“They were just suspicious of me from the beginning” - Iowa

by Jennifer Hemmingsen

When Victor Rodgers heard that his baby had been born, he headed to the hospital.

Even though he and the child’s mother weren’t together anymore, he planned on being an involved dad.

It was February 2009 — five weeks before her due date — but his ex’s new boyfriend had beaten her so badly that doctors had to deliver the baby. That’s how the Iowa Department of Human Services got involved.

Rodgers wanted to take his daughter home with him, but the DHS worker said he would have to go through the agency. She placed the baby with a foster family.

It took three months for DHS to confirm Rodgers’ paternity. Again, he asked to take his daughter home. Instead, the agency allowed him to visit her. Twice a week. With supervision.

Even though Rodgers had no history of child abuse or neglect, DHS would make him jump through more than two years’ worth of hoops to prove he was good enough to keep her.

He’s not alone. A recent third-party analysis of Linn County DHS, conducted by the non-profit Center for the Study of Social Policy, cited a concerning, widespread confusion between child safety and the potential risk of future harm among Cedar Rapids child welfare workers. The confusion was further compounded by “stigma, labeling and negative inferences drawn based on a family’s history.”

The analysis noted a “culture of caution” that leads to excessive intervention, coercion and monitoring of families, particularly black families. It found “the child protection system and its partners intervened with some African-American families in extensive ways with no clear reason or rationale.”

As Rodgers, now 48, tells it: “They were just suspicious of me from the beginning.”

Over the next few months, DHS records show, Rodgers worked his way up from supervised to unsupervised visits, meeting every personal and parenting goal the agency laid out for him. In October 2009, he even had his girlfriend, Molly, who had an extensive history with DHS, move out of his apartment because his caseworker told him to.

Rodgers agreed to take his daughter, Karee, to a safe place and call police, if Molly or Karee’s mother showed up at his apartment. By December 2009, he was consistently having weekend-long visits with his child. Social workers would drop in unannounced twice a day just to monitor his care. Things were going fine.

By Jan. 13, 2010, DHS gave him full-time custody of Karee on a trial basis — the last step toward reunification.

That month, when Molly showed up at Rodgers’ place, he took Karee to his cousin’s house, in accordance with the safety plan.

Yet when police arrived, Molly told them she lived there, and it was Rodgers who was forced to leave. When he returned later that night, Molly stabbed him in the shoulder. The next day, a DHS worker showed up at Rodgers’ home with police, demanding Karee.

Rodgers refused to hand over the child without a court order. Instead, police stunned him with a Taser and took Karee. DHS moved him back to fully supervised visits.

Still, caseworkers were positive about his progress, noting that Rodgers had maintained stable housing, employment and school throughout the case. He had everything needed to care for Karee and was showing good parenting skills.

“Victor has been able to do what DHS wanted done and progress to getting Karee home,” a February 2010 note reads. “Victor is very conscientious in moving forward in his life for himself and Karee.

“Victor did a lot of things right in the incident with Molly in attempts to keep Karee safe, including removing her from the situation,” the caseworker wrote. “She was kept safe.”

Perplexingly, though, just a few lines later: “Victor needs to be able to show he can protect Karee.”

Rodgers had planned on moving back to Illinois to be close to his sister once he got custody of Karee. He never got the chance.

On May 10, 2010, police again found Molly at Rodgers’ apartment. The state filed a petition to terminate Rodgers’ rights.

Rodgers continued to visit his daughter, under supervision. The worker’s notes are poignant: “Victor was very appropriate.” … “Victor was calm and relaxed during the visit, but did seem to be sad when this worker took Karee to his vehicle and drove off.” … “Karee never wanted her dad to let go of her.” … “Karee was very content sleeping in her dad’s arms for the majority of the visit.”

At Rodgers’ termination hearing that August, the social worker testified she didn’t believe Rodgers ever would harm his child. She was just worried he wouldn’t be able to keep her safe.

On Nov. 16, 2010, Rodgers’ parental rights were terminated. He appealed. He lost.

