By BRIAN WALKER
The Post Falls foster parents arrested on Thursday in connection with the death of a 2-year-old girl they cared for nearly three years ago bonded out of the Kootenai County jail on Friday after their first appearance in court.
Jeremy Clark, 36, and his wife, Amber Clark, 28, were arrested after a grand jury assigned to the case came back with an indictment in the Karina Moore case on Wednesday night.
Both were being held in jail on $25,000 combined bonds on two counts of felony injury to a child, one count of concealing evidence and one count of perjury. The bond amount stayed the same during the first appearance before the couple bonded out of jail late Friday afternoon, according to jail staff.
During their court appearance earlier in the day, Amber sobbed while Jeremy showed little emotion. Several supporters of the Clarks attended their appearance.
The Clarks, represented by the county Public Defender's Office, declined to be interviewed on Friday, per their attorneys. Their attorneys could not be reached for comment.
The arraignment in district court is expected on Thursday. The case is expected to go to trial.
"When I became chief, bringing this to a conclusion was one of my top priorities," Post Falls Police Chief Scot Haug said. "My feeling was that somebody needed to be a voice for Karina. This was a very complex case that took interviewing dozens of medical experts, witnesses and reviewing digital and physical evidence.
"We wanted to make sure we had a good solid case (before making the arrests). We've always had a detective, sometimes two, assigned to the case for the past three years."
Haug and Kootenai County Prosecutor Barry McHugh declined to comment on details surrounding the charges or evidence.
"I can't talk about evidence," Haug said. "That will come out in court."
McHugh added: "They deserve a fair trial."
Haug said another child under the Clarks' care - a boy who was 4 at the time - was allegedly injured in the home between 2007 and 2008.
"The (injury to child) charges indicate physical harm done to the children, but I can't get into the specifics," Haug said.
The Clarks were registered foster parents for two years and had several children in their care, but haven't been registered with the state since the Moore case. They also have kids of their own.
Haug said he believes the Clarks were aware of the ongoing investigation during the past three years. A search warrant was recently served at their home.
Jeremy was arrested without incident at his house, while Amber was arrested at her Hayden workplace.
Haug said the Clarks were not cooperative with police during the investigation, but declined to specify.
The grand jury met on the case from Monday through Wednesday. Haug said it's rare that cases go to a grand jury, which speaks to the complexity of the Moore case. He said police supported McHugh's decision to have a grand jury consider the charges.
Karina's biological mother, Samantha Moore, couldn't be reached for comment on Friday. She earlier said she doesn't believe her daughter's death was an accident.
Haug said Samantha was pleased with the outcome of the case when he spoke with her on Thursday.
The Clarks, who had been Karina's foster parents for more than a year, told police that Karina fell about 4 feet down a flight of carpeted stairs during the Jan. 6, 2009, incident. Amber Clark told police she was on the couch and recognized that the child might fall, but the child fell to the bottom of the stairs before she could help. She called the incident a tragic accident.
Haug wouldn't comment if investigators believe the account was made up.
Clark claimed she performed CPR until emergency responders arrived and flew her to Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane. Police said Karina was at the bottom of the stairs when they arrived.
Karina was brain dead and comatose afterward and died 10 days later.
The Spokane County Medical Examiner's Office ruled the case a homicide, citing "blunt force head injuries."
However, the examiner's report did not corroborate with the initial police investigation nor the opinions of multiple doctors police interviewed at Kootenai Medical Center and Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, which determined the head and spleen injuries were consistent with an accidental fall.
John Howard, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy of Karina, said he could not comment on the evidence or factors that led him to the homicide determination.
Moore filed civil lawsuits against the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in January this year in state and federal courts, claiming she reported abuse allegations against the Clarks to social workers twice, but her concerns weren't addressed.
The suit claims the IDHW "negligently and with reckless indifference failed to supervise the foster home ... which resulted in the death of Karina."
The suits have been stayed.
Karina and two of her siblings, a brother and sister, had been living with the Clarks. Moore has since regained custody of her two surviving children.
The Clarks hadn't been booked in the local jail before.
Staff writer David Cole contributed to this article.
Source http://www.cdapress.com/news/local_news/article_4599160c-4a3a-5254-9fa5-1876efb5147f.html
CPS corruption hurts and destroys families worldwide. Please use caution posting about CPS here or anyplace on the internet. For your protection, using your full, real name and precise location is not advised. CPS has eyes everywhere and CPS is notorious for taking what people say, twisting it, embellishing on it and then using it against them in CPS "investigations" and at court proceedings.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
The Federal Government Should Not Decide If Kids Need Mental Health Screening
by Dr. Susan Berry
On the heels of new recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), that children as young as four years of age be evaluated for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a new study (funded by two agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services) has concluded that the drugs used to treat ADHD do not pose risk of serious heart problems to children and young adults. Currently, ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed neurobehavioral disorder in children, with about 10% of children having been labeled with the diagnosis, as of 2007. The highest number of parent reports of ADHD has been among those covered by Medicaid.
But, why are increasing numbers of children and adults being diagnosed with ADHD? Is it just coincidence that DHHS-funded research has recently concluded that it’s safe to give stimulant medications to very young children immediately after the AAP, a major supporter of Obamacare, has announced its recommendations for earlier screening? To be sure, many physicians and mental health practitioners believe ADHD is being overdiagnosed. MedPage Today, a service for physicians that provides a clinical perspective on breaking medical news, found that 80% of its readers believed the disorder is overdiagnosed. Similarly, psychiatrist Dr. Allen Frances states that ADHD has become an “epidemic” for several reasons: (1) Changes in the wording of the diagnosis in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), (2) heavy drug company marketing to doctors and advertising to the public, (3) extensive media coverage, (4) pressure from parents and schools to control disruptive behavior in children and (5) the use of stimulant medication (such as Ritalin) for performance enhancement.
In light of what appears to be a drive to diagnose more behaviors as “abnormal” earlier in life, Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has reintroduced H.R. 2769. The Parental Consent Act 2011 prohibits mandatory mental health screening of students without the express written, voluntary, informed consent of their parents or legal guardians. The bill seeks to protect the fundamental right of parents to direct and control the upbringing and education of their children. With the passage of this bill, federal education funds cannot be used to pay any local school or government agency that charges parents, who refuse consent to permit mental health screening for their child, with child abuse or child, medical, or educational neglect.
A major concern is that daycare providers and teachers are the main referral sources for ADHD screening. The types of behaviors many of these individuals may view as “problematic,” in a classroom setting, such as fidgeting, distractibility, inattention, interrupting, and lack of organization are very much consistent with a normal four-year old’s stage of development. While some adults may view the children’s behavior as a “problem,” the real issue may be that adults are expecting young children to function, without disruption, in an institutional setting.
As more young children have been placed in daycare settings, larger groups of them must be managed by just a few adults. Dr. Paul’s bill prevents children who attend public schools, or daycare programs that receive federal funding, from being forced to submit to mental health screening without parental consent.
According to Congressman Paul, a physician:
“Many children have suffered harmful side effects from using psychotropic drugs. Some of the possible side effects include mania, violence, dependence and weight gain. Yet, parents are already being threatened with child abuse charges if they resist efforts to drug their children. Imagine how much easier it will be to drug children against their parents’ wishes if a federally-funded mental-health screener makes the recommendation.”
The bill is in response to a recommendation by the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, established in 2002 by President George W. Bush, whose stated purpose was to bring greater awareness and service guidelines regarding mental health issues to Americans. According to Congressman Paul:
“The commission recommends that universal or mandatory mental-health screening first be implemented in public schools as a prelude to expanding it to the general public. However, neither the commission’s report nor any related mental-health screening proposal requires parental consent before a child is subjected to mental-health screening. Federally-funded universal or mandatory mental-health screening in schools without parental consent could lead to labeling more children as “ADD” or “hyperactive” and thus force more children to take psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, against their parents’ wishes.”
While AAP recommends that behavioral interventions be utilized first, prior to medications, for young children diagnosed with ADHD, Dr. Frances states:
“…experience suggests that these cautions will be widely ignored in busy everyday practice, especially because behavioral approaches are usually unavailable and medication is so highly promoted and readily available.”
As a practicing psychologist, this last statement is the crux of the matter. While there is a small minority of children who have neurological disorders that require medications, some parents and teachers would prefer a quick fix of medication for a child in order to make teaching and parenting easier, rather than work on an approach that requires thinking outside the box and consistent implementation by both parents and teachers. The number of young children who come to my office already tagged with ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, etc. is staggering. The larger educational issue is that many of the children diagnosed with ADHD are actually very bright and need to be taught in a different manner, one that our “one size fits all,” institutional public education system does not adequately address.
Source http://biggovernment.com/sberry/2011/11/04/the-federal-government-should-not-decide-if-kids-need-mental-health-screening/
On the heels of new recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), that children as young as four years of age be evaluated for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a new study (funded by two agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services) has concluded that the drugs used to treat ADHD do not pose risk of serious heart problems to children and young adults. Currently, ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed neurobehavioral disorder in children, with about 10% of children having been labeled with the diagnosis, as of 2007. The highest number of parent reports of ADHD has been among those covered by Medicaid.
But, why are increasing numbers of children and adults being diagnosed with ADHD? Is it just coincidence that DHHS-funded research has recently concluded that it’s safe to give stimulant medications to very young children immediately after the AAP, a major supporter of Obamacare, has announced its recommendations for earlier screening? To be sure, many physicians and mental health practitioners believe ADHD is being overdiagnosed. MedPage Today, a service for physicians that provides a clinical perspective on breaking medical news, found that 80% of its readers believed the disorder is overdiagnosed. Similarly, psychiatrist Dr. Allen Frances states that ADHD has become an “epidemic” for several reasons: (1) Changes in the wording of the diagnosis in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), (2) heavy drug company marketing to doctors and advertising to the public, (3) extensive media coverage, (4) pressure from parents and schools to control disruptive behavior in children and (5) the use of stimulant medication (such as Ritalin) for performance enhancement.
In light of what appears to be a drive to diagnose more behaviors as “abnormal” earlier in life, Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has reintroduced H.R. 2769. The Parental Consent Act 2011 prohibits mandatory mental health screening of students without the express written, voluntary, informed consent of their parents or legal guardians. The bill seeks to protect the fundamental right of parents to direct and control the upbringing and education of their children. With the passage of this bill, federal education funds cannot be used to pay any local school or government agency that charges parents, who refuse consent to permit mental health screening for their child, with child abuse or child, medical, or educational neglect.
A major concern is that daycare providers and teachers are the main referral sources for ADHD screening. The types of behaviors many of these individuals may view as “problematic,” in a classroom setting, such as fidgeting, distractibility, inattention, interrupting, and lack of organization are very much consistent with a normal four-year old’s stage of development. While some adults may view the children’s behavior as a “problem,” the real issue may be that adults are expecting young children to function, without disruption, in an institutional setting.
As more young children have been placed in daycare settings, larger groups of them must be managed by just a few adults. Dr. Paul’s bill prevents children who attend public schools, or daycare programs that receive federal funding, from being forced to submit to mental health screening without parental consent.
According to Congressman Paul, a physician:
“Many children have suffered harmful side effects from using psychotropic drugs. Some of the possible side effects include mania, violence, dependence and weight gain. Yet, parents are already being threatened with child abuse charges if they resist efforts to drug their children. Imagine how much easier it will be to drug children against their parents’ wishes if a federally-funded mental-health screener makes the recommendation.”
The bill is in response to a recommendation by the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, established in 2002 by President George W. Bush, whose stated purpose was to bring greater awareness and service guidelines regarding mental health issues to Americans. According to Congressman Paul:
“The commission recommends that universal or mandatory mental-health screening first be implemented in public schools as a prelude to expanding it to the general public. However, neither the commission’s report nor any related mental-health screening proposal requires parental consent before a child is subjected to mental-health screening. Federally-funded universal or mandatory mental-health screening in schools without parental consent could lead to labeling more children as “ADD” or “hyperactive” and thus force more children to take psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, against their parents’ wishes.”
While AAP recommends that behavioral interventions be utilized first, prior to medications, for young children diagnosed with ADHD, Dr. Frances states:
“…experience suggests that these cautions will be widely ignored in busy everyday practice, especially because behavioral approaches are usually unavailable and medication is so highly promoted and readily available.”
As a practicing psychologist, this last statement is the crux of the matter. While there is a small minority of children who have neurological disorders that require medications, some parents and teachers would prefer a quick fix of medication for a child in order to make teaching and parenting easier, rather than work on an approach that requires thinking outside the box and consistent implementation by both parents and teachers. The number of young children who come to my office already tagged with ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, etc. is staggering. The larger educational issue is that many of the children diagnosed with ADHD are actually very bright and need to be taught in a different manner, one that our “one size fits all,” institutional public education system does not adequately address.
Source http://biggovernment.com/sberry/2011/11/04/the-federal-government-should-not-decide-if-kids-need-mental-health-screening/
Unprecedented: N.J. judges find foster parents have no say in child placement
Blog authors note:
Finally, it's about time! Most blood relatives have no say in these kangaroo courts so why do foster parents get a say in them? They are just glorified babysitters for the state kidnappers! Hopefully, this will carry over to all states. Then it would be nice if they would allow legal blood relatives to chime in about placement - that is when the best interests of the child will truly be served. Blood families should never be replaced if they are willing and capable of providing everything necessary for the child.
-----
By Jerry DeMarco
The hearts of New Jersey foster parents are in the right place, but that doesn’t give them a say in placement hearings, a state appeals court has ruled in an unprecedented decision stemming from a Hudson County case.
The “resource parents,” as parents are called in the state’s courts, have “no independent legal interest” when a judge is weighing where to place youngsters from troubled situations, the Appellate Division determined. That responsibility belongs to a law guardian appointed by DYFS.
"The importance of the essential role of resource parents in the child placement arena is unquestioned," Judge Marie Lihotz wrote. "However, the legal rights of such caregivers in securing an undisturbed relationship with a child placed in their home [are] very limited."
The decision was brought on by a Hudson County judge’s refusal to allow two foster parents a say in a hearing that removed a child from her drug-addicted parents and placed the girl with her aunt.
The youngster, now 2, was born on July 16, 2009 with cocaine and other drugs in her system, which put her into a hospital for six weeks. She ended up with the foster parents while DYFS moved to remove her parents’ biological rights.
The foster parents requested "full participation" in proceedings aimed at final placement of the girl, calling themselves "indispensible parties" and "psychological parents."
They said they had plenty of information to share, wanted to review expert reports produced by DYFS and requested they be allowed to retain their own expert. They also gave the judge statements from a pediatrician.
Superior Court Judge Marilyn Foti in Jersey City allowed them to speak, and to attend various hearings, but said their participation ended there. Their testimony couldn’t carry any weight in the ultimate decision, in which the girl was taken from them on April 21. 2011, Foti ruled.
They appealed.
The appeals judges backed Foti, saying the foster parents “should be given the opportunity to let the judge know their wishes during the best-interests hearing.” They noted that "Foti evaluated the competence, sensitivity, patience, responsiveness and devotion of all possible caregivers."
They even went so far as to say that it would hurt the girl somewhat to be removed "from the loving care" of the foster parents.
In the end, however, the appeals judges said Foti "properly balanced the evidence of all necessary considerations and was not merely a preference for a relative placement over care by her resource parents."
What's more, they said, DYFS clearly spells out in its contract that foster parents don’t have the legal right to seek adoption.
The foster parents "opened their home" to the girl, identified in court papers as V.B., "who then stole their hearts," the judges wrote.
"The protective services system values adults like [them], who have optimally fulfilled their role as resource parents. The commitment, care, sacrifice and unconditional love [they] nobly conferred on V.B. will forever alter the course of her life. Nevertheless, the emotional ties that unavoidably developed neither result in psychological parent status nor otherwise confer an interest permitting standing to intervene in a interests hearing."
Source http://www.cliffviewpilot.com/hudson/2981-unprecedented-nj-judges-find-foster-parents-have-no-say-in-child-placement
Finally, it's about time! Most blood relatives have no say in these kangaroo courts so why do foster parents get a say in them? They are just glorified babysitters for the state kidnappers! Hopefully, this will carry over to all states. Then it would be nice if they would allow legal blood relatives to chime in about placement - that is when the best interests of the child will truly be served. Blood families should never be replaced if they are willing and capable of providing everything necessary for the child.
-----
By Jerry DeMarco
The hearts of New Jersey foster parents are in the right place, but that doesn’t give them a say in placement hearings, a state appeals court has ruled in an unprecedented decision stemming from a Hudson County case.
The “resource parents,” as parents are called in the state’s courts, have “no independent legal interest” when a judge is weighing where to place youngsters from troubled situations, the Appellate Division determined. That responsibility belongs to a law guardian appointed by DYFS.
