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 The law that started this, CAPTA, must be repealed.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.
BROOKSVILLE - Lori Allain sat in front of the Hernando County Courthouse.
The last time she was there, it was for a court appearance.
This time she was there to protest.
On Wednesday, she and a dozen other people picketed the Florida Department of Children and Families, saying the state agency was overzealous in breaking up their families.
Allain, 47, of 14327 Hurricane Drive, faces charges of aggravated child abuse and neglect, along with her husband, Arthur "Tommy" Allain, 46.
A court date has not been set.
Lori Allain's attorney, Jim Dysart, said Wednesday morning that a plea deal was offered to Arthur Allain but not to his wife.
"We are far from that," he said.
Both are accused of starving a 10-year-old girl placed in their home by feeding the girl one spoonful of food three times daily. When the girl was found in their home, authorities said she weighed 27 pounds.
Since authorities took the child out of the Allain's home, the girl has gained weight and now weighs more than 60 pounds.
The Allains pleaded innocent to the charges last June.
Lori Allain said she doesn't want anything more to do with the 10-year-old girl and her 14-year-old half brother .
"I don't want her back," Allain said sitting on the courthouse steps. "I don't know where she is. I have no contact with her ...and don't want any contact with her."
She and her husband were arrested June 18 after investigators said the couple starved the 27-pound girl, locking her in her bedroom to keep her half brother from sneaking her food.
Authorities said the girl was given milk and Ensure, a nutritional drink.
The couple maintains the girl had an eating disorder and was unable to keep food down without vomiting.
Soon after the arrest, the courts removed the Allain's four sons amid allegations of sexual abuse.
In October, the four boys were returned to the Allain home, Lori Allain said.
Wednesday's demonstration, she said, was to lend support to other families unfairly affected by DCF rulings.
Allain said she and her husband again have full custody of their sons. DCF officials, she said, visit her home to ensure there is no mistreatment.
The case of the 10-year old was a separate issue from her sons and should not have warranted another investigation, she said.
Others at the demonstration had their own concerns.
Brandey Cremeans, 18, said DCF took her prematurely born twin sons away from her while the two were getting treatment at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg..
Pedro Diaz said he has been fighting with the DCF for three years after his wife, now dead, claimed he abused his two sons.
Diaz continues to fight for the right to have custody of the two boys and is awaiting a hearing to address the abuse charge.
BROOKSVILLE - A small group of protesters gathered outside the Hernando County Courthouse on Wednesday as part of a nationwide protest against child protective services.
"The law needs to get control over the Department of Children and Families," said Lori Allain, who was joined by her sons on the courthouse steps. "They're stepping over the lines."
Allain and her husband, Arthur "Tommy" Allain, were arrested in June. They face charges of abuse and neglect stemming from the treatment of a 10-year-old girl and her half-brother who were removed from their home in May.
Allain said DCF and "false allegations" against her family members resulted in her four sons being removed from her home.
Her sons returned to the Allain home in October.
Brenda Swallow, who helped organize the event, said she wanted to spread the message that she and other families have been victimized by the system.
Swallow was handing out fliers that began, "Set Our Children Free!!!"
Dennis Callaghan, the Hernando County manager for DCF, declined to comment on specific cases involving the protesters and their families.
But he said the department follows the law.
"We have a role to intervene when there's an abuse report," he said. "We do everything possible to ensure child safety and to keep the children with their relatives."
Swallow said the group was planning to gather at several other locations as part of their day of protest.
Tennessee: Bureaucrats want to trash the Fourth Amendment
And people want to know why I'm against CPS! Here's a good example of the sick mentality of "child savers".
We have a great Constitution, but if the CPS agencies continue to trash our Constitutional Rights in their mad rush to "save" all children from their own parents, we no longer have any hope of freedom in this country. What they want is a totalitarian state where we're afraid to answer our own doors for fear of what might happen next. -LJM
By Judith R. Tackett, jtackett@nashvillecitypaper.com
December 03, 2004
The Tennessee Department of Children's Services has set a legislative agenda for the next General Assembly that includes a new law that would allow the agency more leeway in entering homes where child neglect is suspected.
The department is also going to propose a bill to allow permanent guardianship and back a third concerning a cooperative adoption law.
DCS Commissioner Viola Miller said her department has been working closely with the Joint Committee on Children and Youth to develop a multiple response law, which would give DCS options when entering homes.
"Right now the only option we have is to go in to do an investigation," Miller said.
However, Miller estimates that in about 60 percent of cases families do not abuse but neglect their children. These families need help, she said.
A multiple response law would allow DCS to enter a home and evaluate what the needs are "and work with other community agencies involved with that family to help them getting the resources that they need to keep their children safe and their family strong," Miller said.
The permanent guardianship proposal creates an option for relative caregivers who often shy away from terminating parental rights of their relatives, in many cases their own children.
"Right now our relative caregivers don't have any option for permanency except for adoption," Miller said.
The guardianship law is addressed in a recently released report by Fostering Results, a public education and outreach campaign initiated by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Mark Testa, co-director of Fostering Results, said the report made a compelling case to support permanence for children in long-term relative care through federally subsidized legal guardianship.
"There are an estimated 19,250 foster children in the United States who have been in state custody for 17 or more months," Testa said. "They're living stably with kin, and … the courts have determined that reunification and adoption are not options for them."
Testa said the permanent legal guardianship was underutilized by many states because federal child welfare assistance was cut off once a relative takes legal guardianship of a child. Foster care and adoption, on the other hand, receive federal subsidies.
States that use legal guardianship often apply for a federal waiver that would allow them to direct subsidy money to families using legal guardianship.
Miller said she would also like to introduce the cooperative adoption law if not in the upcoming session then definitely the following year.
The law would give birth families the legal right to maintain contact with their children as they grow up. Details such as visitation rights would be determined in each case with the agreement of both the birth and the adoptive families.
"There is plenty of research that indicates to us that the vast majority of adopted children when they reach adulthood want to know where their roots are," Miller said. "And this allows that from the very beginning."
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