WARNING: CRIME ALERT! CPS "Child Protection Services" is kidnapping children! Stop Organized Crime! View San Luis Obispo Children Non Profits: http://www.box.net/shared/cnp6fok9i8 View your county: visit: www.guidestar.com

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Kathleen goes to jail for trying to take a 'Bubble Bath'!

KATHLEEN GOES TO JAIL AGAIN - Arrested for taking a bath:

Today I was arrested AGAIN for 'Obstruction of  Justice'! The officer busted down my door and hauled me off to jail while I was still in my pajamas and ready to take a bath. He showed up telling me I had a warrant for my arrest. Turns out I had a 'bogus' Obstruction of Justice' charge which stemmed from yet another false charge. Then charged me on a SECOND Obstruction of Justice today just because I wanted to take a bubble bath.

HERE'S THE STORY: 

In May of 2008 I was given a false DUI by Police to stop me from being a speaker at the Family Preservation Rally in Washington DC. I had stated on my website (http://www.cpscorruption.blogspot.comthat I planned on attending the rally.  The day before I was arrested I had met with Police to show  them pictures of my daughter's attempted suicide during the time she was in foster care. She had cuts all over her arms and I was very concerned. I asked the Police for help in getting her out of foster care. They told me there was nothing they could do because it was a CPS issue. I asked him how he knew about the Rally and he told me the Chief of Police was reading my blog. WOW (our Tax dollars hard at work).   Before I left the station an officer called out to me "Hey Kathleen, are you still planning on attending the Rally in Washington DC?".  I responded back saying "I wouldn't miss it for the world!!".  The very next day I was  pulled over and the Police gave me the FALSE DUI charge. In the car he told me  "You're not going anywhere Kathleen. Now you can't even leave the state"  ...and he smiled..... THOSE ASSHOLES!  I wasn't  given a Breathalyzer or a blood test. I wasn't even booked. He just handed me the citation.  I found out later the Atascadero Police had a youth non-profit that was being used to money launder. 

Since I wasn't going to be turned into a criminal by a 'criminal enterprise' I left the Country. While in Greece I was told by County Counsel that they had dropped the false DUI, but when I returned to America I discovered that it hadn't been dropped, and now this charge had turned into a warrant. When they came to arrest me for the false DUI I was scared. I had just gotten my daughter back after two long years, so I locked me and Jenny in the office while I tried to call an attorney. The officer forced his way in and he threw me in jail while Jenny took off running. She boarded a train to Southern California. I went to San Luis Obispo and  handled the false DUI, which was eventually reduced to a 'reckless driving' (that I wasn't even guilty of), but apparently the officer filed new charges for  'Obstruction of Justice'.  I had no idea that I even had this charge - until today when he came to arrest me on the warrant. Today while arresting me he issued me yet another 'Obstruction of Justice'  charge because I wouldn't answer the door. I spoke to the officer through the door telling him that I wasn't dressed and he told me to open up the door anyhow. When I refused he busted the door down. I had just ran my bath water and I planned on taking a nice 'bubble bath'.  This officer refused to let me get my clothes on. He handcuffed me and threw me in jail in my Pajama's. After I was booked and given another bogus charge they released me but I had no way to get home. My worker David wasn't answering the office phone, so  so here I am on the side of the freeway in my pajamas thumbing because I had no money to get home. How lovely - they just love to humiliate people!!!  

So now I have TWO FALSE Obstruction of Justice charges against me. They just really love me and want to keep me in America!  Here's the real kicker -  guess when my next court date is? July 23rd  - the same day as the D.C Family Preservation Fest !!!!! This is the SECOND time they have given me false charges to stop me from attending the Rally. It's pretty obvious that they want to keep their little Organized Crime quiet.  Unless you have experience the corruption first hand it's difficult to understand what they do to people.  This is what they do to CPS Victims!!! I have no doubt that if I had my 8 month old the baby here with me today he would have been taken and placed into foster care. This is why I want to get out of NAZI America and the Mafia Police! 


"Evil is like cancer, when we fail to swiftly remove it then the whole body is inevitably destroyed. This crippling infestation occurs individually as well as collectively as a group, a community & nation. The corruption that plagues society is a destroyer of public safety, peace & harmony, but when crime enters the arena of government, whether local, state or federal, it becomes especially diabolical & dangerous."


If were arrested without cause BILL THEM for your time! Stand up! Speak out!
NO ONE IS GOING TO MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE IF YOU DON’T!


Links:

Kathleen Dearinger 
Families Unite 4 Children's Rights Foundation

Sunday, March 28, 2010

FORMER SENATOR NANCY SCHAEFER KILLED

Dear Friends,

I have some tragic and very sad news to share with my fellow Activists today. Yesterday I found out that on Friday, March 26th Former State Senator Nancy Schaefer and her husband, Bruce were found dead in their home. Tragically Nancy was shot in the back while she was sleeping. Bruce was also shot. Subsequently, both of them have died.  The media claims that this was a Murder-Suicide pact, but most of us who were close to Nancy know that was NOT the case. This was a 'HIT'. Nancy and her husband were killed to keep them 'quiet' about the Racketeering that is happening within Child "Protection" Services, aka, CPS

Below are articls on her death as reported by the media:

The Media reports that Bruce had cancer and they had made a "murder-suicide pact". The couple’s daughter states that she had no knowledge of any serious illness affecting her father!  Bruce had surgery last year - but he recovered! 

http://www.ajc.com/news/gbi-husband-shot-ex-410703.html?cxntlid=brkng_nws_bnr

In this repor Lt. Governor Casey Cagle offers his condolencs, but Nancy personally told me that he assisted in getting her out of office to 'quite' her up about exposing the CPS corruption:

http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/murder-suicide-possible-cause-408021.html?cxntlid=daylf_artr

I think It's interesting that Senator Don Thomas who claims to have been a 'friend' of Nancy's, yet he is leading people to believe that this was a "murder-suicide". He did this even before the investigation began. Perhaps this is because he's the Chairman of the Health and Human Service Committee (HHS)...his views were drastically different from Schaefer's, who was trying to stop the corruption!


