Legal Kidnapping
By John T (teenager)
English Final Essay
Ms. D (this is a note from my English teacher: “ESSAY, WOW! This is very powerful and I would like to encourage you to send your story to the media and to the state legislature."
May 15, 2017. Legal Kidnapping
Civil rights attorney Shawn Macmillan stated : - “Nobody, nobody especially the government is above the law. The County of Los Angeles, they know that seizing a child from his parent without getting a warrant except in an emergency violates the United States Constitution and harms not only the parent. You’ll hear this in the evidence. It also harms the child. The County also knows that doing a bad, a biased, a shoddy investigation, not following procedures, not properly supervising its workers, it could cause a parent to lose their child. Potentially forever.” (From Court Transcript: Duval vs. County of Los Angeles 2016, a winning case/jury trial)
This is a topic not very well known, an issue that the general public isn’t very familiar with unless you yourself are going through it. A government agency originally founded to relocate children in danger found a way to turn a profit on the backs of those children. It sounds crazy right! The facts will clearly show this. Just read on and enjoy our taxpayer funded atrocities being revealed before your very eyes. In the past journalists and whistleblowers have uncovered issues that have sparked public outcry and ultimately enacted change. I feel that this is what must be done in order to work clarity and justice into the system that the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) has set up for us.
Like nearly all the people that advocate for this issue of corruption in the DCFS and the Family Courts, I have had my own experiences with the system. My parents broke up when I was six. I spent half time with my dad and half time with my mom; they were very different. I started getting into serious trouble in 8th grade with drugs and alcohol. When my parents realized something was seriously wrong they put me into this “Britney Spears” like rehab center, where I got therapy, schooling, good food and exercise. I felt as if we were on the right track. One day a staff member of the rehab told me someone from the D.C.F.S. office wanted me to come in and interview with my parents, a “team decision meeting” is what they called it. When I showed up there was an assembled team of social workers and my mom and dad sitting around this big table. They asked me some questions about my home life and proceeded to tell me about all these wonderful services like therapy and tutoring they could provide me. I sat through the first half of their spiel until the lady leading the meeting (the supervisor) actually started talking about what they brought me there for. She said, as I was in a safe rehab, doing very well. I would be supervised while still at home for a couple of months once I was out of the rehab; a sort of trial period. If I were to fail, I’d be put in the foster care system. I got back to my room at the rehab center perplexed about the ultimatum I was just given. I wasn't worried about messing up because, as I said, I felt I was on the right track. I had been clean and sober for months. It was 8 days after the meeting at DCFS when a staff member told me I would have to get ready to leave because I was being discharged. I was immediately excited because that meant I could go home after being there almost four months, but sadly it wasn't my mom or dad who was picking me up it was a social worker taking me to a foster home. I was so confused I hadn’t gotten into any kind of trouble and I was angry because they lied about the trial period and the “home services” they offered. To make this all worse it was Christmas and I was to leave the next day. Everyone's families were visiting them except for mine. They were not allowed to come, nor was I allowed to call them because at that point I was no longer in my parent's custody. It makes me sick that my parents were not allowed to see me and would technically be breaking the law if they visited me on Christmas.
So, I rode through the maze of living with strangers, living with large groups of kids, court dates, being put on psychotropic meds and all the therapy I could get. It was absurd. They gave extra therapy for the problems they created. I got out safely, other than the fact that in that time in DCFS custody I was turned on to hard drugs by an older roommate, got into trouble at school with assault charges against me and expelled from a school district and not to forget, gang violence and racist kids who hated white people. I was arrested in the custody of DCFS, not my parents and the responsibility fell entirely on my parents. I do take responsibility for my actions but, I can't help to think that the abrupt and minimal contact with my parents plus the hive of drugs and violence that group homes can be, had something to do with my behavior. Not until after I was back in my parent's custody was I clear on even why I was taken. I assumed it was me and my behavior but the initial report said that I had admitted to one of my therapists “neglect” and “emotional abuse” from my parents. Since then we have a letter from that therapist saying, DCFS lied in their reports to the judge by twisting the words of the therapist that reported this. They say it was a lack of supervision and emotional abuse by dad and they took me from my mom because she disagreed with how my dad treated me, and that was called emotional abuse by DCFS. Of course the charges were vague and unworthy. Finding out that was the reason for the hardest year of my life was devastating, and left my mom and even my dad with traumatizing knowledge of the unfairness, that is our Department of Child Safety. The irony of this is that DCFS pulled me out of a rehab that both my parents signed me into because they loved me and were concerned for me, and where I was truly being rehabilitated!
