Victims Of Child Abuse Laws

 Announcements

VOCAL NY Presentation in Rochester at the Monroe County Legislative Chambers:

Hello I am the Vice President of VOCAL NY, a not-for-profit corporation.

Child abuse is detestable, the abuse of the innocent. The Lisa Steinbergs and Eli Creekmores haunt us with the brutality that can happen to children at the hands of a few parents. However, Mike Arsham, the Executive Director of the Child Welfare Organizing Project in New York City explains, "The type of horrific child abuse that makes tabloid headlines and - to too large an extent - drives public child welfare policy, occurs in only a very small percentage of families coming into contact with New York City's child welfare system.".

According to the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Statistics, in 2001, more than two-thirds of referrals received were investigated and of those, Fifty-nine percent of the investigated cases were later classified as unsubstantiated. Of the remaining 41 percent, Fifty-seven percent of the children were neglected, most of which are due to poverty. (According to Mike Arsham, and Richard Wexler author of the book, "Wounded Innocents" and member of the National Coalition for Child Protective Reform funded by the Edna Clark McConnell Foundation, and Douglas Besharov, the first director of the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect and others, in neglect cases, which are the largest portion of child abuse cases, the primary problem is a family’s poverty.)

According to the National Coalition for Child Protective Reform, as many as two of every three cases prompting investigation are determined to be false. After other court related processes had also been undertaken, far less than 1 report in 5 represented actual abuse. Douglas Besharov, the first director of the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect states that the incidence of false allegations is 70 percent. Nationally known author and consultant on child sexual abuse cases, Dean Tong states, "Wouldn't it seem logical that any system producing a 60 to 70 percent error rate should be examined for deficiencies? Wouldn't it seem sensible for any system so rife with errors on both sides of the child abuse coin be tapped for legislative changes?"

Indeed, there is another side to child abuse; children needlessly taken from their homes. False allegations result in innocent children being torn from their loving families, subjected to needless foster care, lengthy interrogations, intrusive physical examinations and unnecessary therapy because of misdiagnosis. Needless intervention contributes to undermining the effectiveness of family parenting and causing emotional trauma to a child's sense of parental protection and safety from the outside world.

Not only does this high rate of false accusations cause harm to families and children, it diverts the efforts of those professionals involved in real abuse cases, thus reducing the care and help available to those children who really need it.

There is lack of Accountability in the foster care system.

We have to stop pretending that removing a child to be on the safe side will do no harm.

From a report entitled, "New York State Abandons Victims of Institutional Child Abuse"

"The children most vulnerable to abuse, maltreatment, and neglect are arguably those who live apart from their parents, in foster group homes, detention facilities, or in other such institutions. ...State statute requires that the State itself, namely its Department of Social Services, investigate all allegations of child abuse in institutions. Unfortunately, the Department of Social Services has not fulfilled its obligation." The ACLU Children's Project reported that children removed to foster care are ten times more likely to be abused while in the custody of the State than they are to be maltreated in their own homes." The NYU School of Social Work Research Project study conducted in Baltimore found 28 percent of the children in the system had been abused while in foster care.

According to the Child Welfare Organizing Project, "Equating placement with child protection is a false premise. Many children are mistreated in foster care in ways of which their parents were never accused or suspected."

In an upstate case just last year in Buffalo there were 2 children in foster care and another who was home supervised by CPS who died, three children dead. " I could have kept my grandbaby. He would be alive", said Katherine Parker, who said Family Court denied her the opportunity to get custody of her two grandsons..." from the Buffalo News article Failing the Children by Jay Tokasz on 8/24/2003. Katherine Parker's other grand child was hospitalized for abuse. Both boys were in foster care.

From "Secrets That Can Kill: Child Abuse Investigations in New York State" by Temporary Commission of Investigation of the State of New York with DONALD O. CHESWORTH Chairman. "The Commission determined that the child protective system is in desperate need of reform. The current system puts the children of New York at risk through laws which ...(in part) hamper effective oversight of the child protective system by shielding that system from public accountability".

The lack of accountability in part is also due to CPS workers enjoying immunity from prosecution.

One study sited from the "Assault on Parenthood", by Dana Mack, many of the homeless, drug addicted, and criminally disposed at one time or another have been victims of the foster care system - "ripped from their homes and subjected to multiple placements that have rendered them emotionally decimated and socially crippled."