http://www.ajc.com/news/gbi-husband-shot-ex-410703.html

As you know, Nancy has been relentless in exposing the EVILS of CPS and their affiliates who are Trafficking children to illegally obtain Federal Funds. This corruption has spread past the Legislative level, and many Politicians are involved in Racketeering, and this is why it has been so difficult to change the laws.  Many Politicians are connected to "Children Charities", that are linked to Pharmaceutical companies and who are making Political campaign contributions  by drugging foster kids. I worked with Nancy for over two years as we raised public awareness. She tried to help me in my own case when my daughter was trafficked, and she made many calls on my behalf. It was with Nancy's advice that I moved to Europe last year, for she was concerned about my safety due to my Activism.  When she couldn't get laws passed in the United States to stop the corruption she went to Europe to try to help families. Last year she went to Amsterdam Holland and  gave a speech at the World Congress of Families  on the subject of "The Unlimited Power of Child Protective Services." She was the President of  Eagle Forum of Georgia and Eagle Forum's National Chairman of Parents' Rights. Nancy has also appeared on several non main stream radio shows. She was a fearless and brave woman. She  was unafraid to expose the evils of CPS  which caused her to lose her Senate seat, and ultimately her life.  It's as though she accepted her fate for the sake of children. Nancy loved children. Her and her husband had 5 children and 13 grandchildren.  

During one of her speeches she said "There are some causes that  are worth losing for and this is one of those times".  She had an undying devotion and dedication to fight for abused children and their families who were so cruelly being victimized by the court criminals.  

I spoke to William Wagener with "On Second Thought TV" tonight and he tells me he was planning on interviewing Nancy for his show next month.They had recently spoken and she had some 'sensitive' information she was going to share with him, including the names of those people  involved. He said that even though they spoke on 'safe phones' Nancy was very nervous, and she was very very scared. She must have known that there was going to be a hit out on her. I can say for sure that Bruce did NOT kill Nancy. He deeply loved his wife and she was there by his side during his and surgery and illness last year.  There was NO murder-suicide or financial problems as reported by the media, who is also covering up the details as well as her activism against Government corruption.





SEE WHAT ALEX JONES HAS TO SAY ABOUT NANCY'S "MURDER"
http://www.infowars.com/oddities-in-the-nancy-schaefer-suicide-case/


WHY DOESN'T THE MEDIA MENTION THAT NANCY WAS THE PRESIDENT OF EAGLE FORUM? www.eagleforumofga.org/


I WONDER HOW MANY CPS VICTIMS AND ACTIVISTS BELIEVE THAT THIS WAS A MURDER-SUICIDE? 

Below are some links to some articles and speeches given by Nancy about CPS:




Nancy  was a deeply religious Christian woman who would recite biblical passages to me, and we would often pray together. This is a very sad time for all of us. Those who knew Nancy describe her as a warm and  caring person. She was a wonderful lady and a dear friend of mine who I loved, admire, and respected. She was a rare jewel and someone who I will never forget. I will hold the memories of  Nancy close to my heart. 


God Bess you Nancy and you finally rest in Peace!

  
Kathleen Dearinger 

Sunday, January 17, 2010

The Social Origins of Eugenics & The Role of Social Workers

Social Origins of Eugenics and the Role of Social Workers 



When many people first learn about eugenics, they wonder how intelligent people, including highly educated scientists, could have believed so many seemingly bizarre ideas. How could anyone accept the simplistic notion that complex human behaviors are determined by single genes or that mental tests designated more than three/fourths of all Russian and Polish immigrants to the U.S. as feebleminded?
To understand why eugenics gained such a following in the first three decades of the 20th century, one needs to examine the economic, social, and political context in which it flourished. Science, or what is claimed to be science, is a product of culture – like any other human activity. What seems in hindsight to be naive or absurd, must have seemed reasonable in its own era. This is especially true when scientific ideas are used to explain social problems.
American eugenics developed in the wake of turbulent economic and social problems following the Civil War. The rapid growth of American industry, coupled with the increased mechanization of agriculture, created the first major migration away from farms, and cities expanded faster than adequate housing. Wholesale exploitation of labor created militant labor union organizations. Price fluctuations bankrupted many businesses and precipitated a series of depressions, starting in 1873, and reoccurring about every decade through the early 1900s. This further fueled labor unrest. The situation was made worse by an ever-increasing tide of immigrants, mostly from southern and eastern Europe, which peaked just before, and again after, World War I.
Social Darwinism had attempted to explain away social and economic inequalities as the "survival of the fittest." However, by the turn of the century, this simplistic idea had been turned on its head. A declining birthrate among the wealthy and powerful indicated that the captains of industry were, in fact, losing the struggle for existence. The working class not only was organizing against them, but they were also outreproducing them. At the same time, traditional approaches to solving the problems of the urban poor – charity, social work, and religious institutions – were proving of little help.
Solving the new problems of industrialization demanded a change from laissez-faire to managed capitalism – toward the increased role of government and planning in the economic and social sphere. This new philosophy became known as progressivism. Embedded in progressivism was the idea of scientific management – long-range planning by university-trained experts. This new managerial class became increasingly vital to the economic process. In a country that had nurtured a reverence for invention, the use of scientific management had a special appeal. Progressive reformers had a strong faith in science as the cure-all that would herald in a new era of rational control of both nature and human society. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that the revelations of a new science of genetics gave birth to a new science of social engineering – eugenics.
Genetics appeared to explain the underlying cause of human social problems – such as pauperism, feeble-mindedness, alcoholism, rebelliousness, nomadism, criminality, and prostitution – as the inheritance of defective germ plasm. Eugenicists argued that society paid a high price by allowing the birth of defective individuals who would have to be cared for by the state. Sterilization of one defective adult could save future generations thousands of dollars.
Eugenicists and their wealthy supporters also shared a mutual antipathy for political radicalism and class struggle. They were alarmed by the increasing strength of militant labor unions and the rise of the American socialist party, especially after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. These movements were, to some extent, correctly judged to be associated with immigrants from southern Europe, especially Italians, eastern Europeans, and Jews. These new immigrants were seen as troublemakers, and the eugenicists purported to have data showing that the problem was in their genes. The solution to the problem was simple – selective immigration restriction.
Eugenics was seen as a way to solve all of these combined problems because it placed the cause in the defective germ plasm of individuals and ethnic groups, and not in the structure of society itself. Eugenics used the cover of science to blame the victims for their own problems. Eugenicists seemed to have the weight of rigorous, quantitative, and thus scientific evidence on their side. To those with economic and social power – and imbued with the new spirit of scientific planning – eugenicists appeared to offer a rational and efficient approach of treating social problems.
In an era troubled by rapid and seemingly chaotic change, eugenics offered the prospect of a planned, gradual, and smooth transition to a more harmonious future. With its emphasis on planned breeding, eugenics provided the biological counterpart to new theories of scientific control and rational management in business. Just as a new group of professional managers was making a place for itself in American economic life, eugenicists emerged as scientists with a special expertise in the solution of perennial social problems. Eugenics provided what seemed to offer an objective, scientific approach to problems that previously had been cast almost wholly in subjective, humanitarian terms. Whereas charity and state welfare had treated only symptoms, eugenics promised to attack social problems at their roots.
  


