The Persecution and Prosecution of Reverend Moon

The Persecution and Prosecution of Reverend Moon
by Candadai Seshachari

This book review of Inquisition is reprinted, with permission, from Weber Studies: An Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal, Fall 92 (Weber State University, Ogden, Utah). Dr. Seshachari is the Interim Dean, College of Arts and Humanities at Weber State University.

Imagine this scenario: A hard-hitting, highly respected journalist, the only reporter ever to have won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Peabody Award, sees an irresistible opportunity to do a woof-and-warp expose on an alien church. The leader of this church has been tried for federal tax evasion and duly sentenced to 18 months in jail. This church has been publicly ridiculed and openly attacked in the American press. U.S. Senator Robert Dole and Congressman Donald Frazer have vociferously accused the church of brainwashing religious-minded Americans with lies and blasphemies.

The reporter hires himself on the staff of a newspaper that is owned by the much-aligned church to "get an inside track on one of the most controversial religious organizations in the United States." In time, he earns the trust of its leaders, secures access to its inner echelons of power, and gains access to confidential records. The stage is now unabashedly set for an explosive account that could conceivably blow the church off the American soil!

Now the players: the church, the Unification Church; the leader, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon; the newspaper, The Washington Times; the would-be exposer, the redoubtable Carlton Sherwood. Sherwood had hoped to undermine the Unification Church by mining the very stuff of "juicy sex scandals." He thought he would surely confront in Moon "a Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart clone running loose."

Clean slate

Result of investigation? "Zero." And what about all the grizzly stories of kidnapped kids who were forced to disavow their parents and religions? "In a word: bunk," to quote Carlton Sherwood again. What Sherwood found instead was a church that was puritanical to its core, a church that did not suffer even ordinary moral lapses by its members one that was simple, straightforward, and amazingly charitable. He uncovered a horrifying story of government's hate and intolerance toward everyday, ordinary Americans who had chosen to exercise their religious freedom by following the tenets of the Reverend Moon.

Sherwood's investigation showed that the CIA, FBI, INS, SEC, FTC, and a host of other federal agencies including a dozen senate, state, and congressional committees had single-mindedly hounded Moon and his Church. It was tantamount to nothing short of a government-backed inquisition. Sherwood's discovery and abhorrence at what he found are best stated in his own words:

"The Unification Church, its leaders and followers were and continue to be the victims of the worst kind of religious prejudice and racial bigotry this country has witnessed in over a century. Moreover, virtually every institution we as Americans hold sacred the Congress, the courts, law enforcement agencies, the press, even the U.S. Constitution itself was prostituted in a malicious, oftentimes brutal manner, as part of a determined effort to wipe out this small but expanding religious movement."

Inquisition is a thoroughly researched story of the persecution and prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. The charge against Moon was that he had used nearly $8,000 of church money for his everyday use, something that mainstream churches have historically done. Sherwood details how certain members of the jury were "Mooney" haters and how some others were manipulated. He narrates other grueling tales of iniquities and injustices that were heaped on the Reverend Moon in the name of law and justice. But the significance of the book lies elsewhere.

Telling indictment

Inquisition is a telling indictment of the racial intolerance and religious bigotry that, like some bloody scourge, defiles the national American character. Our national history is often told in terms of blood and violence that are directly related to intolerance and bigotry. From Anne Hutchinson to Joseph Smith, Jr., to Sun Myung Moon to the nine Buddhist monks who were recently slaughtered in Arizona, we hear episodes in our history of the persecution of those whose beliefs are different from ours. The Quakers and Shakers and the Hare Krisnas are self-effacing symbols of our national urge to brutalize those who are not part of the mainstream. Of course, all of this began with the early Puritans those who fled persecution in turn became ruthless persecutors themselves. Also, Native Americans have paid a heavy price, to the point of becoming exterminated, for the mere fact that they were and are different. Religiously and racially.

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon paid the price for being different on both scores in spite of all the guarantees enshrined in the First Amendment. Perhaps what makes Inquisition more than worthwhile reading is that it brings to the fore the idea that there is something in our national character that makes us recoil at wanton, arbitrary, and mindless violence and hate. We celebrate the life and achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr., precisely because he exposed our everyday hatreds and pettinesses. We revere Lincoln because he made us confront our racism.

The Los Angeles racial riots are a testimony to our intolerance of color and race as much as their aftermath is a challenge to our ability to live together. In some basic ways, American society is a fragile society where the best is held in tension with the worst, and the sublime is held in check by the profane. And there is always hope witness the unending barrage of laws guaranteeing fairness and equality that roll out of our legislatures the hope that our idealism will be the harbinger of a better America that is racially and religiously more tolerant.

That hope is at the heart of Carlton Sherwood's Inquisition. It is also at the heart of the price that the Reverend Sun Myung Moon has paid.

Shannon Traore aka Shannon Tyler - How this white collar child abuser from Fairfax CPS manufactured sexual abuse allegations.

STICKS AND BONES - CPS Abuses in Fairfax County revealed.

STICKS AND BONES

Alice and Miguel Velasquez couldn't explain the bump on their daughter's rib cage to themselves or to their doctor. How, then, could they explain it to Alexandria's Child Protective Services?

by
Sarah Godfrey


On Feb. 3, 2000, Alice and Miguel Velasquez took their daughter Liliana for a routine well-baby visit at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. They were concerned about a lump on the left side of their 4-month-old's rib cage.

Alice, 22, an Army medical-lab technician, had discovered a slight protrusion while handling Liliana a few days earlier. The lump was not visible to the eye but could be felt by running a hand across the child's ribs. She thought of calling Liliana's pediatrician, but the child didn't seem to be in pain when the spot was touched.

Alice's husband, Miguel, 30, a flooring contractor from El Salvador, wasn't home at the time, so she called her grandmother in Indiana to ask for advice. "Liliana is just fine," the older woman assured her. When Miguel returned, he also felt the lump. Unconvinced that it was nothing, he told his wife that they should definitely show it to the doctor when Liliana went for her checkup.