"The importance of the essential role of resource parents in the child placement arena is unquestioned," Judge Marie Lihotz wrote. "However, the legal rights of such caregivers in securing an undisturbed relationship with a child placed in their home [are] very limited."
The decision was brought on by a Hudson County judge’s refusal to allow two foster parents a say in a hearing that removed a child from her drug-addicted parents and placed the girl with her aunt.
The youngster, now 2, was born on July 16, 2009 with cocaine and other drugs in her system, which put her into a hospital for six weeks. She ended up with the foster parents while DYFS moved to remove her parents’ biological rights.
The foster parents requested "full participation" in proceedings aimed at final placement of the girl, calling themselves "indispensible parties" and "psychological parents."
They said they had plenty of information to share, wanted to review expert reports produced by DYFS and requested they be allowed to retain their own expert. They also gave the judge statements from a pediatrician.
Superior Court Judge Marilyn Foti in Jersey City allowed them to speak, and to attend various hearings, but said their participation ended there. Their testimony couldn’t carry any weight in the ultimate decision, in which the girl was taken from them on April 21. 2011, Foti ruled.
They appealed.
The appeals judges backed Foti, saying the foster parents “should be given the opportunity to let the judge know their wishes during the best-interests hearing.” They noted that "Foti evaluated the competence, sensitivity, patience, responsiveness and devotion of all possible caregivers."
They even went so far as to say that it would hurt the girl somewhat to be removed "from the loving care" of the foster parents.
In the end, however, the appeals judges said Foti "properly balanced the evidence of all necessary considerations and was not merely a preference for a relative placement over care by her resource parents."
What's more, they said, DYFS clearly spells out in its contract that foster parents don’t have the legal right to seek adoption.
The foster parents "opened their home" to the girl, identified in court papers as V.B., "who then stole their hearts," the judges wrote.
"The protective services system values adults like [them], who have optimally fulfilled their role as resource parents. The commitment, care, sacrifice and unconditional love [they] nobly conferred on V.B. will forever alter the course of her life. Nevertheless, the emotional ties that unavoidably developed neither result in psychological parent status nor otherwise confer an interest permitting standing to intervene in a interests hearing."
Source http://www.cliffviewpilot.com/hudson/2981-unprecedented-nj-judges-find-foster-parents-have-no-say-in-child-placement
Lawmaker: Mom’s struggle to keep her children shows problems with DCFS
By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Price • This is what Jennifer and Brandon Stark brought in a plastic grocery sack as goodbye gifts for their four boys: a few rocks for their oldest son’s collection, puzzles, piggy banks, crayons and letters expressing their love.
On Oct. 25, a week after a judge terminated their parental rights and 14 months after the state Division of Child and Family Services first investigated the couple for alleged drug use and neglect, the Starks saw their sons for what may be the last time.
The case has caught the attention of parental rights advocates and a state legislator who says it exemplifies the way the court and child welfare systems work against parents, especially those with limited resources.
"She lost her children and her major crime was she didn’t have a job and a driver’s license and was therefore dependent on her husband," said Rep. Christine F. Watkins, D-Price. "I just found it astonishing in a very negative way."
Among troubling aspects of the case, according to Watkins, is the amount of time the parents were given to regain their children, the children’s placement with foster parents rather than relatives and the high rate of children in foster care in the region.
The Starks plan to appeal the placement of their boys, who range in age from 6 years to 7 months, with foster parents and say their attorney is optimistic. But odds of success are slim: 97 percent of parental rights terminations are upheld, according to DCFS. The division doesn’t track appeals challenging placements.
Watkins said she began investigating the DCFS Eastern Region, which includes Carbon and Emery counties, about 18 months ago after being overwhelmed with complaints from constituents.
"If you don’t do everything they tell you to do, exactly as they tell you to do it, then you’re done," said Watkins. "They will take your kids. It is tragic."
"There were a lot of things very wrong here," she said. "I worked with the state director, and a lot of changes have been made."
Among those changes: appointment of a new region director about nine months ago. But Watkins is still concerned and is already drafting legislation to address what she sees as flaws in the system. Among them, she says, is the lack of funds put into home services to help families stay together.
Last year, DCFS spent $94 million on foster care and kinship support services, but just $7 million on in-home services to help families correct problems that put their children in jeopardy.
Brent Platt, DCFS director, said he believes with a new director in place, the Eastern Region office is "moving in the right direction, but it takes time. He [the new director] is working closely with the Price office and trying to rebuild that relationship with the community."
It is unclear what, if any, effect the region’s problems played in the Stark case. The division’s stated preference is that in-home services be provided so that children remain with their parents and, if that is not possible, that they be placed with relatives.
Liz Sollis, DCFS spokeswoman, said she couldn’t legally comment on the Stark case specifically other than to note it is the juvenile justice system that ultimately decides what happens in child welfare cases.
That leaves the Starks, who provided some documentation to back their account, and their supporters to tell what happened.
The allegations • The Starks, both in their mid-20s, had three sons in August 2010 when police and child protective service workers first investigated them for alleged drug use and child neglect.
At the time, the Starks had been together for eight years and married for more than two years. Jennifer Stark, pregnant with their fourth child, was employed at a care center while Brandon Stark looked after the kids and ferried his wife to and from work. It was alleged they left the children alone during those trips, which they deny.
When the Starks refused to take drug tests, the state placed their three sons in a temporary shelter. The couple quickly relented.
As with many child welfare cases, some facts are disputed but not this one: as alleged, Brandon Stark periodically used marijuana, methamphetamine and opiate drugs. Over eight months, Brandon Stark was drug tested at least 34 times; about half his tests were positive. Jennifer Stark, in contrast, went through more than 16 drug tests, and each was negative.
After his first positive test, DCFS required Brandon Stark to separate from his wife and children and get drug treatment; he moved in with a friend, got a job at a fast-food restaurant and entered drug counseling.
The couple had moved out of their rented home, and Jennifer had lost her job. Her service plan was to find a place to live, get a job and sign up for counseling and peer parenting support.
Right from the start, Jennifer Stark, whose siblings and parents live in Ohio, asked her caseworker to consider placing the children with her sister, who was more than willing to take them.
"But we never heard from her," said Kim Kisseberth of Findlay, Ohio, one of Jennifer Stark’s nine siblings.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Stark found a place to rent, paid for by her husband, and in late September the boys were returned to her care; about a month later, Brandon Stark was allowed to move back in with his family.
The setbacks • As winter set in, Brandon Stark’s $8 an-hour job wasn’t enough to cover rent, utilities and $50 a week for his drug treatment program. The Starks moved to a cheaper place but were still underwater financially.
"It was either rent for us or it was his drug treatment," Jennifer Stark said. Brandon Stark dropped out of the program and couldn’t afford a second $140 drug assessment the state requested, she said. He soon relapsed.
DCFS drew up a new service plan allowing Brandon Stark to stay with his family as long as he re-entered drug treatment. A caseworker suggested he find a better-paying job or take on a second job to pay for the program and the family’s monthly expenses, according to the couple.
By mid-March, when Jennifer Stark gave birth to their fourth son, Brandon Stark had stopped participating in drug tests and was once again barred from living with his family. Jennifer Stark said she agreed to a new service plan only after the caseworker threatened to remove her children.
"I had no job, no means of transportation because I don’t have my driver’s license and was living far from everyone I know, trying to handle four kids by myself and stay as mentally stable as I could under the conditions," Jennifer Stark said. The caseworker’s advice? Rely on friends, family and the community for childcare, transportation and support, she said.
Jennifer Stark said she was told "something was wrong with me that I was with someone like [Brandon] and hadn’t seen the signs" of his substance abuse.
In early May, a caseworker found Brandon Stark at the home — though Jennifer Stark claims he had just stopped by to drop off a rent check — and the division again took custody of the four children, placing them with a foster family in Orem.
"We were told there were no foster families in this area equipped to take four kids," Jennifer Stark said — something DCFS acknowledges is a problem in rural areas.
A new service plan was drawn up, which looked much like the others: drug treatment for him, increased independence for her through learning to drive, getting a job, counseling. A permanency hearing, when decisions are made about whether to continue efforts to reunify a family, was set for late August.
"I was looking for jobs as much as I could," Jennifer Stark said. With public school out until fall, there was no chance she’d finish driver education and get her license in time.
And Brandon Stark’s plan "failed right off the get-go," Jennifer Stark said. He spent six weeks in jail this summer after falling behind in restitution payments in connection with a March 2010 misdemeanor shoplifting offense, according to court records.
For Jennifer Stark, the result was lost financial support and transportation to job interviews and to visits with their children in Orem. The state suggested she move into a women’s shelter.
"I was offended," Jennifer Stark said. "I had a roof over my head and Brandon was in jail at the time. So why?"
Still, she agreed to check it out.
"I was told I would have to cut all ties [with other family], on top of losing my kids, my husband and everything," Jennifer Stark said. "I didn’t want to lose my mother-in-law and what little support I had. They couldn’t guarantee transportation for anything. They said I would get a month [at the shelter] and then they’d try to find me a place to go. I said no."
But the decision to stick with her husband and stay out of the shelter proved to be more strikes against her, Jennifer Stark said, resulting in caseworkers describing her as "co-dependent."
It’s one of the issues that irks Watkins. "Are we helping families or are we destroying families?" she said.
Kisseberth said she’d offered over the years to help Jennifer when her relationship was in trouble, but her sister would "always say we were raised to not divorce that easily, that she was going to hold it together. She’d said, ‘So what if I leave him and one day my boys are coming to me saying, ‘Why did you take us away from our dad?’ "
The outcome • By June, the Kisseberths had completed all the steps necessary to be a kinship placement and were on track to be certified as foster and adoptive parents by the August hearing, which the state helped pay for them to attend.
The Kisseberths had remodeled their home, completed a home inspection, background check, foster parenting classes and interstate paperwork, and lined up daycare and other support. They had never met the three youngest children and hadn’t seen the oldest boy since he was a toddler but began building a relationship through weekly phone calls over the summer. They also sent a photo album introducing them to their extended family.
Kisseberth said that at the August hearing, the Starks’ caseworker, the state’s attorney and the couple’s attorney all recommended that the boys live with them.
Jennifer Stark said she acknowledged at the hearing that neither she nor Brandon were currently able to provide for their children — an admission they were told would increase odds of their children being placed in the custody of her sister.
People who had worked with the Starks and their children submitted letters describing them as well-bonded and, in Jennifer’s case, as making "a good amount of progress in a short time to be reunited with her children."
But days after the August hearing, 7th District Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen sided with the children’s guardian ad litem, who recommended the boys stay with the foster family with whom they had spent the previous four months and who are interested in adopting them.
"When they take the kids away from us, and put them in foster care, they don’t have any ties, they don’t know the foster parents," Jennifer Stark said. "What would have been the difference with my sister and her husband?"
On Oct. 18, the Starks’ parental rights were terminated. Days later, they bid their boys goodbye.
"Yeah, I made some mistakes, but I don’t feel it was bad enough to lose our children forever," Brandon Stark said.
His wife, he said, did "everything in her power and it was still not good enough for the state because she chose to stick with me. ... All we can do is hope and pray for the appeal to go through and hope her sister will get them so we can see them again."
Their last meeting with the boys was just a half-hour, and they were warned by a caseworker to not make promises, to not talk about the future, to leave their sons’ questions about when they might visit again unanswered, to leave Jennifer Stark’s tears unexplained.
That left them with these words: "Just, ‘Love you,’ " a weeping Jennifer Start said afterward. " ‘No matter what, we love you.’ "
Source http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/jazz/52788018-78/stark-jennifer-brandon-foster.html.csp?page=1
The Salt Lake Tribune
Price • This is what Jennifer and Brandon Stark brought in a plastic grocery sack as goodbye gifts for their four boys: a few rocks for their oldest son’s collection, puzzles, piggy banks, crayons and letters expressing their love.
On Oct. 25, a week after a judge terminated their parental rights and 14 months after the state Division of Child and Family Services first investigated the couple for alleged drug use and neglect, the Starks saw their sons for what may be the last time.
The case has caught the attention of parental rights advocates and a state legislator who says it exemplifies the way the court and child welfare systems work against parents, especially those with limited resources.
"She lost her children and her major crime was she didn’t have a job and a driver’s license and was therefore dependent on her husband," said Rep. Christine F. Watkins, D-Price. "I just found it astonishing in a very negative way."
Among troubling aspects of the case, according to Watkins, is the amount of time the parents were given to regain their children, the children’s placement with foster parents rather than relatives and the high rate of children in foster care in the region.
The Starks plan to appeal the placement of their boys, who range in age from 6 years to 7 months, with foster parents and say their attorney is optimistic. But odds of success are slim: 97 percent of parental rights terminations are upheld, according to DCFS. The division doesn’t track appeals challenging placements.
Watkins said she began investigating the DCFS Eastern Region, which includes Carbon and Emery counties, about 18 months ago after being overwhelmed with complaints from constituents.
"If you don’t do everything they tell you to do, exactly as they tell you to do it, then you’re done," said Watkins. "They will take your kids. It is tragic."
"There were a lot of things very wrong here," she said. "I worked with the state director, and a lot of changes have been made."
Among those changes: appointment of a new region director about nine months ago. But Watkins is still concerned and is already drafting legislation to address what she sees as flaws in the system. Among them, she says, is the lack of funds put into home services to help families stay together.
Last year, DCFS spent $94 million on foster care and kinship support services, but just $7 million on in-home services to help families correct problems that put their children in jeopardy.
Brent Platt, DCFS director, said he believes with a new director in place, the Eastern Region office is "moving in the right direction, but it takes time. He [the new director] is working closely with the Price office and trying to rebuild that relationship with the community."
It is unclear what, if any, effect the region’s problems played in the Stark case. The division’s stated preference is that in-home services be provided so that children remain with their parents and, if that is not possible, that they be placed with relatives.
Liz Sollis, DCFS spokeswoman, said she couldn’t legally comment on the Stark case specifically other than to note it is the juvenile justice system that ultimately decides what happens in child welfare cases.
That leaves the Starks, who provided some documentation to back their account, and their supporters to tell what happened.
The allegations • The Starks, both in their mid-20s, had three sons in August 2010 when police and child protective service workers first investigated them for alleged drug use and child neglect.
At the time, the Starks had been together for eight years and married for more than two years. Jennifer Stark, pregnant with their fourth child, was employed at a care center while Brandon Stark looked after the kids and ferried his wife to and from work. It was alleged they left the children alone during those trips, which they deny.
When the Starks refused to take drug tests, the state placed their three sons in a temporary shelter. The couple quickly relented.
As with many child welfare cases, some facts are disputed but not this one: as alleged, Brandon Stark periodically used marijuana, methamphetamine and opiate drugs. Over eight months, Brandon Stark was drug tested at least 34 times; about half his tests were positive. Jennifer Stark, in contrast, went through more than 16 drug tests, and each was negative.
After his first positive test, DCFS required Brandon Stark to separate from his wife and children and get drug treatment; he moved in with a friend, got a job at a fast-food restaurant and entered drug counseling.
The couple had moved out of their rented home, and Jennifer had lost her job. Her service plan was to find a place to live, get a job and sign up for counseling and peer parenting support.
Right from the start, Jennifer Stark, whose siblings and parents live in Ohio, asked her caseworker to consider placing the children with her sister, who was more than willing to take them.
"But we never heard from her," said Kim Kisseberth of Findlay, Ohio, one of Jennifer Stark’s nine siblings.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Stark found a place to rent, paid for by her husband, and in late September the boys were returned to her care; about a month later, Brandon Stark was allowed to move back in with his family.
The setbacks • As winter set in, Brandon Stark’s $8 an-hour job wasn’t enough to cover rent, utilities and $50 a week for his drug treatment program. The Starks moved to a cheaper place but were still underwater financially.
"It was either rent for us or it was his drug treatment," Jennifer Stark said. Brandon Stark dropped out of the program and couldn’t afford a second $140 drug assessment the state requested, she said. He soon relapsed.
DCFS drew up a new service plan allowing Brandon Stark to stay with his family as long as he re-entered drug treatment. A caseworker suggested he find a better-paying job or take on a second job to pay for the program and the family’s monthly expenses, according to the couple.
By mid-March, when Jennifer Stark gave birth to their fourth son, Brandon Stark had stopped participating in drug tests and was once again barred from living with his family. Jennifer Stark said she agreed to a new service plan only after the caseworker threatened to remove her children.
"I had no job, no means of transportation because I don’t have my driver’s license and was living far from everyone I know, trying to handle four kids by myself and stay as mentally stable as I could under the conditions," Jennifer Stark said. The caseworker’s advice? Rely on friends, family and the community for childcare, transportation and support, she said.
Jennifer Stark said she was told "something was wrong with me that I was with someone like [Brandon] and hadn’t seen the signs" of his substance abuse.
In early May, a caseworker found Brandon Stark at the home — though Jennifer Stark claims he had just stopped by to drop off a rent check — and the division again took custody of the four children, placing them with a foster family in Orem.