Social Workers with Child "Protection" Services have been removing children at an alarming rate since Clinton's Welfare Reform Act of 1997. The number of children who are being removed yearly are in the millions, yet the media stays silent. Children are being ripped from their homes and the parents are stripped of all constitutional rights in "secret" Civil Courts that have neither a trial or jury.  These innocent families  have no where to turn for help.  


Yes, It does appear that Eugenics is back in America and this is all being done under the disguise of "protecting" children. 


Please watch these videos: 

Schools, Academies and eugenics (same thing is going on in the UK)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBxQpft5F_k 
Child Stealing By the State:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0HQINaypE8
War Against The Weak (movie trailer): http://www.waragainsttheweakmovie.com/

ENDGAME - Eugenics/ Population Control: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=child+protection+services+eugenics&search_type=&aq=o

Additional Resources:

White trash:  Eugenics as Social ideology:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m7r5645128751581/
Margaret Sanger and Eugenics: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/dickie-sanger.html
Eugenics, "Degenerate Girls", and Social Workers During the Progressive Era:
http://aff.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/23/1/22
Human Genome Project: http://www.genome.gov/

The Media & Their Influence In Shaping Our Perspectives




January 16, 2010


Ok,  today I’m going to talk about the MEDIA and their coverage of Child Protection Services (CPS) cases,  or lack there of.  There seems to be a complete BLACKOUT of news coverage on what is really going on with the millions of  children who are being abducted  by the US Government each year.  I know, you say - well, there’s privacy issues that are of concern to  Child “Protection” agencies, who claim to be protect the anonymity of abused children; using the term ‘Confidentiality . But are they?  Why is it okay for these same agencies to exploit millions of children by placing their names and pictures all over the internet, yet operate in strict “secrecy” during the process of removal?  These same children who’s previous identities were concealed can be found at various adoption websites, listed in the ’For Sale’ section in ads that are being done by  the very agency who claims to be ‘protecting’ children. So, the question is - who are they really protecting? 


The current system that is being utilized to obtain children is veiled in “secrecy“, and even the media is not allowed to attend these “secret” hearings. Child Protection agencies claim that they are removing abused children, yet most of  these “secret” hearings are held in “Civil” Court rather than in “Criminal” Court. This protects the real criminals who are trafficking children, and since there is no media coverage the public never learns the truth.  


Did you know that Social Services has a ‘Media’ Department and Social Workers are embedded within the  media to write opinion biased stories? That’s right, so whenever there is a true case of child abuse the Media is contacted to run the story - over and over and over … until we become indoctrinated enough to believe that we should be taxed more money for the sake of combating child abuse.  This conditioning persuades people to vote in certain bills to increase Federal funding to Child Welfare agencies who are money laundering, and this is done all being done under the ‘guise’ of protecting children.  Worse yet, is despite the fact that we have TRILLIONS of dollars going into child protection, more than half of all child deaths occur AFTER they are removed by Child “Protection” Services. But you won‘t hear these stories or the real statistics from the media. They won’t tell you that 7 out of 10 children who are placed into foster care are  abused, molested, or even killed, or that  80% of our prison population are former foster kids. They don‘t tell you about the over drugging of  children who are in the system and that 2/3 of foster children  are being placed on  psychotropic drugs. Not will they tell you  about the kickbacks they are receiving from “Big Pharma“.  Instead, the media shares heartwarming stories and encourages people to foster a child or to adopt, and foster parents are given monetary 'incentives'. Advertising campaign slogans, like this one at Adopt Us Kids states: “you don’t have to be a perfect parent to adopt a kid, there are plenty of teenagers who will put up with you”, are sure to attract  less than ‘quality’ foster parents. Yet, CPS would rather adopt out children than to  return them to their biological  families because trafficking children is very profitable. The adoption frenzy is driven by supply and demand, and the more people adopt, the greater the demand  for ‘merchandise’.  In order to meet the needs for the adoption “industry” and others Child Protection Service agencies must obtain more Children - and they use the media to do it. 

Many parents have proof that their children were kidnapped by the Government yet these stories go unheard.  But if a child were kidnapped by a stranger there would be media hype: “Amber Alerts”, parents crying on TV, newspaper articles,  and milk cartons depicting a picture of the missing child. When the Government does it you won’t a peep out of the media … Shhhhh 



The media doesn’t mention that most of the children who are removed by CPS are not abused or neglected, oh no, those cases rarely get coverage.  In fact, the media hangs up on parents who attempt to share their stories and they ignore proof that is mailed to them.  So who are these people that mold our opinions and why the big Cover up? Well, let’s take look at the people who control the media. We have a small number of  corporations that control all of the world’s opinions and shape our beliefs. This mental engineering is mostly owned by Zionists who also happen to have their hands in the Political arena and the very profitable Drug industry.  It is this stereotyping  and exploitation of children that is influencing our thoughts and beliefs, not the reality of what is actually occurring in America. There is no power greater in the world today than the  great manipulators of public opinion and unfortunately taxpayers continue to fall for the fraud that is draining our economy and ripping good families apart.  
   