Child Protective Services, CPS, DCS, DCF whatever they call it your state, is only allowed to remove a child if they are in immediate danger of bodily harm or death. If not, a warrant must be signed by a judge. (SB1003, new legislation signed by Gov. Ducey). They should not take safe kids away from their families. Just one of the ways they can do this is by stretching the term “neglect” as far as they can in order to establish a charge against the parents. The way they get around the warrants is that they call you in for a “team meeting” and present the usually nervous unsuspecting parents with lots of paperwork to sign. Then the social worker will ask you to sign this, and say you’ll get your kid back and if you don't sign this we will take your kids. If you do not cooperate they can call the police and have them turn your kids over based on whatever allegations they make. The term “neglect" is the reason for 80% of kids in Arizona that are taken. These stretched allegations of neglect, leaving parents that struggle to make ends meet, or possibly a dirty home, vulnerable to losing their kids. (Ortega). The scary part is I'm not exaggerating; all it takes is to draw a bit of attention to yourself. A call to the hotline by a neighbor, concerned teacher, therapist or even someone that has it out for you may lead to social worker involvement. I asked myself many times why does this happen? Social workers can’t possibly be doing this knowingly. It's simple, they work hard to get a degree to help kids, then end up being painfully wrong, and if they talk about it they’ll be fired. Luckily there are people like Melinda Murphy who worked for the department in L.A. DCSF for over 10 years and quit on good terms. She was is the co-author of a book called A Culture of Fear: An Inside Look at Los Angeles County’s Department of Children & Family Services. When interviewed Melinda said, “Because I had a conscience. I wanted to be able to sleep at night. I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror. When I went to work for them, I thought I’d be working for the children, I’d be working for the families, building on their strengths. I discovered no, what I am doing is I am working for the Department of Children and Family Services. I am a PR agent. I’m not protecting the children and the families. I am protecting the Department of Children and Family Services; and I couldn’t live with that.” (Melinda Murphy and Julian Dominguez, Former LA County Social Workers Reveal Corruption in Child “Protection” Services ).
Julian J. Dominguez, also a former DCFS employee, in interviews said, “Clinical Social Workers (CSWs) are told what they can and cannot include in a court report. When social workers findings disagree with the opinion, position, point of view and implicit or explicit bias of the caseworkers, a Ghost Author takes over the report going to the Judge… who ultimately decides the future of these children.” (Stefano) CSWs are prevented from including their direct observations of the facts and the truth about the family. The CSWs are ordered to sign the document under penalty of perjury. By doing this they misrepresent the report as their own. Should the CSW refuse to sign on ethical or moral grounds, they are told they would be considered “insubordinate,” and may be harshly disciplined or even terminated. The Ghost Author justifies this highly unethical practice because “DCFS speaks with one voice. ” The “DCFS speaks with one voice” dictum is tightly woven into the cultural fabric of the agency and is designed to prevent any meaningful or change in the organization.(Former LA County Social Worker Reveals Corruption in Child “Protection” Services ). The power structure in DCFS offices are backed up and enforced by its management structure, and County Counsel ensures that Ghost Authoring will keep this arbitrary and unethical practice from ever being challenged or even reviewed.
The above happened to me and many of the kids I lived with. Once or twice a month, meetings take place with everyone that is working on your case including you and your parents. It's a sort of follow up. You can move the case forward, backward or stay in one spot. Forward means you are to be discharged, backward is always bad news and if you're in the same spot you will have to wait until the next court date to find out what is going to happen. The whole process is nerve-racking. It's almost like a parole board meeting except the report sent to the judge usually doesn’t represent your progress because the Ghost Writer is the one who writes the report that gets sent out. They found that it costs the taxpayers $83,000.00 per year, per child for the states to seize a healthy child. If the kids are placed on psychotropic drugs it doubles…if the kids are sick or mentally ill it triples. (Senator Wyden and Senator Hatch had hearings about CPS in Washington DC.) That’s why caseworkers ask the court to allow children to be examined and placed on drugs. The federal funding was set up to accommodate the amount of children currently in the system. If one year you have many children in the system and then one year you have fewer, funding will drop to less and less, meaning they will have to downsize. What other way could you possible keep this business thriving? You come up with more and more “services,” you stretch terms like neglect, supply drugs to tons of kids, and use a Ghostwriter system so the social worker can sign a document they didn’t write. This keeps the money flowing and the kids in the system. My vision of this reform is not to get rid of DCS but instead implement laws and checks and balance system so you can’t use vague ridiculous reasons to rip a child out of their parents’ custody. A good start is bill SB 1003 (proposed by Rep. Kelly Townsend) recently which would make social workers go to a judge to get a warrant, so seizing safe children for vague reasons isn’t as prominent as prominent as 80% .