"We were told there were no foster families in this area equipped to take four kids," Jennifer Stark said — something DCFS acknowledges is a problem in rural areas.
A new service plan was drawn up, which looked much like the others: drug treatment for him, increased independence for her through learning to drive, getting a job, counseling. A permanency hearing, when decisions are made about whether to continue efforts to reunify a family, was set for late August.
"I was looking for jobs as much as I could," Jennifer Stark said. With public school out until fall, there was no chance she’d finish driver education and get her license in time.
And Brandon Stark’s plan "failed right off the get-go," Jennifer Stark said. He spent six weeks in jail this summer after falling behind in restitution payments in connection with a March 2010 misdemeanor shoplifting offense, according to court records.
For Jennifer Stark, the result was lost financial support and transportation to job interviews and to visits with their children in Orem. The state suggested she move into a women’s shelter.
"I was offended," Jennifer Stark said. "I had a roof over my head and Brandon was in jail at the time. So why?"
Still, she agreed to check it out.
"I was told I would have to cut all ties [with other family], on top of losing my kids, my husband and everything," Jennifer Stark said. "I didn’t want to lose my mother-in-law and what little support I had. They couldn’t guarantee transportation for anything. They said I would get a month [at the shelter] and then they’d try to find me a place to go. I said no."
But the decision to stick with her husband and stay out of the shelter proved to be more strikes against her, Jennifer Stark said, resulting in caseworkers describing her as "co-dependent."
It’s one of the issues that irks Watkins. "Are we helping families or are we destroying families?" she said.
Kisseberth said she’d offered over the years to help Jennifer when her relationship was in trouble, but her sister would "always say we were raised to not divorce that easily, that she was going to hold it together. She’d said, ‘So what if I leave him and one day my boys are coming to me saying, ‘Why did you take us away from our dad?’ "
The outcome • By June, the Kisseberths had completed all the steps necessary to be a kinship placement and were on track to be certified as foster and adoptive parents by the August hearing, which the state helped pay for them to attend.
The Kisseberths had remodeled their home, completed a home inspection, background check, foster parenting classes and interstate paperwork, and lined up daycare and other support. They had never met the three youngest children and hadn’t seen the oldest boy since he was a toddler but began building a relationship through weekly phone calls over the summer. They also sent a photo album introducing them to their extended family.
Kisseberth said that at the August hearing, the Starks’ caseworker, the state’s attorney and the couple’s attorney all recommended that the boys live with them.
Jennifer Stark said she acknowledged at the hearing that neither she nor Brandon were currently able to provide for their children — an admission they were told would increase odds of their children being placed in the custody of her sister.
People who had worked with the Starks and their children submitted letters describing them as well-bonded and, in Jennifer’s case, as making "a good amount of progress in a short time to be reunited with her children."
But days after the August hearing, 7th District Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen sided with the children’s guardian ad litem, who recommended the boys stay with the foster family with whom they had spent the previous four months and who are interested in adopting them.
"When they take the kids away from us, and put them in foster care, they don’t have any ties, they don’t know the foster parents," Jennifer Stark said. "What would have been the difference with my sister and her husband?"
On Oct. 18, the Starks’ parental rights were terminated. Days later, they bid their boys goodbye.
"Yeah, I made some mistakes, but I don’t feel it was bad enough to lose our children forever," Brandon Stark said.
His wife, he said, did "everything in her power and it was still not good enough for the state because she chose to stick with me. ... All we can do is hope and pray for the appeal to go through and hope her sister will get them so we can see them again."
Their last meeting with the boys was just a half-hour, and they were warned by a caseworker to not make promises, to not talk about the future, to leave their sons’ questions about when they might visit again unanswered, to leave Jennifer Stark’s tears unexplained.
That left them with these words: "Just, ‘Love you,’ " a weeping Jennifer Start said afterward. " ‘No matter what, we love you.’ "
Source http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/jazz/52788018-78/stark-jennifer-brandon-foster.html.csp?page=1
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Police Won't File Charges Against Texas Judge Caught on Video Beating Daughter
Associated Press
Police say a Texas judge who was secretly videotaped beating his teenage daughter seven years ago won't face charges because the statutes of limitations have passed.
Rockport Police Chief Tim Jayroe said Thursday that Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams likely would have been charged with causing injury to a child and other assault offenses if the five-year statutes of limitations hadn't expired.
Adams is still being investigated by the state Department of Family and Protective Services, which has requested he not preside over any of its cases.
Adams' 23-year-old daughter, Hillary, posted the 8-minute clip of the 2004 beating on YouTube last week that shows her father savagely lash her 17 times with a belt.
Hillary Adams says that until last week, only a couple of close friends knew about the savage beating she received seven years ago from her father, a Texas judge who handles child abuse cases.
Adams says the outpouring of support and encouragement she's received since posting the video online last week is tempered by the sadness that it's her father lashing her with a belt and threatening to beat her "into submission." The video had been watched nearly 2 million times by Thursday morning.
"I'm experiencing some regret because I just pulled the covers off my own father's misbehavior after so many people thought he was such a good person. ... But so many people are also telling me I did the right thing," she told The Associated Press outside her mother's home in the Gulf Coast town of Portland, near Corpus Christi.
"He's supposed to be a judge who exercises fit judgment," she said."I cannot stress enough -- I cannot repeat myself enough, that he just needs help."
And she said the videoed attack was not a one-off. "It did happen regularly for a period of time," she told NBC's "Today" show on Thursday.
In the same interview, Hallie Adams blamed her ex-husband's bouts of violence on his "addiction," calling it a "family secret." She did not elaborate. Their 22-year marriage ended in 2007.
The judge did not return an AP reporter's call seeking comment early Thursday.
Police in Rockport, where the 51-year-old judge lives, opened an investigation Wednesday after receiving calls from several concerned citizens, Police Chief Tim Jayroe said.
William Adams has been receiving threatening phone calls and faxes at the courthouse since the video went online, Aransas County Sheriff Bill Mills said.
No one answered the door Wednesday at the judge's home, repeated calls to his office rang unanswered and his attorney, William Dudley, did not respond to phone messages seeking comment. A neighbor said she saw Adams and his girlfriend packing luggage, a briefcase and rifles into their truck.
Corpus Christi television station KZTV caught up with the judge while he was getting into his vehicle Wednesday, and he confirmed it was him in the video. But he said it "looks worse than it is" and that he doesn't expect to be disciplined.
"In my mind, I haven't done anything wrong other than discipline my child after she was caught stealing," Adams said. "And I did lose my temper, but I've since apologized."
When told of her father's comments, Hillary Adams said, "it's a shining perfect example of his personality and he believes he can do no wrong. ... He will cover up rather than admit to what he did and try to come clean."
She stressed that she did not post the video as revenge and does not want her father punished. Rather, she did it because she thinks it will force him to seek help, and because he has been harassing her and she thought posting the clip would make that stop.
"We need to reach out to victims and the abusers themselves to get people to realize what it actually is," she said. Hillary, who was 16 at the time, said she secretly videotaped the beating in her bedroom because she "knew something was about to happen." She says her parents were angry at her for using her computer to download pirated content over the Internet.
In the clip's opening seconds, William Adams is heard telling Hillary's mother, "Go get the belt. The big one. I'm going to spank her now." With belt in hand, he turns off the light and tries forcing his daughter to bend over the bed to be beaten, but she refuses.
"Lay down or I'll spank you in your (expletive) face," Adams screams while he lashes her with sweeping blows across the legs, ignoring her wails and pleas for him to stop.
A few minutes into the video, Hillary's mother barks at her to "turn over like a 16-year-old and take it! Like a grown woman!" For about a minute, the ordeal appears to have ended after both parents leave the room and shut the door. But the judge then storms back into the room and the beating resumes.
Hallie Adams said she was "completely brainwashed and controlled" by her ex-husband.
"I did every single thing that he did," she told NBC. Hillary Adams said she is not angry at her mother.
Child advocates roundly condemned the beating as abuse. But investigators may decide that the judge's actions, while shocking, weren't criminal.
The lines between what's deemed child abuse and what's considered an acceptable level of discipline differ across the country and among various social groups, though the use of objects such as belts and sticks is usually seen as beyond any normal physical punishment, said David Finkelhor, a University of New Hampshire sociology professor who heads the school's Crimes against Children Research Center.
Adams, Aransas County's top judge, was elected in 2001 and has dealt with at least 349 family law cases in the past year alone, nearly 50 of which involved state caseworkers seeking determine whether parents were fit to raise their children.
Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the state Department of Family and Protective Services, said in an email that the agency is aware of the video and "will take the appropriate steps in this matter." He said the agency would have no further comment.
Source http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/03/texas-judge-caught-on-video-beating-daughter-needs-help/
Police say a Texas judge who was secretly videotaped beating his teenage daughter seven years ago won't face charges because the statutes of limitations have passed.
Rockport Police Chief Tim Jayroe said Thursday that Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams likely would have been charged with causing injury to a child and other assault offenses if the five-year statutes of limitations hadn't expired.
Adams is still being investigated by the state Department of Family and Protective Services, which has requested he not preside over any of its cases.
Adams' 23-year-old daughter, Hillary, posted the 8-minute clip of the 2004 beating on YouTube last week that shows her father savagely lash her 17 times with a belt.
Hillary Adams says that until last week, only a couple of close friends knew about the savage beating she received seven years ago from her father, a Texas judge who handles child abuse cases.
Adams says the outpouring of support and encouragement she's received since posting the video online last week is tempered by the sadness that it's her father lashing her with a belt and threatening to beat her "into submission." The video had been watched nearly 2 million times by Thursday morning.
"I'm experiencing some regret because I just pulled the covers off my own father's misbehavior after so many people thought he was such a good person. ... But so many people are also telling me I did the right thing," she told The Associated Press outside her mother's home in the Gulf Coast town of Portland, near Corpus Christi.
"He's supposed to be a judge who exercises fit judgment," she said."I cannot stress enough -- I cannot repeat myself enough, that he just needs help."
And she said the videoed attack was not a one-off. "It did happen regularly for a period of time," she told NBC's "Today" show on Thursday.
In the same interview, Hallie Adams blamed her ex-husband's bouts of violence on his "addiction," calling it a "family secret." She did not elaborate. Their 22-year marriage ended in 2007.
The judge did not return an AP reporter's call seeking comment early Thursday.
Police in Rockport, where the 51-year-old judge lives, opened an investigation Wednesday after receiving calls from several concerned citizens, Police Chief Tim Jayroe said.
William Adams has been receiving threatening phone calls and faxes at the courthouse since the video went online, Aransas County Sheriff Bill Mills said.
No one answered the door Wednesday at the judge's home, repeated calls to his office rang unanswered and his attorney, William Dudley, did not respond to phone messages seeking comment. A neighbor said she saw Adams and his girlfriend packing luggage, a briefcase and rifles into their truck.
Corpus Christi television station KZTV caught up with the judge while he was getting into his vehicle Wednesday, and he confirmed it was him in the video. But he said it "looks worse than it is" and that he doesn't expect to be disciplined.
"In my mind, I haven't done anything wrong other than discipline my child after she was caught stealing," Adams said. "And I did lose my temper, but I've since apologized."
When told of her father's comments, Hillary Adams said, "it's a shining perfect example of his personality and he believes he can do no wrong. ... He will cover up rather than admit to what he did and try to come clean."
She stressed that she did not post the video as revenge and does not want her father punished. Rather, she did it because she thinks it will force him to seek help, and because he has been harassing her and she thought posting the clip would make that stop.
"We need to reach out to victims and the abusers themselves to get people to realize what it actually is," she said. Hillary, who was 16 at the time, said she secretly videotaped the beating in her bedroom because she "knew something was about to happen." She says her parents were angry at her for using her computer to download pirated content over the Internet.
In the clip's opening seconds, William Adams is heard telling Hillary's mother, "Go get the belt. The big one. I'm going to spank her now." With belt in hand, he turns off the light and tries forcing his daughter to bend over the bed to be beaten, but she refuses.
"Lay down or I'll spank you in your (expletive) face," Adams screams while he lashes her with sweeping blows across the legs, ignoring her wails and pleas for him to stop.
A few minutes into the video, Hillary's mother barks at her to "turn over like a 16-year-old and take it! Like a grown woman!" For about a minute, the ordeal appears to have ended after both parents leave the room and shut the door. But the judge then storms back into the room and the beating resumes.
Hallie Adams said she was "completely brainwashed and controlled" by her ex-husband.
"I did every single thing that he did," she told NBC. Hillary Adams said she is not angry at her mother.
Child advocates roundly condemned the beating as abuse. But investigators may decide that the judge's actions, while shocking, weren't criminal.
The lines between what's deemed child abuse and what's considered an acceptable level of discipline differ across the country and among various social groups, though the use of objects such as belts and sticks is usually seen as beyond any normal physical punishment, said David Finkelhor, a University of New Hampshire sociology professor who heads the school's Crimes against Children Research Center.
Adams, Aransas County's top judge, was elected in 2001 and has dealt with at least 349 family law cases in the past year alone, nearly 50 of which involved state caseworkers seeking determine whether parents were fit to raise their children.
Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the state Department of Family and Protective Services, said in an email that the agency is aware of the video and "will take the appropriate steps in this matter." He said the agency would have no further comment.
Source http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/03/texas-judge-caught-on-video-beating-daughter-needs-help/
Judge orders Kentucky to release records on child-abuse deaths
Written by Deborah Yetter
For the second time in 18 months, a Franklin Circuit Court judge has ordered the state to release records pertaining to child-abuse deaths and serious injuries, finding that there is “no legal basis” for withholding them.
“The court must conclude that the (Cabinet for Health and Family Services) is so immersed in the culture of secrecy regarding these issues that it is institutionally incapable of recognizing and implementing the clear requirement of the law,” Judge Phillip Shepherd said in his ruling, issued Thursday.
The decision comes after a lengthy court fight by The Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader to obtain the records — and more than a year after Shepherd first ruled that the cabinet must disclose the material.
After that decision, the cabinet released some information about the death of a Wayne County toddler who drank drain cleaner at an alleged methamphetamine laboratory. But the cabinet refused to provide the newspapers with information about other child-abuse deaths.
A 2009 Courier-Journal investigation found that nearly 270 Kentucky children had died of abuse or neglect during the past decade — more than half in cases in which state officials knew of or suspected problems.
Thursday’s ruling is a major open-records victory for the newspapers and the public because it forces the cabinet to disclose details of how well the state does its job of protecting children from severe abuse, said Jon Fleischaker, a lawyer for The Courier-Journal.
“It’s about time the cabinet recognizes that it is not above the law,” Fleischaker said. “It has to comply with the mandate of state and federal law. This is not a difficult issue.”
Cabinet officials released a brief statement Thursday saying that they are reviewing the ruling. They gave no indication when they would release the records.
Fleischaker said the cabinet could appeal but added that he doubts it would succeed because Shepherd found for the newspapers in the virtually identical case last year. The cabinet did not appeal that ruling, making the decision final.
Fleischaker called on Gov. Steve Beshear to direct officials at the cabinet to comply with the court’s ruling.
“We now have a judge talking about the inability of the cabinet to understand its legal obligations,” Flesichaker said. “Maybe the governor needs to step in. He probably should have stepped in before this.”
Beshear spokeswoman Kerri Richardson didn’t respond to a question about whether Beshear will get involved. She said in a statement only that the cabinet is reviewing the decision.
Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said Thursday’s ruling has important ramifications.
“It’s not just a win for the press,” Brooks said. “It’s a win for kids and for citizens who are taking a look at this issue.”
In his opinion, Shepherd had harsh words for cabinet officials who have consistently fought releasing material the newpapers sought after several highly publicized child abuse or neglect deaths, including the 2009 case of the Wayne County toddler.
His order said the cabinet “misinterpreted” state law and “continues to flatly ignore” provisions that require it to disclose the records.
“The release of these records will help to keep the cabinet accountable to prevent future tragedies and to answer to taxpayers who fund the cabinet,” it said.
State law — conforming to federal law — says such records may be “publicly disclosed” in cases in which a child was killed or severely injured from abuse or neglect if the cabinet had involvement with the family. But in recent years, cabinet officials have refused to release such material, citing the need for confidentiality.
Shepherd’s order noted the “exact issues” in the current case were already addressed in the initial lawsuit filed by the newpapers in 2009.
In that case, Shepherd ruled in May 2010 that the cabinet must release records related to the death of Kayden Daniels, the 20-month-old Wayne County boy who died at the home of his teenage parents, the site of the alleged meth lab. Both the child and his mother, then 14, had been under supervision of the cabinet before the death.
Records sought by the newspapers included a “fatality report” that the cabinet is required by law to conduct, examining the circumstances of the child’s death and actions of cabinet officials involved with the family. After Shepherd ordered the cabinet to release the report, agency officials acknowledged they had never conducted the review or produced such a report.