Kathleen Dearinger ~ 


Why is the media keeping quiet? Click here to find out ----> http://tinyurl.com/SocialWorker-Eugenics

Monday, January 11, 2010

Celebrities Speak out Against Corrupt CPS

http://tinyurl.com/CelebritiesSpeakOutAgainstCPS



"The foster care system is totally obsolete. Kids are being killed, abused and even experimented on.At age 18, they are aged out of the system, they give them $5 and a bag of lunch and say go live your life. Most of these kids end up in trouble, jail, or a mental institution. All the kids in the group homes, juvenile detention centers and over half of the people in prison overall come from the foster care system."
Darryl "DMC" McDaniels 




"When you look at the number of African American children in foster care around the country and you look at the woe that has befallen the children, it breaks your heart. A lady said to me in Oakland, Ca., "Mr. Cosby, you should see them when they get out of the van and they're being transferred from one house to another and they have everything they own in the world in a black Hefty bag that they're carrying. They look like refugees." She said that you look at the children's faces and there's neither happiness nor anger. There's nothing left. If by age 18, you've been in over 20 homes, how do you trust anybody anymore? Our people need to feel these things and hear these things. They need to feel it like when you rip a Band-Aid off. We need to feel the sting. Otherwise, it becomes as ordinary as saying, "Pass the salt." How many more stories do we have to hear? Come on people, it's time for change".
Bill Cosby




"I am tired of children being removed from parents who love them.I know personally of a similar case.... I and several young actors will start talking about this case and highlight this issue in the international press if this will not stop."
Q'orianka Kilcher






"To be honest with you, I hold what I call a flawed culture in the Department of Child Safety responsible.They struck me as people with no morals, no ethics and they are only there for careers and not for a concern about the people who they are taxpayer-funded to serve.I find it evil and I think the taxpayer needs to know.It would seem the care of children has been lost in bureaucratic games."
Don Greene



"The safety I fear was the abuse in foster homes, because I wasn't abused and raped on the streets the message I got was that the streets were safer in my mind; when your young you think that your immortal."
Cupcake Brown, Author of "A Peice Of Cake"


Saturday, January 9, 2010

Taking Liberties - Former Social Worker Report



A former caseworker for the child protection agency in NY describes how the agency really works


She thought she was hired to protect children. But instead, a city child abuse investigator discovered that betraying her clients was part of her job description. Tales from a year inside the Administration for Children's Services. 


By Akka Gordon
Source: City Limits MAGAZINE


Emergency Children's Services is an inconspicuous, dingy building at the southern edge of Soho. About 30 to 40 kids come here each night, after they are taken away from their parents and while they're waiting for a foster home to take them in. When they get here, they cry, fight or sit silently on a stained couch, eyes glazed over. As an investigator for the New York City Administration for Children's Services, I spent many nights here.When children first arrive at ECS they are taken through a metal detector by security. Some carry garbage bags containing their clothes; others tightly clutch just the one item they brought from home. Each is accompanied by an ACS child protective caseworker, who is given a number and waits to be called to check the kids in. On a busy night, of which there are many, this can take hours.

In the waiting room, some tattered old books and the odd toy lie about. A green banner hangs year round saying, "Seasons Greetings From Pre-Placement" and does little to conceal the cracking paint. The children hungrily eye a vending machine in the corner and beg their caseworkers for candy. And the caseworkers say, No way.

Some of these kids, who range from newborn babies to 17-year-olds, have been rescued from seriously abusive or neglectful parents. Others are here for reasons that are ambiguous, unjustified, even arbitrary. But they all come to the same dim room on Laight Street. And because the city's Administration for Children's Services has identified them as children in danger, this is the first of many unfamiliar places they'll be seeing as they journey through the city's foster care system.

Like me, the other caseworkers here are exhausted. Most of them are on the phone or stare up at the television hung from the wall. It is not part of the job to comfort the children just plucked from their homes. They are irritated and want to get home.

When I first started coming to ECS, I tried to reach out to all the children who were crying or sitting alone, shocked and terrified. It was easier with the little ones, because I could hug them and they would immediately respond. But the older ones were different. I asked them, "Do you know why you are here?" Chances were that they had only a vague idea; ACS investigators often do not tell the children they are removing exactly what is going on. Most of the time the kids shrugged and said, "I don't know." Or they knew pieces, like, "Because mommy didn't clean the house." Often it was, "Because mommy got arrested."
The more I ended up at ECS, the harder it became to comfort these children. When you had no idea where a child was going to end up that night, it was impossible to assure them of anything. When a child asks, "Am I going to get split up from my little brother?" you can't say no. Although all efforts are supposed to be made to place siblings together, there are countless exceptions. Instead you have to say, "Let's hope not, okay?"

One night I was at ECS with a 3-year-old named Christopher, whom I had picked up from a precinct in East Harlem. His mother was arrested that day on drug charges. He had been living in a crack house, according to the police who took him, and his arms and legs were caked with dirt. All he had with him was a pacifier and a scarf. I pulled the pacifier out of his mouth and asked him, "Are you going to talk to me?" He looked at me and said, "Fuck off." Other than this, he didn't speak.
In the waiting room he pulled a chair out from under a girl his age as she went to sit down. After she fell, crying, he jumped up and down, pointing and laughing at her. I tried to engage him, to keep Christopher from terrorizing the other children. Then another caseworker came in. He lifted him by one arm and shouted in his face, "Listen, you brat. You better sit down and SHUT UP." He tossed Christopher onto the couch and he bounced, landing on his head. The caseworker warned, "Don't even think about moving. I'm watching you." Christopher did not move or even cry. He looked at me for help.