As of right now, mothers and fathers that have lost their kids to this have banned together in order to write bills, push legislation and fight the corruption in the courts. The only tools we really have are lawyers, specifically civil rights lawyers that sue Child Welfare Agencies/The State. It's a new and growing form of law that only a handful of lawyers will actually do. It's extremely complicated because it's a combination of family and dependency laws that violate constitutional rights. The 4th Amendment, the right to be free of illegal searches and seizures, the 5th Amendment the right against self-incrimination, the 14th Amendment, the right to due process under the law. These are some of the violations people are able to sue and win settlement for against out of control child welfare agencies. The people must stand up for their rights and push the fact that, if this organization breaks the law, they will not get away with it. I encourage every parent and child whose civil rights have been violated to seek justice and implement change one lawsuit at a time.
Works Cited
Ortega, Bob, “Arizona's DCS: Why are kids taken away? Too often the answer is unknown” The Republic http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2017/01/22/ arizona-department-child-safety-why-kids-taken-away-too-often-answer-unknown/96539080/ 5-1-2017
Senator Hatch and Senator Wyden, “Senate Hearing on Foster Care” Washington , D.C., CSPAN, span.org, August 4, 2014, https://www.c-span.org/video/?327478-1/hearing-us-foster-care-system, May 1, 2017
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, “15-55563 Preslie Hardwick v. Marcia Vreeken,” YOUTUBE, youtube.com, October 7, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZa0LxmFTkI, May 1, 2017
LMFT Julian J. Domingues and M.A. Melinda Murphy, “A Culture of Fear: An Inside Look at Los Angeles Country’s Department of Children and & Family Services,” December 13, 2013, Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency, LLC , May 1, 2017
Interview, National Safe Child Show “DCFS LA County Social Worker Retires and Comes Out, interview with Julian Domingues,” Published on May 8, 2014 YOUTUBE, youtube.com, May 1, 2017
KAREN DE SÁ, “Drugging Our Kids Children in California’s foster care system are prescribed unproven, risky medications at alarming rates
” The Mercury News. mercurynew.com August 24, 2014
http://extras.mercurynews.com/druggedkids/ May 1, 2017
Civil rights attorney Shawn Macmillan stated : - “Nobody, nobody especially the government is above the law. The County of Los Angeles, they know that seizing a child from his parent without getting a warrant except in an emergency violates the United States Constitution and harms not only the parent. You’ll hear this in the evidence. It also harms the child. The County also knows that doing a bad, a biased, a shoddy investigation, not following procedures, not properly supervising its workers, it could cause a parent to lose their child. Potentially forever.” (From Court Transcript: Duval vs. County of Los Angeles 2016, a winning case/jury trial)
This is a topic not very well known, an issue that the general public isn’t very familiar with unless you yourself are going through it. A government agency originally founded to relocate children in danger found a way to turn a profit on the backs of those children. It sounds crazy right! The facts will clearly show this. Just read on and enjoy our taxpayer funded atrocities being revealed before your very eyes. In the past journalists and whistleblowers have uncovered issues that have sparked public outcry and ultimately enacted change. I feel that this is what must be done in order to work clarity and justice into the system that the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) has set up for us.
Like nearly all the people that advocate for this issue of corruption in the DCFS and the Family Courts, I have had my own experiences with the system. My parents broke up when I was six. I spent half time with my dad and half time with my mom; they were very different. I started getting into serious trouble in 8th grade with drugs and alcohol. When my parents realized something was seriously wrong they put me into this “Britney Spears” like rehab center, where I got therapy, schooling, good food and exercise. I felt as if we were on the right track. One day a staff member of the rehab told me someone from the D.C.F.S. office wanted me to come in and interview with my parents, a “team decision meeting” is what they called it. When I showed up there was an assembled team of social workers and my mom and dad sitting around this big table. They asked me some questions about my home life and proceeded to tell me about all these wonderful services like therapy and tutoring they could provide me. I sat through the first half of their spiel until the lady leading the meeting (the supervisor) actually started talking about what they brought me there for. She said, as I was in a safe rehab, doing very well. I would be supervised while still at home for a couple of months once I was out of the rehab; a sort of trial period. If I were to fail, I’d be put in the foster care system. I got back to my room at the rehab center perplexed about the ultimatum I was just given. I wasn't worried about messing up because, as I said, I felt I was on the right track. I had been clean and sober for months. It was 8 days after the meeting at DCFS when a staff member told me I would have to get ready to leave because I was being discharged. I was immediately excited because that meant I could go home after being there almost four months, but sadly it wasn't my mom or dad who was picking me up it was a social worker taking me to a foster home. I was so confused I hadn’t gotten into any kind of trouble and I was angry because they lied about the trial period and the “home services” they offered. To make this all worse it was Christmas and I was to leave the next day. Everyone's families were visiting them except for mine. They were not allowed to come, nor was I allowed to call them because at that point I was no longer in my parent's custody. It makes me sick that my parents were not allowed to see me and would technically be breaking the law if they visited me on Christmas.