Shepherd ordered the release of other cabinet records in the case, such as documents relatging to state contacts with the family, the cabinet disclosed.
But it refused subsequent requests for information about other child-abuse deaths. That prompted the newspapers to file a second lawsuit in January, asking Shepherd to order the cabinet to comply with his previous order.
Shepherd, in Thursday’s ruling, also struck down “emergency regulations” that cabinet officials enacted in January seeking to sharply restrict the information it must release about child deaths and injuries. Shepherd’s order found no basis in state law for the regulations.
Because the newspapers had requested records related to child deaths for the past several years, such records are likely to be voluminous and could impose a “substantial administrative burden on the cabinet,” Shepherd’s order said.
For that reason, Shepherd ordered the cabinet to meet with the newspapers within the next 10 days to try to reach an agreement on the “orderly and timely production of the records.”
If the parties can’t agree, Shepherd’s order said he will hold a hearing on the matter and spell out the “time, place and manner of production.”
Shepherd also reserved a ruling on the newspapers’ request for attorneys fees until the other issues are resolved.
He already has awarded the newspapers $20,700 in legal costs from the first round of litigation. The cabinet has appealed that order.
Fleischaker called on Gov. Steve Beshear to direct officials at the cabinet to comply with the court’s ruling.
“We now have a judge talking about the inability of the cabinet to understand its legal obligations,” Flesichaker said. “Maybe the governor needs to step in. He probably should have stepped in before this.”
Beshear spokeswoman Kerri Richardson didn’t respond to a question about whether Beshear will get involved. She said in a statement only that the cabinet is reviewing the decision.
Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said Thursday’s ruling has important ramifications.
“It’s not just a win for the press,” Brooks said. “It’s a win for kids and for citizens who are taking a look at this issue.”
In his opinion, Shepherd had harsh words for cabinet officials who have consistently fought releasing material the newpapers sought after several highly publicized child abuse or neglect deaths, including the 2009 case of the Wayne County toddler.
His order said the cabinet “misinterpreted” state law and “continues to flatly ignore” provisions that require it to disclose the records.
“The release of these records will help to keep the cabinet accountable to prevent future tragedies and to answer to taxpayers who fund the cabinet,” it said.
State law — conforming to federal law — says such records may be “publicly disclosed” in cases in which a child was killed or severely injured from abuse or neglect if the cabinet had involvement with the family. But in recent years, cabinet officials have refused to release such material, citing the need for confidentiality.
Shepherd’s order noted the “exact issues” in the current case were already addressed in the initial lawsuit filed by the newpapers in 2009.
In that case, Shepherd ruled in May 2010 that the cabinet must release records related to the death of Kayden Daniels, the 20-month-old Wayne County boy who died at the home of his teenage parents, the site of the alleged meth lab. Both the child and his mother, then 14, had been under supervision of the cabinet before the death.
Records sought by the newspapers included a “fatality report” that the cabinet is required by law to conduct, examining the circumstances of the child’s death and actions of cabinet officials involved with the family. After Shepherd ordered the cabinet to release the report, agency officials acknowledged they had never conducted the review or produced such a report.
Shepherd ordered the release of other cabinet records in the case, such as documents relatging to state contacts with the family, the cabinet disclosed.
But it refused subsequent requests for information about other child-abuse deaths. That prompted the newspapers to file a second lawsuit in January, asking Shepherd to order the cabinet to comply with his previous order.
Shepherd, in Thursday’s ruling, also struck down “emergency regulations” that cabinet officials enacted in January seeking to sharply restrict the information it must release about child deaths and injuries. Shepherd’s order found no basis in state law for the regulations.
Because the newspapers had requested records related to child deaths for the past several years, such records are likely to be voluminous and could impose a “substantial administrative burden on the cabinet,” Shepherd’s order said.
For that reason, Shepherd ordered the cabinet to meet with the newspapers within the next 10 days to try to reach an agreement on the “orderly and timely production of the records.”
If the parties can’t agree, Shepherd’s order said he will hold a hearing on the matter and spell out the “time, place and manner of production.”
Shepherd also reserved a ruling on the newspapers’ request for attorneys fees until the other issues are resolved.
He already has awarded the newspapers $20,700 in legal costs from the first round of litigation. The cabinet has appealed that order.
Source http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20111103/NEWS01/311030033/Judge-orders-Kentucky-release-records-child-abuse-deaths?odyssey=nav%7Chead
For the second time in 18 months, a Franklin Circuit Court judge has ordered the state to release records pertaining to child-abuse deaths and serious injuries, finding that there is “no legal basis” for withholding them.
“The court must conclude that the (Cabinet for Health and Family Services) is so immersed in the culture of secrecy regarding these issues that it is institutionally incapable of recognizing and implementing the clear requirement of the law,” Judge Phillip Shepherd said in his ruling, issued Thursday.
The decision comes after a lengthy court fight by The Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader to obtain the records — and more than a year after Shepherd first ruled that the cabinet must disclose the material.
After that decision, the cabinet released some information about the death of a Wayne County toddler who drank drain cleaner at an alleged methamphetamine laboratory. But the cabinet refused to provide the newspapers with information about other child-abuse deaths.
A 2009 Courier-Journal investigation found that nearly 270 Kentucky children had died of abuse or neglect during the past decade — more than half in cases in which state officials knew of or suspected problems.
Thursday’s ruling is a major open-records victory for the newspapers and the public because it forces the cabinet to disclose details of how well the state does its job of protecting children from severe abuse, said Jon Fleischaker, a lawyer for The Courier-Journal.
“It’s about time the cabinet recognizes that it is not above the law,” Fleischaker said. “It has to comply with the mandate of state and federal law. This is not a difficult issue.”
Cabinet officials released a brief statement Thursday saying that they are reviewing the ruling. They gave no indication when they would release the records.
Fleischaker said the cabinet could appeal but added that he doubts it would succeed because Shepherd found for the newspapers in the virtually identical case last year. The cabinet did not appeal that ruling, making the decision final.
Fleischaker called on Gov. Steve Beshear to direct officials at the cabinet to comply with the court’s ruling.
“We now have a judge talking about the inability of the cabinet to understand its legal obligations,” Flesichaker said. “Maybe the governor needs to step in. He probably should have stepped in before this.”
Beshear spokeswoman Kerri Richardson didn’t respond to a question about whether Beshear will get involved. She said in a statement only that the cabinet is reviewing the decision.
Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said Thursday’s ruling has important ramifications.
“It’s not just a win for the press,” Brooks said. “It’s a win for kids and for citizens who are taking a look at this issue.”
In his opinion, Shepherd had harsh words for cabinet officials who have consistently fought releasing material the newpapers sought after several highly publicized child abuse or neglect deaths, including the 2009 case of the Wayne County toddler.
His order said the cabinet “misinterpreted” state law and “continues to flatly ignore” provisions that require it to disclose the records.
“The release of these records will help to keep the cabinet accountable to prevent future tragedies and to answer to taxpayers who fund the cabinet,” it said.
State law — conforming to federal law — says such records may be “publicly disclosed” in cases in which a child was killed or severely injured from abuse or neglect if the cabinet had involvement with the family. But in recent years, cabinet officials have refused to release such material, citing the need for confidentiality.
Shepherd’s order noted the “exact issues” in the current case were already addressed in the initial lawsuit filed by the newpapers in 2009.
In that case, Shepherd ruled in May 2010 that the cabinet must release records related to the death of Kayden Daniels, the 20-month-old Wayne County boy who died at the home of his teenage parents, the site of the alleged meth lab. Both the child and his mother, then 14, had been under supervision of the cabinet before the death.
Records sought by the newspapers included a “fatality report” that the cabinet is required by law to conduct, examining the circumstances of the child’s death and actions of cabinet officials involved with the family. After Shepherd ordered the cabinet to release the report, agency officials acknowledged they had never conducted the review or produced such a report.
Shepherd ordered the release of other cabinet records in the case, such as documents relatging to state contacts with the family, the cabinet disclosed.
But it refused subsequent requests for information about other child-abuse deaths. That prompted the newspapers to file a second lawsuit in January, asking Shepherd to order the cabinet to comply with his previous order.
Shepherd, in Thursday’s ruling, also struck down “emergency regulations” that cabinet officials enacted in January seeking to sharply restrict the information it must release about child deaths and injuries. Shepherd’s order found no basis in state law for the regulations.
Because the newspapers had requested records related to child deaths for the past several years, such records are likely to be voluminous and could impose a “substantial administrative burden on the cabinet,” Shepherd’s order said.
For that reason, Shepherd ordered the cabinet to meet with the newspapers within the next 10 days to try to reach an agreement on the “orderly and timely production of the records.”
If the parties can’t agree, Shepherd’s order said he will hold a hearing on the matter and spell out the “time, place and manner of production.”
Shepherd also reserved a ruling on the newspapers’ request for attorneys fees until the other issues are resolved.
He already has awarded the newspapers $20,700 in legal costs from the first round of litigation. The cabinet has appealed that order.
Fleischaker called on Gov. Steve Beshear to direct officials at the cabinet to comply with the court’s ruling.
“We now have a judge talking about the inability of the cabinet to understand its legal obligations,” Flesichaker said. “Maybe the governor needs to step in. He probably should have stepped in before this.”
Beshear spokeswoman Kerri Richardson didn’t respond to a question about whether Beshear will get involved. She said in a statement only that the cabinet is reviewing the decision.
Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said Thursday’s ruling has important ramifications.
“It’s not just a win for the press,” Brooks said. “It’s a win for kids and for citizens who are taking a look at this issue.”
In his opinion, Shepherd had harsh words for cabinet officials who have consistently fought releasing material the newpapers sought after several highly publicized child abuse or neglect deaths, including the 2009 case of the Wayne County toddler.
His order said the cabinet “misinterpreted” state law and “continues to flatly ignore” provisions that require it to disclose the records.
“The release of these records will help to keep the cabinet accountable to prevent future tragedies and to answer to taxpayers who fund the cabinet,” it said.
State law — conforming to federal law — says such records may be “publicly disclosed” in cases in which a child was killed or severely injured from abuse or neglect if the cabinet had involvement with the family. But in recent years, cabinet officials have refused to release such material, citing the need for confidentiality.
Shepherd’s order noted the “exact issues” in the current case were already addressed in the initial lawsuit filed by the newpapers in 2009.
In that case, Shepherd ruled in May 2010 that the cabinet must release records related to the death of Kayden Daniels, the 20-month-old Wayne County boy who died at the home of his teenage parents, the site of the alleged meth lab. Both the child and his mother, then 14, had been under supervision of the cabinet before the death.
Records sought by the newspapers included a “fatality report” that the cabinet is required by law to conduct, examining the circumstances of the child’s death and actions of cabinet officials involved with the family. After Shepherd ordered the cabinet to release the report, agency officials acknowledged they had never conducted the review or produced such a report.
Shepherd ordered the release of other cabinet records in the case, such as documents relatging to state contacts with the family, the cabinet disclosed.
But it refused subsequent requests for information about other child-abuse deaths. That prompted the newspapers to file a second lawsuit in January, asking Shepherd to order the cabinet to comply with his previous order.
Shepherd, in Thursday’s ruling, also struck down “emergency regulations” that cabinet officials enacted in January seeking to sharply restrict the information it must release about child deaths and injuries. Shepherd’s order found no basis in state law for the regulations.
Because the newspapers had requested records related to child deaths for the past several years, such records are likely to be voluminous and could impose a “substantial administrative burden on the cabinet,” Shepherd’s order said.
For that reason, Shepherd ordered the cabinet to meet with the newspapers within the next 10 days to try to reach an agreement on the “orderly and timely production of the records.”
If the parties can’t agree, Shepherd’s order said he will hold a hearing on the matter and spell out the “time, place and manner of production.”
Shepherd also reserved a ruling on the newspapers’ request for attorneys fees until the other issues are resolved.
He already has awarded the newspapers $20,700 in legal costs from the first round of litigation. The cabinet has appealed that order.
Source http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20111103/NEWS01/311030033/Judge-orders-Kentucky-release-records-child-abuse-deaths?odyssey=nav%7Chead
Lawyer: Charges will be tough against judge in beating video
By Tracy Sabo, Ashley Hayes and Moni Basu, CNN
Dallas (CNN) -- A Texas judge whose daughter posted a graphic video of him beating her repeatedly has unleashed torrents of public anger but he may not ever face criminal prosecution.
Hillary Adams, now 23, uploaded a video of her father whipping her with a belt, cursing at her and berating her. She said Thursday that violence was a regular occurrence in her family home.
"It did happen regularly, for a period of time, and I could tell, because of the pattern, that things were escalating again," she said on NBC's "Today."
Her father, William Adams, a court-at-law judge in Aransas County, Texas, faces a police investigation and a judicial conduct probe.
Aransas County District Attorney Patrick Flanigan said authorities are looking at numerous factors, including the child's age and the statute of limitations.
The law is complex on which charges could be brought, he said, and which statutes may apply -- all speculation until the video is confirmed to be authentic.
"We're in a fact-finding situation now to determine what is true," he said. His office will look at how the law has changed in the past couple of years, as there could have been different laws in effect at the time.
However, a criminal defense lawyer said it was not likely that Adams could be prosecuted.
In an offense involving injury to a child, Texas law defines a child as being 14 years or less, said Houston lawyer Chris Tritico. Hillary Adams was 16 in the video.
He said the judge might have been charged with aggravated assault except in Texas, the statute of limitations is three years. The video was filmed in 2004.
"This young lady sat on this videotape for six years," Tritico said. "That's where the problem is."
But outrage over the beating erupted Thursday and in the court of public opinion, William Adams, who handles family-related and juvenile court issues, had already been convicted.
The state Commission of Judicial Conduct was inundated with calls, e-mails and faxes, it said in an online statement announcing the start of a probe into the matter.
"We want to get to the bottom of it ... regardless of who the person is," Flanigan said.
Aransas County Attorney Richard Bianchi said his office was also overwhelmed with calls and e-mails, including some from overseas, since the video went viral on the Internet.
"Just a sad day. It's unfortunate for all the people in that video. It doesn't bode well for the image of our community or our judiciary or our legal community in Aransas County," Bianchi said.
Adams was temporarily relieved of his duties for the next two weeks, and a visiting judge will take over his caseload while the matter is being investigated, according to the office of Aransas County Administrative Judge Burt Mills.
Meanwhile, Hillary Adams appeared on "Today" with her mother, Hallie Adams. Although she participated in the videotaped beating, Hillary Adams said she has since left the marriage because of the abuse and has apologized.
"We're very close now," she said when asked if she was angry at her mother. "When I showed her the video, she started crying, hasn't stopped apologizing, and I forgive her because she knows everything that happened."
Asked how she could condone or participate in the incident, Hillary Adams acknowledged, "It's chilling," but said. "My answer to you and to the world is something that I've been hiding for a very long time. It's a family secret, and that's addiction" on her husband's part.
She did not elaborate, but said, "I lived in an environment of dysfunction and it steadily got worse." She said she left her husband when Hillary was 6 months old and "he shamed me into going back.
"I was completely brainwashed and controlled," Hallie Adams said. "I did every single thing he did."
Hillary Adams said on "Today" that she left her video camera on her dresser recording and covered its light with a scarf in order to capture the video.
The video is punctuated by cracks of the man's belt and the girl's screams and cries.
She waited seven years to release it because at the time it was shot, she was still a minor and living under her father's roof. She didn't know what might happen to herself, her mother or her younger sister, she said.
The 2004 beating occurred when her father was punishing her for using the Internet "to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time," Hillary Adams wrote on the Internet posting. She said she released the video after being harassed by her father.
"It was the straw that broke the camel's back," she said Thursday. "It wasn't any huge happening or anything." She said she told her father she had the video, "and he didn't seem to think anything of it, and basically dared me to post it."
The video posting said, "Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system if he can't even exercise fit judgment as a parent himself. Do not allow this man to ever be re-elected again. His 'judgment' is a giant farce. Signed, Hillary Adams, his daughter."
Receiving an outpouring of support after posting the video has been like a form of therapy, she told KRIS, which is based in Corpus Christi, Texas.
"People are believing us now, instead of calling us liars like they have in the past," she said.
In an interview with KZTV outside his Rockport, Texas, home Wednesday, Adams confirmed to a reporter that he was the man beating his daughter with a belt and a board on the video.
"She's mad because I've ordered her to bring the car back, in a nutshell, but yeah, that's me. I lost my temper," Adams told the station. "Her mother was there, she wasn't hurt ... it was a long time ago ... I really don't want to get into this right now because as you can see my life's been made very difficult over this child."
Adams continued: "In my mind I have not done anything wrong other than discipline my child when she was caught stealing. I did lose my temper, I've apologized. It looks worse than it is."
A phone number listed for William Adams appeared to be out of service Thursday, with calls not connecting.
