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 The law that started this, CAPTA, must be repealed.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.
(September 4, 2004) - For two years as a teenager, Holly Coomber lived under the fearful command of her foster father, who sexually assaulted her, impregnated her, then forced her to give up her child, according to court papers and social services records.
That relationship - Coomber eventually considered her foster father, William Allen, her lover - took a violent turn in 1986 when the two went on a bloody multistate robbery trek and murdered two convenience store clerks, one in Seneca Falls and another in Georgia.
Allen pulled the trigger in both murders, and Coomber testified against him in both states.
Now, lawyers in New York are pushing for freedom for Coomber. They argue in court papers filed in Seneca County on Friday that Coomber's lawyer in her Seneca County trial in 1986 was ineffective because he did little to no work to unearth the horrid circumstances of her life and the power that Allen wielded over her.
"Holly Coomber was also a victim of William Allen," said Syracuse attorney Randi Juda Bianco, one of a team of attorneys seeking to have Coomber's conviction overturned. "She was his punching bag, she was his sex toy, and she was his foster child."
Coomber's former lawyer, former Seneca County Public Defender Thomas Jones, could not be reached for comment.
Coomber received a 121/2- to 25-year sentence in Georgia, where she is now incarcerated, to be followed by the same sentence in New York.
Allen originally was sentenced to death in Georgia, but that sentence was overturned and he was retried, convicted and sentenced to life. He was also convicted and sentenced to life for the New York murder.
Reached Friday, family members of Donna Guerriri, the Seneca Falls clerk slain in 1986, said they did not want to comment. Alfred Guerriri Jr., who was married to Donna Guerriri, has received the court papers from Coomber's lawyers.
Former Seneca County District Attorney Dennis Bender, who is now a County Court judge, wrote in a 1999 letter in court filings that he had no doubt that Coomber "knew someone was going to be murdered" during the Seneca Falls robbery. "I suggest, notwithstanding her background, the 13 years is not a very high price for her to pay," he wrote of the time Coomber had then served.
Bianco, Rochester lawyer Barbara Farrell, the New York State Defenders Association and Syracuse-based sentencing specialist Richard Luciani have amassed adoption, school, social service and criminal records from New York, Georgia and Missouri that detail the struggles of Coomber's upbringing and the sordid relationship between her and Allen.
Allen "is a master of intimidation," a Missouri social worker who became close to Coomber wrote in February 1986. "In my opinion he calls all the shots and leaves Holly unsure of all except that she knows she needs to please him to remain."
Coomber was then 17 and pregnant with a child she claimed was Allen's. Allen forced her to give up the child and told friends that the child had died, reports show.
A tragic life
Born in Hornell, Steuben County, in 1969, Holly Coomber was placed into adoption when she was 8 months old because her parents were unable to afford children, according to court records. Coomber alleges in an affidavit that her adoptive family was violent toward her, and that her family told others she was "accident prone" as an excuse to cover up her injuries. She also suffered sexual molestation at the hands of an uncle, she alleged.
In 1983, she was sent to the Hillside Children's Center in Rochester, where troubled youths are housed and counseled. She was placed into the foster care system when her adoptive family did not want her to return. In October 1984, after two short foster care placements, she was placed in the home of William Allen and his wife in Lyons, Wayne County.
Shortly after moving in with the Allens, Coomber underwent knee surgery at Genesee Hospital. Allen would visit and talk about wanting to have sex with her, according to her affidavit.
Once she returned to the home, Allen began regularly having sex with her in the woods, telling his wife he was taking her to teach her to hunt, Coomber claimed. At age 16, he had her quit school and declare herself "emancipated," a move that should have alerted state authorities to the control he had, her lawyers argue.
Soon afterward, the two moved together to Missouri, where she became pregnant, she says, with Allen's child. Allen, who divorced his wife, was 46, and Coomber was 16.
"William Allen told me that if I came home with a baby, he would kill it," Coomber said in her affidavit. She gave up the child, and Allen, having claimed to others that the baby died, took her away from Missouri.
"He made her give the child up for adoption," said Glynn County, Ga., Police Capt. Jack Boyet, who interviewed and grew to know Coomber after the Georgia murder. "That's pretty good control. When you can make a mother give up her child, you've got a pretty good hold on that person."
The slayings
The first murder occurred in Brunswick, Ga., in October 1986, when the couple robbed a convenience store and Allen fatally shot the 48-year-old clerk, Emily Moore.
Allen and Coomber then traveled to New York and, during a robbery of a Seneca Falls Kwik-Fill, Allen murdered Guerreri. They stole gas, three cartons of Pall Mall cigarettes and $130.
The two returned to Georgia, where they were arrested and linked to both murders.
While in jail, Allen persuaded Coomber to take blame for the slayings, Boyet said.
"He talked her into saying she did everything," Boyet said. "That went on for about two and a half months."
Eventually, Coomber agreed to testify against Allen in both states.
Under her plea agreement, Coomber did not have to testify against Allen when he was retried after the reversal of his death sentence, Boyet said. But, Coomber wanted to. "She knows what she did was wrong and she was trying to correct it," he said.
Should Coomber be freed, she may well have a family to return to, Bianco said. Her biological family has recently been in touch with her, and says she can move in with them.
LENEXA, Kan. - Matt Zenner was never convinced. His social worker wife said not to worry about her frequent visits to clients' homes, but he wouldn't bite.
"It just never sat well with me," he said.
His worst fears were confirmed Aug. 17, when Teri Zenner was stabbed to death while visiting a 17-year-old client, Andrew Ellmaker, at his home. Ellmaker has been charged with her death.
Zenner's slaying validated her husband's concerns and those of many of the 320,000 licensed social workers nationwide who frequently venture into the homes of clients in hopes of getting lives back on track.
Now, Matt Zenner is battling his grief by fighting for more protection for social workers. He wants them equipped with pagers that can call 911 and have global-positioning satellite capabilities, wants to ensure case workers have clients' criminal records, and wants to see mental health facilities reopened so there's adequate room for patients who should be hospitalized.
"There's no one that should have to go through this," said the widower, a 27-year-old railroad worker and father of a 9-year-old girl from a previous relationship. "You're taking people that are going and trying to help people and they're not protected."
Little information has been compiled on violence against social workers, though Zenner certainly was not alone. In Madison, Wis., last month, a man was charged with trying to stab to death a social worker. An Akron, Ohio, man was sentenced to 16 years in prison earlier this year for raping and kidnapping a social worker visiting his home.
A 1999 University of Michigan study of 1,600 social workers found 3.3 percent of participants had been physically assaulted by a client, 22.8 percent had been threatened with physical assault, and 49.3 percent had been verbally abused. One in four social workers - 24.6 percent - said they had a colleague who was assaulted by a client.
"Those are not minor figures," said Siri Jayaratne, the primary author of the study. "It's a pretty scary thing."
Social work schools address the dangers graduates may face, but most training comes on the job. At Johnson County Mental Health Center, where Zenner had worked for five years, new hires go through a two-day training and an annual one-day refresher, mainly on how to deal with aggressive clients, according to David Wiebe, the center's executive director.
Social workers nationwide receive similar instruction, but it's not always enough.
Madelyn Harvey-Elliott's nerves get tangled on home visits now. It's been less than three months since an agitated mother closed her fist and punched her near her right eye.
"I had no warning," said the 52-year-old Dayton, Ohio, social worker, who has a small scar from the attack. "I've never been fearful before, but I'm fearful now."
Teri Zenner was never afraid either.
"All the fears came from me," said Matt Zenner, who was married on May 22.
What happened to the 26-year-old social worker that Tuesday afternoon remains cloudy. Her husband lost touch with her after she went to Ellmaker's suburban home; he called her dozens of times and grew scared.
He pulled into his driveway that afternoon and was greeted by detectives.
"Is it Teri?" he asked.
They said, "Yes."
"Just tell me she's not dead," he said.
But she was.
Teri Zenner was stabbed multiple times and died of a wound that penetrated her heart, said Paul Morrison, Johnson County district attorney.
Police and prosecutors are waiting for trial to offer more details on the case, and they could be gruesome. "He mutilated her," said Matt Zenner.