When the couple brought the lump to the attention of the intern who examined Liliana, they say, he dismissed their worries at first. "He said it was probably a calcium deposit, and that she appeared happy and healthy," says Alice. Still, she pressed him. With a history of spinal disorders such as scoliosis and spina bifida in her family, Alice wanted to be sure that the bump wasn't an early indicator of one. "I was hoping if an X-ray caught the signs early, that it could be corrected."

When the couple persisted in their concern, the intern brought in staff pediatrician Dr. Paul Reed, who consented to X-rays for Liliana. Radiologist Donald Flemming performed the X-rays and detected five rib fractures in various stages of healing, as well as three additional suspected rib fractures.

The extent of the baby's injuries prompted Reed to immediately contact Capt. Barbara Craig, a doctor and the director of the Armed Forces Center for Child Protection, as well as Child Protective Services (CPS) in Alexandria, Va., where the Velasquezes were living. Social workers immediately came to the hospital to interview Miguel and Alice.

Liliana was transferred from Bethesda and kept overnight at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The next evening, after the social workers obtained a court order, Liliana was taken into city custody and placed in a foster home.

The Velasquezes claim they had no idea what had happened to cause their daughter's injuries, and were adamant that they had done nothing to cause them. They never imagined that for the next year and a half they would be faced with the impossible task of convincing the city that their daughter's injuries were caused by a rare bone disease they had never even heard of.

Nor could the Velasquezes foresee that another family's experience with Alexandria social services would affect their battle to regain custody of their daughter after the disease was identified. Alice and Miguel had no idea that they would be seen as an opportunity for a city agency under scrutiny to redeem itself.

"While we were going through all of this, the Katelyn Frazier case happened," says Alice. "That made everything a lot harder."

Doctors who discover injuries that appear to be nonaccidental in children are required to notify the proper authorities, usually the jurisdiction's child-welfare agency and/or law enforcement officials. Any doctor who fails to make such a report can face steep fines and possibly imprisonment, depending on state statutes.

Once social workers become involved, they, too, must adhere to specific regulations, in their case dictating how they investigate reports of suspected child abuse or neglect. Virginia receives more than 33,000 reports of possible abuse or neglect each year; its city and county social workers are required to investigate each and every one.

The social workers must decide whether long-term intervention is warranted and whether the child should be taken into protective custody. The investigation process includes talking with the parents—and child, if the child is old enough—face to face, making home visits, and checking for past reports of abuse against any adult members of the household. If social workers find that a report of abuse is founded, they devise a long-term foster-care plan with the family and continue to monitor both parents and child. Parents must meet certain conditions before they are able to regain custody. Usually, they are required to take parenting classes and undergo individual therapy. If they are cooperative and complete the requirements, the family can be reunited.

On its Web site, the Virginia Department of Social Services, which oversees local jurisdictions, states its goal as reuniting families: "Even if the child must be temporarily removed for safety, the goal is to return the child to the home as soon as possible."

Miguel and Alice Velasquez agree that in the beginning stages of their involvement with the social safety net, both the military doctors and the Alexandria social workers who placed their daughter in foster care were doing their jobs correctly. "I've worked in a hospital," says Alice. "If I'd found a child with even one rib fracture, I would've acted the same way."

Two high-profile local cases of child abuse, however, have shifted the goals of child-welfare agencies in both Alexandria and the District of Columbia. Area social-service agencies' traditional emphasis on family reunification has come into question following the deaths of two little girls who might still be alive had they not been returned to their birth mothers.

Twenty-three-month-old Brianna Blackmond was killed on Jan. 6, 2000, two weeks after D.C. child-welfare workers restored legal custody to her mother, Charrisise Blackmond. Brianna had been taken away from her mother in June 1998 after a social worker discovered her and seven siblings living in filth and rummaging through trash trying to find food. She was immediately placed in foster care.

The events that led to Brianna's return to her mother were a series of egregious oversights. The social worker handling Brianna's case failed to complete her recommendation that Brianna not be returned in time for a court hearing. While both the social worker and the attorney representing the city were on vacation, a D.C. Superior Court judge approved a motion entered by Charrisise Blackmond's lawyer to return Brianna to her mother—without a hearing. No one made a home visit before the child was returned. Anyone who had would have discovered that Charrisise Blackmond and several of her children were illegal tenants in the public-housing unit inhabited by Angela O'Brien, the woman who would later kill Brianna with a blow to the head.

Three-year-old Katelyn Frazier was fatally injured two days after Christmas 2000 while in the custody of her mother, Pennee Frazier. Their Alexandria apartment was shared with Frazier's boyfriend, Asher Levin, and three siblings. Katelyn had spent the majority of her life in a foster home under the care of Lesley Dodson, who had sought to adopt the child. Dodson's hopes were dashed in September 2000, when a judge decided to return Katelyn to her birth mother. She had been back in her mother's care only three months when she was killed. Levin later confessed to beating the toddler to death.

Unlike the Brianna case, in which a child seemed to fall through the cracks of a beleaguered child welfare system, the Katelyn case received an enormous amount of attention from city social workers—even after the child was reunited with her mother. The Washington Post reported that Katelyn was the subject of more than 15 court hearings to determine her placement, and social workers visited Pennee Frazier's home more than 30 times during the three months she had her daughter back. But somehow they missed what neighbors and friends later reported: Shortly after returning to her mother's apartment, Katelyn began showing bruises and other obvious signs of abuse.

Katelyn's death outraged community members. Residents have demanded that CPS be held accountable for what many believe was a mishandling of the case.

"[Katelyn] was too young to insist that the Alexandria [Department of Human Services] do its job...which was to make sure that whoever was entrusted with the care of this very vulnerable child did the right thing by her," said one angered community resident in an opinion piece published in the Fairfax Journal.

In July 2001, the city announced it would implement changes outlined in a review of Alexandria CPS conducted by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA). The report, which criticized the department's handling of the Frazier case, offered recommendations to improve the agency's case monitoring.

The city was effective in its damage control until it was discovered that the CWLA's report had been edited, with portions unflattering to CPS removed, before City Manager Phil Sunderland distributed it to city councilmembers in June.

With its social-service agencies under intensified scrutiny, Alexandria was probably the worst possible jurisdiction for a family lobbying for the return of a child.

