Fight CPS And Win
Fighting Child Protective Services
False Accusations
Published September 19, 1991
Enterprise News, Pixley, California
Used by permission of the publisher.
by Joseph Sarandos
In a case that is a throw-back to the mid-eighties, a very young, very white and very poor couple from Porterville are being falsely accused by a CPS worker of both physically and sexually assaulting their four-week old son, and the very attractive and adoptable infant has already been placed into a hostage situation with a 25 dollars a day foster mother, instead of with his available, willing and suitable grandparents, who have top priority by law.
This is the second time in his new life that this baby has been forcibly separated from his biological family by CPS, the first incident having been foiled by an honest pediatrician in Fresno, who refused to ambiguously attribute the baby's apparent medical problems to willful abuse by his parents. But CPS does not give up that easily in the cases of potentially adoptables.
Like many other infants who were born with medical problems, this baby had been taken by his caring and concerned parents to a licensed pediatrician because of rectal bleeding, discolored genitals, and curved legs, within days of his being brought home from the hospital of his birth and then, on an almost daily basis, for checks and tests by many doctors, nurses, and technicians.
During the course of his examinations and treatments he had been subjected to thermometers, doctors' fingers, and plastic tubes being inserted into his tiny rectum; one of which objects being the most likely cause of the internal cut which was finally discovered and surgically corrected.
But unlike the honest pediatrician who had foiled CPS's first attempt to permanently take away this baby, another Fresno county-employed doctor was more than willing to cooperate with CPS in blaming the parents and possibly the grandparents for not only the rectal tear but also for the twisted bones of the baby's legs. And on the sole basis of that doctor's speculations and opinions, the baby's young father was arrested and jailed on charges of physical abuse and sexual assault upon his newborn.
And in the absence of the Juvenile Court Judge, the Divorce Court Judge has granted CPS's petition for detainment of the baby. Because we recognize such as the beginnings of a pattern by which many of the babies have been wrongfully taken and adopted out, I and others who serve as State Authorized Representatives of and for such parents and babies are deeply concerned and worried that this case might signal a resurgence or continuation of that unholy pattern in Tulare County, although we pray that we are mistaken.