Ellmaker has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery. His mental fitness to stand trial is being evaluated.
"This young man has serious problems," said defense attorney Joe Dioszeghy.
Meanwhile, Matt Zenner is working with administrators at Johnson County Mental Health Center and setting up meetings with lawmakers, including Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan.
Zenner has not called for a freeze on social workers' home visits; he knows how important they are. But he says social workers must be better shielded from harm.
"Society has changed," he said, "but protection for social workers hasn't."
Zenner believes part of the problem is a lack of available beds for mental health patients who need hospitalization. Wiebe estimates Kansas has about 350 beds available, down from around 5,000 in the 1950s.
Wiebe said Teri Zenner followed all protocol in her final client visit and there were no red flags to indicate potential violence. The defendant has a prior conviction for carrying a concealed knife, though Johnson County Mental Health Center does not routinely get background checks of patients.
It's not uncommon for social workers to make a home visit with a colleague or even a police officer if a client is believed to be dangerous, but neither Zenner nor colleagues saw reason to fear Ellmaker. They relied on their own assessment of him - as many social service agencies do - which rates patients based on impulse control and any history of violent or aggressive behavior.
Wiebe admits it's a "very imperfect" science.
"We're not very good about our ability to predict violent behavior," he said.
According to sources, the DSS worker named in this article is the same one that lied claiming not to have received Dr. Baughman's report in support of returning Diane Booth's son Vincent to her. -LJM
Two Central Coast women are headed to jail for embezzling thousands of dollars from the Department of Social Services in San Luis Obispo County.
Angela Sanchez and her sister, Loretta Solano, pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $14,000. Prosecutors say Sanchez, a former employee of the department, and her sister took the money over a four-year period.
"Sanchez was in a position to help those that were in the most need of our help in her role at the department of social services," says prosecutor Steve Von Dohlen. "But she and her sister manipulated this vital system for their own personal benefit."
Investigators found the money was deposited into the bank accounts of both Sanchez and Solano, and records show that a significant amount of money was taken out of the accounts at an ATM machine at the Chumash Casino.
"Her indication was that she was withdrawing money there not for use as fruits from the crime but instead to establish a record for future tax reporting purposes," says Von Dohlen. "What implications that may have down the road remain to be seen."
Judge Michael Duffy told the women they betrayed the public trust, which is something the court takes very seriously. He sentenced Sanchez to 270 days in jail, while her sister will spend 90 days in jail, and both women also received five years probation. The sisters will serve their jail time separately; Loretta Solano will report to jail on October 1, and Angela Sanchez will start her sentence on December 30.
Namaste! (The God in me sees and acknowledges the God in you)
Please join with us in adding the names of our loved ones, those we know suffering at the hands of Child Protective Services and those advocating for their rights to the Unity prayer list.
Unity churches around the world will be holding a 24 hour prayer vigil on Thursday, September 9th. Names on this list will be read aloud throughout the day. Please go to:
http://www.worlddayofprayer.org/submitnames.htm to submit the names of those you wish to be added to this list.
You may go to: http://www.worlddayofprayer.org/ for a full explanation of this event.
Thank you and may God hold you safely in His hands on this and all your days.
Blessed be,
Michele Bassette
Ohio AFRA Coordinator
BANGOR (AP) - A former elementary school teacher and foster parent has pleaded guilty in federal court in Bangor to charges of distributing of child pornography.
Prosecutors say 34-year-old Chris Reardon faces up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
According to court documents, Reardon transmitted images of child pornography from his home in Holden to a police officer in New Hampshire who was posing as a 14-year-old boy.
1/7/04
For Immediate Release
CONTACT: JoElla Cudney
Phone: 916-319-2059
(SACRAMENTO)- Legislation that will protect children from forced medication with dangerous psychiatric drugs will be in the Assembly Health Committee Tuesday, January 13 at 1:30 PM.
"Parents have fled the country, gone to jail, moved their children out of state. They have been falsely labeled as child abusers and they have seen their children institutionalized - all because they have refused to allow them to be subjected to powerful and dangerous drugs," Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, R-Monrovia, said.
"The scenario is all too common: a teacher or school counselor with no medical training 'diagnoses' a child as suffering from a psychiatric disorder. School officials tell parents they must allow the child to be treated with a dangerous drug. The parents refuse. They are classified as child abusers and threatened with losing their children if they don't go along with this destructive program," continued Assemblyman Mountjoy.
Assemblyman Mountjoy's bill, AB 1424, will ensure that other parents do not suffer the same torment as Diane Booth, an East Bay mother. Ms. Booth lost her son Vincent in a battle over forced drugging. In 1999, school officials told her that the boy, then 7, suffered from ADHD, and they demanded that she allow Vincent to be drugged. When Ms. Booth refused, she was put on the list of child abusers and her son was forced into an institution where he was drugged and physically abused, she said.
Ms. Booth contrived to get her son back and fled to Canada with him. They were tracked down there. Vincent was sent back to an institution and his mother was jailed. She was released after several months, penniless. Rather than face more time in jail, she again fled to Canada, this time without her son. In fact, she has not been allowed to even communicate with him.
Los Angeles area mother Rocio Eslava at first succumbed to pressure from a school counselor and allowed her daughter to take an anti-depressant for a supposed "chemical imbalance." The daughter then began suffering severe headaches and diarrhea. She became suicidal and was taken to a mental hospital.
When a hospital psychiatrist tried to force a different anti-depressant on the girl, Ms. Eslava refused only to have the psychiatrist threaten to have her daughter taken away and placed in foster care. Ms. Eslava responded by sending her daughter to stay with relatives out of the area. The daughter promptly recovered and has continued to do well, but she and her mother were deeply affected by the forced separation.
Sacramento area resident David Smith fought a similar battle with school authorities who, even though they lacked medical qualifications, diagnosed his son as having ADHD. When he refused to drug the boy, Smith was accused of child abuse and his home was visited and searched by Child Protective Services workers. He changed his son's school, and the boy bloomed.
Assemblymember Mountjoy knows first hand about the issue. "I have personally seen the terrible effects that psychiatric drugs can cause from experience with my own son," he said. "Luckily, we were able to get him off the drug very quickly as soon as we saw that it was harming him. No parent should be forced to put or keep their child on these potentially harmful drugs."
Lorraine Ruiz, a whistleblower who is at the center of a major investigation into the foster care ombudsman's office in Santa Clara County, stated, "It is common for schools to call Child Protective Services and allege medical neglect when they want to pressure a parent into putting their child onto psychiatric drugs. Already overworked CPS personnel are required to investigate. If school personnel knew what goes on in the foster care system-prostitution rings, excessive psychiatric drugging, kids moved to home after home, physical abuse, sexual abuse--they would never think of calling Child Protective Services for such a thing."
Dr. Fred Baughman, Jr., a pediatric neurologist, said that the drugging of children is not only bad for them but bad medicine.
"There is still not one single physical test that proves any one of the so-called 'disorders' is actually a disease with any detectable physical abnormality," he said. "Psychiatrists are labeling physically normal children as 'diseased' and drugging them with dangerous psychotropic drugs to change the way they behave or feel."
Cassandra Auerbach of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Los Angeles said that the abuse is wide ranging. "Psychiatrists testing these drugs are on the payroll of the drug companies; data about children attempting suicide after being given psychiatric drugs in clinical trials has been withheld from medical doctors and the public," she said. "Some people go completely psychotic from these drugs. Others suffer heart failure, brain damage, permanent movement disorders, liver toxicity, excessive weight gain, and addiction, to name just a few side effects."
"The intent of AB 1424 is very simple," she said. "Stop forcing parents to drug their children with these potentially fatal drugs and don't take the child away if the parents refuse."
Similar legislation has been signed into law in Arizona and Texas in 2003.
01/09/2004
A social worker sacked for failing to protect the murdered eight-year-old Victoria Climbie is to appeal against her dismissal for gross misconduct.
Lisa Arthurworrey was banned from working with children and had her name added to the Protection of Children Act list following an inquiry into why Victoria's abuse was not stopped.
