Held Hostage By the System

Held Hostage By the System

Do the words ‘Child Protective Services’ (CPS) bring about thoughts of child abuse, sexual
molestation and murder? Most tend to think of Child Protective Services as a system that would
protect helpless, innocent children from such atrocities. This agency was designed with two primary
purposes in mind. First and foremost, to protect children from abusive parents and/or guardians;
second, to preserve the unity of the family whenever possible. In its current state, that could not be
further from the truth. Because our government has given the Child Protective Service system
unlimited power and authority to interfere without basis (Scott, 1994), made millions in funding
available for group home and foster home care, as well as immunity from all accountability to their
actions, Child Protective Services ultimately has the power to play God; to destroy the lives of every
parent and child in this county without repercussion. America’s families are being held hostage by the
system - it is time to fight for reform.

To begin the process of reform, the Child Protective Service reporting guidelines must be changed. All
professionals who work with children (i.e. teachers, counselors, physicians, etc.) are considered
mandated reporters and are required by law to report suspected child abuse (Scott, 1994). However,
any individual or private citizen may report child abuse as well. According to investigative researcher
and journalist, Brenda Scott, the guidelines allow for anyone to call their state’s 800 hotline to make a
claim of child abuse and they are guaranteed anonymity, even to the worker who takes their call, as
long as they claim the report is being made in “good faith.” In another article, How Child Protective
Services Works, published by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, a New York City
Child Protective Service worker stated “all it takes to begin the potential destruction of a family is one
anonymous phone call to the 800 hotline.” How can it be determined if a report is being made in good
faith if callers are not required to identify themselves? How safe are parents and children based on
such facts? Best stated by author Brenda Scott, “this stacks the deck for millions to be drawn into the
Child Protective Service web unnecessarily” (pg. 27). Reporters, no matter who they are, must be
required to identify themselves – as much to protect the innocent as to punish the guilty. Former
President Ronald Reagan made the statement, “You cannot have a strong, healthy nation without the
family at its very base” (Scott, 1994). “Child Protective Services, with its almost unlimited power, is
following an agenda that will destroy that foundation” (pg. 27).

Before we can work toward a goal of making and keeping the family at the base of our great nation,
we must first correct the errors in the Child Protective Service system itself. The reporting guidelines
are only the beginning. We must reform the investigative process and the family court system as well.
Since reporters of abuse are guaranteed anonymity, Child Protective Services requires no proof that an
act of abuse has been committed. They are permitted to go to our child’s school to interrogate them
without parental knowledge; they are permitted to remove the child surreptitiously and without proof of
abuse. All that is required of Child Protective Services is that they claim to have reason to believe the
child may be “at risk” of being abused. Brenda Scott defines this as the “at risk trap.” If a child is
actually being abused, and the worker does not remove the child, he/she could be faced with legal
repercussions; however, removing and placing the child in foster care brings about no repercussions,
even if the child is murdered in that setting (pg. 55). The whim of one social worker, most of whom
have no children of their own, can turn a child’s world and an innocent family upside down (Scott,
1994).

With the “at risk trap” set in place, next comes the parent’s day in court. The burden of proof does not
lie with the family court system; it is the responsibility of the parent to prove their innocence. The way
the family court system is set up, this is an almost impossible task. According to the fifth, sixth, and
fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution, everyone has the right to due process, the
right to a fair trial. In accordance with the Constitution, all are entitled to the right to receive notice of
charges, the right to counsel, the right to face and cross-examine accusers, the right to privilege
against self-incrimination, the right to subpoena witnesses and documentation to refute unfavorable
evidence, and so on and so forth. Yet, the family court system is exempt from recognizing these
constitutional rights because they are “outside the realm of the criminal justice system” (Scott, 1994).
In other words, since the subject is a minor child, Child Protective Services can use “confidentiality”
as a basis for denying due process and violating a parent’s constitutional rights. Criminals have more
rights than parents. Can we honestly say this is not a system out of control?

Since parenting seems exempt from the constitutional rights of all others, it is quite easy for Child
Protective Services to destroy a family without incident. This system, based on the opinions of
sometimes very unqualified Child Protective Service workers, places children in harm’s way far more
than parents and guardians. Scott states in her book Out of Control: Who’s Watching Our Child
Protection Agencies? that in most cases, children do not need to be removed from the custody of their
parents. She further states that “studies indicate that children are actually ten times more likely to be
abused in foster care than in their birth homes” (1994). It is not about evidence or proving guilt, nor is
it about the “best interest of the children.” The Child Protective Service system ultimately has the
authority to pick and choose which cases they will or will not pursue.

