaucracy.
Caseworkers are coming forward because they say they have faced a barrage of criticism since Faheem Williams, age 7, was found dead and stored in a plastic bag in the basement in the Newark home of a relative on Jan. 5. Two brothers were found alive but malnourished. Despite allegations that the children were being abused, a caseworker closed the file in February 2002.
At an emotional news conference here today, agency employees said they mourned Faheem's death, but believed they were unjustly being blamed. They said that huge caseloads and lack of basic resources like cars for conducting visits and cellphones for field work meant that they were hard pressed just to handle crisis cases.
"No matter how hard you work, it seems you can never accomplish anything," said Juanita Gardner, who said she had worked for the agency for 16 years.
Ms. Gardner said her burden of court appointments, and driving children and their parents to and from appointments with doctors, therapists and food pantries, meant she frequently worked holidays, vacations and late into the night, all without compensation. "I spend more time with DYFS than my own family," she said.
Workers said that despite the dangerous situations they investigate, and the crime in some of the neighborhoods they go into, they rarely get the support of other government agencies, including the police.
In December, two workers were transporting a mother to court-ordered psychiatric evaluation when she had a psychotic episode and attacked them, pulling out clumps of hair from one worker and biting another. According to a grievance filed against the agency by the workers' union, the state police took 30 minutes to respond to a call for help and then refused to arrest the woman.
"We are very concerned about worker safety," said Ms. Facciarossa, who said that she was aware of the case but could neither confirm or deny the allegations.
The New Jersey State Police could not be reached for comment tonight.
By the accounts of workers, the consequences of the enormous caseloads and lack of support is that work that should get done occasionally does not get done, and children and their families fall through the cracks.
"At one point I had 114 children on my caseload," said Reggie Jones, who has been at the agency for 16 years. "I was responsible for visiting all 114 children once a month. That is impossible."
In private interviews, workers gave other examples of where overwhelming caseloads could affect work practices.
"Most workers don't like doing an emergency removal because there is a lot of work involved," said Cheryl Smith, who works in the suburban Bloomfield office. "We have to go with the child for a physical and that can take hours at the hospital. Then we come back to look for foster care, but sometimes we can't find a placement and that takes more hours. When you are done with that, then there is more paperwork because you have to be in front of the judge the next day to explain the removal."
As a result, Ms. Smith said that while "in cases of severe abuse or if the children are left alone" emergency removals do happen, in cases where "children are beaten but not really bad," only services like counseling are put in place.
Other caseworkers said that when they get a case that appears to be an emergency late in the day, they sometimes come back and do it in the morning.
Fight CPS And Win asks activists everywhere to make efforts to see that Logan Marr's death at the hands of a CPS caseworker is known to the residents of their areas.
Frontline set up a page on their website to announce this program:
We call your attention to the press release links at the end of each article. Please forward these links to all media outlets in your area and wherever else you think they might be used - especially the link to the Logan Marr press release.
Its okay if a newspaper gets the link more than once. The more often they get it - the more they'll know there are people interested in having this information shared with the public.
We now have about two weeks to get these links out to the media. Please forward this article to other activists and ask for their help. Post it to as many message boards as you can, so people will be aware of the show.
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