She had been responsible for investigating Victoria's case in her role as a junior social worker at Haringey council in north London.
But although she admitted feeling responsible for Victoria's death, she claimed that she had been duped by Victoria's carers, badly advised by her managers and misled by medical reports.
"I was Victoria's allocated social worker so in some ways I was responsible. My job was to protect children," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "It's with me every single day and it will continue to be with me for the rest of my life."
Victoria died in February 2000 after enduring months of abuse inflicted by her great-aunt, Marie Therese Kouao, and the woman's boyfriend, Carl Manning.
She had suffered 128 separate injuries, including cigarette burns, scars from where she had been hit with a bicycle chain and hammer blows to her toes.
She was also forced to sleep in a bin liner in a bath at Kouao's home in Tottenham, north London, where she had been sent by her parents, who wanted to give their daughter a better life than in the Ivory Coast.
Ms Arthurworrey told Today that she had been allocated Victoria's case to investigate fears that the girl had burns and marks from a belt buckle.
Although Victoria appeared "shy and withdrawn", she believed she was "just a normal seven-year-old".
Ms Arthurworrey claimed that the medical reports had focused on emotional abuse and neglect, and had not mentioned physical abuse, explaining that the marks on Victoria's body had been caused by scabies.
However, she admitted that she had only "skim-read" a fax from doctors detailing Victoria's injuries because it had been handwritten and had been difficult to make out.
Instead she relied on the summary of a consultant paediatrician, which she said found no evidence to justify the abuse fears.
She had then shown the summary to her manager, who supported her decision to allow Victoria to return to Kouao from hospital.
Ms Arthurworrey lost touch with the woman shortly afterwards and closed the case a week before Victoria died. Kouao and Manning were later jailed for life.
"It wasn't until I heard on the news that Kouao and Manning had been arrested for her murder that I realised that I had got things terribly wrong, because I had perceived Kouau as a caring person who was trying to do her best for her child," she said.
APPLETON — Melanie Schmitz sits on her sofa, her legs drawn beneath her, and reflects on her childhood and the recent arrest of her parents on child abuse and neglect charges in Tennessee.
They are very much linked.
In this town, about the size of Jackson, Melanie tells the Wisconsin portion of the story; of the numerous children in her parents' care, of the abuse accusations made four years earlier in Brown County, and of the similarities of those allegations to some of the abuse accusations in Gibson County.
No charges were ever filed in the Brown County case.
It has been three years since she sneaked, one box after another, her belongings out of Tom and Debra Schmitz's Howard home during a period of time before she and the boxes disappeared in August 2001. She was 17 years old.
It was the third time she had run away in less than a year, since reporting to a high school counselor and social worker that the Schmitzes were mentally, verbally and physically abusing children in their home.
In September 2001, Tom and Debra Schmitz left the Green Bay area for Tennessee without her. In June, the couple were charged in Tennessee and had 18 children removed from their home. Prosecutors will present evidence to a grand jury later this month on four misdemeanor charges of abuse. Other charges could be filed, Tennessee authorities have said.
The charges didn't surprise Melanie, now 20. In November 2000, the then 16-year-old told Brown County social services about child abuse she said she had allegedly witnessed. At the time, the family lived on Windover Road in Howard.
Eleven children were in the home at that time, including a foreign exchange student, according to documents The Jackson Sun obtained from the Brown County child services investigation.
Tom and Debra denied any wrongdoing to police and investigators. No charges were ever filed, although Wisconsin authorities have indicated to the Press-Gazette that the case could be reopened.
The Jackson Sun talked with Melanie Schmitz and Shirley Hogan, Debra Schmitz's mother, in mid-July. Neither is on speaking terms with Tom or Debra.
Tom and Debra Schmitz are accused of beating children, locking them in a metal cage and forcing them to spend hours in a dark cellar.
Some accusations recalled by Melanie and Hogan are similar to ones in Tennessee. The Brown County accusations included: children being made to stand in cold showers, being locked in a bedroom for two days and fed only bread and water, being made to sleep in the bathtub or on the bathroom floor and one child being tied to the bed.
Melanie no longer wants a relationship with the woman she at times called "Debbie" instead of mom, the woman who used to be her best friend.
Yet, a 34-page report signed by Beth Reimer, a Wisconsin social worker, stated: "- this case will be unsubstantiated for physical abuse and neglect. It is also unsubstantiated for emotional abuse at this time."
The Brown County Sheriff's Department thus closed the case as "unsubstantiated" until it received any further evidence of abuse. One police officer, John Toonen, indicated in his report that Melanie "appeared to me to be telling the truth about everything, including the fact that if she ever told what went on she might have to live in a foster home, that the reason she was now telling the story was that because her parents were now trying to adopt another child and that they can't handle the ones they have now."
Four years later, Melanie stands by her accusations of abuse.
"I wish they would have listened to me, because all this stuff in Tennessee wouldn't have happened," she said.
'It all changed'
It was the mid-1980s, and Debra Schmitz lived on Westline Road in Suamico next door to her mother, Shirley Hogan.
Hogan and Debra's father had built Debra a two-story house next door to their home to get Debra away from an abusive relationship, Hogan said.
Debra and her three biological children lived on Westline from 1985 to 1989, when Tom and Debra were married and Tom adopted the three children. The couple has a child by marriage.
The family grew from four children to 10 (through adoption and other methods) to 18 kids in Tennessee. It's that growth that concerns Melanie Schmitz, who now tells of a home she claims was in chaos.
Yet Hogan's and Melanie's stories are told with the backdrop of statements from some of the Schmitz children that Melanie was a spoiled teenager who lied to investigators as revenge against a strict household.
But Melanie's and Hogan's memories aren't all bad.
Debra was "at one point a normal mom," Melanie said. "She would do stuff with us, and, you know, take us places and spend quality time with us."
"And then, it all changed dramatically within a few years."
Melanie said the children's care fell to her after her older sister Mandy left the house. The family moved to Windover Road in Howard in 1998 and lived there three years before moving to Tennessee in August or September 2001, Melanie said.
The Wisconsin investigative report states that Melanie told a social worker that "her mother drinks one liter of wine every two days."
Later in that same report, the same social worker reported that Melanie's aunt, Teri Hogan, told the social worker that Melanie said Debra "will drink alcohol starting at 8 a.m. and not stop until late at night or until she passes out."
Debra and other children in the home denied she drank excessively in the Wisconsin investigative report. But the nurses who have accused the Schmitzes of abuse in Tennessee both said Debbie would regularly start drinking wine before lunch and was often intoxicated by suppertime, according to the Gibson County search warrant.
The Wisconsin investigation
Just before the first time she ran away from the Schmitzes' home in November 2000, Melanie first alleged abuse to school officials. But the day after Melanie made her initial complaint her brother, Mitchell, told police officers she was lying and was mad because their parents had taken the car from her, a Brown County Sheriff's Department report said. But then Mitchell backed up her accusations later in the same interview at his school, indicating that he "probably got hit the most."
One police officer wrote: "Mitchell became scared when I started writing this (Mitchell's claims of abuse) down. I had to quit writing. Mitchell with a look of fear in his eyes stated 'You can’t tell my parents I told you this.' He was afraid of being hit."
The Schmitzes told investigators that Melanie was grounded shortly before making her complaint for being somewhere she was not supposed to be, according to reports. They said she was "a good child" but added that they are strict with her and that she'd had trouble with that. They went on to say their children had threatened to call social services in the past, that they do this whenever they're disciplined in a way they don't like, according to the report. The couple said in one report that they use different techniques with different children "as their needs vary so greatly."
The couple also addressed some of the accusations.
Debra admitted putting Marcus Schmitz, now 10, in a cold shower with his clothes on but said she was in the shower, too, holding him. She'd resorted to the cold shower after other techniques they used had failed to stop a terrible habit he had of "blowing snot and spitting."
Debra said she did this once and denied accusations that she left him in the shower for 45 minutes while she went to the store.
The shower lasted about five minutes, Debra said in the reports.
Debra denied having any problems with alcohol and said she drank "a glass of wine every couple of days or so while cooking dinner."