There is a lack of Accountability for CPS/DSS , especially in the area of Family preservation. According to NY state law, Family preservation and reasonable efforts to reunite children and families is priority. In actuality there is a lack of real commitment in the system to provide family preservation. Reasonable efforts has become a paper trail to appease procedural requirements. Family preservation and reasonable efforts includes visitation for the family while children are in foster care. While in foster care, the lack of sufficient visitation can severely harm children. The most visitation I have seen in a case is 3 hours a week for a child as young as twelve months to one child as old as eleven. Other children are only allowed one to two hours a week. These cases were supervised visitation, so why can't we provide more? The Monroe CPS office told us they wouldn't support more visitation. A thirteen month old child now cries when taken from the foster parents to visit the natural parents. He has lost his parental bond. The average time in foster care for a child taken out of the home is 33 months according to NCCANS. This is a lifetime to some children.

The lack of accountability fosters the lack of due process by the system. Lynne Nayman, president of VOCAL NY explains, "Lack of due process dominates CPS investigations. Most investigations do not involve family court. Yet on the basis of an anonymous report a caseworker can conduct a so-called "investigation" make a decision concerning a family and mandate your compliance with their decision and services. (If you are indicated you are on the child abuse registry until the youngest child in the report turns 28 and barred from employment in many areas. If you are not indicated you still remain on the registry for 10 years and these reports are available to DSS, local police, mental health agencies, and the DA." Then State Child Abuse Registry is based on the lowest standard of proof "some credible evidence". Our system allows CPS to be judge, jury, and executioner. Not constitutional and unreasonable practices when you know that according to the National Coalition for Child Abuse and Neglect statistics show that 70% of allegations are false. )

Another of the problems we see in the current child welfare system is the lack of Constitutional protections for children and families against search and seizure without court orders, and deprivation of liberties with out due process which amounts to 14th, 9th, 5th and 4th amendment rights violations. The Supreme Court explains that children have the right to know and be raised by both parents. Parents have the right to raise, educate, nurture and have a relationship with their child without unnecessary state intervention. The state says imminent danger overrides the rights of children and families.

However, there is no oversight on imminent danger removals they can be sponsored by corrupt or negligent individuals and covered up by others to protect the county. (In the nationally popular case of Eve Hibbits, a women whose three young children were seized by a policeman who claimed he wanted to send a message. The children were taken from her during a local county fair on the allegation that the children were severely sunburned. Immediately, The papers quoted the emergency room physicians as claiming the children had second-degree burns. A few days after her arrest the papers ran another story, the burns were stated as being first-degree burns, those of moderate sun burn. The mother and children were eventually reunited after Mrs. Hibbits spent 8 days in jail where she and her children were completely separated.)

In a case in New York, a child was taken from her mother in the emergency room when the physician claimed that two broken ribs were seen on an X ray of a three year who had a scratch on the forehead, bruised cheek and missing hair. The mother had taken the child to the emergency room immediately on noticing her hair falling out and the refusal of local pediatricians to treat her children because of delayed Medicare re-embursement. After immediate removal of her four year old brother who showed no signs of injury to a foster care home, a new X ray showed no broken ribs but a possibly deformed ninth rib. Those children are still in foster care.

Mr. Arsham sites, "Inadequate legal representation by court-appointed attorneys and a resulting lack of due process in the Family Court " Assemblyman Roger Green confirms the same conclusion.

Children are removed from parents custody before culpability is determined. Parents are assumed guilty until proven innocent. Also, the right to face your accuser is circumvented by anonymous allegations being allowed by CAPTA. Total immunity is provided for those making allegations of abuse even those knowingly making false allegations. In some cases I have observed, judges given evidence from CPS before any examination of the evidence occurs to include the defense. The judge in one case then ordered a decision on visitation based on this bias to determine who was abusing this child prior to any fact-finding hearing at an initial preliminary hearing. The parents were already being approached to admit to the charges and reminded that any other choice would lengthen the stay of their children in foster care and may lead to termination of parental rights. A family is up against a government funded brick wall of county prosecutors, social services attorneys, law guardians, counselors, child protective workers, social service investigators, psychologists and others all there to access guilt. There is immediate presumption of guilt, yet our criminal justice system is based on innocent until proven guilty.