The caseworker explained to me defensively, "That's the only way these kids listen. That's how they are treated at home, so that's the only way to get through to them." And I wondered, silently: If we aren't treating these children any better than they were treated in their homes, then what are we doing?

To the manager at ACS who makes the fateful decision to remove a child, and to the judge who approves it, a child exists on a piece of paper, alongside a list of disturbing circumstances. They don't see a child having a panic attack at 3 a.m. because he is suddenly alone in the world. Or slamming his head against a wall out of protest and desperation. The good intentions that go into the decision to remove a child often have little to do with the sometimes brutal outcomes of that choice. And the problem is not simply caseworkers who do not know how to talk to children. The whole system does not treat children with dignity and respect.

Usually, the kids fell asleep in my lap during the car rides to their new foster homes. But Christopher stayed awake all the way to his new home in Staten Island, until 3 a.m. He stared out the car window and watched Manhattan recede in the distance. He seemed to know exactly what was happening, like an adult trapped in a little body that couldn't speak. But when I finally had to leave him, he did what any 3-year-old would do in the face of abandonment. He clung for his life to my leg.
_______
When I graduated from college two years ago, I decided to become a caseworker for ACS. I wanted to learn how child welfare policy affects children and their families--not from reports and data, but on the front lines.
It may seem hard to imagine now, but in many ways I loved my job and had no plans to do anything else. As a caseworker, I was in a unique position to advocate for children and parents when they most needed help. Many of the parents and children I encountered made deep impressions on me, and I established close connections with some of them. I also enjoyed the investigative aspect of the job, the thrill of constantly going into unknown situations. At first, I saw it as a daily adventure.

But it did not take long for me to see that there was no adventure here. Many of these families were harassed, their rights systematically violated by ACS. Their children were being swallowed up by an agency that too often operated on virtually unchecked authority, wielded arbitrarily. And I represented that agency.
More and more, I felt that I could not do the job I believed I needed to do with an ACS badge around my neck. I resigned from the agency in October 1999, after working there for just over a year. After all that I had experienced, I felt, like many of my clients, crippled by feelings of powerlessness. At the time, the only thing I could do was write it all down.

In the year I worked there, the Administration for Children's Services investigated more than 50,000 reports of child abuse and neglect. I handled about 50 of them in my job as a child protective caseworker in the Manhattan field office. I went all over the city investigating cases--to housing projects, family shelters and, once, to an apartment where a father had made a robot for his kids out of old Metrocards. But except for the time I visited a family on the Upper West Side--who hired their own doctors to disprove ACS's allegations of child abuse--my work took me to low-income neighborhoods. The reality is that families who are likely to be reported to ACS are poor.

When I first started the job, my supervisor explained to me that bad caseworkers sympathize with the parents. "Being sentimental," he said, "is the worst way to be." If you relate to the parent, the wisdom goes, you cannot conduct an objective investigation.

The entire investigation process relies on the assumption that parents do not know their rights, starting with the moment they allow caseworkers to come into their homes. A lot of these families are so conditioned to caseworkers knocking on their doors that the presence of a city worker in their homes is just another part of life. Nearly half a million New York City children have been the subjects of ACS investigations. If you are poor and if you have had problems with the law, if you have ever been involved in a domestic violence dispute, if you took your child to the emergency room after an accident, if you have ever used drugs, if your children have problems in school, if you have ever been homeless, ACS has been a part of your life.

_______
Child protective specialists get about two to three new cases each week, sent to them by their supervisors. Those supervisors have their own supervisors, called managers. It's managers who sign off on the big decisions: whether a case is worth pursuing and, most critically, when to put children into foster care.
For a caseworker, each case represents a heavy set of tasks and responsibilities. First, unless the call was anonymous, she must contact the source of the report. Many calls come from professionals required by law to report suspected abuse or neglect, such as teachers, guidance counselors and hospital social workers. Other people call in reports, too, especially neighbors and family members. But many of these reports turn out to be false, and some of them are made purely for revenge.

Within 24 hours of a report, the caseworker has to visit the family at home. Caseworkers must interview each child and examine them all for marks and bruises. They must also interview every other member of the household, check every room for safety, check refrigerators and cabinets for food. Immunization records, birth certificates and proof of income must be verified. Next, caseworkers contact the children's schools and doctors. And in cases that involve drug allegations, the caseworker must accompany the parent to a drug test.

At any point during the investigation, a manager can order children to be removed from their homes if it is determined that their lives are at risk. But under state law and ACS policy, removals are supposed to be a last resort. As an alternative, the agency offers a menu of services to help families deal with problems; counseling, parenting classes, drug treatment and housekeeping services are the most typical.

These investigations and interventions save children's lives and protect their well-being all the time. Caseworkers are trained to look beneath the surface, to not trust a parent's statement without evidence and to compile as much information about a family as possible. Caseworkers and their supervisors are accountable for each case; the days when cases piled up on desks without anyone contacting a family are long over.

But accountability, at ACS, is a one-way street. A manager or supervisor has no one to answer to if a child who shouldn't be in foster care is removed from home anyway. There is no penalty for the wrongful taking of a child. And the pressures to remove are intense. I was trained to do removals in cases that did not necessarily qualify as abuse or neglect because, as one of my supervisors reminded me, "prevention is better than a cure." When I was resistant to doing a removal on a case, that same supervisor's advice was, "It's better to be safe than sorry." And at moments of uncertainty, the mantra was "Cover your ass"--a phrase heard often around the office. It was backed up by a pervasive fear--among caseworkers, supervisors, managers and attorneys--of seeing our photograph in the Daily News as the person who made an error that was literally fatal.