Karee would later be adopted by an unrelated family.

“Still to this day, I don’t have an allegation of child abuse or child neglect or anything,” he said. “I’m a good parent. They said I did a great job.”

That wasn’t good enough for a system that demands parents not only prove they’ve kept their children safe but judges their fitness to parent and rights to their children based on a theoretical future harm.

Source http://thegazette.com/2011/12/31/they-were-just-suspicious-of-me-from-the-beginning/

Niveen Ismail Seemed Prison-Bound for Plot to Kidnap Son Until Jurors Heard Her on Tape

By Matt Coker

Niveen Ismail headed into a Santa Ana courtroom last week facing the possibility of a three-year prison sentence for allegedly asking a private investigator to kidnap her 7-year-old son from his foster parents.

But, after three hours of deliberations, the jury found the Newport Beach 45-year-old not guilty, and based on the press accounts from the trial, it's easy to see why.

Ismail, who lost parental rights to her son in 2005 when officers found him home alone, contacted and met P.I. Robert Young in November 2009. According to the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA), Ismail proposed paying Young a large sum of money to kidnap her son from his foster family in Lake Forest and take him to Tijuana. From there, prosecutors alleged, Ismail planned to take her son to Europe or her native Egypt.

But the investigator later contacted the Newport Beach Police Department, and another meeting was set up on Dec. 4, 2009, that had Ismail joined by the P.I. and an undercover cop she believed was working with her point person. At that meeting, the OCDA claimed, Ismail discussed obtaining passports for her and her son, asking again for her son to be kidnapped in exchange for money. She was then arrested, and when trial began Dec. 7 Ismail was facing one felony count of solicitation to commit kidnapping.

What blew the case for prosecutors were the secretly recorded tapes from Ismail's meeting with Young and the undercover, according to Jon Cassidy's coverage in the Orange County Register. Young testified that Ismail threw out the kidnapping idea as a "what if" at the first meeting, but while she is heard discussing such a plot at the follow-up meeting, she did not actually request it, Cassidy reports. Instead, Ismail is heard continually trying to steer the conversation back to another idea: spying on the foster family, according to Cassidy, who adds it was the investigators who were heard repeatedly bringing up the kidnapping.

Ismail was told a kidnapping would cost $5,000 versus $500 for surveillance on the foster family. After initially providing Young and his fake partner with a photo of her son--and indication she was in on the kidnapping--she later changed her mind and only paid $500, Cassidy reports.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Beth Costello presented circumstantial evidence that Ismail had begun applying for an Egyptian passport and looked online for driving directions to the Mexican border and flight information from Mexico to Europe, but that obviously was not enough for the jury to buy that the mom had, as the charges suggest, solicited to commit a kidnapping.

"We had an intelligent jury that sifted through rumor, innuendo and distraction thrown at them by the prosecution," Ismail's attorney, Ann Cunningham, reportedly told Cassidy. "The case was all on tape."

Source http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/12/niveen_ismail_gladys_remigio_k.php

Mother who won't give up faces prison - California

By JON CASSIDY

SANTA ANA – The state took Niveen Ismail's son and gave him to somebody else.

Now authorities are trying to lock her up, charging her with going too far to get him back.

Ismail, of Newport Beach, went to trial in Orange County Superior Court this week on a single charge of solicitation to kidnap - the result of a December 2009 meeting with a private investigator and an undercover police officer who was wearing a wire. The charge carries three years.

In the meantime, she is waging her own battle in federal court with civil rights lawsuits that question why California is the only state not to follow a Supreme Court ruling on how to terminate parental rights.

In the criminal case, the prosecution says Ismail asked the investigator to kidnap her then 7-year-old son, Anthony, from his foster family and take him to Mexico or France, where Ismail would pick him up and return to her native Egypt.