So, I rode through the maze of living with strangers, living with large groups of kids, court dates, being put on psychotropic meds and all the therapy I could get. It was absurd. They gave extra therapy for the problems they created. I got out safely, other than the fact that in that time in DCFS custody I was turned on to hard drugs by an older roommate, got into trouble at school with assault charges against me and expelled from a school district and not to forget, gang violence and racist kids who hated white people. I was arrested in the custody of DCFS, not my parents and the responsibility fell entirely on my parents. I do take responsibility for my actions but, I can't help to think that the abrupt and minimal contact with my parents plus the hive of drugs and violence that group homes can be, had something to do with my behavior. Not until after I was back in my parent's custody was I clear on even why I was taken. I assumed it was me and my behavior but the initial report said that I had admitted to one of my therapists “neglect” and “emotional abuse” from my parents. Since then we have a letter from that therapist saying, DCFS lied in their reports to the judge by twisting the words of the therapist that reported this. They say it was a lack of supervision and emotional abuse by dad and they took me from my mom because she disagreed with how my dad treated me, and that was called emotional abuse by DCFS. Of course the charges were vague and unworthy. Finding out that was the reason for the hardest year of my life was devastating, and left my mom and even my dad with traumatizing knowledge of the unfairness, that is our Department of Child Safety. The irony of this is that DCFS pulled me out of a rehab that both my parents signed me into because they loved me and were concerned for me, and where I was truly being rehabilitated!
Child Protective Services, CPS, DCS, DCF whatever they call it your state, is only allowed to remove a child if they are in immediate danger of bodily harm or death. If not, a warrant must be signed by a judge. (SB1003, new legislation signed by Gov. Ducey). They should not take safe kids away from their families. Just one of the ways they can do this is by stretching the term “neglect” as far as they can in order to establish a charge against the parents. The way they get around the warrants is that they call you in for a “team meeting” and present the usually nervous unsuspecting parents with lots of paperwork to sign. Then the social worker will ask you to sign this, and say you’ll get your kid back and if you don't sign this we will take your kids. If you do not cooperate they can call the police and have them turn your kids over based on whatever allegations they make. The term “neglect" is the reason for 80% of kids in Arizona that are taken. These stretched allegations of neglect, leaving parents that struggle to make ends meet, or possibly a dirty home, vulnerable to losing their kids. (Ortega). The scary part is I'm not exaggerating; all it takes is to draw a bit of attention to yourself. A call to the hotline by a neighbor, concerned teacher, therapist or even someone that has it out for you may lead to social worker involvement. I asked myself many times why does this happen? Social workers can’t possibly be doing this knowingly. It's simple, they work hard to get a degree to help kids, then end up being painfully wrong, and if they talk about it they’ll be fired. Luckily there are people like Melinda Murphy who worked for the department in L.A. DCSF for over 10 years and quit on good terms. She was is the co-author of a book called A Culture of Fear: An Inside Look at Los Angeles County’s Department of Children & Family Services. When interviewed Melinda said, “Because I had a conscience. I wanted to be able to sleep at night. I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror. When I went to work for them, I thought I’d be working for the children, I’d be working for the families, building on their strengths. I discovered no, what I am doing is I am working for the Department of Children and Family Services. I am a PR agent. I’m not protecting the children and the families. I am protecting the Department of Children and Family Services; and I couldn’t live with that.” (Melinda Murphy and Julian Dominguez, Former LA County Social Workers Reveal Corruption in Child “Protection” Services ).