A therapist who supported the couple said she never witnessed anything that could be considered abuse by either of the Schmitzes, a report said. She added "they have some very difficult children and as a result sometimes have to use alternate methods of discipline, but none has ever been abusive."
Though some people have doubted her accusations and motives for making them, Melanie said: "I have never lied about anything. I've never exaggerated anything. I've always spoken the truth."
KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Two sets of East Tennessee parents have lost custody of their multiple, adopted children recently after reports of abuse. A Rockwood couple has lost custody of nine children, seven of those are adopted. [ couple loses custody ]
And a Scott County couple's case is going to the grand jury on charges of aggravated child abuse. [ grand jury bound ]
6 News spoke with DCS officials Wednesday, learning the limit for adopting children is based on the parent and what they can handle.
DCS team coordinator Eugene Gray says, "We have a guideline that says they can take three children in their home, three foster children. There's not a limit on the number of adopted kids they can take in the home."
DCS says that parents also have to meet certain guidelines, such as a background check. "We have to look at their medical history. We have to look at their references. We have to do a thorough check in order to find...in order to see if the familty can support and parent that number of children in their home," Gray says.
Parents taking in DCS children receive financial assistance, ranging anywhere from $400 a month to $1,400, in the most severe circumstances.
One adoptive parent, Candy Elliott, says her four adopted children, four-year-old Victoria, three-year-old George and two-year-old Rachel, bring her much joy. They played today while their brother, Jake, was at school.
"It takes a special parent to be...a special person to be foster parent. There are a lot of us out there. I don't think we're getting the credit that we deserve," Elliott says.
She also says there are lots of adoptive and foster parents like her, who love their children. Three of them have special needs so Elliott became a stay-at-home mom to give them the attention they need. "Sometimes, I'm going to doctor's visits six times a month with these four, which normally you'd do yearly physicals with a normal child."
A lot of consideration went into the number kids the Elliotts brought into their home. "I realize that you should know your limits. Some people can only take one. Before I had these children adopted and then when Rachel and my other little boy came open for adoption, I really thought about that."
Foster and adoptive parents who spoke with 6 News Wednesday said if parents are doing their jobs, they can't pocket any of the money because if won't cover all the needs of the children.
Parenting difficulties such as this eventually prompted Karen and her husband, Timothy, to make a tough decision nearly 18 months ago - they would send Erin, who has special mental needs, from their Michigan home to live with Tom and Debra Schmitz in Tennessee.
Now age 9, Erin was one of the 18 children the Tennessee Department of Children Services removed from the Schmitz home in June because of possible abuse. The case, however, hasn't swayed Karen Tolin's belief that Tom and Debra Schmitz are good parents. She plans to be in a Gibson County courtroom Thursday to support the couple's effort to visit the children.
''It's so sad,'' Tolin said in a phone interview from her Michigan home. ''My heart just goes out to Tom and Deb. Sooner or later, the truth is going to come out.''
In Tennessee, the couple is accused of beating children, locking them in a metal cage and forcing them to spend hours in a dark cellar. They also are accused of forcing children to dig their own graves and telling them they could be killed and buried in the back yard and no one would care.
Abuse allegations also were lodged against the couple in November 2000 when they lived in Wisconsin. An extensive investigation, however, ended with no charges being filed. Tolin believes those accusations were from ''disgruntled family members who got mad.''
It was just several months earlier in 2000 that the Schmitzes received a Family of Distinction Award from the Green Bay-De Pere YWCA in March 2000 for their parenting skills. And it is during this Wisconsin period when the Tolins and Schmitzes strengthened a friendship.
Tolin recently spoke by phone with The Jackson Sun from her Michigan home. She also corresponded by e-mail.
She is disturbed by the misdemeanor criminal charges against the couple in Tennessee and said some of the alleged abuses are simply parenting techniques required for children with special needs.
Tolin said she has been summoned to appear for a juvenile court hearing on Thursday to determine whether the Schmitzes neglected children in their home. She believes she will also be called as a defense witness in the criminal case against the Schmitzes and has written letters on the Schmitzes' behalf to The Jackson Sun, the Tennessee DCS and Gov. Phil Bredesen.
Tolin, however, wants her daughter back.
She and her husband have hired an attorney to assist them. They want Erin back along with her belongings seized by police, including her legal papers, Social Security card and Michigan Medicaid card.
''She's not going to grow up in the system in Tennessee,'' Karen Tolin said.
Friendship forms from similar situations
Like the Schmitzes, the Tolins also have a large family of 10 children, some of whom were adopted. They have information about their family at www.s-tolin.net.
The Tolins adopted Erin in 1999. The girl has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and cognitive delays, Tolin said. The girl's biological mother drank while she was pregnant with her, she added.
The Tolins eventually decided to ''disrupt'' the adoption, or terminate their parental rights to Erin, because of the difficulties they had parenting her. But the Tolins didn't want her in ''the state system,'' or state custody, she said.
The Tolins had known the Schmitzes for five years and decided to place Erin with them because they ''had the resources and supports to meet her needs,'' Karen Tolin said.
She and Debra Schmitz became friends through a Wisconsin organization called Acres of Hope, where the two served as volunteer consultants. The group helps match children with families wanting to adopt, Tolin said. She and Debra were volunteer consultants because they were adoptive parents, she added. Their task was to provide information and support to families adopting children.
Tolin said Erin was improving with the Schmitzes. The girl hadn't been able to write her name on a straight line and was afraid of water, she said. In the time she'd spent with the Schmitzes, Erin had written a book and could ''swim like a fish,'' Tolin added.
Erin was placed in respite care in the Schmitzes' home in the Trenton area, and the couple had guardianship of her. Tolin said the Schmitzes had all the proper paperwork they needed to have her daughter.
The Schmitzes intended to adopt Erin but hadn't filed the necessary consent-to-adopt form that Tolin said she had taken to them in March of this year. Tolin got the form from the private agency through which they'd adopted Erin. The form would have terminated the Tolins' parental rights.
Tolin said she has spent time in the Schmitz home on two different trips in August 2003 and March of this year to visit her daughter. She has also appeared for juvenile court hearings with the couple. At a hearing on July 27, she carried a Barney stuffed animal with a yellow ribbon tied around its neck. The yellow ribbons are to show support for the children ''because the children are the ones who are paying big time,'' Tolin said in the phone interview.
''It would help if they allowed her (Debra) to see some of the other children,'' said Tolin, who added that Debra has lost a lot of weight because of the case. ''They're only letting her see her biological son.''
At the July 27 hearing, Juvenile Court Judge Robert Newell handled the Schmitzes' request to see their children with a ruling that the couple could visit them if they could work out an agreement with DCS and guardians representing each of the children.
Tolin referred to the nurses who have accused the Schmitzes of child abuse and neglect as ''disgruntled employees'' who were jealous of Tom and Debra and wanted some of their children.
Some of the children the DCS removed from the Schmitzes have been placed with both nurses.
''Instead of going in with a gun and bullets, they went in with the CPS,'' Child Protective Services, Tolin said of the nurses. Child Protective Services is a branch of the DCS that investigates child abuse and neglect claims.
Both nurses, Sherry Dvorak and Brenda Filkel, said Tolin doesn't know them well enough to make the comments she's made about them. Tolin has met Dvorak only once and Filkel over two or three nights while visiting the Schmitzes, the nurses said.
''Tom and Debra have nothing that I want nor that Brenda wants,'' Dvorak said. ''I was not disgruntled at all. When I was there, I did a good job. Tom and Debra weren't my employers. I worked for Care All'' in Martin.
She did not report the Schmitzes either, Dvorak said. Two of the children came to her for help and she pointed them in the right direction to get that help, Dvorak added.
''The state of Tennessee removed these kids,'' Dvorak said. ''I didn't.''
Filkel also said she was not a disgruntled employee.
''I'm not going to get into a political mudslinging contest with the Schmitzes or any of their kind,'' Filkel said of Tolin. ''I can't judge her, and I don't think she has the right to judge me and Sherry.
''I think when people see what comes out in court, everybody's going to know the truth,'' Filkel said. ''This is not about me or Sherry. This is about the children.''
