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Kidjacked | Jacked Up
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In 86.8% of cases where a child was placed in foster care, Kansas failed to make the required 'reasonable effort' to reunite him with his parents. National CPS News Archive
National News Coverage
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Study Shows Majority of Americans Doubt Quality of Public School Education
by Jeremy Reynalds
Results from a recently released study show the vast majority of Americans have significant doubts about the quality of a public school education, and believe other options generally are better for children.
According to a news release from Ellison Research, the study asked Americans to rate the overall quality of education students get from public schools, home schooling, charter schools, and three types of private schools: non-religious, Catholic, and Christian (non-Catholic), and then to decide which option is the best for students in a number of different ways.
ASSIST News Service
April 26, 2008
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FLDS Raid - A Dangerous Legal Precedent
by Joel Skousen
I waited a week to comment on the Texas case, separating 437 children from their FLDS parents, to see if any substantive evidence of abuse would emerge. It hasn't.
Even if it had, those could have been handled individually. But no, Texas plans instead to make every member of the group pay the supreme price: to strip away their beloved children. This case is about group punishment. In spite of a search warrant tainted by a false witness (the "Sarah" who doesn't exist), no actual specific evidence of abuse, or any unwilling participants in this polygamous compound, a self-righteous Texas judge had decreed that all 400 + children will not be returned to the custody of their parents.
Rense
April 26, 2008
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Sweep of Polygamist Sect Kids Raises Legal Questions
The state of Texas made a damning accusation when it rounded up 462 children at a polygamous sect's ranch: The adults are forcing teenage girls into marriage and sex, creating a culture so poisonous that none should be allowed to keep their children.
But the broad sweep - from nursing infants to teenagers - is raising constitutional questions, even in a state where authorities have wide latitude for taking a family's children. The move has the appearance of "a class-action child removal," said Jessica Dixon, director of the child advocacy center at Southern Methodist University's law school in Dallas.
Fox News
April 25, 2008
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'Sarah' may be Colorado woman
The telephoned pleas for help that triggered a raid on an alleged polygamist ranch in Texas have been linked to a woman with a history of false accusations.
Rozita Swinton, 33, of Colorado Springs has been named a "person of interest" by authorities in Texas, the Deseret Morning News reported. Documents unsealed Wednesday said that calls purportedly from a teenager named "Sarah" had been made on a prepaid cell phone Swinton had used previously.
United Press International
April 24, 2008
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Sect challenges legality of search warrant, raid
Authorities knew that reports of alleged abuse at a polygamist sect's Texas ranch were questionable before they raided the compound, attorneys for the ranch's families said in court documents Thursday.
The attorneys are arguing that search warrants were wrongly issued in the case. A state official responded that the initial reports don't matter at this point, because "we found children being abused." It also asks the judge to issue an order restricting the publication of documents and records seized from the ranch.
CNN
April 24, 2008
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They're coming for your kids!
by Ilana Mercer
Imagine: One day you're frolicking in the open air on a large compound, doing your daily chores and feasting on hearty homegrown fare; the next you're gagging on a diet of T&A courtesy of MTV and fast-food compliments of your fat foster mom.
As the makeshift mom hollers at you to swallow your zombifying meds - the Texas foster care system is notorious for pumping its charges full of psychotropic drugs - her flaccid live-in lover eyes you lustily. As I write, many of the kids kidnapped by Texas rangers from the Yearning for Zion ranch are being scattered across the state to far-flung group homes and shelters.
World Net Daily
April 24, 2008
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Who will save women of Zion sect?
by Antonia Zerbisia
Bad enough that the women of the Yearning for Zion "ranch" in Eldorado, Texas, had been turned into zombie baby incubators, or at least that's how they come across on TV.
Now they're being victimized yet again as the legal system works to permanently separate them from their youngest children, including nursing newborns.