But in a videotape of the meeting played in court Thursday, Ismail never appeared to instruct anyone to kidnap her son, although the audio is garbled at times. A potential kidnapping plan is discussed, but Ismail says on tape at least seven times that she just wants to go with another plan: surveillance on her son's foster family in hopes of digging up or manufacturing dirt.

After she insists on Plan A – surveillance – the undercover officer encourages her to give him $2,000 to get a fake passport for Anthony, so that they can at least get started with Plan B, kidnapping, according to the tape. She agrees and emails him a photo of Anthony to use, but then backs out, agreeing only to give him $500 to start surveillance, according to the tape.

As she left that December meeting to go to the bank, she was arrested by Newport Beach police, who had been listening in, according to court records.

The meeting with the private investigator and undercover officer came just a few weeks after Ismail got word that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied her appeal of the legal proceedings that took her son away. (Later, in 2010 and 2011, she filed civil rights lawsuits against most of the agencies involved, which are pending.)

Deputy District Attorney Beth Costello said that Ismail "resorted to the illegal" after her appeals over the adoption case were exhausted.

Ismail's son was taken by the Orange County Social Services Agency in 2005 after she left him home alone, according to court records. Huntington Beach police found her preschool-age son alone in his crib after a neighbor heard him crying.

Social workers came in to take the boy. Ismail, a single mother, had gone to work even though her child care arrangement fell through that day, her attorney, Ann Cunningham said.

In supervised visits, Ismail failed to set boundaries – not giving Anthony time-outs, allowing him a cookie when he didn't finish his meal, social workers reported, court records said.

A fair-haired boy with almond eyes and a winsome smile, Anthony was placed with a "fost-adopt" family in Lake Forest, three months after he was taken from Ismail, and has been with them ever since.

In her lawsuit, Ismail accuses the social workers of deciding early on to adopt her son out to another family and thwart any chance at reunification by incessant fault-finding, such as:

She fed him a tuna fish sandwich during a bowling outing, and tuna got on the ball return.

Her toilet water was blue.

She ordered him an IHOP International Breakfast meal rather than something from the Kids Menu.

At Dave and Busters, on a mid-week afternoon, she allowed her son to use the men's room by himself, while she and a social worker waited by the door.

That last incident was cited by the judge in deciding to terminate reunification efforts, according to Ismail and Cunningham. Taking her son to an establishment with a bar was said to be evidence of bad judgment.

Ismail is arguing that the way California severs parental rights is unconstitutional.

In California, a parent's rights can be effectively terminated before anyone has to present "clear and convincing" evidence that they should be, according to a law journal article that she cites in her lawsuits.

The other 49 states follow a Supreme Court precedent that requires a court to find "clear and convincing evidence" of a parent's unfitness before terminating his or her rights. California follows a looser "preponderance of the evidence" standard. That means a mother loses her child if the court rules it's more likely than not she's a bad one.

The California Supreme Court has decided that the U.S. Supreme Court standard doesn't apply here. By the time a California court considers a mother's rights, they are outweighed by the child's bonds with a new family.

Ismail argues that point in her lawsuits, but first she has her kidnapping case, which continues on Monday.

In November 2009, Ismail called several private investigators, prosecutors allege. One of them, Robert Young, had a history as a police informant.

Young testified Thursday that Ismail approached him with a plan either to dig up dirt on the foster couple or to plant something incriminating. At the end of the meeting, she mentioned a Plan B: kidnapping her son and taking him abroad, he said. Young said he'd have to talk to his partner. Then he called the police, and set up another meeting with Ismail, bringing Newport Beach police officer Neal Schuster, who was posing as his partner.

On tape, the "investigators" say they'd be willing to help her get her son back.

"It's not like we haven't done stuff like this in the past," one says.

"Seriously, can you do Plan B," Ismail asks early on. "What if I ask you to fly him to Libya, or France," she asks later.

Otherwise, she continually steers the conversation back to Plan A, saying she'd need a few more weeks to decide about Plan B.