Sources who work closely with Alexandria CPS say that although de-emphasizing family reunification is not a formal policy reform, they have anecdotal evidence that it's happening all over the city. One source describes the agency as being in "crackdown" mode and says that employees are overcompensating, keeping families apart, because they are "very scared" of making another mistake.

Because of legal constraints, most of the people involved in the removal of Liliana Velasquez from her parents' care were unable to comment on the case for this story. "We have stringent confidentiality rules that apply to social-services work—we can't even acknowledge that we have any case under our care or anything attendant to that. We can actually be charged with a misdemeanor if we do so," explains Meg O'Reagan, director of Alexandria's Department of Human Services. Her department oversees the city's Family Services Division,which includes CPS.

Attorneys George McAndrews, who represents the city, and Russell Hatchell, who represents Liliana's interests in court proceedings, also declined to comment.

"The Frazier case had caused us more problems than we might have had otherwise," says Dorothy Isaacs, an attorney who agreed to represent Alice and Miguel Velasquez pro bono in February 2001. "[The] Alexandria [Department of Human Services] is sensitive right now, and I can't say I blame them. They really screwed up with [the Katelyn Frazier] case."

During their initial interview at the naval hospital, Alice tried to defend her husband to CPS social workers Jackie Lusk and Johnny Simancas. She explained how Miguel cared for their daughter during the day while she was at work. She told them how he drove from their home to her office at the Pentagon and back again twice each day because she hadn't wanted to stop breast-feeding after she returned to work. "Their response to me was 'Whose side are you on?'" says Alice.

"They asked me how much my husband drank and if he had been drinking that night," says Alice. "I told them that we're Mormons—we don't even drink sodas with caffeine."

The Velasquezes were puzzled by the social workers' immediate fingering of Miguel. "My husband couldn't hurt a flea! If anything, he's the one afraid of me! They just had it in their minds from the very beginning that it was him," says Alice.

"I don't even remember the walk from the hospital to the car—I just remember standing in the street and hearing Liliana crying as the car drove away," recalls Alice, crying. "Even after I couldn't see the car any longer, I could still hear her. I sat down on the curb and threw up."

The couple drove home through a snowstorm to an empty apartment. After hours of crying and worrying, they finally fell asleep. Alice would wake up a few hours later: "I heard her cry, and I got up to feed her. But when I went to the crib she wasn't there. I would turn on the lights and look everywhere for her until I realized. This went on for weeks and weeks."

During the course of the investigation, Miguel and Alice were told that if they could provide a reasonable explanation for their daughter's fractures, she would be returned to them. They immediately came up with a list of things that could have possibly happened to cause Liliana's injuries, some of which later came back to haunt them during court proceedings.

Perhaps one of them had rolled on her as she slept in their bed? Or maybe they had pressed on her belly too hard while trying to ease gas and constipation? Maybe her visiting older half-sister had somehow hurt her while they were playing? Miguel offered: "Maybe I hugged her too tight because I love her so much."

Despite their efforts to explain the origin of their daughter's fractures, Miguel was arrested on Feb. 17, 2000, for criminal child abuse and neglect. He says it was his first arrest and that his experience in jail was "very bad": "They just treat you like you're nothing in that place."

The Velasquezes were now faced with not only civil custody hearings and the CPS foster-care requirements but the possibility of a criminal trial as well.

Miguel remained in jail for only a few hours, but after Alice posted bail and he was released, he received the worst blow: Although CPS had granted both Miguel and Alice visitation time with their daughter, as a standard condition of his bond, Miguel was prohibited from seeing Liliana, meaning he could be jailed again if he came into contact with her.

Liliana stayed in foster care for the entire month of February. Alice regained custody of her daughter in March, but Miguel still wasn't allowed to see her. He moved in with his father temporarily, hoping that his court-appointed criminal attorney, Mary McGuire, would soon be able to successfully petition for an amendment to his bond, allowing him to move back home and see his daughter.

But being away from his family proved too much for Miguel to bear. At the beginning of May, he began visiting Liliana and Alice. However, on May 5, someone anonymously tipped off CPS that Miguel was spending time with his daughter. On May 12, Simancas, along with the Fairfax County police, came to the Velasquez home to take away Liliana and arrest Miguel.

Miguel and Alice both describe the scene as something "out of a movie." The cops came into the house in the middle of the night and found Miguel hiding in a bedroom closet. Alice was again left alone. The next morning, for the second time, Alice bailed her husband out of jail.

"We haven't been perfect in this process—it was a mistake," says Alice. "But I knew that if I was in [Miguel's] position and [Miguel] told me that I couldn't see our daughter, that I would hate him. His only crime was missing and wanting to see his daughter."

On May 1, 2000, Miguel was indicted by a City of Alexandria grand jury on the charge of felony child abuse and neglect. The crime typically carries a penalty of two to 10 years' imprisonment. A trial date was set for June.

One evening in February 2000, a few weeks after Liliana was first taken away, Miguel and Alice decided to watch television as a distraction. After a quiet dinner, they sat on the couch and idly flipped through the channels. There was a commercial for the news program 20/20 that mentioned a segment on a disease with a funny name—osteogenesis imperfecta.

A friend at church had mentioned the disease to them just that Sunday. "Have you heard of this?" the friend had asked, handing them some literature on the disease, which is characterized by bones that break easily. The couple decided to watch the prograó. They tuned in at 10 o'clock and learned about the hallmarks of "OI," as it is called—a bluish tint to the whites of the eyes, excessive perspiration, hyperflexibility, and inexplicable bone fractures—sometimes even before a child is born.

Miguel and Alice sat on the couch in silence throughout the entire program, not speaking even to express relief.

"We couldn't believe it—it all made sense. Liliana always sweated a lot and had a bluish tint to her eyes. When she was a baby, Miguel and I would argue about whether her eyes were brown or blue, because the tint was so strong," says Alice. "Even people at church and other family members noticed it. Then there is my family history of spinal problems and my hyperflexibility," she says, bending her elbow back into an impossible position.

"OI is 'brittle-bones' disease," explains Dr. Jay Shapiro of Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute's Osteogenesis Imperfecta Clinic, which treats OI patients from around the world. "It's a disease where people are born with fragile bones—they can have fractures even while in the womb. Most continue to fracture throughout their lives. Some may have only three or four fractures over their lifetime and look fairly normal. Others, with more severe OI, can have growth problems and may be only 3 to 4 feet tall and have many fractures—20, 30, maybe even more."