The Toronto Star
April 23, 2008
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Do county payments to judges amount to bribes?
by Charlene Muhammad
Two activists want Attorney General Michael Mukasey to launch a Justice Department investigation into what they call courtroom corruption fueled by "unwarranted" payments from Los Angeles County to Los Angeles Superior Court judges.
Two activists want Attorney General Michael Mukasey to launch a Justice Department investigation into what they call courtroom corruption fueled by "unwarranted" payments from Los Angeles County to Los Angeles Superior Court judges.
Final Call News
April 22, 2008
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'Failure to Protect' - From the Diocese of Fairbanks
by Richard Wexter
There was a story on NPR yesterday about rampant sexual abuse in isolated compounds, perpetrated by religious leaders.
Although there were relatively few offenders, the number of victims is staggering. The "compounds" are Native Alaskan villages. The abusers were priests and lay volunteers supervised by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks in the 1960s.
NCCPR Child Welfare Blog
April 22, 2008
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Wanting Contact: Advocacy group announces correspondence bill
by Kate Weber
Carrie Adams lived three streetlights away from her two children and did not see them for two years.
Adams, originally from Palos Heights, a Chicago suburb, was one of several people gathered Sunday at the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore to stand up for parents' rights. The people came from as far away as Sheboygan, Wis., as members of Project Prevent, an organization striving to join hundreds of advocacy groups across the country to fight for the same issue: families.
Daily Chronicle
April 21, 2008
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Bill would lend financial help to relatives who care for children
by James R. Hermann, Sr.
Nearly 15,000 children across the country now living in foster care could leave foster care and live permanently with relatives if federal support was available to help with their care, as is now available for many foster parents who adopt children.
It is time for reform. Now. A bi-partisan bill (S661/HR1288, commonly known as the "Kinship Caregiver Support Act") is being prepared that would give guardianship of children by relatives the support they need, allowing these kids to leave the foster care system for good.
Bonner County Daily Bee
April 20, 2008
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Moms, children from Texas sect to be parted
SAN ANGELO, Texas - Adult mothers who have been allowed to stay with their young children since they were taken from a polygamous sect will be separated from them after DNA sampling is completed next week, a child-welfare official said Saturday.
State District Judge Barbara Walther late Friday ordered that parents and children of the Yearning For Zion Ranch submit DNA samples to help sort out family relationships that have confounded authorities since 416 children were taken into state custody two weeks ago.
Northwest Herald
April 20, 2008
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Canadian children in polygamy battle
by Michelle Roberts
The attorney general for British Columbia said yesterday he was alerted by officials in Ottawa that some children taken from a Texas polygamist compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are Canadians.
The confirmation came hours after Angie Voss, of Texas Child Protection Services, testified at a custody hearing for 416 children - seized in a raid earlier this month based in allegations of physical and sexual abuse - that some of the children before the court are Canadians.
The Toronto Star
April 19, 2008
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Eldorado Yearning For Zion women experience the most feared words ever spoken: 'Your children are ours,' CPS
by Gary Naler
"The death penalty of family law cases." This is how the events unfolding for 416 children and their now-separated mothers were described as the State of Texas and Child Protective Services (CPS) mount their largest single attack ever.
After being forcibly removed from their homes at gunpoint and then through deceit and lies separated from their children, these crying and now-untrusting mothers deprived of any parting contact with their children were given the choice-go to a women's shelter or go back to your homes. "Your children are ours," said CPS.
News Release Wire
April 17, 2008
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The Medicated Child
by Frontline
Ten years ago, stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall were the drugs of choice to treat behavioral issues in children. Today children as young as four years old are being prescribed more powerful anti-psychotic.
There has been a dramatic increase in the number of children being diagnosed with serious psychiatric disorders and prescribed medications that are just beginning to be tested in children. The drugs can cause serious side effects, and virtually nothing is known about their long-term impact. "It's really to some extent an experiment, trying medications in these children of this age."