'It's not a money thing'
The DCS has said that nine of the children taken from the Schmitzes were the couple's legally adopted children; one was a biological son; one was a child the couple was in the process of adopting; and seven were children they did not have legal custody of, meaning the law didn't recognize the Schmitzes as their legal guardians.
Tolin said Debra told her she had the consent-to-adopt forms for those seven children and that they also had not been filed with a court. The child the couple was in the process of adopting was from New York, Tolin said.
The Schmitzes already had the order-of-adoption for him, Tolin added. All that was needed was a trip to New York to finalize the adoption, she said.
Nevertheless, the Tolins are still Erin's adoptive parents.
They now want her back because of changes within the Tolin family that would allow them to ''meet her needs,'' Karen Tolin said. For instance, her husband has retired and can now help with Erin, and the child whose feeding tube Erin was taking no longer requires one, Tolin said. They now also have other resources for her mental health issues.
Tolin said the Schmitzes were not paid to care for Erin while she was in their home. Instead, the Tolins sent only supplies their daughter needed.
''It's not a money thing,'' Karen Tolin said of their arrangement with the Schmitzes. ''We don't do this for the money. We do this because we feel God sent these children to us, and we do it on what we have.
''People think we get rich doing what we do,'' she said. ''It's a misconception - always has been, always will be.''
In a letter Tolin sent to The Jackson Sun, the DCS and Gov. Phil Bredesen, she stated that for those not aware of disorders like those that Erin has, ''there is much information available, from doctors that specialize and other parents parenting these children, on how challenging these children are and NOT just anybody can parent them.''
She believed the Schmitzes were equipped to help Erin.
''I am fully aware that this is a 'larger than typical' family BUT also know their children have always had the best and ultimate of care and unconditional love,'' she wrote.
Normal parenting techniques don't work with certain special needs children, Tolin said. Her daughter was one of the children allegedly locked in a ''cage'' by the Schmitzes, but this ''cage'' is actually a metal hospital bed with a lid on it that does not lock, she said. The hospital bed and the cold showers that have been called abuse are parenting techniques required for certain special needs children, Tolin said. The techniques are ''geared for the individual diagnosis'' and have been ''proven effective,'' she added.
The doctors ordered the cold showers for children when they are raging to help them ''regroup,'' she said. Or they may need to go into the hospital bed to regroup, she added.
The two techniques are basically for children with Reactive Attachment Disorder, she said.
Many of the children taken from the Schmitzes home had been diagnosed with RAD, but a DCS spokeswoman has said all the children are being re-evaluated to determine if they truly have that and other diagnosed special needs.
''They have no impulse control,'' Tolin said of children with RAD. ''You've got to have a way to help them regroup. When a child is in a rage, they can't even stop themselves.''
The techniques may look bad to an outsider but are no different than sending a child to its room for a time out, she said.
There is support for Tolin's claim.
Helen Roberts, a therapist with Renaissance Trauma and Recovery Center, told the Green Bay Press Gazette that children with RAD don't have normal coping skills or internal controls and have to be disciplined more strictly than children of normal development.
The center Roberts works with in Green Bay, Wis., treats children with RAD.
Still, opponents such as Larry Sarner of Loveland, Colo., believe therapy used to treat what he calls an ''almost imaginary disease'' amounts to child abuse, according to the Press Gazette. His Advocates for Children in Therapy group monitors child abuse cases for signs of RAD and attachment therapy treatment.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - When Jerry Regier was hired to head up Florida's child welfare agency two years ago, the Department of Children & Families was under a cloud.
A child who was supposed to be under the agency's watch had been missing for more than a year before the agency noticed, and agency chief Kathleen Kearney was virtually under siege.
But it wasn't just that immediate case that had the agency on the heels: Regier was given the task of fixing a system that had been the subject of more than 10 special committees and five grand juries over the years, all trying to figure out how a bureaucracy can best care for kids whose families seemingly can't or won't.
Just two years later Regier, too, is leaving, claiming to have been successful in a number of ways at improving how the agency cares for children, but being slammed by questions about how he dealt with contracting out some of what DCF does.
The reasons are different - Regier wasn't blamed for directly failing any particular child - but the departure is a familiar scene.
"Fundamentally, I think it's a very difficult job," said David Lawrence, the chairman of the most recent blue ribbon panel to look at the agency's shortcomings.
Part of the reason it is difficult is obvious: failure can be counted in the deaths and injuries of children. And they will never all be prevented.
But it's also difficult because there isn't a clear consensus of what the agency would have to do to be considered successful.
Some child welfare experts, advocates, and politicians measure success in cases investigated, children removed from homes, perhaps what may have been tragedies avoided.
Others say that's the opposite of how it should be gauged - that making natural families safe and thereby avoiding abuse is the most important thing.
Regier and Gov. Jeb Bush, who hired him, pointed to measures where all children are better off: DCF pay has risen, the backlog of investigations was shortened, the number of adoptions increased.
But others who have watched the department had a mixed assessment.
Lawrence said the department had made improvements in short term problems that needed immediate fixing. But Regier wasn't successful at winning a bigger budget to better compensate front line workers, he said.
"It is still a significantly underfunded area," Lawrence said. "What kind of quality are we paying for?"
One big difference between Regier's DCF and the agency under previous chiefs is the Bush administration's emphasis on privatizing much of its frontline work to community-based agencies - a goal Regier embraced.
Ultimately, that's what brought him under fire. Rather than foul-ups in cases involving particular children, Regier came under scrutiny for being too close to contractors seeking to do business with his agency. In a sense, auditors found, he did the public's work, but operated under rules more like those in the private sector.
A shift to a privatized model added another difficulty.
"A lot of (DCF's) responsibilities are being delegated to private agencies," said Bernard Perlmutter, director of the Children & Youth Law Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law. And that can create a lack of accountability. Yet, when there's a mistake, the secretary must answer.
"They really are a contract management agency ... but a lot is still on the line," Perlmutter said.
Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform and an advocate of keeping children with their family as much as possible, said that simply increasing adoptions of children removed from homes was the wrong approach.
He said the state needs to do more to fix the causes of abuse and neglect - generally, poverty. It's cheaper to help families find jobs and buy food for children than to take their kids and put them in foster care, he argues.
"Then you have room in good foster homes for children in real danger and your workers have more time to find the children in real danger," Wexler said.
Bush said shortly after appointing Regier that keeping families together would be a bigger priority. But Wexler said Regier wasn't successful at moving Florida away from a model of taking too many children out of their family.
The Lawrence committee looked at the case of Rilya Wilson, whose disappearance in Miami led to Kearney's resignation. The committee noted that deeper societal problems made the DCF job difficult - problems reasonable people have disagreed on for years on how to combat.
"Drug abuse. Deep poverty. Homelessness. ... Lack of timely medical care or mental health services," all were partly to blame for Wilson's tragic case, the panel said in its final report.
And some of those problems may always vex society. Bush lamented last year that there's no way in a free society to eliminate child abuse.
"We can't be ever-present in every case (where) there are these sad, sad deaths or when harm is done," Bush said. "And there should never be an expectation of perfection."
ROANE COUNTY (WATE) -- Officials with the state Department of Children's Services (DCS) say they recently took nine children from a Rockwood couple after allegations of physical abuse surfaced.
Robert and Nora Ramsey have seven adopted children and two foster children.
DCS officials say they first heard about the possible abuse on August 4th when they went to investigate claims that an adopted adult sister was hurting the kids.
DCS put a safety plan in place to keep the sister away from the children during its investigation.
Then on August 20th, DCS heard the mother may have been hurting the kids.
All of the children were removed from the home that day and placed in state custody.
Tennessee state child services authorities investigating child abuse allegations against a former Green Bay-area couple are probing whether children in their care were wrongly diagnosed or over-medicated.
Some of the children formerly in the care of Thomas and Debra Schmitz had been diagnosed with emotional disorders but may not have been properly assessed, an official recently told The Jackson Sun.
Additionally, a private-duty nurse for the Schmitzes has claimed that foster parents of some of the children are discovering the children don't need some of the medications they had been taking.