Family court requires only a preponderance of evidence, hear say is allowed and CPS opinions used to decide cases over the rights of the child and family to be together. State laws are so broad that virtually anything a parent does or does not do can be labeled abuse or neglect, if a worker sees fit. For example:

Article 10, Part 4, Section 1046 (ii), which states " proof of injuries sustained by a child or of the condition of a child of such a nature as would ordinarily not be sustained or exist except by reason of the acts or omissions of the parent or other person responsible for the care of such child shall be prima facie evidence of child abuse or neglect, as the case may be, of the parent or other person legally responsible;." This law encompass anything from an accidentally sustained scratch to brutalized physical abuse, from a sniffle to starvation and the parent is ultimately responsible even for poor medical treatment or advice.

The results that I have seen are our family courts are doing a great deal of harm to families in favoring one parent over the other in custody battles, in over riding civil liberties in abuse and neglect cases, in abusing children in cases of false allegations when children are needlessly separated from their homes. Lawyers are telling their clients that their only recourse is to plead guilty even if they are not and in one case in Oswego, when two children were placed in foster care, the family was told if the father didn't accept the plea, the other two children would be removed from both parent's care.

The need for the Repeal or abolish CAPTA/Mondale Act Provides for federal dollars to fund counties that provide monetary incentives to keep a strong overbearing DSS. Realistically, very few federal dollars are being used to provide for family preservation services. Most federal dollars are used to support foster care which is the first reaction of the agency. There are no caps on spending for foster care dollars. It therefore, becomes beneficial for the county to remove children from their homes. Yet family preservation efforts can be less expensive than foster care and have a greater success rate, according to Richard Wexler.

(From a situation paper by National Coalition for Child Protection Reform recounts the following story:

"A state can, if it so chooses, receive its entire allocation under this law(Family Preservation and Family Support Act of 1993) and spend not one dime on family preservation. The so-called “Adoption and Safe Families Act” (ASFA) - the 1997 law effectively abolishing "reasonable efforts"

"But even if all the money had been earmarked for family preservation, it still would have been dwarfed by the money available for what still is the best-funded child welfare "service" -- foster care..........Indeed, between 1999 and 2003, the federal government is estimated to have spent nine dollars on foster care for every dollar spent to prevent it.)

The funding bias in favor of foster care is one of the main reasons why so many children are needlessly placed."

The National Commission on Children also found that children often are removed from their families "prematurely or unnecessarily" because federal aid formulas give states "a strong financial incentive" to do so rather than provide services to keep families together .

The Adoption Act passed recently, also further supports and promotes adoptions of foster children over 550,000 of them across the US. Again reasonable efforts and family preservation is nowhere on the radarscope of our laws and policies. In the cases that I have been involved, the reality is that children are deterred from visiting their parents and pushed toward adoption before any investigation is completed or court rulings are made.

The latest May 2001 draft "Renewed Plan of Action by the Administration for Children's Services" reads:

This is simply not happening currently in New York State.

In conclusion, legislation needs to be focused on promoting and supporting families, since most families provide a key component for the nurturing of children. We need to realize as a society that destroying families destroys children as well. Removing children from families should be the exception and not the rule. Protecting family’s and children's rights ensures that families will have a place to nourish their children. We as a society should be more willing to help and work with families and less quick to judge and punish. One mother I spoke to this week outside of family court sums up the devastation of the system on parents- " I have worked so hard to get my family in a better place and now this (her children in foster care) just makes that all worthless" This young woman who as a defiant teen was placed on PINS and isolated from her family - now as a young mother of two along with the children's father had surrounded her family with loving grand parents and other family members as her families support network, only to have this ripped apart when the children were placed in foster care and the grand mother's denied temporary custody.

Let me leave you with some words from Dana Mack, with the New York based Institute for American Values, "Over the course of the past century, the family has ceded a great deal of its influence on children's development to child care providers, schools, social welfare agencies and the entertainment media... it is not surprising that judges and lawyers would come increasingly to the conclusion that children are and ought to be raised by extra familial professionals rather than parents. This conclusion is erroneous. In the book, " In The Best Interests of the Child", psychoanalysts and legal scholars Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, Albert Solnit, and Sonia Goldstein explore a multitude of cases in which the legal system has endangered children by allowing professionals to infringe upon parental tasks, parental roles, and parental discretion. "Neither separately nor together they warn do (professionals) make up for a parent -even an imperfect one!"