"I think we're going to go with the first one," Ismail tells him. "If A fails.... I was hoping to do A.... Go with A.... I was hoping A would work.... You don't think A would work?.... Maybe you can work on A for a couple weeks.... Why don't you think about Plan A first.... If you want B, that would take at least a month of preparation for me.... I'm really thinking I want to go with A.... We'll start off with A and if that doesn't work out for you.... A would be good.... I'm still debating what to do."

The prosecution needs to prove that kidnapping was actually requested, not just discussed, according to the state's jury instructions for the charge she is facing.

Source http://www.ocregister.com/news/ismail-330857-court-son.html

Police: Fugitive who sexually abused foster children arrested

Blog authros note:
What is with these fosters who are so vile? Why didn't someone at CPS or whoever licensed them do a thorough check on these people? They couldn't have really checked into these people because this seems like something too weird to have just started when this man was 40. It makes us sick to think that CPS's failures are why so many children suffer such horrendous abuse simply due to CPS negligence.
-----

by Naxiely Lopez

McALLEN — A combined effort by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies led to the arrest of a man wanted in connection with the sexual assault of three children who were under his care for more than a year.

Investigators believe Jose Luis Cazares, 40, abused three foster children — all under the age of 10 — while they lived with him and his wife, Belinda, from January 2008 to April 2009, court documents showed. The children were placed in foster care because their mother was deported to Honduras.

Police learned about the alleged abuse only after a second foster family took the children in.

A woman who claimed to be the victims’ half-sister went to police in May and told them the children had made an outcry, records showed. Police did not reveal the woman’s identity.

Investigators took the victims to the Children’s Advocacy Center in Edinburg in June, where they were interviewed separately by professionals. There, the children detailed their lives with the Cazares.

One girl told staff at the center Cazares would take her to his room, where he would sexually assault her or use sex toys to do so, records showed.

The girl told police she pleaded with Cazares to stop, but he wouldn’t.

If she told, he would slap her in the mouth, the child said.

The abuse happened “every day in a while after school,” a probable cause affidavit quotes her saying.

A second girl told staff Cazares would buy something for them if they engaged in sex with him and his wife.

That child detailed an incident during Halloween in which he took her costume off and assaulted her.

A third victim, a boy, did not make an outcry, police said. But his sisters told staff they saw Cazares sexually abusing him.

The children began showing signs of abuse shortly after the second foster family began caring for them in April 2009, the half-sister told police.

The family reached out to Child Protective Services at the time to alert them about the assault, but the family was never contacted by anyone, records showed. They reached out again in 2010 to the children’s physician, but again no one followed up.

By the time police were involved, Cazares and his wife had already relocated.

That’s when the Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Fugitive Task Force got involved. The team comprises officers from various law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Marshals Service; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Texas Department of Criminal Justice; U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Hidalgo and Starr County sheriff’s offices; and police departments in McAllen, Mission, San Juan and Weslaco.

Officers tracked Cazares down in Prairie Gillette, Wyo., using documentation from Child Protective Services, police said. Investigators contacted the Gillette police and they assisted in questioning the pair.

Both denied the allegations, investigators said.

Gillette police also assisted in interviewing a fourth female minor who was living with them in Wyoming, police said.

The girl apparently had a child at a young age, which sparked investigators’ interest.

The fourth victim initially told police her baby’s father was a boy at school, but she eventually admitted Cazares raped her when she was living with him in McAllen, police said.

That girl told police she was at home taking care of the three foster children when Cazares ordered them to their rooms and raped her on the couch by holding her down.

On Tuesday, investigators received information that Cazares was once again in the area and was working at Hayashi Hibachi, records showed. Police arrested him there about 4:45 p.m.

Investigators continued working on filing charges against Cazares’ wife, Belinda.

A McAllen Municipal judge charged Jose Luis Cazares with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child — a first-degree felony — sexual assault and prohibited sexual conduct, both second-degree felonies. His bond was set at $550,000.

If convicted, he could face up to life imprisonment and a fine of up to $10,000.

Source http://www.themonitor.com/news/fugitive-56493-mcallen-abused.html