Earlier this summer the Department of Children Services removed 18 children - many of them believed to have special medical or emotional needs - from the Schmitz' Gibson County home following allegations of physical and mental abuse.
The couple, who moved to Tennessee from Howard a few years ago, are accused of beating children, locking them in a metal cage and forcing them to spend hours in a dark cellar. They also are accused of forcing children to dig their own graves and telling them they could be killed and buried in the back yard and no one would care.
District Attorney General Garry Brown, upon hearing the medication allegation, said the claim will be investigated before it is presented to a grand jury. If the allegations are true, such actions "could possibly amount to an act of abuse or neglect," he said.
A judge at their preliminary hearing recently reduced two of the child-abuse charges against the Schmitzes from felonies to misdemeanors and dismissed one felony count of child abuse against each of the Schmitzes. That charge stemmed from an accusation they held down a 14-year-old girl and lanced a boil beneath her arm with a rusty box cutter.
The judge sent the remaining charges - all misdemeanors - to a grand jury for its review Sept. 27. Those charges are based on the grave-digging accusation and others alleging Debra Schmitz, 44, threw a butter knife at a girl striking her in the shoulder and cut her long hair to within 3 inches because she would not reveal the name of a boy who'd sent her a note.
The Schmitzes also have a neglect case pending in juvenile court, where they're accused of neglecting their children. The couple will return to juvenile court Thursday for a hearing on that matter.
Unnecessary prescriptions?
Sherry Dvorak, one of the nurses who has accused the Schmitzes of abuse and neglect and now a foster parent to four children taken from the Schmitz home, recently reported that some of the children removed from the Schmitz home are being weaned from some medications.
Dvorak said two of the foster moms caring for the Schmitzes' children told her that they're not having to give the children "as much medicine, if any." Dvorak has talked to these foster parents during recent get-togethers but said she didn't know the parents' names.
One example was of a 6-year-old girl who was diagnosed with "failure to thrive" and was being fed at night through a tube in the Schmitzes' home, Dvorak said. The child is now eating three meals a day with the family, without the aid of a feeding tube and is gaining weight, she added.
As for the children in her custody, Dvorak said she is "not having the behavioral problems that I was told by Debra that she was having with them."
Michael Robbins, Debra Schmitz' attorney, countered Dvorak's claim by noting it's not unusual for one doctor to make a diagnosis and for a second doctor to make a different one.
"Does that mean the first doctor was part of a scam?" he asked. "You get disagreements among professionals all the time. I don't think you can get wealthy caring for special needs kids and relying on government funds for that."
What DCS has found
A majority of the children taken from the Schmitz home had been diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, said Department of Children Services spokeswoman Carla Aaron. One was on a feeding tube and at least one required a wheelchair.
The Web site Adoption.com defines reactive attachment disorder as a disorder "characterized by the inability of a child or infant to establish age-appropriate social contact and relationships with others. Symptoms of the disorder may include a failure to thrive, developmental delays, a refusal to make eye contact, feeding difficulties."
"We have had all the children evaluated at Le Bonheur (Children's Hospital in Memphis) to determine if they truly are special needs and, if so, what are their special needs, and all that will be presented in the court case," Aaron said. "I'm sure it will be presented in the criminal case. It's definitely information needed in the juvenile court case."
Aaron noted that independent physical and mental evaluations are done on all children that come into state custody. But she noted that reactive attachment disorder is a diagnosis that is "widely thrown out there - Research shows that a lot of these kids that have been diagnosed with that really don't have it. It's a possibility that these children (in the Schmitz case) weren't properly assessed, so we wanted to get an independent diagnosis."
Aaron would not comment on whether Department of Children's Services officials believed that the Schmitzes did anything illegal regarding any medication given the children.
"That’s up to the district attorney to decide if any criminal law has been broken," Aaron said.
Chris Brown has been told to keep his mouth shut.
By Dave Ranney, Journal-World
Monday, August 30, 2004
"The judge issued a gag order. I respect that," he said. "But when they take your kids from you, what are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to fight back?"
Almost two years ago, Brown's twin boys were put in foster care after an emergency room doctor discovered one of the boys had three broken ribs, a perforated liver and a slight concussion. At the time, the twins were barely a month old.
Social workers think Brown, 21, abused the boy. They want him to confess.
But Brown insists he and his wife, Michelle, had nothing to do with the boy's injuries. Both, he said, have passed polygraph tests, psychological evaluations and in-home evaluations.
And Brown, who lives in Paxico and supervises a custodial crew at the nearby Jeffrey Energy Center, said he won't confess to something he didn't do.
"There's nothing fair or right about this," he said last week. "It's all wrong."
Because of the gag order, Brown's comments could prompt his arrest and jail time.
"I don't want to go to jail," he said. "But this is the only way I can have a say. When we're in court, we don't get to say anything. We have to just sit there.
"I see this as the last possible thing I can do for my kids."
Not unusual
Brown's plight is not unusual. Each year, hundreds of Kansas parents find themselves in busy courtrooms, caught in the legal and moral struggles that come with balancing parents' rights against society's need to protect children.
"This could happen to anybody," said Camie Russell, an advocate for parents of children in foster care. "I've seen it many, many times."
Routinely, Russell said, parents are pressed to admit they abused their children so social workers can put together a safety plan that, if followed, would give the court the assurances it needs to let a child return home.
"That's fine. I don't have a problem with that," she said. "But here you're asking a parent to admit to something he swears he didn't do -- a parent who's willing to go to jail rather than do that, a parent who could just as easily go 'Yeah, sure, whatever,' get the kids back and be done with it.
"Doesn't that tell you that maybe he's telling the truth? That maybe they really don't know what happened?" said Russell, who lives in Chanute. "People would be horrified if they knew how often this goes on."
Balancing act
But it's also true, said Tom McDonald, a social welfare professor at Kansas University, that a judge shouldn't return a child to a home he's not sure is safe.
"Those two things -- safety of the child and keeping families together -- are in dynamic tension," McDonald said. "The entire system has struggled with this and continues to struggle with this. It all comes down to a balancing act."
In the Browns' case, Shawnee County District Judge Dan Mitchell ruled in June that returning the twins to their parents was "not viable." A hearing on whether to sever the Browns' parental rights is set for Jan. 13.
Citing confidentiality concerns, Mitchell last week declined comment on the Browns' case. "If I could, I would," he said. "But I can't."
But Brown said Mitchell indicated in court the ruling was based on the recommendation of a multidisciplinary team he'd convened to review the case.
"It turns out we don't have the right to question the multidisciplinary team," Brown said. "We don't get to face our accuser."
His past
One of the members, Brown said, let it be known Brown had been caught making methamphetamine.
"That wasn't me," he said. "That was another Chris Brown. I have a common name."
Another time, Brown said, he was accused of having a violent criminal record.
"That Chris Brown was black. I'm white," he said. "If they had asked me, I would have told them that wasn't me. But they don't ask."
Brown's past is not concern-free. He admits getting in fights in elementary and junior high school, getting caught with beer in the trunk of his car while a teenager and not having much good to say about his mother.
Brown's driver's license is suspended due to a slew of unpaid traffic tickets.
If he hired a lawyer, he could get his license reinstated. But that, he said, would take money and he's not about to spend that kind of money on himself. He'd rather spend it on the children.
"My kids are the most important thing in the world to me," Brown said. "I don't have a dime to spend on anything but them."
'We don't get to'
Brown said the team has said the boy's being dropped from a crib could not have caused his injuries. And in one of the X-rays, he said, it looked like one of the boy's ribs may have been cracked before, an indication of previous abuse.
"That's according to their expert. That's what he says," Brown said. "But we don't get to call an expert because we'd have to pay him. We don't have that kind of money."
Michelle Brown and the Browns' attorney, Rene Netherton of Topeka, declined to be interviewed. Both cited the gag order.
Brown said he and Michelle had spent more than $10,000 -- most of it borrowed from Michelle's grandparents -- on psychological evaluations, a lie-detector test and Netherton's services.
Netherton, he said, is no longer charging them her full fee. "She's cut it in half," he said. "It's $75 an hour instead of $150."