The media and others have sold their case to the public, the therapists, and government officials that family life is seriously flawed, pathogenic, and dysfunctional. Mack states, " as long as the elite (therapists, government officials and the media) continue to play chorus to a family drama of anger, violence, and therapeutic redemption, no family in America is safe. Every fifteen seconds, an American family is falsely accused of child maltreatment. You could be next."

VOCAL NY's focus is on those families needlessly separated by the child welfare laws and other individuals who have been unjustly prosecuted in an overly aggressive system of judging child abuse allegations. VOCAL NY strongly supports just and reasonable child abuse laws that protect children while promoting and supporting families. Thank you for your time and attention.

Mary Jo Marceau-Hawthorne

Vice President of VOCAL NY

P.O. Box 94

Fairport, NY 14450

Nigerian Defense Trust Fund End-Of-Year Fundraising Banquet

Louis Eze spent the last 10 years in jail for child sexual abuse and was recently completely vindicated in an appeal. His lawyers said it was a clear case of the public defender not submitting evidence at trial that would have helped to exonerate Louis.

I have met and talked with Louis and he is a kind, gentle, Christian man. Louis is Nigerian and a member of the Nigerian community in Buffalo, NY. The Nigerian Community has banded together and created the Nigerian Defense Fund in order to help Louis and two others, Joy Wosu and Dominic Okongwu who are still in jail. The Nigerian Defense Trust Fund is a non-profit organization entirely devoted to seeking justice without regard to race, religion or national origin. The attorneys, Brian Sheppard, Esq,, John R. Nuchereno, Esq,, Michael B. Berger, Esq., and Robert L. Marinelli, Esq., praised Louis for keeping his case alive while in jail so that they could eventually win this appeal.

Louis, the attorneys who won Louis' appeal, and Barbara Lyn Lapp of VOCAL NY were honored at a fundraising banquet on Saturday, December 13, 2003 at Daemen College in Buffalo NY. The theme of the banquet was 'One down, two to go'. The NDTF are continuing their efforts for those still incarcerated.

Louis is the real hero in all of this. His strong faith, hard work and persistence in not taking a plea bargain has won him exoneration. God blesses those who seek and adhere to the truth. To read more about this case on-line go to http://www.justicedenied.org/v1issue3.htm and page down till you see Joy Wosu. Please support Joy Wosu, 94G0120, Albion Correctional Facility, 3595 State School Road, Albion, NY 14411.

Father's Day trip to Washington DC  June 9th.  Send your stories and/or join us.  Talk to your federal representatives.

Firming up schedule of Senators office to visit.  Presently including Delaware, Virginia, and New York.  We will be presenting petitions and your story, hand delivered with our message of reform to your representatives.

SEND STORIES NOW To:mmarceauhawthorne@yahoo.com

Radio Talk Show  to Host a Victim of Child Abuse Laws from Oswego County and VOCAL NY VP- Tune into "Unraveling the New World Order" on May 14th at 1:05 eastern time on a station near you.  Listen and Phone in your questions at the time of the broadcast.

The show will center around the issues of false allegations of child abuse and what happened to a family in Oswego County, also who and what is VOCAL NY, our goals, and our thoughts on helping children and families.

Hear the broadcast at the following site:

http://www.inforadionet.com/index.html

Basic contents of the interviews:

We as a nation have been fighting terrorism abroad; a  war for liberty. We have a serious problem within our  own nation that is eroding our liberty. That problem  is child abuse. We as a nation have struggled with  this problem for many years and have passed much  legislation. We have even introduced a new form of  child abuse- government instituted child abuse and  family abuse. 

Families are being destroyed .  Children are being denied their God given freedom to  know, love, and be cared for by their parents and  parents are being denied the right to raise educate  and nurture, and have a relationship with their  children-- Your constitutionally protected freedoms as  defined by the 14th amendment and the Supreme Court.  