There are an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 OI sufferers in the United States alone. In its mildest form, the disease may cause the bluish tint to the eyes, brittle teeth, and a slightly triangular face, but these indicators do not necessarily have to be present in a child with OI. Diagnosis is based on a combination of factors, including evaluation by doctors and geneticists, and, if necessary, lab testing. The disease may go undetected for years—or be misdiagnosed as child abuse.

Like OI, child abuse is often characterized by broken bones. Fractures in multiple stages of healing—especially rib fractures—are often present in both children with OI and children who are being battered. And, because these distinguishing characteristics are the same, children with OI are often suspected to be victims of abuse when they are first seen by doctors.

"You have a parent who walks in and presents exactly like someone who abuses their child," says Heller An Shapiro, director of the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. "They bring in a child with injuries—fractures, bruises, etc.—and when asked how the injuries occurred, say, 'I don't know.' Well, that is exactly how someone who is abusing their child would respond, so they fit the profile. I have empathy for social workers in this sort of situation who are trying to piece together what's going on."

And, Heller An Shapiro notes, the disease is unfamiliar to many doctors and social workers. "We've worked hard to educate doctors, emergency-room personnel, and social workers, but it's not something that people see often, and it is highly unlikely that it would be diagnosed in its mildest form. Most doctors can spot the more severe types of OI, where the child might be in a wheelchair or have visible deformities. But for a child who looks normal and happens to have OI, the disease is rarely identified right away."

Because the disease is indeed rare and most people are unaware of its existence, the Velasquezes had a difficult time getting authorities to take their claims seriously. After seeing the 20/20 segment, Alice gathered all of the information she could find about OI and presented it to caseworker Lusk, who she says blew it off. She also approached Capt. Craig, who she says told her, "Don't believe everything you see on the Internet."

The couple say that even their respective court-appointed civil attorneys didn't seem interested in the information. But McGuire, faced with a desperate client looking at a decade behind bars, finally agreed to push for an OI test for Liliana. In May 2000, a judge granted the test, to be paid for by the court.

Later that month, Liliana was examined by two physicians in the genetics department of Children's Hospital. She was given a painful skin biopsy, involving the removal of a plug of skin from her forearm about the size of a pencil eraser. "I had to hold her while they took the skin sample," says Alice. "She was just screaming and looking at me like 'Mommy, why are you letting them do this to me?' It was terrible."

The skin sample was sent to the University of Washington's Department of Pathology for analysis in its Collagen Diagnostic Laboratory. The doctors at Children's Hospital also decided to give Liliana another complete set of X-rays, to confirm the presence of the previously diagnosed fractures. These new X-rays showed only five rib fractures—the additional three suspected fractures were not confirmed.

The results of the skin test came back in September. Although such test results usually come back in three weeks, the lab had also performed other studies, including DNA work, along with the collagen skin test. Genetic counselor Melanie Pepin, who works at the lab, says that such additional tests are often conducted "especially with the question of nonaccidental injury." The results confirmed what her parents had suspected: Liliana had tested positive for OI Type I, a mild form of the disease.

The city's civil prosecutor attempted to discredit the test as experimental and unreliable, and argued that the diagnosis of OI didn't preclude the possibility that Miguel could have still abused his daughter. Capt. Craig became a key witness in both lines of argument.

Craig declined to comment for this article, citing confidentiality regulations affecting active-duty military personnel, but she has made her opinions on the case apparent throughout court proceedings. In a November 2000 e-mail to Alexandria Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Roger Canaff, she wrote, "Do I think these parents cannot be trusted? Yes. Do I think Liliana will be further abused in their care? Yes? Can I prove this in court? No. Does she have OI? Maybe—probably....Will a judge or jury buy any of this? They will probably have sympathy on the poor parents who will cry and lie in telling about their ordeal against the mean doctors in the military. The OI, if present, is an extremely mild case and may not have anything to do with her fractures."

The prosecution also pointed out that Liliana had not experienced any new fractures during her year in foster care. Jay Shapiro says that when a child is removed from a home and does not experience new fractures, it often means that the child does not have OI and was being abused.

"Let's say you have someone who brings a child into the ER [with fractures]," Shapiro says. "The ER calls Social Services and the child is taken away. The child has another fracture while on his or her own. Then you have someone who brings a child into ER with many fractures, the child is put in foster home, and the child doesn't fracture again. Usually you can say with some degree of certainty that the first case is OI and the second is child abuse."

Shapiro adds, however, that there are exceptions to the rule. "That type of evaluation is probably good 96 percent of the time. In a couple of cases it may not be so clear. That is the loophole, where you're not 100 percent sure."

"It is true that even if a child has OI there could be real abuse going on," says Heller An Shapiro. "It makes all of the factors difficult to assess—especially in Virginia, where they are so anxious about making a mistake that they may make accusations even when clearly that isn't the case."

"Having OI doesn't mean a child can't be abused, but there is absolutely nothing in Miguel's history that could lead anyone to think he could possibly abuse his child," says Isaacs.

The prosecution also argued that the test for OI can be unreliable. Although the collagen skin test can yield a false negative result, a positive test is foolproof, says Heller An Shapiro: "They got it wrong when they argued about the OI test, calling it experimental. [Liliana] got a positive test. If an OI test is positive, it's positive. The positive success rate is 100 percent. The negative result is less reliable—an 85 to 90 percent success rate. But if someone tests positive, there is no question."

Pepin agrees the test, which has been in use since the early '80s, does not yield positives: "The issue in terms of the test's sensitivity isn't if a positive test confirms OI—a positive result confirms the presence of OI."

In December 2000, Miguel's felony charge was reduced to a misdemeanor in light of the new information pertaining to Liliana's OI. In January 2001, the Alexandria city attorney entered a nolle prosequi in the case—declining to prosecute for lack of evidence—after McGuire was successful in suppressing all of his pre-charge statements. His conversations with Reed, Craig, and even Lusk, prior to his arrest, were thrown out. Miguel says he wasn't read his Miranda rights before talking to doctors and social workers at Bethesda. Even though he wasn't being charged with a crime at the time, Miranda law applies to custodial investigations as well. All criminal charges against him were dismissed.