Well-known in child welfare circles, Netherton filed the 1989 lawsuit that forced a major overhaul of the state's child welfare system.
What happened
In interviews before the gag order, the Browns told the Journal-World that on Dec. 11, 2002, they were asleep in their bedroom. About 3 a.m., Chris Brown was awakened by one of the twins crying.
When he went to the babies' room, he noticed the bathroom light was on.
"That was weird," he said. "I knew we'd turned it off when we went to bed."
Entering the two-crib nursery, he said he found his 3-year-old stepson -- Michelle's son from a previous marriage -- trying to give the crying infant his pacifier.
The twin, no longer in his crib, was lying on the floor.
Brown said his wife put the 3-year-old to bed while he calmed the infant.
"In five minutes he was back asleep," he said. "That was it." The second twin slept through the crying.
Three hours later, Michelle Brown got up to attend to the twins. While feeding one of the boys, she noticed his chest was making "a popping sound." She called the doctor's office and was told to take the baby to an emergency room.
Brown said he and Michelle think the 3-year-old boy climbed into the twin's crib and dropped the infant to the floor -- a drop of about 40 inches. It's also possible, they say, the boy then fell on the twin after climbing out of the crib.
Later that day, police searched the couple's three-bedroom apartment. The officers noted a small stool at the foot of the injured twin's crib; it was the stool the 3-year-old used to reach the sink in the bathroom.
"We think he got up to go to the bathroom -- that's why the bathroom light was on -- and then he went in to play with the babies because we weren't there to tell him no," Brown said.
The police report also says officers found no evidence indicating drug use, alcohol abuse, pornography or firearms.
Fears for future
Now, the twins have been in foster care for 22 months. Most of the time, they have been with Michelle's parents in Silver Lake.
The injured boy has since recovered. Michelle's other son lives with her ex-husband and ex-mother-in-law.
The Browns are free to visit the twins as long as at least one of Michelle's parents is present. They are not allowed to spend the night.
"It's good that they're there, but it's not the same as having them home," Brown said. "We don't get to see the kids on our schedule, we get to see them on the grandparents' schedule. We can't take them anywhere. It's not like they're your kids, it's like they're your nieces or nephews."
If the Browns' parental rights are severed, Michelle's parents are willing and ready to adopt the twins.
But Brown said he fears Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services workers will instead move the twins to another foster home, cutting off his and Michelle's access.
"They could do that," he said. "They've got it in their heads that I'm some kind of angry, violent person. I can see them doing that."
Thomas and Debra Schmitz had 18 children, many with special needs. The state of Tennessee wonders how the former Green Bay-area residents got them all. The Internet and "child swapping" are suspected.
Melanie Schmitz doesn't remember where she and her family were in Illinois that day, only that she was at a truck stop.
Her entire family - her parents, Thomas and Debra Schmitz, and about a dozen children - had piled into the family's motor home to make the trip from Howard. Melanie was 16 years old; the trip came about a year before the family moved to Tennessee without her.
She hasn't forgotten why they went: to pick up a boy, about 6 or 7 years old, so he could join their family.
"It was kind of a secretive thing," said Melanie, now 20.
Two months ago, Thomas and Debra Schmitz were arrested on child abuse charges at their home near Trenton, Tenn., by the Gibson County Sheriff's Department. The children in the Schmitzes' care, now numbering 18, were placed in foster homes. The couple now waits to see if a grand jury will hand down an indictment next month on the child abuse charges. They also face a dependent neglect charge in juvenile court.
On Nov. 29, 2000, Melanie accused her parents, then of Howard, of child abuse in Brown County. That resulted in an extensive investigation by child services officials. No charges were filed.
Since leaving Wisconsin with 10 children three years ago for Gibson County, the family has grown by eight. Many of the 18 children are characterized as special-needs, with various physical and emotional problems, and thus qualify for federal subsidies to help pay for their care.
As they await the grand jury date, questions remain.
Why is the family so large and where did all the children come from?
Does the state track such children, their families and their movements?
Is it legal?
When the Tennessee Department of Children's Services removed the children from the couple's home, it immediately tried to determine how the Schmitzes got the children. As recently as three weeks ago, the agency had concerns about eight of the children. Now, the agency has determined the rightful parents or custodians for all 18. The breakdown of what the agency found:
- Nine of the children have been legally adopted.
- One is the Schmitzes' biological son.
- Seven of the children do not legally belong to the Schmitzes. An eighth child, in the process of being adopted, also does not belong legally to the Schmitzes. These eight children were in the Schmitzes' home through some type of private arrangement with parents or custodians, agency spokeswoman Carla Aaron said, and that is where many of the questions rest.
The children are from Florida, Wisconsin, New York, Tennessee, Michigan, Louisiana and Texas.
Respite or permanent?
The agency has said that the Schmitzes consider the eight private-arrangement children as respite-care cases, in which a child lives in another home for "a short period of time" for reasons that might include a foster mom who is sick or a death in the family.
"It's a very short amount of time," Aaron said. "It certainly wouldn't go on for months and months and months."
But significant concerns regarding the Schmitzes and respite care remain:
- The boy Melanie Schmitz remembers at the truck stop was a respite child. However, the Schmitzes picked up that child four years ago. The child is still with the family, according to documents obtained by The Jackson Sun.
- According to Gibson County law enforcement, the Schmitzes sent a child to live with another large Gibson County family, the Matthewses. The Matthewses decided they no longer wanted the child, and the Schmitzes subsequently sent the girl to Arizona, where she now lives with another family. Recently, the agency removed 16 children from the Matthewses' home on child abuse concerns, although no criminal charges have been filed.
Last week, a Gibson County judge upheld the agency's action. The Matthewses will have a full hearing on their dependent neglect case in October.
- A Louisiana woman sent her adopted child to the Schmitzes as a respite-care child. She later decided to let the Schmitzes adopt the girl, though they have yet to adopt her, according to court testimony.
The agency's Aaron could not comment on specific private arrangements.
"The Schmitz family referred to them (the eight private arrangements) as respite," Aaron said. "If the Schmitzes call it respite, that would be one thing, but it does not fit the definition that we'd call respite."
Agency policy gives foster parents in Tennessee up to 31 days a year for respite, though there are exceptions for medically fragile foster homes and other unique situations. The number of days a family gets for respite also may vary from state to state.
When the state is involved with the children, the agency requires licensing for people providing respite. But licensing is not required for a private arrangement between two adults that involves their own children - adopted or biological.
"If two adults enter into an agreement, that's between them," agency spokeswoman Andrea Turner said. "We don't have oversight as far as that's concerned."
The agency also has no oversight over a family that moves into Tennessee with a large number of children not in state custody.
"We might not have any oversight, but that wouldn't preclude us from having concerns about it," Turner said.
A person cannot move a child who is in state custody, in any state, to another state without contacting what is called the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, said Mickey Johnson, program director for West Tennessee Stepping Stones in Memphis. Stepping Stones is an agency that contracts with the Department of Children's Services to place children in state custody.
"What ICPC is all about is home studies," said Marty Nodurfth, Arkansas' Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children Administrator. "We do a home study to identify if the home will be safe for the child to go into."
Those home studies are done by a certified social worker and involve factors such as verification of income and a criminal background check, Nodurfth said.
The only situation that does not require Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children notification involves the transfer of children across state lines by a parent, close relative or legal custodian to be placed with another close relative, according to Nodurfth.
The parent, close relative or legal custodian may also place the child with what the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children refers to as a "nonagency guardian." But in that situation, the non-agency guardian must go through the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children to do a home study and be identified by a court as a non-agency guardian before receving a child from another state.
Agency workers are not the only ones concerned about how the Schmitzes grew their family.
"I don't know if it's legal or not," Gibson County Sheriff Joe Shepard said of the private arrangements that are suspect. "But if it is legal, it ought not to be."
State Rep. Chris Crider, R-Milan, said problems with large families in Gibson County, such as the Schmitzes and the Matthewses, are new, and state officials are still trying to learn as much as they can about them.