How is this happening you might say? If the  government takes children there must be a good reason.  After all there is a lot of bad parents out there.  What about children who die in families as a result of  child abuse and neglect? Why not " when in doubt take  them out"? Shouldn't we take children out of homes if  we have any suspicion of child abuse? What about  children of divorce? Is is OK to deprive children of  one parent in custody battles decided in a family  court. This is some of what I have heard people say.  But what warrants the decimation of a family?  Wouldn't families be better served by being helped to  be better families and children be better off in their  natural families? If children are truly in danger why  isn't this a crime, proven in a criminal court instead > of allegations in a family court where constitutional  protections are rare. 

 Richard Gelles Dean of the school of  social work at the University of Pennsylvania helped  to draft the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.  He said in a Frontline interview, that he is  comfortable with the widening safety net even if it  means that children are removed from their homes  unnecessarily. He authored the book "The book of  David, How preserving families can cost children's  lives."(1996)  

False accusations result in innocent children being  torn from their loving families, subjected to needless  foster care, lengthy interrogations, intrusive  physical examinations and unnecessary therapy because  of misdiagnosis. This constitutes child abuse by the  system. Not only does this high rate of false  accusations cause harm to families and children, it  diverts the efforts of those professionals involved in  real abuse cases, thus reducing the care and help  available to those children who really need it.  

I am a board member and spokes person for VOCAL of New  York, a non profit organization composed of parents,  children, and others who provide support, advocacy,  and information to families who have been negatively  impacted by the child abuse laws and are involved with > the family court system. VOCAL stands for 'Victims of  Child Abuse Laws'. Our goal is to see that children  and families are protected from all forms of abuse,  including that which is being inflicted upon them as a  result of poor judgment made by child protective  agencies. We want to see due process accorded to all.  We wish to see preservation of the family unit made a  priority in the handling of suspected child abuse  cases. Families afford a key source of emotional  stability in a child's life. 

VOCAL promotes good parenting and we support just and  reasonable child abuse laws. 

Do you know that anyone who doesn't like you can  destroy your child's life with a single anonymous  phone call? 

Do you know that anyone can cut off your contact with  your children by accusing you of abuse or molestation?

Do you know that if one of your children is injured  and you can't explain the injury, All of your children  can be separated from their parents and/or each other?  Do you know that over 70% of accusations of child  abuse are eventually determined officially to be  unfounded?  Do you know that in a family court of law you are  guilty until proven innocent?  Do you know that what you don't know about the Child  Protective, Family Placement and other Children and  family service arms of the government can hurt you? 

We have a system of child welfare with serious  problems that VOCAL and many others feel needs to be  addressed: 

We are in desperate need of family court law  reform.  Evidence of the constitution of the United States is  very hard to find in Family courts. One attorney told  me the constitution doesn't apply in family courts.  That attorney was running for Family court judge.  There is no due process in a family court- no jury of  your peers. So where are the checks and balances?  You are up against a government funded brick wall of  county prosecutors, social services attorneys, law  guardians, counselors, child protective workers, social  services investigators, psychologists and other  professionals all there to access your guilt.

There is  Immediate presumption of guilt. yet our criminal  justice system is based on innocent until proven  guilty. Yet, All Family court judges take an oath of  office to uphold the constitution of the United States  above any state constitutions when they are sworn  into office.  Family courts are doing a great deal of harm to  families in favoring one parent over another in  custody battles, in over riding civil liberties in  abuse and neglect cases, in abusing children in cases  of false allegations.

The Starkey family story: 

Tim explained who he was and recanted his story which I will try to paraphrase here. He and his wife Joanne have a blended family. Tim's son who resides with his mother and Joanne's two daughters and two small children that were born after Tim and Joanne were married. Tim has been disabled due to a accident on the job which severely injured him physically.   One of Joanne's daughters was very defiant and endangering the welfare of the other children. Tim and Joanne tried to get help for her. When funds ran low they sought help from the county.

They were told to place the child in a PINS program (Persons in need of supervision) run by the county. They did this in good faith hoping to find help for the child.  Instead they became the target of child abuse allegations. Both of Joanne's daughters were removed from the home. The charges were taken to criminal court where the grand jury threw out the case.  The family court in spite of the claim the judge made to also release the case if the criminal court didn't prosecute decided to try the case in family court. Tim was pressured into a plea bargain of Nolo Contendre, no contest which un-know to the Starkey's at the time was as good as admitting to guilt. Tim and Joanne being unable to afford attorneys of their own had county appointed attorneys. The significance and outcome of this plea was not explained to them. The attorneys basically said if Tim didn't take this plea deal, the other two small children would be removed from the home and placed in foster care as well. Tim took this plea to save his family. It was a deal to trade one child for another.