Julian J. Dominguez, also a former DCFS employee, in interviews said, “Clinical Social Workers (CSWs) are told what they can and cannot include in a court report. When social workers findings disagree with the opinion, position, point of view and implicit or explicit bias of the caseworkers, a Ghost Author takes over the report going to the Judge… who ultimately decides the future of these children.” (Stefano) CSWs are prevented from including their direct observations of the facts and the truth about the family. The CSWs are ordered to sign the document under penalty of perjury. By doing this they misrepresent the report as their own. Should the CSW refuse to sign on ethical or moral grounds, they are told they would be considered “insubordinate,” and may be harshly disciplined or even terminated. The Ghost Author justifies this highly unethical practice because “DCFS speaks with one voice. ” The “DCFS speaks with one voice” dictum is tightly woven into the cultural fabric of the agency and is designed to prevent any meaningful or change in the organization.(Former LA County Social Worker Reveals Corruption in Child “Protection” Services ). The power structure in DCFS offices are backed up and enforced by its management structure, and County Counsel ensures that Ghost Authoring will keep this arbitrary and unethical practice from ever being challenged or even reviewed.
The above happened to me and many of the kids I lived with. Once or twice a month, meetings take place with everyone that is working on your case including you and your parents. It's a sort of follow up. You can move the case forward, backward or stay in one spot. Forward means you are to be discharged, backward is always bad news and if you're in the same spot you will have to wait until the next court date to find out what is going to happen. The whole process is nerve-racking. It's almost like a parole board meeting except the report sent to the judge usually doesn’t represent your progress because the Ghost Writer is the one who writes the report that gets sent out. They found that it costs the taxpayers $83,000.00 per year, per child for the states to seize a healthy child. If the kids are placed on psychotropic drugs it doubles…if the kids are sick or mentally ill it triples. (Senator Wyden and Senator Hatch had hearings about CPS in Washington DC.) That’s why caseworkers ask the court to allow children to be examined and placed on drugs. The federal funding was set up to accommodate the amount of children currently in the system. If one year you have many children in the system and then one year you have fewer, funding will drop to less and less, meaning they will have to downsize. What other way could you possible keep this business thriving? You come up with more and more “services,” you stretch terms like neglect, supply drugs to tons of kids, and use a Ghostwriter system so the social worker can sign a document they didn’t write. This keeps the money flowing and the kids in the system. My vision of this reform is not to get rid of DCS but instead implement laws and checks and balance system so you can’t use vague ridiculous reasons to rip a child out of their parents’ custody. A good start is bill SB 1003 (proposed by Rep. Kelly Townsend) recently which would make social workers go to a judge to get a warrant, so seizing safe children for vague reasons isn’t as prominent as prominent as 80% .
As of right now, mothers and fathers that have lost their kids to this have banned together in order to write bills, push legislation and fight the corruption in the courts. The only tools we really have are lawyers, specifically civil rights lawyers that sue Child Welfare Agencies/The State. It's a new and growing form of law that only a handful of lawyers will actually do. It's extremely complicated because it's a combination of family and dependency laws that violate constitutional rights. The 4th Amendment, the right to be free of illegal searches and seizures, the 5th Amendment the right against self-incrimination, the 14th Amendment, the right to due process under the law. These are some of the violations people are able to sue and win settlement for against out of control child welfare agencies. The people must stand up for their rights and push the fact that, if this organization breaks the law, they will not get away with it. I encourage every parent and child whose civil rights have been violated to seek justice and implement change one lawsuit at a time.
Works Cited
Ortega, Bob, “Arizona's DCS: Why are kids taken away? Too often the answer is unknown” The Republic http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2017/01/22/ arizona-department-child-safety-why-kids-taken-away-too-often-answer-unknown/96539080/ 5-1-2017
Senator Hatch and Senator Wyden, “Senate Hearing on Foster Care” Washington , D.C., CSPAN, span.org, August 4, 2014, https://www.c-span.org/video/?327478-1/hearing-us-foster-care-system, May 1, 2017
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, “15-55563 Preslie Hardwick v. Marcia Vreeken,” YOUTUBE, youtube.com, October 7, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZa0LxmFTkI, May 1, 2017
LMFT Julian J. Domingues and M.A. Melinda Murphy, “A Culture of Fear: An Inside Look at Los Angeles Country’s Department of Children and & Family Services,” December 13, 2013, Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency, LLC , May 1, 2017
Interview, National Safe Child Show “DCFS LA County Social Worker Retires and Comes Out, interview with Julian Domingues,” Published on May 8, 2014 YOUTUBE, youtube.com, May 1, 2017
KAREN DE SÁ, “Drugging Our Kids Children in California’s foster care system are prescribed unproven, risky medications at alarming rates
” The Mercury News. mercurynew.com August 24, 2014
http://extras.mercurynews.com/druggedkids/ May 1, 2017