Hillary Adams told KRIS that her father was "making light of the situation."
"I just can't believe he would say something like he doesn't think it's a big deal."
At one point in the 7 1/2-minute video, the man says to his near-hysterical daughter, "What happened to you, Hillary? Once you were an obedient, nice little girl. Now you lie, cheat and steal."
He yells at her, "You want to put some more computer games on? You want some more?"
"Are you happy?" he asks her. "Disobeying your parents? You don't deserve to f---ing be in this house."
He also berates the girl's mother for allowing a "f---ing computer" in the house.
The older woman also strikes the girl with a belt once, and near the end of the video instructs the girl not to "touch one other thing on the computer besides your schoolwork until you are given notice otherwise."
Hillary Adams "has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father's backwards views," according to the YouTube posting.
Adams told KRIS that the conduct is "not as bad as it looks on tape." The judge said he had contacted judicial review officials in Austin and "more will come out" in the investigation, KRIS reported.
Asked what he might mean, Hallie Adams said on "Today," "I think that the story that's going to come out ... in his mind is that he's projected his problem onto me. For the entire four years since I've left the marriage, I've been abused and harassed through texts, e-mail." She said she told William Adams in June that she would not speak to him again, and "he has threatened to file for modification and take my younger daughter away from me."
Asked whether she wants her father to lose his job, Hillary Adams said on "Today," "I think wishing anybody to lose their job is not a really good thing to do," but "his being fit for the job, that's something I really can't say that he is."
She said she believes her father has been punished enough by the video being made public, "and I just think he really needs help and rehabilitation. We need to get him counseling or something."
She said she regretted that it was her own father "but at the same time so many people are telling me I did the right thing."
One court employee called Adams a good judge and told CNN affliate KTRK that there were always two sides to every story.
Whether Adams will face consequences for beating his daughter remains to be seen. But he will have to face the public three years from now, when he is up for re-election.
This article is based on reporting by Tracy Sabo in Dallas and Dave Alsup, Ashley Hayes and Moni Basu in Atlanta. CNN's Carma Hassan and Michael Martinez contributed to this report.
Source http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/03/justice/texas-video-beating/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Dallas (CNN) -- A Texas judge whose daughter posted a graphic video of him beating her repeatedly has unleashed torrents of public anger but he may not ever face criminal prosecution.
Hillary Adams, now 23, uploaded a video of her father whipping her with a belt, cursing at her and berating her. She said Thursday that violence was a regular occurrence in her family home.
"It did happen regularly, for a period of time, and I could tell, because of the pattern, that things were escalating again," she said on NBC's "Today."
Her father, William Adams, a court-at-law judge in Aransas County, Texas, faces a police investigation and a judicial conduct probe.
Aransas County District Attorney Patrick Flanigan said authorities are looking at numerous factors, including the child's age and the statute of limitations.
The law is complex on which charges could be brought, he said, and which statutes may apply -- all speculation until the video is confirmed to be authentic.
"We're in a fact-finding situation now to determine what is true," he said. His office will look at how the law has changed in the past couple of years, as there could have been different laws in effect at the time.
However, a criminal defense lawyer said it was not likely that Adams could be prosecuted.
In an offense involving injury to a child, Texas law defines a child as being 14 years or less, said Houston lawyer Chris Tritico. Hillary Adams was 16 in the video.
He said the judge might have been charged with aggravated assault except in Texas, the statute of limitations is three years. The video was filmed in 2004.
"This young lady sat on this videotape for six years," Tritico said. "That's where the problem is."
But outrage over the beating erupted Thursday and in the court of public opinion, William Adams, who handles family-related and juvenile court issues, had already been convicted.
The state Commission of Judicial Conduct was inundated with calls, e-mails and faxes, it said in an online statement announcing the start of a probe into the matter.
"We want to get to the bottom of it ... regardless of who the person is," Flanigan said.
Aransas County Attorney Richard Bianchi said his office was also overwhelmed with calls and e-mails, including some from overseas, since the video went viral on the Internet.
"Just a sad day. It's unfortunate for all the people in that video. It doesn't bode well for the image of our community or our judiciary or our legal community in Aransas County," Bianchi said.
Adams was temporarily relieved of his duties for the next two weeks, and a visiting judge will take over his caseload while the matter is being investigated, according to the office of Aransas County Administrative Judge Burt Mills.
Meanwhile, Hillary Adams appeared on "Today" with her mother, Hallie Adams. Although she participated in the videotaped beating, Hillary Adams said she has since left the marriage because of the abuse and has apologized.
"We're very close now," she said when asked if she was angry at her mother. "When I showed her the video, she started crying, hasn't stopped apologizing, and I forgive her because she knows everything that happened."
Asked how she could condone or participate in the incident, Hillary Adams acknowledged, "It's chilling," but said. "My answer to you and to the world is something that I've been hiding for a very long time. It's a family secret, and that's addiction" on her husband's part.
She did not elaborate, but said, "I lived in an environment of dysfunction and it steadily got worse." She said she left her husband when Hillary was 6 months old and "he shamed me into going back.
"I was completely brainwashed and controlled," Hallie Adams said. "I did every single thing he did."
Hillary Adams said on "Today" that she left her video camera on her dresser recording and covered its light with a scarf in order to capture the video.
The video is punctuated by cracks of the man's belt and the girl's screams and cries.
She waited seven years to release it because at the time it was shot, she was still a minor and living under her father's roof. She didn't know what might happen to herself, her mother or her younger sister, she said.
The 2004 beating occurred when her father was punishing her for using the Internet "to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time," Hillary Adams wrote on the Internet posting. She said she released the video after being harassed by her father.
"It was the straw that broke the camel's back," she said Thursday. "It wasn't any huge happening or anything." She said she told her father she had the video, "and he didn't seem to think anything of it, and basically dared me to post it."
The video posting said, "Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system if he can't even exercise fit judgment as a parent himself. Do not allow this man to ever be re-elected again. His 'judgment' is a giant farce. Signed, Hillary Adams, his daughter."
Receiving an outpouring of support after posting the video has been like a form of therapy, she told KRIS, which is based in Corpus Christi, Texas.
"People are believing us now, instead of calling us liars like they have in the past," she said.
In an interview with KZTV outside his Rockport, Texas, home Wednesday, Adams confirmed to a reporter that he was the man beating his daughter with a belt and a board on the video.
"She's mad because I've ordered her to bring the car back, in a nutshell, but yeah, that's me. I lost my temper," Adams told the station. "Her mother was there, she wasn't hurt ... it was a long time ago ... I really don't want to get into this right now because as you can see my life's been made very difficult over this child."
Adams continued: "In my mind I have not done anything wrong other than discipline my child when she was caught stealing. I did lose my temper, I've apologized. It looks worse than it is."
A phone number listed for William Adams appeared to be out of service Thursday, with calls not connecting.
Hillary Adams told KRIS that her father was "making light of the situation."
"I just can't believe he would say something like he doesn't think it's a big deal."
At one point in the 7 1/2-minute video, the man says to his near-hysterical daughter, "What happened to you, Hillary? Once you were an obedient, nice little girl. Now you lie, cheat and steal."
He yells at her, "You want to put some more computer games on? You want some more?"
"Are you happy?" he asks her. "Disobeying your parents? You don't deserve to f---ing be in this house."
He also berates the girl's mother for allowing a "f---ing computer" in the house.
The older woman also strikes the girl with a belt once, and near the end of the video instructs the girl not to "touch one other thing on the computer besides your schoolwork until you are given notice otherwise."
Hillary Adams "has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father's backwards views," according to the YouTube posting.
Adams told KRIS that the conduct is "not as bad as it looks on tape." The judge said he had contacted judicial review officials in Austin and "more will come out" in the investigation, KRIS reported.
Asked what he might mean, Hallie Adams said on "Today," "I think that the story that's going to come out ... in his mind is that he's projected his problem onto me. For the entire four years since I've left the marriage, I've been abused and harassed through texts, e-mail." She said she told William Adams in June that she would not speak to him again, and "he has threatened to file for modification and take my younger daughter away from me."
Asked whether she wants her father to lose his job, Hillary Adams said on "Today," "I think wishing anybody to lose their job is not a really good thing to do," but "his being fit for the job, that's something I really can't say that he is."
She said she believes her father has been punished enough by the video being made public, "and I just think he really needs help and rehabilitation. We need to get him counseling or something."
She said she regretted that it was her own father "but at the same time so many people are telling me I did the right thing."
One court employee called Adams a good judge and told CNN affliate KTRK that there were always two sides to every story.
Whether Adams will face consequences for beating his daughter remains to be seen. But he will have to face the public three years from now, when he is up for re-election.
This article is based on reporting by Tracy Sabo in Dallas and Dave Alsup, Ashley Hayes and Moni Basu in Atlanta. CNN's Carma Hassan and Michael Martinez contributed to this report.
Source http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/03/justice/texas-video-beating/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Texas judge confirms video of him beating daughter, says 'I lost my temper'
Blog authors note:
Here is a good example of the sadistic people who run family courts and make judgements against parents who truly love their children and which many are in front of these sadists due to false allegations.
-----
By By Tracy Sabo and Ashley Hayes, CNN
Dallas (CNN) -- A Texas judge faces a police investigation and judicial probe after a video showing him beating his then-16-year-old disabled daughter was posted on the Internet.
The graphic video drew international outrage after it was posted by a woman who said she was the victim of the beating seven years ago and that her parents -- including her father, Aransas County, Texas, Court-At-Law Judge William Adams -- were the ones seen beating and cursing at her in the video.
On Wednesday afternoon, Judge Adams was temporarily relieved of his duties for the next two weeks, and a visiting judge will take over his caseload while the matter is being investigated, according to the office of Aransas County Administrative Judge Burt Mills.
No court dates were scheduled this week, Mills' office said.
In an interview with KZTV outside his Rockport, Texas, home Wednesday, Adams confirmed to a reporter that he was the man beating his daughter with a belt and a board on the video, taped in 2004.
"She's mad because I've ordered her to bring the car back, in a nutshell, but yeah, that's me. I lost my temper," Adams told the TV station. "Her mother was there, she wasn't hurt ... it was a long time ago ... I really don't want to get into this right now because as you can see my life's been made very difficult over this child."
Adams continued: "In my mind I have not done anything wrong other than discipline my child when she was caught stealing. I did lose my temper, I've apologized. It looks worse than it is."
Speaking via phone to Texas television station KRIS, a woman who identified herself as Hillary Adams, the daughter in the video, said she posted the video, and criticized her father for "making light of the situation."
"I just can't believe he would say something like, he doesn't think it's a big deal," she said.
She told KRIS she set up the camera to record the incident seven years ago, but waited for "the right time" to release the video.
"Waiting this long to publish it has enabled me to look at it with hindsight and not be so caught up in the passion of the moment," Hillary Adams said. "I think we do, my mother and I, we do need to try to move on past the anger and just concentrate on getting counseling and help."
Receiving an outpouring of support after posting the video has been like a form of therapy, she told KRIS, which is based in Corpus Christi, Texas.
"People are believing us now, instead of calling us liars like they have in the past," she said.
Aransas County Attorney Richard Bianchi said his office has been overwhelmed with calls and e-mails, including some from overseas, since the video went viral on the Internet.
"Just a sad day. It's unfortunate for all the people in that video. It doesn't bode well for the image of our community or our judiciary or our legal community in Aransas County," Bianchi said.
When asked if Judge Adams could continue to work under the media attention and while the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct investigates, Bianchi replied: "That depends on his state of mind. He'll have to look himself in the mirror and ask if he can conduct himself fairly and make good decisions."
Judge Adams is up for re-election in three years, Judge Mills told CNN. He was elected to a four-year term last year, said Aransas County Clerk Peggy Friebele.
Asked if there were any similar or past incidents in the longtime judge's personnel record, Bianchi stated: "Nothing involving the county attorney's office... He, like all of us, has his personal life struggles... he had a divorce." Adams was the county judge, an administrative position, before being elected as a county court-at-law judge about 10 years ago, Bianchi said.
A person identifying herself as Hillary Adams said in posting the video to the sharing site Reddit she decided to post it after receiving a "barrage of harassment" over the phone from her father.
The video, apparently shot on a webcam, was also posted to YouTube. In that posting, the person identifying herself as Hillary Adams said the beating occurred in 2004, when her father was punishing her for using the Internet "to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time."
The video posting said, "Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system if he can't even exercise fit judgment as a parent himself. Do not allow this man to ever be re-elected again. His 'judgment' is a giant farce. Signed, Hillary Adams, his daughter."
CNN tried repeatedly on Wednesday to reach William Adams at his Rockport, Texas, office, but received a constant busy signal.
But Adams told Texas television station KRIS that the conduct is "not as bad as it looks on tape." The judge said he had contacted judicial review officials in Austin and "more will come out" in the investigation, KRIS reported
Meanwhile, Aransas County Administrative Judge Mills told CNN that he spoke with Adams on Wednesday morning.
"I talked to him this morning and he was pretty upset," Mills said. He added that Adams was due to be off from work Wednesday for personal reasons.
Judge Adam's ex-wife, Hallie Adams, posted a comment on Facebook about the video, according to KRIS.
The posting attributed to Hallie Adams states: "I am praying for my daughters and me and my family to heal in all ways from emotional and physical abuse, for the current and continuing abuse of my children and me that has been ongoing to end -- starting now -- for my daughters to both finally be able to go to counseling both individually and as a family group with their dad's approval, encouragement, involvement and support, for him to finally make amends to all of us, talk openly with us, and take the first steps to letting our broken family heal."
A page called "Don't Re-Elect Judge William Adams" also sprang up on Facebook, attracting more than 13,000 "likes" by Wednesday night. Messages were posted by users in countries including Australia, the Netherlands and Guatemala, among others, and a Spanish-language version of the video was posted on YouTube.
"This man doesn't deserve power," said a posting on the Facebook page. "He doesn't know how to use it."
A person identifying herself as Hillary Adams, on a Twitter account using the same username as the posting on Reddit, tweeted to CNN, "I'm not sure how much I should say, except that above all we need to help my father instead of condemning him."
In another tweet, the person said, "I'm feeling some regret for publishing the video because to ruin my own father is heavy indeed. But I really want him to seek help."
The video was brought to authorities' attention about 9 p.m. Tuesday, Rockport Police Chief Tim Jayroe told CNN, and authorities are investigating to determine its authenticity.
Aransas County District Attorney Patrick Flanigan told CNN authorities are looking at numerous factors, including the child's age and the statute of limitations.
The law is complex on which charges could be brought, he said, and which statutes may apply -- which is all speculation until the video is confirmed to be authentic.
"We're in a fact-finding situation now to determine what is true," he said, and the district attorney's office will get updates from the police department about the investigation.
In addition, he said, his office will look at how the law has changed in the past couple of years, as there could have been different laws in effect at the time.
The possibility of an alleged abuser holding a position of authority such as a judge "doesn't matter and shouldn't matter" in the investigation, District Attorney Flanigan said, adding, "it will be a normal review."
As a judge, Adams handles misdemeanor cases, including family-related and juvenile court issues, Flanigan said. Those cases rarely move to the criminal side or cross to his purview, he said.
"We want to get to the bottom of it ... regardless of who the person is," he said.
The Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct declined comment on the matter Wednesday, but it said it was aware of the situation. A woman answering the phone said the commission has been "overwhelmed."
Hillary Adams "has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father's backwards views," according to the posting on the YouTube video. "The judge's wife was emotionally abused herself and was severely manipulated into assisting the beating and should not be blamed for any content in this video."
Attempts by CNN to contact Hillary Adams' mother were not immediately successful Wednesday.
The video is punctuated by cracks of the man's belt and the girl's screams and cries.
At one point, the man says to his near-hysterical daughter, "What happened to you, Hillary? Once you were an obedient, nice little girl. Now you lie, cheat and steal."
At another point in the 7 1/2-minute video, he yells at her, "You want to put some more computer games on? You want some more?"
"Are you happy?" he asks her. "Disobeying your parents? You don't deserve to f---ing be in this house."
He also berates the older woman, who identifies herself as the girl's mother, for allowing a "f---ing computer" in the house.
The older woman also strikes the girl with a belt once, and near the end of the video instructs the girl not to "touch one other thing on the computer besides your schoolwork until you are given notice otherwise."
The girl was apparently 16 at the time the video is taken, as the older woman at one point instructs her to "turn over like a 16-year-old and take it."
Judge Adams' work schedule will be reassessed as new information is revealed in the investigation, Mills' office said.
Police and the district attorney are taking the investigation seriously, Jayroe, the police chief, said. Investigators have not yet spoken to Hillary Adams or her family, he said, and have not tried to contact William Adams.
"We would want to talk to her," he said of Hillary Adams.
Jayroe said his department has asked the Texas Department of Public Safety for assistance with an investigator. "It's the first time in 22 years we've asked for assistance," he said.