PBS
April 9, 2008
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Eli Lilly Zyprexa RICO Lawsuit
by Daniel Haszard
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal sues Eli Lilly and Company, Inc. for illegally marketing its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa for unapproved uses, and concealing the drug's serious side effects, for more than a decade.
Eli Lilly allegedly corrupted physicians, pharmacies and administrators at nursing homes and youth detention centers as part of a massive illegal marketing campaign to promote Zyprexa for unapproved off-label uses, including for the treatment of children.
PR USA
April 9, 2008
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State audit: DSS improving foster care oversight
BOSTON - A state audit has found continued improvement by the Department of Social Service in its handling of the state's foster care system.
Massachusetts Auditor Joe DeNucci said today that the latest audit found no overdue criminal background checks of foster care providers. A 2005 report found overdue or blank background checks on 133 providers. By 2006, that number was reduced to 68.
Boston Herald
April 9, 2008
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400 Children Taken From Polygamist Sect
More than 400 children, mostly girls in pioneer dresses, were swept into state custody from a polygamist sect in what authorities described Monday as the largest child-welfare operation in Texas history.
The dayslong raid on the sprawling compound built by now-jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was sparked by a 16-year-old girl's call to authorities that she was being abused and that girls as young as 14 and 15 were being forced into marriages with much older men.
CBS News (TX)
April 7, 2008
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Recall Judge Peter McBrien Petition
Judge McBrien is a disgrace to the American judiciary system and an extreme danger to children, petitioners and respondents.
McBrien has broken at least two California Code of Judicial Ethics canons: A Judge Shall Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in All of the Judge's activities and a Judge Shall Perform the Duties of Judicial Office Impartially and Diligently. Please help remove him from office.
iPetitions
April 5, 2008
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Doctor is sued in death of girl, 4
by The Boston Globe
The parents of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley are awaiting trial on charges that they killed her in December 2006 with an overdose of psychiatric drugs.
A medical malpractice suit filed yesterday asserts that a Tufts Medical Center psychiatrist who diagnosed the girl as bipolar when she was 28 months old and then treated her for two years with a regimen of powerful drugs is to blame for her death.
The Boston Globe
April 4, 2008
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NICE endorses 'universal' health visiting service
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has backed calls for the health visiting service to be reinforced in the UK.
"Health visitors should be proactive and visit all mothers, parents and carers of infants and preschool children at home (where possible) to assess the needs."
Management in Practice (UK)
March 31, 2008
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Was School Strip-Search Legal?
by Reynolds Holding
Case Pits Students' Privacy Rights vs. Need to Keep Drugs, Weapons Out of Schools
A student strip-searched for drugs when she was in eighth grade took her case to a federal appeals court on Wednesday, arguing through a lawyer that school officials had violated her constitutional rights by overzealously enforcing a strict policy against alcohol, narcotics - and, in her case, Ibuprofen.
ABC News (A)
March 28, 2008
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Lifting the Veil of Secrecy
by Jim Nintzel
Child Protective Services faced some damning headlines in 2007. Following the deaths of several abused kids in Tucson, lawmakers aim to reform Child Protective Services.
The spate of incidents caught the attention of state Rep. Jonathan Paton, who has teamed up with Rep. Kirk Adams of Mesa to sponsor a half-dozen bills the lawmakers say will improve CPS by opening up more files to the public and forcing the agency to work more closely with police and prosecutors.
Tucson Weekly
March 22, 2008
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State settles lawsuit over placement of disabled
by James Vaznis
More than 600 mentally retarded or developmentally disabled individuals will leave nursing homes in the next four years, to live more independently in an apartment, family home, or group setting.
Their exodus is a key part of a settlement the Patrick administration reached with advocates for the disabled in a 10-year-old case in which plaintiffs argued that the nursing home placements violated federal mandates, including a requirement that they be in the most integrated setting appropriate for their care.
The Boston Globe (MA)
March 21, 2008
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