Miguel and Alice thought their daughter was finally coming home.

But the nolle prosequi in Miguel's criminal case had no bearing on either the civil custody proceedings or CPS's monitoring of the family. Instead of reinstating Liliana, the agency was able to keep her in the foster-care system on a technicality: It sustained an internal administrative finding against the parents—an action that affects civil custody.

McGuire had seen to it that all pertinent OI information went into Miguel's file in the criminal case. The court-appointed civil attorneys representing the couple at the time, however, had not done the same for the civil custody case.

"The administrative finding was sustained because they were supposed to submit the results of the OI test and didn't," says Isaacs. "Alice and Miguel rightfully thought that the OI finding was on record, so they didn't submit the doctors' reports. They said that Johnny Simancas told them that it was in the record. Because the parents were supposed to give additional info and didn't, the [administrative] finding was sustained."

CPS also argued that Miguel and Alice had failed to complete a key requirement of their foster-care plan—admitting their guilt.

"They said that they wanted us to stipulate our roles in her abuse and move beyond a victimization posture. We would have lied and said that we did it in a minute, just to get our child back, but it was a Catch-22," says Alice.

"They wanted us to say we were abusing our baby," says Miguel.

If the Velasquezes had admitted guilt, under the nolle prosequi, the misdemeanor case against Miguel could have been reopened, and the criminal charges could have been reinstated. If new evidence is introduced within one year in a nolle prosequi case, charges can be re-entered.

"In September, when the skin biopsy came back, if they would've apologized, I would've understood," says Alice.

"We want our names cleared," continues Alice. "Even when all of this is over, it will follow us. Whenever Liliana starts a new school, it's something that will be on record, something that everyone will know about. We just want an apology. We want them to admit they were wrong."

The Velasquezes believe that CPS focused on Miguel because of his race. "I think I was targeted because I am a Latino man," he says.

In addition to caring for Liliana, Miguel also has an older daughter, 7-year-old Cassandra, from a previous marriage. While married to his ex-wife, Roxanna Garay, and still living with Cassandra full time, he served as her primary caregiver. Cassandra has congenital heart disease, and Garay has testified that when her daughter's illness was at its most severe and she herself couldn't cope, it was her husband who stepped in and cared for the child.

"Miguel's ex-wife testified that he was a loving father—never abused her or their daughter," says Isaacs. "You know, I handle a lot of divorces, and the glowing testimony of an ex-spouse says a lot."

In a March 2000 hearing, Dr. Reed testified that Miguel had been "very flattened in his affect" and "emotionless" as Reed described Liliana's fractures to him.

"Miguel doesn't know what 'fractures' are," counters Alice. Miguel came to America from El Salvador in 1990, and although he speaks English quite well, she argues, medical terminology isn't something that even most native speakers are very familiar with, let alone someone who is still learning the nuances of the language.

"Miguel has language issues, and Alice isn't a lawyer, so there was some confusion," says Isaacs.

One statement that was brought out repeatedly by prosecutors during hearings was Craig's recollection that Miguel had confessed to lifting Liliana with one hand and "throwing" her to her mother "like a football" during his interview with her the day Liliana was brought to Bethesda.

"It's ridiculous. They don't even have football in Miguel's country—he would've never made that comparison!" says Alice.

Heller An Shapiro says that poor families of color are especially vulnerable to charges of child abuse, because social-service agencies often target such families. "That seems to be the profile that social workers and child-abuse experts have in mind. The other piece to that puzzle is young or inexperienced parents."

"There is no doubt in my mind that it is a class issue, but I wouldn't be surprised by racial motivations, either," says Isaacs. "People who can afford counsel, who are familiar with the legal system, and who know when to keep their mouths closed to avoid incriminating themselves—they're treated differently."

In addition to the agony of being separated from their daughter, Miguel and Alice also faced fears that Liliana was being neglected in her foster home. "[CPS] didn't think we were good parents, but they allowed her to be treated poorly in foster care," says Alice.

According to INOVA Alexandria Hospital records, Liliana was hospitalized seven times while under the care of foster mother Willie Mae Gray. Liliana was seen at INOVA Alexandria on May 26, May 27, July 5, Aug. 3, Nov. 12, Dec. 14, and, finally, on Dec. 19, 2000. Usually, she was brought in for malnutrition and diarrhea. Her parents were not notified by social workers of Liliana's trips to the emergency room.

But Alice had begun to notice worrisome changes in her daughter's demeanor. Whenever Liliana was brought to the CPS offices for visitation, she was always "dirty and exhausted," says her mother. Liliana's long hair was often matted to her head and was falling out in small patches. She usually wasn't dressed properly for the weather, adds Alice.

"She was always dirty. She stunk, had terrible diaper rash to the point of open, bloody lesions. I later found out she had several vaginal infections because she was not being cleaned properly," says Alice.

Alice and Miguel found out that their daughter was a frequent visitor to the emergency room only after she contracted pneumonia in December 2000 and was retained for nine days. A hospital employee told Alice that Liliana was a "frequent" visitor, and urged her to seek out a copy of her daughter's medical file. She was able to obtain the records and was shocked at what she found.

Alice became desperate to transfer her daughter from Gray's care and into another foster home. She frantically tried to contact her court-appointed civil attorney, to no avail: "He wouldn't return my calls."

It was at this point that Alice began contacting the media: "Fox 5, Eyewitness News—everybody but Jerry Springer." She was successful in gaining public attention. Both Channel 9 and the Spanish-language cable channel Univision planned spots profiling the family, which were aired in March 2001. The increase in visibility also brought them to Isaacs, whose firm was recommended to the family by an acquaintance.

"People treated us a lot differently after they found out our story was going to be on TV," says Alice. Liliana was placed in another foster home at the end of February. The family believes that Isaacs' involvement and the media attention they received were instrumental in their daughter's transfer.

Previously, CPS intervened in illnesses and injuries of children in foster care only if a caseworker reported a child as possibly being abused or neglected. But in June 2001, the city announced a "new-eyes approach" that requires investigation into any injuries sustained by a child in foster care. Currently the Velasquezes have physical, but not legal, custody of their daughter. Although she was finally returned to her parents' home in July 2001, the city still effectively has control over all decisions regarding her health, education, and welfare.