Source http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/02/justice/texas-video-beating/?hpt=hp_t2
Here is a good example of the sadistic people who run family courts and make judgements against parents who truly love their children and which many are in front of these sadists due to false allegations.
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By By Tracy Sabo and Ashley Hayes, CNN
Dallas (CNN) -- A Texas judge faces a police investigation and judicial probe after a video showing him beating his then-16-year-old disabled daughter was posted on the Internet.
The graphic video drew international outrage after it was posted by a woman who said she was the victim of the beating seven years ago and that her parents -- including her father, Aransas County, Texas, Court-At-Law Judge William Adams -- were the ones seen beating and cursing at her in the video.
On Wednesday afternoon, Judge Adams was temporarily relieved of his duties for the next two weeks, and a visiting judge will take over his caseload while the matter is being investigated, according to the office of Aransas County Administrative Judge Burt Mills.
No court dates were scheduled this week, Mills' office said.
In an interview with KZTV outside his Rockport, Texas, home Wednesday, Adams confirmed to a reporter that he was the man beating his daughter with a belt and a board on the video, taped in 2004.
"She's mad because I've ordered her to bring the car back, in a nutshell, but yeah, that's me. I lost my temper," Adams told the TV station. "Her mother was there, she wasn't hurt ... it was a long time ago ... I really don't want to get into this right now because as you can see my life's been made very difficult over this child."
Adams continued: "In my mind I have not done anything wrong other than discipline my child when she was caught stealing. I did lose my temper, I've apologized. It looks worse than it is."
Speaking via phone to Texas television station KRIS, a woman who identified herself as Hillary Adams, the daughter in the video, said she posted the video, and criticized her father for "making light of the situation."
"I just can't believe he would say something like, he doesn't think it's a big deal," she said.
She told KRIS she set up the camera to record the incident seven years ago, but waited for "the right time" to release the video.
"Waiting this long to publish it has enabled me to look at it with hindsight and not be so caught up in the passion of the moment," Hillary Adams said. "I think we do, my mother and I, we do need to try to move on past the anger and just concentrate on getting counseling and help."
Receiving an outpouring of support after posting the video has been like a form of therapy, she told KRIS, which is based in Corpus Christi, Texas.
"People are believing us now, instead of calling us liars like they have in the past," she said.
Aransas County Attorney Richard Bianchi said his office has been overwhelmed with calls and e-mails, including some from overseas, since the video went viral on the Internet.
"Just a sad day. It's unfortunate for all the people in that video. It doesn't bode well for the image of our community or our judiciary or our legal community in Aransas County," Bianchi said.
When asked if Judge Adams could continue to work under the media attention and while the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct investigates, Bianchi replied: "That depends on his state of mind. He'll have to look himself in the mirror and ask if he can conduct himself fairly and make good decisions."
Judge Adams is up for re-election in three years, Judge Mills told CNN. He was elected to a four-year term last year, said Aransas County Clerk Peggy Friebele.
Asked if there were any similar or past incidents in the longtime judge's personnel record, Bianchi stated: "Nothing involving the county attorney's office... He, like all of us, has his personal life struggles... he had a divorce." Adams was the county judge, an administrative position, before being elected as a county court-at-law judge about 10 years ago, Bianchi said.
A person identifying herself as Hillary Adams said in posting the video to the sharing site Reddit she decided to post it after receiving a "barrage of harassment" over the phone from her father.
The video, apparently shot on a webcam, was also posted to YouTube. In that posting, the person identifying herself as Hillary Adams said the beating occurred in 2004, when her father was punishing her for using the Internet "to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time."
The video posting said, "Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system if he can't even exercise fit judgment as a parent himself. Do not allow this man to ever be re-elected again. His 'judgment' is a giant farce. Signed, Hillary Adams, his daughter."
CNN tried repeatedly on Wednesday to reach William Adams at his Rockport, Texas, office, but received a constant busy signal.
But Adams told Texas television station KRIS that the conduct is "not as bad as it looks on tape." The judge said he had contacted judicial review officials in Austin and "more will come out" in the investigation, KRIS reported
Meanwhile, Aransas County Administrative Judge Mills told CNN that he spoke with Adams on Wednesday morning.
"I talked to him this morning and he was pretty upset," Mills said. He added that Adams was due to be off from work Wednesday for personal reasons.
Judge Adam's ex-wife, Hallie Adams, posted a comment on Facebook about the video, according to KRIS.
The posting attributed to Hallie Adams states: "I am praying for my daughters and me and my family to heal in all ways from emotional and physical abuse, for the current and continuing abuse of my children and me that has been ongoing to end -- starting now -- for my daughters to both finally be able to go to counseling both individually and as a family group with their dad's approval, encouragement, involvement and support, for him to finally make amends to all of us, talk openly with us, and take the first steps to letting our broken family heal."
A page called "Don't Re-Elect Judge William Adams" also sprang up on Facebook, attracting more than 13,000 "likes" by Wednesday night. Messages were posted by users in countries including Australia, the Netherlands and Guatemala, among others, and a Spanish-language version of the video was posted on YouTube.
"This man doesn't deserve power," said a posting on the Facebook page. "He doesn't know how to use it."
A person identifying herself as Hillary Adams, on a Twitter account using the same username as the posting on Reddit, tweeted to CNN, "I'm not sure how much I should say, except that above all we need to help my father instead of condemning him."
In another tweet, the person said, "I'm feeling some regret for publishing the video because to ruin my own father is heavy indeed. But I really want him to seek help."
The video was brought to authorities' attention about 9 p.m. Tuesday, Rockport Police Chief Tim Jayroe told CNN, and authorities are investigating to determine its authenticity.
Aransas County District Attorney Patrick Flanigan told CNN authorities are looking at numerous factors, including the child's age and the statute of limitations.
The law is complex on which charges could be brought, he said, and which statutes may apply -- which is all speculation until the video is confirmed to be authentic.
"We're in a fact-finding situation now to determine what is true," he said, and the district attorney's office will get updates from the police department about the investigation.
In addition, he said, his office will look at how the law has changed in the past couple of years, as there could have been different laws in effect at the time.
The possibility of an alleged abuser holding a position of authority such as a judge "doesn't matter and shouldn't matter" in the investigation, District Attorney Flanigan said, adding, "it will be a normal review."
As a judge, Adams handles misdemeanor cases, including family-related and juvenile court issues, Flanigan said. Those cases rarely move to the criminal side or cross to his purview, he said.
"We want to get to the bottom of it ... regardless of who the person is," he said.
The Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct declined comment on the matter Wednesday, but it said it was aware of the situation. A woman answering the phone said the commission has been "overwhelmed."
Hillary Adams "has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father's backwards views," according to the posting on the YouTube video. "The judge's wife was emotionally abused herself and was severely manipulated into assisting the beating and should not be blamed for any content in this video."
Attempts by CNN to contact Hillary Adams' mother were not immediately successful Wednesday.
The video is punctuated by cracks of the man's belt and the girl's screams and cries.
At one point, the man says to his near-hysterical daughter, "What happened to you, Hillary? Once you were an obedient, nice little girl. Now you lie, cheat and steal."
At another point in the 7 1/2-minute video, he yells at her, "You want to put some more computer games on? You want some more?"
"Are you happy?" he asks her. "Disobeying your parents? You don't deserve to f---ing be in this house."
He also berates the older woman, who identifies herself as the girl's mother, for allowing a "f---ing computer" in the house.
The older woman also strikes the girl with a belt once, and near the end of the video instructs the girl not to "touch one other thing on the computer besides your schoolwork until you are given notice otherwise."
The girl was apparently 16 at the time the video is taken, as the older woman at one point instructs her to "turn over like a 16-year-old and take it."
Judge Adams' work schedule will be reassessed as new information is revealed in the investigation, Mills' office said.
Police and the district attorney are taking the investigation seriously, Jayroe, the police chief, said. Investigators have not yet spoken to Hillary Adams or her family, he said, and have not tried to contact William Adams.
"We would want to talk to her," he said of Hillary Adams.
Jayroe said his department has asked the Texas Department of Public Safety for assistance with an investigator. "It's the first time in 22 years we've asked for assistance," he said.
Source http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/02/justice/texas-video-beating/?hpt=hp_t2
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Oklahoma - Tribal Members Rally In Support Of Naomi Whitecrow
Lisa Monahan, News 9
OKLAHOMA CITY -- A two-year-old Native American dies in foster care. Now, tribal members are calling on lawmakers to deliver justice for Naomi Whitecrow.
The Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes do not believe Whitecrow's foster mother, Amy Holder is being held accountable.
The tribes say the punishment recommended for Amy Holder does not fit the crime.
A jury recommended Holder pay a $5,000 fine after they found Holder guilty of child abuse in the death of Whitecrow.
The tribes say a rally at the capitol Wednesday is not their first attempt to get justice and certainly will not be their last.
Naomi's Aunt, Debby Whitecrow, said, "I'm glad people are taking notice of all we got going here."
A crowd rallied for the two-year-old who was also a member of the tribes.
"We want justice that is what we are looking for in all of this. We are here to remember her life and the life she is no longer going to be able to live with us," Whitecrow said.
Tribal members wore buttons and held signs begging for justice for Naomi. The tribe said they will keep campaigning for a judge to send Holder to prison.
"We want everyone to know what kind of monster is still out there and lurks," Whitecrow said.
Tribal members said they plan to attend Holder's formal sentencing.
Holder's attorney says the jury made its decision and Holder will be ready to pay the fine at sentencing on November 7th.
OKLAHOMA CITY -- A two-year-old Native American dies in foster care. Now, tribal members are calling on lawmakers to deliver justice for Naomi Whitecrow.
The Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes do not believe Whitecrow's foster mother, Amy Holder is being held accountable.
The tribes say the punishment recommended for Amy Holder does not fit the crime.
A jury recommended Holder pay a $5,000 fine after they found Holder guilty of child abuse in the death of Whitecrow.
The tribes say a rally at the capitol Wednesday is not their first attempt to get justice and certainly will not be their last.
Naomi's Aunt, Debby Whitecrow, said, "I'm glad people are taking notice of all we got going here."
A crowd rallied for the two-year-old who was also a member of the tribes.
"We want justice that is what we are looking for in all of this. We are here to remember her life and the life she is no longer going to be able to live with us," Whitecrow said.
Tribal members wore buttons and held signs begging for justice for Naomi. The tribe said they will keep campaigning for a judge to send Holder to prison.
"We want everyone to know what kind of monster is still out there and lurks," Whitecrow said.
Tribal members said they plan to attend Holder's formal sentencing.
Holder's attorney says the jury made its decision and Holder will be ready to pay the fine at sentencing on November 7th.
Thousands of Kids Taken From Parents In U.S. Deportation System
by Seth Freed Wessler
Clara’s eldest kid was 6 years old and her youngest just a year old when it happened. Josefina’s baby was 9 months. All three children were ripped from their mothers and sent to live in foster homes with strangers. Clara and Josefina, sisters in their early 30s who lived together in a small northern New Mexico town, had done nothing to harm their children or to elicit the attention of the child welfare department. Yet one morning last year, their family was shattered when federal immigration authorities detained both sisters. Clara and Josefina were deported four months later. For a year, they had no contact with their children.
The sun was rising on a late summer morning in Farmington. Clara (all parents’ names in this story have been changed) was asleep inside the trailer that she shared with the children and Josefina, who was finishing a night shift at the local restaurant where both sisters worked. Clara says she was jolted awake by the sound of banging and yelling. A group of uniformed officers, some marked with ICE, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and others DEA, for Drug Enforcement Administration, burst through the door.
The agents put Clara in handcuffs, while two of the officers began walking and carrying the children out of the trailer. Clara pleaded with them, asking what they would do with her children. “We’re taking them where we take all the kids,” Clara remembers one of the agents saying. She begged them to let her call a friend who could come pick up the children. The agents refused.
When Josefina arrived home from work several hours later, ICE officers were waiting. The sisters were locked up in the San Juan County jail, where they stayed for several weeks until ICE transported them to an immigration detention center in Albuquerque, three hours to the south. Their children remained in foster care.
This family is one among thousands who’ve been through the same ordeal. In a yearlong investigation, the Applied Research Center, which publishes Colorlines.com, found that at least 5,100 children whose parents are detained or deported are currently in foster care around the United States. That number represents a conservative estimate of the total, based on extensive surveys of child welfare case workers and attorneys and analysis of national immigration and child welfare trends. Many of the kids may never see their parents again.
These children, many of whom should never have been separated from their parents in the first place, face often insurmountable obstacles to reunifying with their mothers and fathers. Though child welfare departments are required by federal law to reunify children with any parents who are able to provide for the basic safety of their children, detention makes this all but impossible. Then, once parents are deported, families are often separated for long periods. Ultimately, child welfare departments and juvenile courts too often move to terminate the parental rights of deportees and put children up for adoption, rather than attempt to unify the family as they would in other circumstances.
While anecdotal reports have circulated about children lingering in foster care because of a parent’s detention or deportation, our investigation provides the first evidence that the problem occurs on a large scale. If these cases continue mounting at the same pace over the next five years, 15,000 children of detained and deported mothers and fathers will likely be separated from their parents and languish in U.S. foster homes.
Citizen Kids Caught in the Deportation Dragnet
Josefina and Clara’s children are among the hidden victims of an expanding immigration detention and deportation system that now expels nearly 400,000 people each year.
According to Clara and Josefina, the ICE and DEA agents came to their home looking for drugs, but found none. Clara believes a neighbor called in the false report to ICE. A criminal background check confirms that charges against the sisters were dropped and that neither had ever been convicted of any crime. ICE nonetheless detained them because of their undocumented immigration status, moving them from the county jail to the immigration detention center where they were held for three months. They were deported to Mexico in December 2010.
According to over 100 child welfare caseworkers and attorneys we interviewed around the country, as rates of deportations increase, so do the numbers of children from immigrant families in foster care. Indeed, federal data released to the Applied Research Center through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that almost one in four people deported in the last year was the mother or father of a United States citizen. (Next week, Colorlines.com will publish a follow-up story further detailing and explaining this startling data.)
Roberta is one such parent. Almost a year ago, she was arrested on a drunken driving charge that would likely have triggered only a short interruption in her child custody, if she were a citizen. Instead, it threatens to result in the termination of the 35-year-old’s parental rights, because she is an undocumented immigrant and was deported after being charged. Her five young children are now in two different foster homes in Phoenix. Separated from them by the U.S.-Mexico border, Roberta cannot make the journey back to fight for her kids.
ICE detained Roberta after the Phoenix police stopped her one evening as she drove three of her children home from a family party, where Roberta acknowledges she had one beer too many. Police administered a breathalyzer and charged her with driving under the influence and with child endangerment.
“I know I’ve made a mistake, but I’ve never before had a problem and I’ve paid,” Roberta told me in late January 2011, while still at the Eloy Detention Center, a 1,600-bed facility run by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America. A criminal background check confirms that this was Roberta’s first conviction in her 15 years living in the United States.
Phoenix is one of almost 70 jurisdictions around the country where local police have signed agreements with the federal government to act as immigration agents. The “287(g)” agreement, as the program is called, turns a simple traffic stop into a path to deportation by deputizing local cops as immigration enforcement agents.
Our research found that children in areas where local cops aggressively engage in immigration enforcement are more likely to be separated from their parents and face barriers to reunification. In the counties we surveyed where local police have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, children in foster care were 29 percent more likely to have a detained or deported parent than in other counties. That disparity remained statistically significant when controlling for the size of the foreign-born population.
In Roberta’s case, as the police officer arrested her, he called the county Child Protective Services, which came quickly to the side of the road and took the children away. The agency placed them in what were supposed to be temporary foster homes, until Roberta could get out of jail.
But she was not released—not until she was deported, without her children.
A Morally Corrupted System
Local immigration enforcement is metastasizing through initiatives like the 287(g) agreements and, most significantly, through a controversial program called Secure Communities, which allows ICE access to data on every person booked into a county jail. As the federal government shifts its deportation tactics away from high-profile workplace raids and toward enforcement that’s silently tied to the day-to-day functions of local police departments, a growing number of long-time residents with families and deep ties to the U.S. are deported. The program is turning jurisdictions around the country into deportation hotspots. We have identified at least 22 states where children in foster care face barriers to reunifying with their detained or deported mothers and fathers.
Whatever the state of the debate, or rancor, over who should and should not be allowed to live in the U.S., the moral and bureaucratic fallout of deporting 400,000 people a year are accumulating to toxic levels. Child welfare caseworkers say that in the face of an opaque detention system, they are helpless to reunify families. And although federal law requires child welfare departments to make diligent efforts toward family reunification, when parents are detained that’s basically impossible.
In Los Angeles, where according to our research, the mother or father of approximately one in every 16 children in foster care has been detained or deported, a caseworker for the country described the frustration. “Ultimately, as social workers our role is to reunify families. I’m not saying that ICE is right or wrong; what I’m saying is, let us do our job, let us reunify families.”