Caseworkers, usually the only people who have had direct contact with a family, don't have much to say in the decision-making process. Managers generally think of them as being incapable of giving meaningful recommendations. One week after the investigation begins, caseworkers have to file an electronic report. The computer offers two options: "safe" and "unsafe." But my manager accepted only one. Any time I determined a child to be "safe," my manager rejected it and returned it to me. The first step to protect yourself, I quickly discovered, is to determine that a child is "unsafe" from the outset of an investigation.

_______
In my division, if the allegations were bad enough--and especially if they came from a teacher, doctor, or other professional required by law to report suspected abuse or neglect--our manager considered them to be absolute truth. Virtually every time, if a caseworker could not find evidence to prove that the allegations were unfounded, the manager would refuse to sign off on a case, clearing it from our ever-growing caseloads, until we marked it "indicated" in the computer system. Indicated means that ACS has found credible evidence that abuse or neglect has taken place.

Our manager indicated a case in which an 18-year-old mother was mistakenly picked up in a drug sweep and immediately released. The same woman had been indicated in an earlier investigation, after hot tea spilled on her child at a family shelter, even though the social worker whose tea it was witnessed that it was an accident. Still, the manager decided that this previous incident--along with a robbery conviction and marijuana use before the child was born--was reason enough to indicate the new case.

Throughout ACS, the proportion of cases that end up labeled indicated has jumped from 26 percent in 1994 to nearly 40 percent in 1998. From a manager's point of view, indicating cases gives them the legal leverage they need to order a removal at any given time. For a parent, it also means something else: Having an indicated case on her record means that she cannot adopt a child, become a foster parent or work with children in any capacity.

From there, the decision to remove is entirely up to the manager. By law, children are supposed to be removed only if their physical or emotional health has been harmed or they are in immediate danger or being hurt as a result of a parent's failure to "exercise a minimum degree of care." In practice, that can mean anything from a parent failing to show up for parenting classes to sending her child to the hospital with a broken limb. But sometimes children are removed for reasons the caseworkers themselves cannot fathom.
On the night I met a client I'll call Louise at the homeless shelter where she lived, she told me her 11-day-old son, Kevin, was born without drugs in his body. That she prayed to God and he gave her another chance. And that she got clean on her own, without any program. I asked her about her other children and she told me what I already knew: She had given birth to five children who were all taken away from her while she was still in the hospital because each time she tested positive for crack.

Back at the office, my manager ordered me to remove Kevin. My manager, like most of her colleagues, did not go for the "life transformation" stuff. It did not matter that all of Louise's drug tests had been clean for the past two years. The manager called it a straight case of neglect, since the woman's other children had all been taken from her. Besides, my manager reminded me, Louise is taking heavy psychotropic medication.

Before going to court, we received a letter written by Louise's psychiatrist, whom she had seen regularly for the past year. He wrote:


    I remember thinking in her case no medication and certainly no therapy had been able to have the effect on her that her new child has had on her....The effect of the role of motherhood on her has defined her and given her grounding. It is our social and moral responsibility to support [Louise] in functioning as a mother. It is clear that [Louise] is ill. However, it is my assessment, in accord with all other senior clinicians [here], that [Louise] poses no immediate threat to her child.
My manager didn't see things the same way, and she made me file the case in court. "If we can't get a neglect finding on this mother, I might as well go work for the Parks Department," she told me. When ACS's attorneys initially wouldn't accept the case, she emailed the head of the legal division. And while I was away at a three-day training, she finally managed to get Kevin into foster care. Louise had stayed overnight with Kevin's father that week after she missed curfew at her shelter, and my manager had found an old order of protection against him--evidence of domestic violence. Louise was nailed with "failure to protect" Kevin from this potentially dangerous man.

(Only later did Louise tell me that she did not really have a history of domestic violence; she made it up a few years ago since she knew it was the only way she could qualify for emergency housing. I explained to her that it was the only reason ACS was able to take Kevin. "Well, what would you have done?" she asked me.)

In Family Court, Louise spoke up for herself, because her attorney did not. She argued her case herself and, with the help of testimony from her psychiatric nurse, won the judge over. Louise got Kevin back on the condition that she secure housing, submit to drug tests, continue to see her psychiatrist and comply with ACS supervision.

The ability to return a child to his or her parent is one of the few rewards of a caseworker's job. After picking up Kevin from his foster care agency in Queens, I sat with him in the Emergency Assistance Unit, the city's dispatch center for homeless families, waiting for his mother to arrive. The waiting room was filled with mothers and crying kids. A little girl came in the waiting area and asked the lady behind the counter for a piece of paper. "No paper," was the curt reply. I told the girl to come over to where I was sitting. My hands were full because I was feeding Kevin, but I told her that she could rip some pages out of my notebook. She stood there and tore out about 30 pages, one at a time. Every few moments she looked up at me waiting for me to say no. I just smiled at her. "That your baby?" she asked me.

"No," I told her.
"You homeless?"
I shook my head.
"You took that baby, didn't you?" she asked.
"I'm giving him back."
"Yeah, you better," she warned.
_______
In my year at ACS, I was lucky to see only a few children who were severely abused and neglected. I did see bruises, belt marks and burns on kids. I saw dirty and hungry children. I saw a baby with cockroaches crawling in her crib. There were kids who had never been to school. I had to ask a kindergartner if her father put his penis in her mouth. I sat in the back of an ambulance with a 9-year-old boy lying on a stretcher who had been beaten up by his mother with a baseball bat. He clutched his HIP card, his only possession now, in his swollen hand. I had a 3-year-old child whose mother forced him to stay awake for four days and three nights because she thought he was possessed by a ghost and would die if he fell asleep. And I met some parents who were dangerous not just to their children, but to me. I had to get an order of protection for myself against one, and was warned by another that I was going to be killed by the Bloods outside Family Court. But all this is what I expected from the job. In a strange way, these really horrible cases turned out to be the easy ones. It was the cases that weren't so clear-cut that kept me up at night. I saw removals occur when parents were accused of failing to follow up with a preventive service program or counseling. Breaking rules at shelters. Using or selling marijuana, or not sending their children to school. Failure-to-protect cases were common. One time, I removed a child from a mother accused of neglecting her infant son when she was hospitalized after a suicide attempt. It turned out the child was not yet even born when the suicide attempt occurred.
I worried about what I would do if my manager ordered me to remove. I worried about making mistakes myself.