The Velasquezes moved to Maryland in late 2001. Alice, who remained on active duty during most of their ordeal, had left the Army that September. Because the couple could no longer pay Alexandria rent without military assistance, the decided to search for an apartment in the more affordable suburbs of Prince George's County. "Of course, that was another whole big issue," says Alice. "They tried to say that we were running away."

Although the Velasquezes moved only 20 minutes from their former home, because they left Virginia, they unknowingly invoked the Interstate Compact to Protect Children (ICPC). This legislation was designed to protect children placed across state lines for foster care and adoption, to ensure that they couldn't slip through the cracks. Under the ICPC, any adopted or foster child remains in the legal custody of the state for six months after any out-of-state move.

After completing all of Alexandria CPS's requirements, Miguel and Alice were devastated to learn that the agency would remain a part of their lives for an additional half-year. The ICPC monitoring period will expire in March, at which time they expect to regain full legal custody of their daughter.

In the meantime, the Velasquezes are attempting to move on with their lives. They are ecstatic to have Liliana back home, and they have a new addition to their family: baby Tahlia, born in October 2001. They are in the process of saving money to have Tahlia tested for OI. Currently, Alice is staying home with both children, and Miguel is supporting the family with contract construction work.

Miguel and Alice must constantly try to protect Liliana from activities that may cause additional fractures, while still trying to ensure that she has as normal a childhood as possible. "We watch her very carefully," says Alice. "We don't let her climb stairs or play on the playground by herself, and we have to watch her when she's around other kids. We also have a list from her doctor of activities she will never be able to do—like horseback riding and gymnastics."

Alice is writing a book about their experiences, not only to help her and her husband process it all, but also so that their daughter will have a record of the ordeal. "I don't want her to hate us. I want her, when she's old enough, to understand exactly what happened—to know how much we love her and that we never gave up on her. We never stopped fighting."

Miguel and Alice communicate with other parents of children with OI who have had similar experiences. At first, they sought out other families and support groups for counsel. Now, they say, they are beginning to give guidance themselves. "It's so incredibly sad. I've done a lot of research on OI, and other families, in almost every single case, have their child taken away, and it is sometimes years before the child is tested," says Alice.

"There was one family where the father served five years in prison before his child tested positive for OI," Alice continues. "After five years in jail, the father is scared to death to touch the kid, the mother is alienated from her husband after spending years wondering if he really did it, and the child doesn't really know his parents. You can't even tell that they're a family anymore. When I think about it, we're one of the lucky ones."

It is easy to see why Alice and Miguel feel lucky, despite their travails, upon seeing Liliana in action. The now-2-year-old girl is beautiful and bright. Although, like many toddlers she is initially reluctant around new people, once she warms up, she is lively. She runs around the house laughing and tries to draw on anything that will stand still. She talks and talks and talks to no one in particular and loves to give demonstrations of her many toys.

While Alice recounts the story of the fight for Liliana, Miguel tries to occupy his daughter in the living room. He plies her with ice cream, Powerpuff Girls cartoons, and games of peek-a-boo. Then he takes her for a quick bath and puts her in pink pajamas. Inevitably, however, the toddler decides she wants to be where the action is.

Liliana comes back into the room, crying with no tears, and climbs into her mother's lap. "Aww, was Daddy trying to make you go to sleep? Oh no, what a mean daddy!" says Alice playfully. Liliana mimics her mother and manages a garbled "mean daddy" of her own. Alice falls over in peals of laughter, stopping only when she notices Miguel grimacing. "Please, Alice," he says. "Don't teach her to say that." CP

Copyright © 2002 Washington Free Weekly Inc.

The 'experts' who made parents into criminals

The 'experts' who made parents into criminals

Allison Pearson, Evening Standard

"The greatest medical scandal of our times," is what Dr James Le Fanu calls it. He is referring to Shaken Baby Syndrome. Thousands of parents have been wrongly accused of abusing their children because the medical profession, in its arrogance, has taken a certain set of symptoms to be evidence of severe battering, rather than accepting an explanation that a child may have simply fallen.

Paul and Joanne, a lovely London couple I know, recently lived through the hell of being accused of harming their baby daughter. Taking the baby to casualty after she rolled off a sofa, they found themselves in a Kafkaesque nightmare, with every protestation of innocence treated as further proof of guilt.

"Denial is highly indicative of abuse," says one smug paediatrician cited by Dr Le Fanu. In other words, unless parents confess, they must have done it.

For years, doctors have insisted that severe injuries, such as haemorrhages in the eye, could not be caused by the trivial accidents parents claimed had taken place. The drawback to this position was obvious: no one had ever pushed an infant off the sitting-room sofa in an experiment to see what damage would result.

Instead of proceeding with caution, however, "experts" gave damning evidence of Shaken Baby Syndrome to the Family Court, while bewildered parents, numb with shock and grief, saw their children removed to foster homes. Some of the accused were jailed.

Paul and Joanne were not trusted to take their daughter home. Only the promise that they would never be alone with her - that there would always be a third person present - saved their ninemonthold from being taken to the fearful place we call "care". Any protest was impossible because, if the family went public, the court would seize the child.

In a bitter irony, this family was going through hell in one part of our city at the same time that medical and social services were failing to notice that Victoria Climbie was being tortured in another.

How much easier and more satisfying to torment an innocent middle-class family, who had taken their child to hospital in good faith, than to confront some evil brutes who went to every length to keep the little girl in their charge from proper treatment and diagnosis.

Well, now it has become clear that there is no such thing as Shaken Baby Syndrome. A pathologist has proved that in 18 independently witnessed accidents, trivial falls produced exactly those injuries which were meant to be consistent with violent abuse. And what do we hear from the experts? A thunderous silence. And from the secretive and draconian Family Court? An apologetic cough.

The Shaken Baby Scandal could be the source of some of the most grotesque miscarriages of justice this country has seen. There is an urgent need for a public inquiry. Each case will need to be re-examined. The jailed must be freed.