Two very good examples of this are the case of 8-year old Alicia Wade in San Diego County,
California, and the case of 16-month old Maxwell Fisher in Berks County, Pennsylvania. In the Wade
case, little Alicia was kidnapped from her home in the middle of the night via her brother’s bedroom
window, placed a vehicle and taken to a secluded area where she was sexually assaulted and threatened
into silence by her assailant. She was taken to the hospital by her parents the following morning after
she complained of pain during breakfast. Although the child provided a very detailed description of her
assailant, including a description of his vehicle, Child Protective Service workers refused to believe her
story and insisted that her father, Jim Wade, was guilty of sexually molesting his daughter. The child
was removed from the custody of her parents, placed in foster care, her mother driven to attempted
suicide, her family destroyed (Federal Information Systems Corporation, 1995). It was proven through
DNA evidence just before she was permanently adopted out that the perpetrator was a known child sex
offender in her neighborhood and that Child Protective Services was aware of his identity within just
days of the assault (Scott, 1994). The DNA found in the child’s undergarments was not tested for two
years following the assault.

In the case of 16-month old Maxwell Fisher in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the child was brutally
sexually assaulted, murdered, and his corpse abused by his drug-addicted mother’s live-in boyfriend.
The Berks County Child Protective Service agency had documentation of a ten year history of abuse in
this family and did nothing to protect this child. After the murder, the agency’s Executive Director,
George Kovarie, was caught actively attempting to cover-up the agency’s knowledge of the abuse. He
later admitted the agency had been aware of it, but claimed “the child simply fell through the cracks of
an overburdened system” (Kovarie Must Tell Whole Truth, 1997). This precious child, according to
Reading Eagle reporter Dan Kelly, had been “repeatedly beaten and was shaken so violently, his brain
was bruised and nerves in his spine were severed, which investigators said caused his death” (1997).
Kelly also reported in that same article that he had been “attacked by roaches and rodents in his crib
before and after his death.” The mother and her live-in-boyfriend were charged with the murder and
are currently in prison.

Without question, the mother and boyfriend were rightfully charged with the child’s murder, but this
case cries out for more. What was Child Protective Services responsibility in his death? The definition
of criminal negligence is “recklessly acting without reasonable caution and putting another person at
risk of injury or death” (WordNet 3.0, 2006). Suffice is to say, considering the county agency’s
knowledge of this family’s history, this is precisely what occurred in the Fisher case. Yet, because of
the immunity given to Child Protective Services, they are absolved of all accountability. This is no
different than granting a doctor immunity from malpractice.

Cases such as Fisher and Wade are all too easily overlooked. There is nothing that can justify a case
such as that of Maxwell Fisher. However, in cases such as Alicia Wade, well-known writer Paul Craig
Roberts, in his article Targeting Parents has a very valid argument. This article addresses the baseless
intrusions of Child Protective Services into the lives of innocent parents and children. In the Wade
case, without any evidence at all, the father was accused of sexually assaulting his daughter. Yet
Roberts states that “some Pennsylvania schools are searching for sexual abuse by forcing sixth grade
girls to undergo genital exams” (2000). That, in itself, is sexual abuse. More often than not, evidence
of child abuse is fabricated – so much to the point that even sloppy housekeeping can be considered an
act of neglect with which the parent can be charged and the child can be removed (Scott, 1994).
Roberts states that “child advocates have put in place a system of reporting on parents that is more
intrusive than the systems used by communists and National Socialists” (2000). As in the case of Alicia
Wade, Roberts believes that child advocates are “determined to fill the nation’s prisons with parents.”
That is a pretty frightening thought and one that cannot be ignored.

The abuse of government power and the cruelty of the Child Protective Service system, to both
parents and children alike is, at times, unthinkable. The conduct of Child Protective Service workers is
frighteningly similar to the findings of the Stanford Prison Experiment. This was an experiment
conducted by Professor Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University in 1971. It was a simulation study of
the psychological impact of imprisonment. Zimbardo wanted to observe how “mock prisoners”
handled being imprisoned psychologically and he was able to observe how the “mock guards” handled
having unlimited power and authority over the prisoners. What was set to be a 2-week experiment had
to be ended after just six days due to the horrendous misconduct of the guards. Unaware they were
being videotaped, the guards began degrading and humiliating prisoners in unthinkable ways. Zimbardo
stated that they were “peaceniks who became like Nazi’s” (Alexander, 2001). All of his participants
were college students who were psychologically tested before they were accepted to participate in his
experiment; all were shown to be psychologically stable and well-grounded. Yet throughout the
experiment, observation proved how “easy it is for good people to become perpetrators of evil” (2001).
This is precisely what is occurring in the Child Protective Service system. Parents and children are
being physically and psychologically abused and the Child Protective Service workers are behaving like
Nazi’s; all of which is motivated by money.

The government has made available to the Child Protective Service system financial incentives for each
child pulled into the system. Millions of dollars in funding is available annually for children who are
placed in group homes or foster homes, yet there is no funding available to keep families together.
Since one primary focus of the Child Protective Service system is to preserve the unity of the family
whenever possible, there should certainly be funding available to ensure family preservation, especially
since some children are actually removed due to poverty (Scott, 1994). On the contrary, rather than
providing assistance to needy families to avoid placing children with strangers, subjecting them to the
sometimes irreparable psychological damage of abuse, sexual molestation, or worse, funding is
available only to the Child Protective Service system, group homes, and foster homes.