_______
Two nights before Christmas 1998, I removed two children who I still believe should not have been taken from their home. I had been a caseworker at ACS for two months.At the last minute, my supervisor instructed me to accompany an even greener coworker on a case I knew nothing about. On the way up the FDR, in the back of the city car, my colleague, Theresa, described the case to me. The children were to be removed because their 82-year-old great-grandmother, Ms. Ruth Jackson, was too old to care for them. Owen, 5, and Carla, 14, were in Ms. Jackson's legal custody, because their mother and grandmother were both absent, allegedly because of drug use.
According to the allegations from an after-school program she attended, Carla had recently slashed a girl in the face with a pocketknife at school and was beyond the great-grandmother's control. Theresa told me Ms. Jackson had medical problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and glaucoma. Due to her "failing health," our supervisor believed that she was not an appropriate caretaker for the children. The supervisor instructed Theresa to ask the great-grandmother to sign a form that would voluntarily place the children in ACS's custody. Theresa told me that she was instructed to call the police and remove the children only if the woman refused to sign the form. Our supervisor had informed Theresa that a refusal to sign would constitute neglect, because Ms. Jackson would not be complying with the best interests of the children.

"I don't believe that this is the right thing," Theresa complained to me. "The great-grandmother hasn't done anything wrong, and her health seems fine." I was furious at her for not telling me any of this before we left. I knew the options a family could be offered in a time of stress. A removal was to be done only in an emergency.

When we arrived, Ms. Jackson looked at us suspiciously and seemed reluctant to let us in. Decorated for Christmas, the apartment smelled like greasy chicken. It was 9 at night.

She instructed the children to go to their rooms. She sat on the sagging couch and asked, "What can I do for you ladies tonight?" She looked a little frail but seemed strong-willed.

I sat in the corner by the Christmas tree while Theresa tried to explain about the voluntary form. "You are old and you have so many health problems," she told Ms. Jackson unconvincingly. "Who will take care of the children if something should happen to you?"

Ms. Jackson said, "Ain't nothing happening to me. What if something happens to you?"
Theresa tried again. "It's not safe for the children to be living with you because you are too old to care for them properly and look after them." She looked at the floor as she said this, her voice shaking.
"What're you saying, miss? These children are not going anywhere. Nobody in this house is too old. I raised them kids since they were babies. The court gave me these children and nobody's going to take them away from me."
"My supervisor said that..."
"What?"
"My supervisor"
"Your what?"
"My supervisor. He wants you to sign this voluntary form so that the children will be safe." She placed the blank form on the coffee table.

"I don't know much about your supervisor, but nobody's signing these kids to them foster people. It's Christmas. Did you know that, dear?"After about 15 minutes of this, Theresa signaled me to call the police. Out in the hallway I called 911, then went back into the apartment to wait for the cops.
Ms. Jackson had no idea they were coming. "Who would want to take these children?" she asked us. "It's Christmas. These children are happy. I take these children to school every day. I make sure they have everything they need to get along fine." The cops banged on the door. "Who's that?" asked Ms. Jackson. "That your supervisor?"

I answered the door. Two cops stood around and did not say much. Theresa started crying, and everything fell into my hands. I explained to Ms. Jackson that the children were coming with us tonight and that she would have to come to court tomorrow to get them back. I had packed kids up quickly once before, so I braced myself to do it again.

The kids were watching The Brady Bunch, lying with their feet up on their great-grandmother's bed. I introduced myself and told Carla to pack up some clothes for herself and her brother. She looked at me as if the prospect of leaving might be exciting for a second. Owen wanted to know if "grandma" was coming. I told him no, and said some things about how everything was going to be okay. Ms. Jackson came in and put clean underwear on Owen, put his pajamas back on, and packed some clothes in a backpack for him.
As we continued to pack, Ms. Jackson stood in the bedroom doorway with her mouth half-open, no sound coming out. Carla ran down the stairs and waited for us in front of the police car.

In the back of the car on our way to ECS, Owen saw his big sister crying. He sat on my lap and started crying into my shirt.

_______
Almost all removals take place at night. Caseworkers are too busy during the day, and a family is also more likely to be home after dark. But some workers deliberately wait till after hours, for the time-and-a-half overtime. Doing a removal, staying out all night at ECS, and then taking the child to a foster home can mean more than doubling a day's pay. With caseworkers' salaries starting at under $32,000, overtime makes a big difference.

The caseworkers who want nothing to do with removals can rely on other caseworkers who volunteer for the money. When supervisors are desperate to find someone to do a removal, they often encourage caseworkers by reminding them, "You could use the extra cash." The consequence is caseworkers arriving at ECS with no idea why they just removed the kids who are with them. When the ECS intake worker or an ACS lawyer asks them why the children were removed, "I don't know, it's not my case" is a standard response. Or simply, "Because my supervisor told me to."

Any caseworker can tell you that they have done removals that they did not personally agree with. But they rarely complain to management, since they will never get in trouble for removing a child under supervisors' orders. Caseworkers are also quiet about unnecessary removals because doing a removal and then transferring a case to foster care takes them a lot less time than keeping it and trying to work with a family. Keeping a case obligates a worker to do regular home visits and follow-ups to make sure a family is getting preventive services. It also means dealing with anything that may go wrong and continuing to be responsible for the children's safety.

To become a child protective caseworker, you do not need to have any experience working with children, or demonstrate that you actually want to work with children. No one even asks if you like children. You must simply have a bachelor's degree in a social science field and pass a two-part exam. For the oral part we were asked to think of five questions we would ask a parent, based on a short case scenario. A "powerful rotting odor" is supposed to prompt test-takers to ask, "What is that smell?" For the written test, we listened to a series of voice mail recordings and wrote down phone numbers and other details. This was not a test of common sense, or even listening skills. It seemed to be a test to see if we were alive.

