Fight CPS And Win
Fighting Child Protective Services
False Accusations
by Linda Jo Martin
On May 12, 2001, Michael McGuckin died. On May 29, his bereaved widow was arrested on felony child abuse charges (that were later proven false.) What the children did next will go down in history.
When the six minor children of JoAnn McGuckin took up arms to protect themselves from Idaho's government child-savers on May 29, 2001, they brought massive media attention to the ongoing persecution of homeschooling families in our country. Americans who rely on a "free" public education, costing the taxpayers $300 billion annually, have been conditioned to think of themselves as incompetent educators in comparison to teachers trained in our nation's colleges. When a growing number of young Americans reclaimed their rights to educate their children at home and on their own, many observers began to be suspicious, offended by this independence and parental control of children.
These days it is in vogue to judge the parenting practices of others harshly. Every parent is a possible child abuse or neglect suspect, and every citizen is called upon to serve as a government watchdog looking for any little flaw to report, anonymously, of course. Homeschooling families look quite suspicious to many Americans because the children are kept away from schools where teachers closely observe children for the government each day. Though homeschooling is legal in every state of this country, and though the U.S. Supreme Court has stated in case law that parents have the right to make educational decisions for their children (a right constitutionally protected by the 14th Amendment's liberty clause) still homeschoolers are held under the microscope of intense scrutiny and suspicion by those who persist in thinking there is something wrong with it.
This past spring, Shanda Wagner, a caseworker employed by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, approached Erina, the 19-year-old daughter of Michael and JoAnn McGuckin, who had moved out of the family home after arguing with her mother. Grieving her father's recent death, this teenager aired complaints and perceptions about her childhood, giving Wagner hearsay evidence of the type that forms the basis of many child welfare cases. Caseworkers are adept at drawing out the kind of negative statements they need in order to take a case to court. She and other government agents then closed in on the McGuckin family.
Early news accounts on the four-day siege of the McGuckin children held that they were isolated on a remote property, totally cut off from society by their mother's decision to homeschool. They were said to be terribly malnourished, uneducated, and neglected. Yet when they were finally examined a few days later at Bonner General Hospital in Sandpoint, the nursing supervisor stated "The children are in good condition without any injuries." Charges of felony child neglect were reduced to a misdemeanor after Dr. Thomas Lawrence, the children's doctor, testified in court that he had no evidence that they were malnourished.
At first a story had been circulated to the media that the impoverished McGuckin children were forced to survive on lake water and lily pad soup, yet it was apparent before long that they had other food sources as well. One homeschooling mother said, "Children who are resourceful enough to create their own dinner from wild edible foods should be praised and encouraged, not pitied. It sounds like a good homeschooling project - both natural science and home economics!"
JoAnn McGuckin was harshly criticized for being unwilling to accept a handout from the local Catholic priest and others who claimed to have been rebuffed when they tried to heap charity upon her, yet at the same time we learned that the sheriff had lured her out of her home by offering to help her get groceries and apply for Social Security benefits. Instead of helping her, he revealed his deceit and imprisoned her, returning to her home with child welfare caseworkers to abduct the children. Later a local food bank employee mentioned they had just dropped off groceries at the McGuckin household a few days before McGuckin's arrest. Obviously the early allegations widely circulated in the media from California to New York were false.
Twisting of facts by government child-savers is quite common in child welfare cases, according to parents who claim to have been unjustly targeted for family interventions. What is unusual was that this time it was printed clearly in the media, for all to see. News writers ended up looking foolish for having used false allegations in their stories, representing them as true. When JoAnn McGuckin went to court at the end of July, she told the media, "We will quibble with some of the information and some of the sources of information... I've seen a lot of stuff that's nothing but lies, and that I'll go after."
Bonner County Prosecutor Phil Robinson successfully petitioned the local court to make the homeschooling McGuckin children wards of the court, saying that they had lived "too many years with this isolation," a common complaint against homeschooling families. Opponents of home education protest that homeschoolers are backwards, isolated, and lacking in socialization opportunities. Homeschoolers however state that their children receive better quality socialization by mixing in the community under natural circumstances with people of a variety of ages. This is perceived as being better than school socialization where children are closed into an age-segregated environment for six hours daily, imprisoned and isolated from society by laws and fences, and forced to bear the unwanted company of people with whom they have little in common. This forced socialization with people they wouldn't normally want to be around includes bullies whose disturbing antics are rarely appropriately punished, whose victims are never truly safe.