Mildred Lawhorn is a regional administrator for the agency office in Jackson. She said that while Tennessee handles roughly 1,000 adoptions each year, the agency does not track the number of private adoptions.
Lawhorn also said the agency limits the number of special-needs children it would place in a home to three nonbiological children. The regional administrators can issue waivers to that limit, Lawhorn said, although she didn't believe the state would ever place as many special-needs children as the Schmitzes had in one home.
Law enforcement documents show allegations of abuse by the Schmitzes, such as beating children, locking them in a metal cage and forcing them to spend hours in a dark cellar. They're also accused of forcing children to dig their own graves and telling them they could be killed and buried in the back yard and no one would care.
Earlier this month, a general sessions court judge reduced two of the child abuse charges from felonies to misdemeanors. The judge also dismissed one felony count against each of the Schmitzes regarding an accusation they held down a 14-year-old girl and lanced a boil beneath her arm with a rusty box cutter. The remaining charges have been sent to the grand jury.
Those charges stem from the grave-digging accusation and others accusations that Debra Schmitz threw a butter knife at a 14-year-old girl, striking her in the shoulder, and cut the girl's long hair to within 3 inches because she wouldn't tell the name of a boy who'd sent her a note.
Melanie eventually ran away from home at age 17, just before the Schmitzes moved to Tennessee. The Jackson Sun spoke with Melanie and other family members in an interview last month in Wisconsin, weeks after the Gibson County child abuse charges were filed.
The agency's Lawhorn acknowledged that there appears to be a lack of coordination between states regarding adoptions and foster care situations involving special-needs children.
When the Schmitzes were arrested in June, the agency had been working with the family to get them the required licensing for having custody of a child requiring respite care.
Jerry Hewitt, in charge of the agency's licensing unit, said the agency, in an oversight, had placed a child needing respite care in the Schmitz home in January. Hewitt said he drove to the couple's home in March and told them they could not provide respite care for a child in Tennessee state custody because they were not licensed to do so.
Dot-com kids
With numerous special-needs children, the Schmitzes needed home health care nurses. One of those nurses was Brenda Filkel.
According to a search warrant on file in Gibson County General Sessions Court, Filkel told authorities that Debra Schmitz introduced her to an Internet group. Filkel said Debra told her that she - Filkel - could get a child through the Web site in three weeks and would not have to go through the agency, the warrant said.
Filkel is now caring for at least two of the Schmitzes' children taken from their home, according to law enforcement.
Additionally, an adoptive parent who sent her daughter to live with the Schmitzes, Sharon Stepleton of Baton Rouge, La., testified that she learned of the couple through a Web site called "Disrupted Adoptions."
Authorities were given a Web site address that Sheriff Shepard said has been disconnected.
People normally go through the state or private adoption agencies to get foster or adoptive children. They can look on the Internet to see children who are available for adoption through the state and to read information about them, Aaron said. But they can't adopt or get foster children from the state through the Internet.
West Tennessee Stepping Stones has a Web site that allows people to get information about children available for adoption.
According to the warrant in the Gibson County case, Filkel "advised she knew and had observed records of swapped, traded and interchanged children in the home and on the Schmitzes' home computers."
Sheriff Shepard has been looking into some of the questionable private arrangements the Schmitzes had with other families.
"They were swapping (children) between themselves," Shepard said. "I know it's legal to send your child to live with someone else. But when you get it and you start passing it around, something's gone wrong with the system."
Shepard's comment was based on the charge the Schmitzes gave the Matthewses a child, age "11 or 12," who then gave her back to the Schmitzes. The Schmitzes, according to Shepard, then sent her to Arizona to live with another family.
"There's no checking; nobody knows where this child is," Shepard said, referring to officials.
It was apparently through the type of private arrangement questioned by the department of Children's Services and investigated by the Gibson County Sheriff's Department, that the Schmitzes obtained the young boy from the Illinois truck stop. He was one of the 18 children removed from the home.
Debra's attorney, Michael Robbins, said he didn't know anything about Melanie's allegation and that it was difficult for him to comment about it. He said it had nothing to do with the Tennessee case.
Tom Schmitz's attorney, Frank Deslauriers, had no comment.
District Attorney General Garry Brown also had no comment about that allegation, saying it was out of his jurisdiction.
Melanie did not know under what arrangements the Schmitzes took in the child. She believed it was supposed to be temporary.
Defense's explanation
Following the couple's preliminary hearing on Aug. 17, Michael Robbins, Debra's attorney, said that there is no law prohibiting the swapping of children, though he does not like the word "swapping" because it has a negative connotation. He believes authorities are using it to make the Schmitzes look bad.
The Schmitzes were involved from time to time with other people who were the legal parents or guardians of children they sent to the Schmitzes to see if the children would "improve or adjust," Robbins said.
There is a network of families on the Internet who share information about their problems and how they solve them. He suggested authorities might be looking for correspondences between people in their mining of the couple's computers, which were seized after the arrest.
"I'm saying categorically if they did find that, it wouldn't be any violation of any law anywhere," Robbins said.
What might be illegal are arrangements not involving a child's parent or guardian, Robbins added.
But all the children with the Schmitzes were there because their parents or guardians wanted them there.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Alabama welfare officials believe the state will complete a court-ordered upgrade of its child welfare system this fall -- 16 years after a foster child, known by his initials, R.C., sued the state seeking to change the system.
Page Walley, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Human Resources, said all but one of Alabama's 67 counties are now in compliance. He said the final county, Cullman, is scheduled to present evidence next month that it is also in compliance.
The federal courts ordered Alabama to improve its child welfare system as a result of a 1988 lawsuit. An agreement was approved in 1991 that includes setting a maximum caseload for social workers.
Walley said he expects a federal judge to hold a hearing later this year to review the case.
Attorney James Tucker, who represents foster children, said he's concerned the state may not be able to sustain the improvements it has made. He said the state has yet to prove that it can keep child welfare systems in all 67 counties operating properly.
However, Walley said a system would be in place to monitor each county.
CANONCITO, N.M. (AP) - A Canoncito couple wants the records on a standoff and suicide at a foster home where their children were placed.
Nadine and Jeffrey Mondragon filed a petition in state district court this week for the records.
The state Children, Youth and Families Department accused the couple of abuse on October 14 and took custody of the five children ranging from 7 to 14 years old.
Three days later, the agency placed the children in the foster home of Francine Crespin of Las Vegas.
Later that day, an officer arrived at the house on a domestic-disturbance call. He was met by Crespin and the five children running out of the house.
Crespin's former boyfriend barricaded himself and then committed suicide.
The children were returned to their parents and CYFD determined the complaint that led to their removal was unsubstantiated.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - The death of a 2-year-old Springfield child in foster care has prompted another lawsuit, this one by the boy's biological mother.
Stephanie Ford's federal lawsuit, filed this month claims that social workers Alysha Friend, Kristy Hardy and Charlene Valade used poor judgment by leaving her son, Dominic James, in a foster home where he suffered fatal abuse.
Dominic died in August 2002, shortly after he was returned to his foster father from a Springfield hospital. Officials believe he died after being severely shaken. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
His former foster father, John W. Dilley Jr. of Willard, was convicted of assault and child abuse resulting in a death. He is now serving a 15-year prison sentence.
The three social workers who are already defendants in a separate action filed by Dominic's biological father, Sidney James.
Sidney James has also gone to state court, filing suit this month against Cox South hospital, where Dominic was treated.
Scott Holste, a spokesman for Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, said he had not seen the petition and could not comment on it.
However, in responses filed last year to Sidney James' lawsuit, Nixon's office denied that the three social workers were liable for Dominic's death.
Ford's attorney, Stephen M. Ryals of St. Louis, said her case was not inspired by Sidney James' lawsuits, which were filed by Kansas City attorneys.
Friend was Dominic's assigned caseworker and Hardy was Friend's supervisor. Valade is an inspector for the hot line operated by the state Department of Family services.
The lawsuit claims Valade did not properly follow up on a call from the Willard Fire Department, reporting bruises on Dominic's back. It also claims that after telling Ford that Dominic would not be returned to the Dilley home, Friend and Hardy later met and decided not to remove him.
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