Then decent, loving people like Paul and Joanne, who live in fear of their toddler falling off her tricycle lest the cuts and bruises be deemed to have a sinister origin, can be taken off the legal blacklist.

At long last, the cries of shaken parents can be heard.

HOW CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES WORKS

National Coalition for Child Protection Reform / 53 Skyhill Road (Suite 202) / Alexandria, Va., 22314 / info@nccpr.org / www.nccpr.org

"Most of the time, I was taking their kids away for no good reason" --A New York City CPS worker.[1]

All it takes to begin the potential destruction of a family is a call to one of the child protective "hotlines" in every state. The call can be made anonymously, making the hotlines potent tools for harassment. More often, however, false allegations are well-meaning mistakes made by people who have taken the advice of the child savers.

Though state laws generally encourage -- or require -- reports if you have "reasonable cause to suspect" maltreatment, child savers urge us to call in our slightest suspicions about almost any parental behavior. (And that sort of advice is not limited to adults. One group has published a comic book effectively telling children to turn in their parents to "other grown-up friends" if they get a spanking).[2] The hotlines then forward the calls to Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies who send workers to investigate. These workers can go to a child's school or day care center and interrogate them without warning. Such an interrogation can undercut the bonds of trust essential for healthy parent-child relationships and traumatize children for whom the only harm is the harm of the investigation itself.

Workers can search homes and strip-search children without a warrant. Child savers insist such searches are rare. But in the course of defending against a lawsuit, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services acknowledged how common they really are. In its legal papers, the department said that any effort to restrict strip-searching "would immediately bring the child abuse hotline investigations to a halt."[3] Such a statement can be true only if strip-searching is routine.

Then it is up to the worker to decide if the case will be "substantiated" and the accused will be listed in a state "central register" of suspected child abusers. Workers make these decisions on their own. There is no hearing beforehand, no way for the accused to defend themselves. (In some states, they can try and fight their way out of the register after the fact).

No proof is required to "substantiate" a case. In most states, "substantiated" means only that there is "some credible evidence" of maltreatment, even if there is more evidence of innocence.

And what if parents object to all this? What if they want to defend their children against a strip-search, for example? Technically, in some circumstances, they can say no to a CPS worker (though the worker doesn't have to tell them this -- there is no equivalent of a "Miranda warning"). But if they do say no, the worker can wield the most feared power of all -- the power to remove a child from the home on the spot.

Workers have that power in 29 of America's 55 states and territories. In all but four of the rest, they need merely call the police to do it for them.[4] Parents then must go to court to try and get their children back. In most states, there is supposed to be a hearing in a matter of days, but often it takes far longer before that child's parents get their day in court.[5]

And it is a very short day. Such hearings tend to be five-minute assembly line procedures with a CPS lawyer who does this for a living on one side, and a bewildered, impoverished parent who just met her lawyer five minutes before -- if she has a lawyer at all -- on the other. Children are almost never returned at these hearings. If the children are lucky, they may get to go home after the next hearing in 30 or 90 days. Or maybe they will never go home at all.

And who are the CPS workers who wield this enormous power? In most states, a bachelor's degree in anything and a quickie training course devoted largely to how to fill out forms are the only requirements for the job. Turnover is enormous and caseloads are crushing. And the worker will find little guidance in the law, which is so broad that almost anything can be deemed abuse or, especially, neglect (See Family Preservation Issue Paper 5, Child Abuse and Poverty). Given all that, it's easy to see why so many children are needlessly removed from their homes.

But that is not the only tragedy. Enormous caseloads dominated by false and trivial cases steal workers' time from children in real danger. That's the real reason children sometimes are left in unsafe homes. See Family Preservation Issue Paper 8 .

There is a CPS worker who allegedly told several parents "I have the power of God." Even more frightening than the thought of a worker saying such a thing is the fact that it's true. CPS workers do have the power of God. And rarely is the power of God accompanied by the wisdom of Solomon.

---

1. Amy Pagnozzi, "HRA Insider: I Took Kids From Parents For No Good Reason," New York Post, February 4, 1991, p.7 Back to Text.

2. Prevent Child Abuse America / Marvel Comics, The Amazing Spider Man, April, 1990, pp.5,6. Back to Text.

3. Defendants' Post-Hearing Memorandum, E.Z. v. Coler, No. 82 C 3976, United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, April 17, 1984, p.23. Back to Text.

4. Lucy Alf Younas, State Child Abuse and Neglect Laws: A Comparative Analysis, 1985 (Washington DC: National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1987) Table 9. Back to Text.

Parental Alienation and Dr. Richard Gardner

Dean Tong on Parental Alienation and Dr. Richard Gardner, M.D.

---

by Dean Tong

---

As I sit here and type this commentary about the now deceased Dr. Richard Gardner, I am still in *shock and awe* by his passing. I've been involved in the tangled web of overzealous child protection and contentious custody cases for about 20 years now. And, it was slightly over 20 years ago that one Richard Gardner, M.D., coined the ever-controversial science we all know as PAS (Parental Alienation Syndrome).

Over these past two-plus decades Dr. Gardner endured as many ad hominem and character assassination attacks by left-wing gender feminists as PAS cases he consulted on. He published his rebuttal views to these attacks with integrity and science at his website www.rgardner.com. His work, while spurned by many, slowly goaded other psychologists nationally - Warshak, Ward, Perry, Rand, Cartwright, Darnall, Mart, Kirkpatrick, et al, to publish in this similar vein. Today, Dr. Gardner's work is referenced directly or indirectly in scores of scientific journal articles, books, and monographs.

He did not create a monster, but helped to elucidate an area of law and psychology that few, if any, could put their finger on - this emotional and psychological form of child abuse - characterized by a chronic campaign of deprecation, disparaging, berating, denigration and brainwashing of one parent against the other parent with the children being wielded as ammunition in the middle. He sought to differentiate PA (Parental Alienation) versus PAS, whereby in the latter the children not only start to participate in the denigration campaign, but also start to vilify the targeted and alienated parent. I saw this firsthand in my consultative role in the high-profile Elian Gonzalez case. And, Dr. Gardner, for all the *abuse* he took in being tapped as a hired gun for fathers, anecdotally and empirically proved that PA and PAS were not and are not gender biased entities and that mothers are the recipients of PAS in scores of cases. Dr. Gardner not only testified at Frye Hearings, nationally, laying the predicate and foundation for his hotly contested science to be accepted by judges, but also maintained an invaluable website that listed the states and countries where PAS has passed legal muster.