Once hired, caseworkers have six weeks of training, where they are taught how to conduct interviews, identify abuse and neglect, and carry out a removal. Legal issues, child development, domestic violence, sensitivity to cultural issues and handling angry clients were also part of the curriculum. Through it all, caseworkers are taught, it is essential to treat clients respectfully and professionally.

But the social work lingo of the training, where we spent two days discussing the need to "leave your baggage at the door," is far removed from the harsh reality of a field office. For new caseworkers, the obsessive concern with liability at the field offices quickly overshadows the reasonable criteria they have been taught for identifying abuse and neglect. Most quickly learn to abandon their training and to do what it takes to survive.

ACS has been making strides cutting down heavy caseloads, but it's still a stressful and at times tedious job--each case, no matter how trivial, calls for the same 15-page report. A contradiction at the heart of it all makes the work even more difficult. Caseworkers are trained to be service providers and advocates for families. To work together with families to uncover and solve problems in the home, caseworkers must establish an intimate rapport with their clients. Yet at the very same time they are engaged in an act of betrayal: as they write down parents' statements and survey their homes and behavior, caseworkers are building a potential court case against them. At no point are they able to tell their clients that everything they say can be used against them in court. The relationship of caseworker and client becomes one of manipulation, characterized by a deep lack of trust on both sides.
Although many of the best caseworkers get fed up and leave the agency, there are good workers who have been at ACS for years. They have survived because they have learned how to manipulate the system to make it work for themselves and their clients. They purposely omit or obscure facts about families in their case records and in their discussions with their supervisors to save clients from unnecessary court action. The most fortunate have supervisors who share their commitment to respecting families' rights. I was one of them: One of my supervisors was a mentor to me, and I considered her directives highly valuable.

Several months before I left the agency, an Emergency Children's Services supervisor who was resigning after more than 10 years blanketed the agency with a stunning email. He began by saying that he is not leaving the agency any better than when he started. He blamed this lack of improvement on ACS Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, whom he accused of being more preoccupied with making the agency look good in the media than with making substantial changes that help clients. "ACS cares more about statistics than they do about children, forgetting that those statistics represent real children," he wrote. The supervisor had equally harsh words for protective caseworkers: "ACS workers cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for doing wrong removals by blaming them on their supervisors or managers or on agency policy." He compared the level of obedience and complacency at the agency to Nazi soldiers who killed 11 million civilians during World War II because "they too were just carrying out orders." Nobody around me talked about the email, not even to disagree.

_______
Carla and Owen were placed in foster care that night. The next day, Theresa went to court. The judge, who happened to be in his seventies himself, ordered that Owen be returned home immediately. The judge stated the obvious: Old age is not grounds for neglect. Carla, however, was to remain in foster care because of her behavior problems. When the judge asked Theresa if she felt the children were in imminent danger, she answered that in her opinion they were not.

Friday, January 8, 2010

MY LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS


Dear Committee Members,

I am aware that Child Protection Services is a Government Eugenics agency, however, there is no true oversight within Child Welfare, especially since investigations are all done internally. For this reason alone we need to establish accountability! Many people have become unfairly targeted, simply because CPS has "quotas" to meet in order to obtain Federal Funds. Children must be taken away so agencies can generate enough income to offset the growing payroll of Child Welfare workers and other contracted vendors. Families have no where to turn when dealing with a corrupt CPS agency, and those associated are Racketeering using non profits. Monies are being wasted on personal luxuries and other extravagances rather than on programs that are intended for children. Many Politician's are affiliated with children charities and are receiving campaign contributions from Big Pharma, therefore, there is no longer a true "Separation of State". Politicians will not respond to fraud complaints, nor pass bills to stop the over drugging of children. Some of these medications are not even FDA approved. Child Advocates; Casa and others, are not meeting with children which is extending their stay in foster care, and Attorney's are being paid for by the County usually side with CPS. Many Judges sit at the head of Adoption agencies and often times oversee Mental Health cases, which enable them to terminate parental rights; deeming parents to be incompetent. Judges are also affiliated with Children charities and are receiving kickbacks from Detention centers, so basically the child has no one representing their best interest. Police are receiving Grant funds under the COPS or CIS (Cops In School) Program, so they too have now become corrupt. Therapists are giving parents & children false mental conditions and are double billing Medical; sometimes billing for children that don‘t even exist. Doctors are misdiagnosing and over drugging children because they are receiving kickbacks from Pharmaceutical companies. Medical professionals are committing insurance fraud and this is draining our Social Security. This is partially the reason America's medical expenses are double than what they are in the rest of the world. There is a HUGE collusion between CPS, Doctors, Lawyers, Therapists, Child Advocates, Law Enforcement, and other contracted vendors who are all profiting from Child “Protection” Agencies.


I am currently working on obtaining funds to create a National online Registry. Data would be anonymously entered using an online interactive database. This register will contain information that will track and store fraud complaints of organizations and individuals, which would be compiled and sorted by County and State. This will assist in determining validity while documenting events. Complaints would be screened and responded to much quicker and this will reduce the incidences of fraud and misappropriations of funds. If a system like this were to be implemented then families and children throughout the United States would not continue to suffer grave injustices at the hands of those who are abusing the very system for which it was intended. They would be able to make complaints without fear of retaliation and the real criminals who are abusing their power would be punished for their crimes against humanity.

If you would be interested in hearing more of my suggestions, please feel free to contact me at: 530-926-2701. Below is a link to 'Our Story' which  describes how  San Luis Obispo (Califiornia) CPS kidnapped my daughter for Federal Funds: http://tinyurl.com/TheDearingerStory  Many of the individuals who were involved were on the following Children Non Profits: http://www.box.net/shared/cnp6fok9i8


Sincerely yours,
Kathleen Dearinger
Families Unite 4 Children’s Rights Foundation
www.cpscorruption.blogspot.com