Tim suffered emotional and physical stress while under duress while in family court and asked for a continuance but the judge said that he did not prescribe to personal problems and continued the court proceedings.  Since then the social services department in Oswego County has a vendetta  against Tim and his family. They have black-balled them in the community.  The families disability support was discontinued and has not been reinstated in-spite of efforts by the family to reinstate them. They recently received a letter from social services asking the parent to get > services for the two small children if they are not able to support them. 

Tim and Joanne live in fear that these two children that remain in the house hold will be taken next.  There were three callers that called in with comments.

One caller was Brother Cletus Kiefer from Missouri and a member of Families At Risk of Missouri. He concurred with Tim and I and related his story and the website: http://www.familiesatrisk.com/About_Us.html

Mary Jo concluded with the following comments:  Some good news, from the 7th circuit court of appeals in Chicago,  Yesterday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a landmark decision  upholding the constitutional rights of parents and private schools against  social workers performing child abuse investigations.   "This is a tremendous victory for parental rights," said Steve Crampton, Chief Counsel for the Center for Law & Policy. website:  www.afa.net/clp   The article is at http://www.afa.net/clp/ReleaseDetail.asp?id=23 

Urgent! Time Sensitive! Need NY PINS stories for media!!

Anyone in New York who has had dealings with the PINS system in the last year or so, since the new laws changed, and would like to share their experience, good or bad, has an opportunity to speak with Eyewitness News and 60 minutes. But we need to get the stories to them ASAP.........anyone interested can call me at (845) 486-4405 days or (845) 471-2432 for the contact info. Deb Lefebvre - Families At Risk/ New York Family Rights Association/ American Family Rights Association

See what our friends in Delaware are doing!!

I am proud of them. This group supported our trip to Washington DC in June although none could make it. I still met with Senator Joe Biden and communicated the message of victims to start a dialog with the Senator's office for the members of Delaware. Exciting and let's keep them in our prayers. Any one that wants to attend this meeting, go for it. Kandy and Cindy are the two members I talked to and they are very knowlegable about the issues.

From our friends in Delaware:  Guess I have good news from De. Child Protective Reform that's me (Kandy Rodriguez) we are having a public meeting in De. on 10/30/03 at the Georgetown Cheer Center. 6.00p.m. until 7.30p.m.

****Have you received your letter from the division of family services that you have been placed on the child abuse registry?? ****

We have about 16 State Rep. and Sen attending this meeting the Gov. has been invited and also DFS people we are going to have about 5 speakers and try to express that the citizens in De.

We want your name on the registry only if you have been convicted in a court of law for child abuse. So please keep us in your prayers and I will let you know how it turned out.

For info: contact [mailto:RSweethouse@aol.com]

Latest!  Kandy Rodriguez has just announced that she is running for a Delaware State Senate Seat!!  Best of our Prayers go with her.  She is the right person for the job!!

This was my agenda for the meeting on Monday, July 26th 2004 VOCAL NY:

1. President’s report

·         Control of treasury accomplished

·         Incorporation papers, corporate seal received

·         Address change for corporate address & service of process address filed with Department of State

·         Attorney General’s Charities Bureau filing done

·         IRS filing to be done

·         Visit with Mary Jo to CWOP and CCFP in May.

2. Vice President’s report

3. Treasurer’s report – Reported by V.P.

4. Secretary’s report

New Business:

1.                   Establishment of fiscal year – will be 7/1 – 6/30

2.                   Establishment of defense fund – merits debated, deferred

3.                   By-law revision needed.  Need to compare ours against stock by-laws.

4.                   501-(c)(3) (Should this be old business?)  Need AG and IRS filings before we do this.  AG done; will submit application after IRS 990 form is filed.

Old Business:

Newsletter – Need to reestablish to reconnect with old contacts, to offer as membership benefits.

Need two more meetings this year.  Next should be late September or early October (lst week of October no good).