In an interview a month after her siblings had been placed in state custody, older sister Erina spoke to the media for the first time, telling of her life as a homeschooler. She mentioned taking ballet lessons, playing on a softball team, and participating in 4H activities. We already knew that the McGuckins weren't as totally isolated as the prosecutor and media wanted us to believe, because they had so many family friends standing behind them and offering to take in the children so they wouldn't be separated in foster homes with strangers. These kinds of community connections are common for homeschooling families, and hardly an indication of total isolation or paranoid seclusion. It was only after Michael McGuckin was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis that the family cut back on social activities. Does anyone really think that a woman with a severely ill and dying husband is supposed to be out in the community being a social butterfly? Is it really so odd that she might want some privacy under these circumstances?
A few other charges were cruelly and publicly lodged against JoAnn McGuckin. At first the media told us she was mentally ill, and at least one large newspaper went so far as to indicate she was probably paranoid schizophrenic. The charge apparently stemmed from a conversation sheriff's deputy Bill Tilson had by phone with a state mental health worker in 1997. The media irresponsibly spread this information though there was no medical examination or proof to substantiate it. They should have known that the woman's doctor was probably not the source, since physicians are bound by confidentiality laws.
Despite the lack of proof that she is mentally unstable, JoAnn McGuckin will be forced through the usual child welfare service plan requirements of a psychological evaluation and counseling. These so-called "services" are required as an element of the county's plan to reunify the family in nearly every instance of government intrusion into family life. This one-size-fits-all remedy helps caseworkers gather more questionable evidence to use against parents. Such "services" are funded by Social Security reimbursements. County-chosen service providers usually receive a large portion of their incomes from child welfare cases, and make reports knowing that they must side with the county in order to continue getting referrals.
When the news media realized the mental illness charge was probably unfounded, the main accusation was quickly changed to consumption of alcohol. Alcohol use is perfectly legal in this country, and there are no laws stating how much income one must have in order to be eligible to drink it. Such a law would be discriminatory against the poor, yet the prosecutor and child welfare caseworker used the alcohol accusation in a very vague yet accusatory way to make her look bad, saying she used most of the family's income to buy it. This kind of vague innuendo based on supposedly professional opinions is the substance and filler for many caseworker reports, despite the complete lack of actual laws against alcohol for poverty level parents. Hasn't it occurred to them that maybe a poor mother with a dying husband might want to comfort herself with a drink now and then, and maybe that's okay?
The quality of homeschooling for this family was itself an issue in the case. Lead-accuser Erina reportedly complained that she had helped teach the younger children during the time of her father's illness, yet stated in court that "Dad made sure we were always reading National Geographic and the Wall Street Journal." She stated, "I was never able to learn algebra, but I was able to pass my GED thanks to some tutoring from two ladies at the library." What Erina needs to know is that there are lots of homeschooled children who willingly help their younger siblings learn, and this is not something to complain about. This is nothing unique. Even public schooled teens are sometimes called upon to tutor younger students, and there it is considered an educational activity. There are also plenty of public-schooled children who never learn algebra; not everyone has an aptitude for it. That's life, not a indictment against a parent's teaching ability.
In the end, the judge decided that McGuckin's willingness to isolate her children caused them to be "at risk" and that a crime possibly did occur, but that there was not enough evidence for the state to pursue felony charges. She conceded that "no one is hurt," and that conditions in the home weren't so bad as to cause injury or poor health to the children. Despite this, she ordered the children be kept in a foster home while McGuckin is forced through a "service" plan in her attempts to regain custody of her children. Once again a non-abusive parent was deprived of the joy of being with her children, and the children are deprived of their right to live with their only living parent, though no crime was proven to have occurred. Family rights activists across the nation decry the injustice of these child abductions based on so-called "risk factors" and poverty. For the government child-savers, it is business as usual.
The McGuckin family, though spotlighted in media glare, is far from unique in the persecution they have endured for their homeschooling lifestyle. The main difference is that the children, frightened and terribly distressed, knew enough about the U.S. Constitution to know what the second amendment states, and why.