An immigration enforcement system that operates anything like the one we have will run roughshod over most everything.
Some of the most unsettling cases that our research has uncovered involve children who entered foster care when local police arrested non-citizen mothers after they or neighbors called 911 to report domestic violence.
Hilaria, of Phoenix, was arrested because she tried to defend herself against her abusive husband. One day in October 2010, he began berating her and threatening her. In minutes, the words escalated into hitting and choking. Hilaria fought back, freeing herself from the man and running to the kitchen, where she says she picked up a screwdriver and threw it at him, drawing blood.
A neighbor heard screaming and called the police. When the cops arrived, Hilaria’s husband told them that she attacked him and, as is too often the case in domestic violence reports, the officers arrested Hilaria for assault. Because their children were home at the time, the police called Child Protective Services. But when the officers and Hilaria’s abuser told the CPS worker that Hilaria had been the assailant, the caseworker left the children with him. Two weeks later, the child welfare department returned to check on the children. The caseworker now suspected that Hilaria’s husband was using drugs and removed the children from him, placing them in foster care.
Two months later, Hilaria sat on a plastic chair in a small detention center visitation room, speaking through tears. “I’ve had domestic violence before, but I took it for my kids,” she said. “Now they’ve robbed me. I did what I did to defend myself and my kids.”
Hilaria is now applying for a reprieve from deportation, which is available to some victims of domestic violence. But because of the charge of assault against her, it’s not clear the government will grant her a visa—she violates a zero-tolerance policy against “criminal” immigrants. The Obama administration recently announced that it would review the deportation cases of all 300,000 people slated for removal. The policy change, which is designed to stop the deportations of people brought to the U.S. as children and other target populations, does not appear to have helped even those like Hilaria. One year after her arrest, Hilaria is still detained. Her children are still in foster care.
The Abyss of Detention
Four months after Roberta lost her children, she also sat in detention center visitation room, sifting through crinkled papers in a bulging folder to find a photo of two of her children. “It has been four months since I’ve talked to my kids,” she said, looking at the photo of her then 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. The children stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling at the camera in front of a graffiti-scrawled wall near the family’s Phoenix apartment. The boy wore camouflage pants and the girl a pink shirt.
“I would rather die than lose my kids,” Roberta said, tears running down her round face.
“They treat us like animals here,” she complained of the barbed-wire ridged jail in Arizona’s basin cotton fields. According to Roberta, women inmates were given unwashed underwear and detainees were fed stale bread and dirty vegetables for their two meals a day. “But the worst,” said Roberta, echoing the sentiments of other detained parents, “is that I can’t see my kids.”
Three weeks after ICE detained Roberta, the juvenile court held a hearing about her family. Roberta, however, did not know about it. Neither her court appointed attorney nor the child welfare caseworkers or attorneys contacted her.
All of the parents with children in Child Protective Services custody whom we interviewed inside six detention centers said that they missed at least one of their juvenile court hearings. From detention, they could not access the courts and their attorneys could not find them.
ICE is not by law required to detain many of those it plans to deport, but it keeps non-citizens locked up to prevent them from absconding. A parent whose singular concern is getting her kids back is scarcely a flight risk. ICE nonetheless takes confinement to an extreme. Even when parents know about their juvenile court hearings, ICE categorically refuses to transport them to juvenile court hearings where vital decisions about their families are made. In hundreds of interviews with attorneys and caseworkers, not one had ever seen a detained parent appear in person at a hearing. Some detainees are not even able to arrange to phone into the hearings.
Unsurprisingly for a system in which about 85 percent of detainees lack legal representation and can be held for months, sometimes years, in squalid conditions, ICE functions without any obligation to the legal needs of the people it detains. And juvenile court judges are powerless to compel ICE to do anything.
“Parents [should] have an absolute right to be present in a court hearing,” a juvenile court judge in Pima County, Ariz., told us, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We order that if they are in custody they appear, but these orders are not honored by the detention facilities. We don’t have the authority over the federal centers.”
A month after she was initially detained, Roberta was finally able to contact her court appointed attorney by phone. But the attorney spoke no Spanish and they could not communicate. Roberta still arranged to call in to the next court hearing, but she says that because of a bad phone connection over the detention center phone, she understood nothing uttered in the courtroom.
Without any specific policy for addressing the needs of detained parents, child welfare agencies often treat them as if they’ve abandoned their children. And so, after several months in detention and no contact with her children, Roberta says she got a letter in the mail. “All [the court] sent me was a Spanish sheet with threats,” she said. “If you don’t appear, you’ll lose kids. That’s all it said.”
There was also little chance she could have complied with the child welfare department’s overall plan for family reunification. Detention centers provide parents no access to the services and programs needed to take part in their case plans for reunification, which for her would have consisted of treatment for alcohol abuse, parenting classes and visitation with her children.
Because detainees are often moved to detention centers far away from their homes—an average of 370 miles—they can rarely see their children. Though the Obama administration has said that it plans to overhaul immigration detention practices, including making efforts to detain non-citizens closer to their homes, as of August 2011, this promise did not appear to have taken effect in any significant way.
Parental Rights End at the Border
Josefina and Clara were deported to Mexico after three months in immigration detention. They made their way to Michoacán, 1,000 miles south of the border, to their mother’s home, where they began trying to regain custody of their children.
During a July 2011 phone interview from Michoacán, Josefina spoke quietly about the baby she never got to bid goodbye. “I don’t know where my child is, I have no contact with my baby,” she said. “I didn’t do anything wrong to have my children taken away from me. I didn’t steal, I didn’t do drugs, nothing. Why did they take my children?”
Once parents are deported, the threats to their families grow. While parents are detained, child welfare departments are largely prostrate to reunify families. Once mothers and fathers are deported, however, the agencies often switch gears, actively slowing down the reunification process and sometimes halting those efforts altogether.
Soon after they were deported, the sisters contacted the Mexican consulate in New Mexico to ask for help in regaining their parental rights. The consulate began corresponding with the child welfare department on the sisters’ behalf. For months after their deportation, a staff person at the consulate repeatedly told Clara and Josefina that the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department planned to reunify the family as soon as the sisters could prove that they had stable housing and jobs. Yet, even after they found work and were set up in their mother’s home, the children remained in foster care. Reunification dates cited by the department came and went, but still, no children.
According to the sisters, the New Mexico child welfare department would not let the mothers speak by phone with the youngest two of the three children and Clara spoke only once to her 6 year old. According to Josefina and Clara, they heard word that their children were placed in three different foster homes and the babies were being raised entirely in English. They feared their children would not remember them even if they were reunified and they began to believe they might never see their children again.
“I miss everything about my kids,” said Clara through sobs over the phone. “How I spent Saturday and Sundays with them, how I made my home with them, all of it. Then my children were just gone.”
Many deported parents make the tormented decision to make the bloody desert journey over the U.S.-Mexico border without papers so that they can be present at juvenile court hearings. Caseworkers around the country said that in many cases, when a parent of a foster child is deported, they are back weeks later to appear in a juvenile courtroom to try and reclaim their children.
The risks of crossing are enormous. In addition to growing violence in Mexico against migrants crossing into the U.S., immigrants caught in the country after a previous deportation now face prison time. Until recently, immigrants who were deported before were simply deported again. Now, “illegal reentry” is treated as a federal criminal offense that carries sentences of years. The charge now accounts for nearly half of all federal criminal prosecutions.
Clara and Josefina did not risk crossing back over the border; the fear of violence on the border or of extended incarceration was too great. So for a year, they waited, in fear their parental rights would be terminated.
In late September 2011, their hope dwindling, the Mexican consulate in New Mexico phoned the sisters at their mother’s house in Michoacán. “They told us to go to the airport the next day,” said Clara.
In the morning they drove three hours to the airport. Two employees of the Mexican government escorted the three children off the plane. In the middle of a waiting room at the airport, after 14 months apart, Josefina and Clara took the children into their arms.
The next day, now back at their mother’s home with the sounds of pouring rain in the background, Clara said over the phone, “It hurts me so much to talk about this. I don’t want to remember anymore.” Now the family will try to piece themselves back together.
For many, however, separation is not memory. It is a present horror. In July, after seven months of detention, Roberta was deported to Mexico. She was given no notice before she was loaded onto an ICE bus and dropped at the border. ICE did not give her time to call her children’s caseworker or her court-appointed attorney before her removal and she arrived in Mexico with nothing but $10, given to her by another deportee.
Deportation too often leads to the seamless termination of parental rights. In jurisdictions around the country, child welfare departments and children’s attorneys have successfully argued that it is in a child’s best interest to remain in the U.S. rather than join their parents in another country. Though child welfare departments are required by law to try to reunify children with their parents, and research shows that children fare better with their families than in foster care, the principal is often quashed when a border stands in the way.
Many caseworkers and attorneys noted to us a pervasive bias against placing children in another country. “When you break down the cases, placement with parents in Mexico happens very rarely,” an attorney who represents children and parents in El Paso, Texas, told us. “The knee-jerk reaction of almost everyone is that the children are better off in U.S.”
As a parents’ attorney in Takoma, Wash., said in describing several cases like Roberta’s, “They’re deported and they’re treated like they fall off the face of the earth.”
Some jurisdictions, especially those near the U.S.-Mexico border, are working to interrupt this rapid move to sever families. In San Diego County, Calif., and El Paso County, Texas, for example, the child welfare departments have established international liaisons who work with the Mexican consulate and Mexican child welfare department to place children with their families in Mexico. Without the consulate, Clara and Josefina would still be without their children.
Yet most countries lack any formal policy for deported parents and ultimately, when parents are detained and deported, families are shattered.
In the detention center, before she was deported, Roberta looked up from the photo of her children and stated a policy that many would think is common sense. “If you send the mom to Mexico,” she said, “let her take her kids with her.” It has now been one year since she lost custody of her children. Her family’s status remains in limbo.
Esther Portillo-Gonzales joined Seth Freed-Wessler in the year-long investigation that produced this story. Their research is ongoing.
Source http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/11/thousands_of_kids_lost_in_foster_homes_after_parents_deportation.html
Clara’s eldest kid was 6 years old and her youngest just a year old when it happened. Josefina’s baby was 9 months. All three children were ripped from their mothers and sent to live in foster homes with strangers. Clara and Josefina, sisters in their early 30s who lived together in a small northern New Mexico town, had done nothing to harm their children or to elicit the attention of the child welfare department. Yet one morning last year, their family was shattered when federal immigration authorities detained both sisters. Clara and Josefina were deported four months later. For a year, they had no contact with their children.
The sun was rising on a late summer morning in Farmington. Clara (all parents’ names in this story have been changed) was asleep inside the trailer that she shared with the children and Josefina, who was finishing a night shift at the local restaurant where both sisters worked. Clara says she was jolted awake by the sound of banging and yelling. A group of uniformed officers, some marked with ICE, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and others DEA, for Drug Enforcement Administration, burst through the door.
The agents put Clara in handcuffs, while two of the officers began walking and carrying the children out of the trailer. Clara pleaded with them, asking what they would do with her children. “We’re taking them where we take all the kids,” Clara remembers one of the agents saying. She begged them to let her call a friend who could come pick up the children. The agents refused.
When Josefina arrived home from work several hours later, ICE officers were waiting. The sisters were locked up in the San Juan County jail, where they stayed for several weeks until ICE transported them to an immigration detention center in Albuquerque, three hours to the south. Their children remained in foster care.
This family is one among thousands who’ve been through the same ordeal. In a yearlong investigation, the Applied Research Center, which publishes Colorlines.com, found that at least 5,100 children whose parents are detained or deported are currently in foster care around the United States. That number represents a conservative estimate of the total, based on extensive surveys of child welfare case workers and attorneys and analysis of national immigration and child welfare trends. Many of the kids may never see their parents again.
These children, many of whom should never have been separated from their parents in the first place, face often insurmountable obstacles to reunifying with their mothers and fathers. Though child welfare departments are required by federal law to reunify children with any parents who are able to provide for the basic safety of their children, detention makes this all but impossible. Then, once parents are deported, families are often separated for long periods. Ultimately, child welfare departments and juvenile courts too often move to terminate the parental rights of deportees and put children up for adoption, rather than attempt to unify the family as they would in other circumstances.
While anecdotal reports have circulated about children lingering in foster care because of a parent’s detention or deportation, our investigation provides the first evidence that the problem occurs on a large scale. If these cases continue mounting at the same pace over the next five years, 15,000 children of detained and deported mothers and fathers will likely be separated from their parents and languish in U.S. foster homes.
Citizen Kids Caught in the Deportation Dragnet
Josefina and Clara’s children are among the hidden victims of an expanding immigration detention and deportation system that now expels nearly 400,000 people each year.
According to Clara and Josefina, the ICE and DEA agents came to their home looking for drugs, but found none. Clara believes a neighbor called in the false report to ICE. A criminal background check confirms that charges against the sisters were dropped and that neither had ever been convicted of any crime. ICE nonetheless detained them because of their undocumented immigration status, moving them from the county jail to the immigration detention center where they were held for three months. They were deported to Mexico in December 2010.
According to over 100 child welfare caseworkers and attorneys we interviewed around the country, as rates of deportations increase, so do the numbers of children from immigrant families in foster care. Indeed, federal data released to the Applied Research Center through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that almost one in four people deported in the last year was the mother or father of a United States citizen. (Next week, Colorlines.com will publish a follow-up story further detailing and explaining this startling data.)
Roberta is one such parent. Almost a year ago, she was arrested on a drunken driving charge that would likely have triggered only a short interruption in her child custody, if she were a citizen. Instead, it threatens to result in the termination of the 35-year-old’s parental rights, because she is an undocumented immigrant and was deported after being charged. Her five young children are now in two different foster homes in Phoenix. Separated from them by the U.S.-Mexico border, Roberta cannot make the journey back to fight for her kids.
ICE detained Roberta after the Phoenix police stopped her one evening as she drove three of her children home from a family party, where Roberta acknowledges she had one beer too many. Police administered a breathalyzer and charged her with driving under the influence and with child endangerment.
“I know I’ve made a mistake, but I’ve never before had a problem and I’ve paid,” Roberta told me in late January 2011, while still at the Eloy Detention Center, a 1,600-bed facility run by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America. A criminal background check confirms that this was Roberta’s first conviction in her 15 years living in the United States.
Phoenix is one of almost 70 jurisdictions around the country where local police have signed agreements with the federal government to act as immigration agents. The “287(g)” agreement, as the program is called, turns a simple traffic stop into a path to deportation by deputizing local cops as immigration enforcement agents.
Our research found that children in areas where local cops aggressively engage in immigration enforcement are more likely to be separated from their parents and face barriers to reunification. In the counties we surveyed where local police have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, children in foster care were 29 percent more likely to have a detained or deported parent than in other counties. That disparity remained statistically significant when controlling for the size of the foreign-born population.
In Roberta’s case, as the police officer arrested her, he called the county Child Protective Services, which came quickly to the side of the road and took the children away. The agency placed them in what were supposed to be temporary foster homes, until Roberta could get out of jail.
But she was not released—not until she was deported, without her children.
A Morally Corrupted System
Local immigration enforcement is metastasizing through initiatives like the 287(g) agreements and, most significantly, through a controversial program called Secure Communities, which allows ICE access to data on every person booked into a county jail. As the federal government shifts its deportation tactics away from high-profile workplace raids and toward enforcement that’s silently tied to the day-to-day functions of local police departments, a growing number of long-time residents with families and deep ties to the U.S. are deported. The program is turning jurisdictions around the country into deportation hotspots. We have identified at least 22 states where children in foster care face barriers to reunifying with their detained or deported mothers and fathers.
Whatever the state of the debate, or rancor, over who should and should not be allowed to live in the U.S., the moral and bureaucratic fallout of deporting 400,000 people a year are accumulating to toxic levels. Child welfare caseworkers say that in the face of an opaque detention system, they are helpless to reunify families. And although federal law requires child welfare departments to make diligent efforts toward family reunification, when parents are detained that’s basically impossible.
In Los Angeles, where according to our research, the mother or father of approximately one in every 16 children in foster care has been detained or deported, a caseworker for the country described the frustration. “Ultimately, as social workers our role is to reunify families. I’m not saying that ICE is right or wrong; what I’m saying is, let us do our job, let us reunify families.”
An immigration enforcement system that operates anything like the one we have will run roughshod over most everything.
Some of the most unsettling cases that our research has uncovered involve children who entered foster care when local police arrested non-citizen mothers after they or neighbors called 911 to report domestic violence.
Hilaria, of Phoenix, was arrested because she tried to defend herself against her abusive husband. One day in October 2010, he began berating her and threatening her. In minutes, the words escalated into hitting and choking. Hilaria fought back, freeing herself from the man and running to the kitchen, where she says she picked up a screwdriver and threw it at him, drawing blood.
A neighbor heard screaming and called the police. When the cops arrived, Hilaria’s husband told them that she attacked him and, as is too often the case in domestic violence reports, the officers arrested Hilaria for assault. Because their children were home at the time, the police called Child Protective Services. But when the officers and Hilaria’s abuser told the CPS worker that Hilaria had been the assailant, the caseworker left the children with him. Two weeks later, the child welfare department returned to check on the children. The caseworker now suspected that Hilaria’s husband was using drugs and removed the children from him, placing them in foster care.
Two months later, Hilaria sat on a plastic chair in a small detention center visitation room, speaking through tears. “I’ve had domestic violence before, but I took it for my kids,” she said. “Now they’ve robbed me. I did what I did to defend myself and my kids.”
Hilaria is now applying for a reprieve from deportation, which is available to some victims of domestic violence. But because of the charge of assault against her, it’s not clear the government will grant her a visa—she violates a zero-tolerance policy against “criminal” immigrants. The Obama administration recently announced that it would review the deportation cases of all 300,000 people slated for removal. The policy change, which is designed to stop the deportations of people brought to the U.S. as children and other target populations, does not appear to have helped even those like Hilaria. One year after her arrest, Hilaria is still detained. Her children are still in foster care.
The Abyss of Detention
Four months after Roberta lost her children, she also sat in detention center visitation room, sifting through crinkled papers in a bulging folder to find a photo of two of her children. “It has been four months since I’ve talked to my kids,” she said, looking at the photo of her then 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. The children stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling at the camera in front of a graffiti-scrawled wall near the family’s Phoenix apartment. The boy wore camouflage pants and the girl a pink shirt.
“I would rather die than lose my kids,” Roberta said, tears running down her round face.
“They treat us like animals here,” she complained of the barbed-wire ridged jail in Arizona’s basin cotton fields. According to Roberta, women inmates were given unwashed underwear and detainees were fed stale bread and dirty vegetables for their two meals a day. “But the worst,” said Roberta, echoing the sentiments of other detained parents, “is that I can’t see my kids.”
Three weeks after ICE detained Roberta, the juvenile court held a hearing about her family. Roberta, however, did not know about it. Neither her court appointed attorney nor the child welfare caseworkers or attorneys contacted her.
All of the parents with children in Child Protective Services custody whom we interviewed inside six detention centers said that they missed at least one of their juvenile court hearings. From detention, they could not access the courts and their attorneys could not find them.
ICE is not by law required to detain many of those it plans to deport, but it keeps non-citizens locked up to prevent them from absconding. A parent whose singular concern is getting her kids back is scarcely a flight risk. ICE nonetheless takes confinement to an extreme. Even when parents know about their juvenile court hearings, ICE categorically refuses to transport them to juvenile court hearings where vital decisions about their families are made. In hundreds of interviews with attorneys and caseworkers, not one had ever seen a detained parent appear in person at a hearing. Some detainees are not even able to arrange to phone into the hearings.
Unsurprisingly for a system in which about 85 percent of detainees lack legal representation and can be held for months, sometimes years, in squalid conditions, ICE functions without any obligation to the legal needs of the people it detains. And juvenile court judges are powerless to compel ICE to do anything.
“Parents [should] have an absolute right to be present in a court hearing,” a juvenile court judge in Pima County, Ariz., told us, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We order that if they are in custody they appear, but these orders are not honored by the detention facilities. We don’t have the authority over the federal centers.”
A month after she was initially detained, Roberta was finally able to contact her court appointed attorney by phone. But the attorney spoke no Spanish and they could not communicate. Roberta still arranged to call in to the next court hearing, but she says that because of a bad phone connection over the detention center phone, she understood nothing uttered in the courtroom.
Without any specific policy for addressing the needs of detained parents, child welfare agencies often treat them as if they’ve abandoned their children. And so, after several months in detention and no contact with her children, Roberta says she got a letter in the mail. “All [the court] sent me was a Spanish sheet with threats,” she said. “If you don’t appear, you’ll lose kids. That’s all it said.”
There was also little chance she could have complied with the child welfare department’s overall plan for family reunification. Detention centers provide parents no access to the services and programs needed to take part in their case plans for reunification, which for her would have consisted of treatment for alcohol abuse, parenting classes and visitation with her children.
Because detainees are often moved to detention centers far away from their homes—an average of 370 miles—they can rarely see their children. Though the Obama administration has said that it plans to overhaul immigration detention practices, including making efforts to detain non-citizens closer to their homes, as of August 2011, this promise did not appear to have taken effect in any significant way.
Parental Rights End at the Border
Josefina and Clara were deported to Mexico after three months in immigration detention. They made their way to Michoacán, 1,000 miles south of the border, to their mother’s home, where they began trying to regain custody of their children.
During a July 2011 phone interview from Michoacán, Josefina spoke quietly about the baby she never got to bid goodbye. “I don’t know where my child is, I have no contact with my baby,” she said. “I didn’t do anything wrong to have my children taken away from me. I didn’t steal, I didn’t do drugs, nothing. Why did they take my children?”
Once parents are deported, the threats to their families grow. While parents are detained, child welfare departments are largely prostrate to reunify families. Once mothers and fathers are deported, however, the agencies often switch gears, actively slowing down the reunification process and sometimes halting those efforts altogether.
Soon after they were deported, the sisters contacted the Mexican consulate in New Mexico to ask for help in regaining their parental rights. The consulate began corresponding with the child welfare department on the sisters’ behalf. For months after their deportation, a staff person at the consulate repeatedly told Clara and Josefina that the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department planned to reunify the family as soon as the sisters could prove that they had stable housing and jobs. Yet, even after they found work and were set up in their mother’s home, the children remained in foster care. Reunification dates cited by the department came and went, but still, no children.
According to the sisters, the New Mexico child welfare department would not let the mothers speak by phone with the youngest two of the three children and Clara spoke only once to her 6 year old. According to Josefina and Clara, they heard word that their children were placed in three different foster homes and the babies were being raised entirely in English. They feared their children would not remember them even if they were reunified and they began to believe they might never see their children again.
“I miss everything about my kids,” said Clara through sobs over the phone. “How I spent Saturday and Sundays with them, how I made my home with them, all of it. Then my children were just gone.”
Many deported parents make the tormented decision to make the bloody desert journey over the U.S.-Mexico border without papers so that they can be present at juvenile court hearings. Caseworkers around the country said that in many cases, when a parent of a foster child is deported, they are back weeks later to appear in a juvenile courtroom to try and reclaim their children.
The risks of crossing are enormous. In addition to growing violence in Mexico against migrants crossing into the U.S., immigrants caught in the country after a previous deportation now face prison time. Until recently, immigrants who were deported before were simply deported again. Now, “illegal reentry” is treated as a federal criminal offense that carries sentences of years. The charge now accounts for nearly half of all federal criminal prosecutions.
Clara and Josefina did not risk crossing back over the border; the fear of violence on the border or of extended incarceration was too great. So for a year, they waited, in fear their parental rights would be terminated.
In late September 2011, their hope dwindling, the Mexican consulate in New Mexico phoned the sisters at their mother’s house in Michoacán. “They told us to go to the airport the next day,” said Clara.
In the morning they drove three hours to the airport. Two employees of the Mexican government escorted the three children off the plane. In the middle of a waiting room at the airport, after 14 months apart, Josefina and Clara took the children into their arms.
The next day, now back at their mother’s home with the sounds of pouring rain in the background, Clara said over the phone, “It hurts me so much to talk about this. I don’t want to remember anymore.” Now the family will try to piece themselves back together.
For many, however, separation is not memory. It is a present horror. In July, after seven months of detention, Roberta was deported to Mexico. She was given no notice before she was loaded onto an ICE bus and dropped at the border. ICE did not give her time to call her children’s caseworker or her court-appointed attorney before her removal and she arrived in Mexico with nothing but $10, given to her by another deportee.
Deportation too often leads to the seamless termination of parental rights. In jurisdictions around the country, child welfare departments and children’s attorneys have successfully argued that it is in a child’s best interest to remain in the U.S. rather than join their parents in another country. Though child welfare departments are required by law to try to reunify children with their parents, and research shows that children fare better with their families than in foster care, the principal is often quashed when a border stands in the way.
Many caseworkers and attorneys noted to us a pervasive bias against placing children in another country. “When you break down the cases, placement with parents in Mexico happens very rarely,” an attorney who represents children and parents in El Paso, Texas, told us. “The knee-jerk reaction of almost everyone is that the children are better off in U.S.”
As a parents’ attorney in Takoma, Wash., said in describing several cases like Roberta’s, “They’re deported and they’re treated like they fall off the face of the earth.”
Some jurisdictions, especially those near the U.S.-Mexico border, are working to interrupt this rapid move to sever families. In San Diego County, Calif., and El Paso County, Texas, for example, the child welfare departments have established international liaisons who work with the Mexican consulate and Mexican child welfare department to place children with their families in Mexico. Without the consulate, Clara and Josefina would still be without their children.
Yet most countries lack any formal policy for deported parents and ultimately, when parents are detained and deported, families are shattered.
In the detention center, before she was deported, Roberta looked up from the photo of her children and stated a policy that many would think is common sense. “If you send the mom to Mexico,” she said, “let her take her kids with her.” It has now been one year since she lost custody of her children. Her family’s status remains in limbo.
Esther Portillo-Gonzales joined Seth Freed-Wessler in the year-long investigation that produced this story. Their research is ongoing.
Source http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/11/thousands_of_kids_lost_in_foster_homes_after_parents_deportation.html
Report to Congress on States’ Use of Waivers of Non-Safety Licensing Standards for Relative Foster Family Homes
Very interesting report about kinship care placements with state by state info:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/statesuse/statesuse.pdf
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/statesuse/statesuse.pdf
ACLU to probe if SD breaks child-protection laws
Associated Press
The American Civil Liberties Union is investigating whether the South Dakota Department of Social Services violated federal law by removing Native American children from their homes and placing them in foster care instead of with relatives.
Tate Walker, an ACLU spokeswoman in Sioux Falls, said the civil rights organization has fielded individual complaints for years from families who said the state violated the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. The law directs officials to place Native American children removed from homes with their relatives or tribes except in unusual situations.
But the cases had been too scattered and disparate to tackle, Walker said, until a recent National Public Radio series accused the state of routinely breaking the law and disrupting the lives of hundreds of Native Americans each year.
"That aired and then boom: We're getting calls left and right," Walker told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The outcry was phenomenal, not only from people demanding that something be done, but also from several potential plaintiffs."
The ACLU investigation could lead to a potential lawsuit that would unite complainants as plaintiffs against the state.
The three-part NPR report described Native American children as being placed in South Dakota's foster care system at a disproportionate rate: More than half of all children in foster care are Native American, despite them accounting for just 15 percent of the state's child population.
The series suggested that the motive might be money, since the state gets federal financial assistance for each child removed from his or her home. It also suggested a conflict of interest in Gov. Dennis Daugaard's work for Children's Home Society of South Dakota when he was a lieutenant governor. That organization received millions of dollars for housing Native American children under contracts the state awarded without competitive bid.
The governor's office criticized the report and went on the defensive even before the series began airing last week, releasing a memo titled "Setting the Record Straight" that accused NPR's reporter of being unfair and biased. According to the memo, Children's Home Society has had contracts with the state since 1978, long before Daugaard became its chief operating officer in 2002.
While Walker commended the NPR report, she said the ACLU isn't out to attack the governor.
"It's not about the governor. It's about these kids," she said. "They deserve someone to check into this."
At the center of the conflict, she said, is a merging of state, federal and tribal jurisdiction that is difficult to navigate. The ACLU hopes the spotlight on the issue will prompt new legislation to make it easier for child-protective services workers to do their jobs.
On its website, NPR describes the three-part series as the culmination of a yearlong investigation.
"Some children are removed from their homes for legitimate reasons," the series' introduction reads. "But in South Dakota very few are taken because they've been physically or sexually abused. Most are taken under a far more subjective set of circumstances."
After the series began airing, two members of Congress _ U.S. Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass, and Dan Boren, D-Okla. _ sent a letter to the Interior Department of Indian Affairs calling for an investigation.
"If the information on the NPR article is accurate, it would appear that the state of South Dakota has failed not only to abide by the mandates of federal law but also failed its Indian children, their families and their tribes by violating the letter and spirit" of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the congressmen wrote to Larry Echo Hawk, Indian Affairs' assistant secretary.
The federal law was passed in 1978 to help ensure that Native American children weren't separated from their families and tribes through involuntary removal.
Gubernatorial aide Tony Venhuizen told the Rapid City Journal it was unfortunate that two members of Congress representing other states didn't contact South Dakota officials before seeking an investigation into allegations about the state.
"These congressmen based their letter on an NPR report that was deeply flawed," he said. "It's really too bad that they took this step without even asking the Department of Social Services or anyone in South Dakota for the facts."
Walker, the ACLU spokeswoman, said the NPR piece highlighted an important and overlooked issue affecting Native American families.
"I have much respect for the (Department of Social Services) workers. I have to imagine that meeting all of the requirements they have to meet can get tricky," she said. "I think that some statutory legislative could potentially ease some of the burden."
Source http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/aclu-to-probe-if-sd-breaks-child-protection-laws/article_2210024d-e8c1-5de7-a2d5-b2bcaacebf39.html
The American Civil Liberties Union is investigating whether the South Dakota Department of Social Services violated federal law by removing Native American children from their homes and placing them in foster care instead of with relatives.
Tate Walker, an ACLU spokeswoman in Sioux Falls, said the civil rights organization has fielded individual complaints for years from families who said the state violated the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. The law directs officials to place Native American children removed from homes with their relatives or tribes except in unusual situations.
But the cases had been too scattered and disparate to tackle, Walker said, until a recent National Public Radio series accused the state of routinely breaking the law and disrupting the lives of hundreds of Native Americans each year.
"That aired and then boom: We're getting calls left and right," Walker told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The outcry was phenomenal, not only from people demanding that something be done, but also from several potential plaintiffs."
The ACLU investigation could lead to a potential lawsuit that would unite complainants as plaintiffs against the state.
The three-part NPR report described Native American children as being placed in South Dakota's foster care system at a disproportionate rate: More than half of all children in foster care are Native American, despite them accounting for just 15 percent of the state's child population.
The series suggested that the motive might be money, since the state gets federal financial assistance for each child removed from his or her home. It also suggested a conflict of interest in Gov. Dennis Daugaard's work for Children's Home Society of South Dakota when he was a lieutenant governor. That organization received millions of dollars for housing Native American children under contracts the state awarded without competitive bid.
The governor's office criticized the report and went on the defensive even before the series began airing last week, releasing a memo titled "Setting the Record Straight" that accused NPR's reporter of being unfair and biased. According to the memo, Children's Home Society has had contracts with the state since 1978, long before Daugaard became its chief operating officer in 2002.
While Walker commended the NPR report, she said the ACLU isn't out to attack the governor.
"It's not about the governor. It's about these kids," she said. "They deserve someone to check into this."
At the center of the conflict, she said, is a merging of state, federal and tribal jurisdiction that is difficult to navigate. The ACLU hopes the spotlight on the issue will prompt new legislation to make it easier for child-protective services workers to do their jobs.
On its website, NPR describes the three-part series as the culmination of a yearlong investigation.
"Some children are removed from their homes for legitimate reasons," the series' introduction reads. "But in South Dakota very few are taken because they've been physically or sexually abused. Most are taken under a far more subjective set of circumstances."
After the series began airing, two members of Congress _ U.S. Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass, and Dan Boren, D-Okla. _ sent a letter to the Interior Department of Indian Affairs calling for an investigation.
"If the information on the NPR article is accurate, it would appear that the state of South Dakota has failed not only to abide by the mandates of federal law but also failed its Indian children, their families and their tribes by violating the letter and spirit" of the Indian Child Welfare Act, the congressmen wrote to Larry Echo Hawk, Indian Affairs' assistant secretary.
The federal law was passed in 1978 to help ensure that Native American children weren't separated from their families and tribes through involuntary removal.
Gubernatorial aide Tony Venhuizen told the Rapid City Journal it was unfortunate that two members of Congress representing other states didn't contact South Dakota officials before seeking an investigation into allegations about the state.
"These congressmen based their letter on an NPR report that was deeply flawed," he said. "It's really too bad that they took this step without even asking the Department of Social Services or anyone in South Dakota for the facts."
Walker, the ACLU spokeswoman, said the NPR piece highlighted an important and overlooked issue affecting Native American families.
"I have much respect for the (Department of Social Services) workers. I have to imagine that meeting all of the requirements they have to meet can get tricky," she said. "I think that some statutory legislative could potentially ease some of the burden."
Source http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/aclu-to-probe-if-sd-breaks-child-protection-laws/article_2210024d-e8c1-5de7-a2d5-b2bcaacebf39.html
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