I was saddened in 1995 when Dr. Gardner's provisions to repeal the Mondale Act (Child Abuse Prevention & Treatment Act), which were disseminated to Congress, did not gain acceptance. I've been saddened that his PAS has met a staunch opponent less far in the American Psychiatric Association by not recognizing same in the DSM-IV or DSM-IV-TR. It is my heartfelt hope they do so when the time comes to publish the DSM-V (I'm told in 2010). Dr. Richard Gardner was a legend before his time. His work will continue to be cited in scientific journal articles and books and in courtrooms around the world. I know I'll be referencing it when I speak on Father's Day at the Million Dads March in Washington, DC. And, there I'll be one step closer to getting it heard by lawmakers up on capitol hill.

God's Speed, Dr. Gardner.

Dean Tong

Parental Alienation: In this Turf War, Kids are the Prize

In this Turf War, Kids Are the Prize
By Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks
Tallahassee Democrat, 6/13/07

In part because of the Alec Baldwin-Kim Basinger custody battle, the controversial concept of Parental Alienation is now being debated extensively in the media. Parental Alienation often arises after a divorce or separation, as one parent turns the children against the other parent, often employing false allegations to do so. Baldwin claims that he is the target parent of PA.

Misguided women’s advocates assert that PA is a myth used by abusive fathers to blame their ex-wives when their children are hostile to them. Recently, Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women, condemned PA as “junk science, junk justice.” NOW, the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and a dozen other women’s groups signed on to a complaint filed against the United States this month with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. The complaint claims that American courts victimize abused mothers by “frequently awarding child custody to abusers.”

In reality, when domestic violence allegations are made, judges take them very seriously, preferring to "err on the side of caution" even when evidence is lacking. By contrast, fathers who are targets of false accusations and parental alienation can only protect their relationships with their children by financing expensive legal battles.

Despite the controversy, PA is a common phenomenon which has been well-documented and widely supported in the mental health community. For example, a longitudinal study published by the American Bar Association in 2003 followed 700 "high conflict" divorce cases over a 12 year period and found that elements of PA were present in the vast majority of the cases studied.

The pain that alienating mothers (or, in some cases, alienating fathers) visit upon their children would be hard to understate. In a new Psychology Today article devoted to this controversy, Michelle Martin, who was a victim of PA as a child, recalls:

"You were either on my mother's side or against her, and if you were on her side, you had to be against my father. She was so angry at him…you couldn't possibly have a relationship with him if you wanted one with her."

Martin describes her late father as a gentle, caring man who refused to criticize her mother. She says that she was so afraid of losing her mother’s approval that she bought into her alienation campaign against her father, including her mother’s systematic attempts to convince her that her father had been abusive. Martin says:

"I still, to this day, have to live with the mean things I said to him. The letters that I wrote to him. There are things I did purposely to hurt him."

Family law mediators J. Michael Bone, Ph.D. and Michael R. Walsh Esq. explain that in PA situations children fear abandonment, and "live in a state of chronic upset and threat of reprisal.” Bone and Walsh note that when children “express positive approval of the absent parent, the consequences can be very serious...The child is continually being put through various loyalty tests…the alienating parent thus forces the child to choose [between] parents...in direct opposition to a child's emotional well-being.”

Some parental alienators go to extreme or even demented lengths. In the Canadian PA case Rogerson v. Tessaro, the Ontario Court of Appeal found that when the children went to visit their father, the mother “failed to inform him about the children's medications, or to give him their prescription drugs, so that they would return home from visits with him sicker than when they left.”

ABC’s John Stossel, who has covered PA on several occasions in recent weeks, describes one “heartbreaking” case he filmed for his TV show 20/20:

“A divorced father went to see his five kids for what he thought would be a full-day visit. He was entitled to that, under court order, and the court also ordered the mother not to discourage the children from spending time with their father. But she clearly had poisoned his children’s minds against him. The father just stood outside his ex-wife’s house and begged his children, ‘Would you like to go out with me today?’ ‘No,’ said one kid after another. Then the mother ordered the kids back into her house.

“What comes through on the tape is the unbridled satisfaction of the mother and the helplessness of the father.”

Parental Alienation is child abuse. Courts need to do more to protect children from alienation, not dismiss it.

Organized Crime Operating in the Child Protection System

NATIONAL ADVISORY ORGANIZED CRIME OPERATING IN THE CHILD PROTECTION SYSTEM


June 29, 2007 Release
This release supercedes all previous dated and undated releases.
by James Roger Brown
Director THE SOCIOLOGY CENTER
www.thesociologycenter.com;
thesociologist@earthlink.net

Five-year-old Florida foster child Rilya Wilson was kidnapped from State custody in February 2001. Florida officials did not detect the kidnapping for fifteen months. The kidnapping went undetected for two reasons, Rilya Wilson was kidnapped by persons knowledgeable of the inner workings of the child protection system, and Florida Department of Children and Families case file record forms were falsified for fifteen months.

Case workers falsely reported Rilya Wilson was in Florida State custody and in good health.

The Rilya Wilson case is not an isolated incident. Falsification of child protection system records is part of a national pattern of organized crime. For one example, Employees of the Florida Department of Children and Families were also implicated in the kidnapping of an Arkansas child that involved falsification of records.

In a June 6, 2002, opinion, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that an infant Arkansas citizen had been illegally transferred to Florida State custody in what was essentially an interstate criminal conspiracy to seize and transport children in complete disregard of State and Federal law. (See Arkansas Department of Human Services v. Cox, Supreme Court of Arkansas No. 01-1021, 349ark, issue 3, sc 9, 6 June 2002 http://courts.state.ar.us/opinions/...606/01-1021.wpd)

The Rilya Wilson case is merely the tip of a criminal iceberg. Beginning about 1973, criminal elements in the mental health and social work professions began cooperating to construct a nationwide organized criminal bureaucracy to exploit children and implement a shared political agenda behind the legislated secrecy of the child protection, juvenile justice, and mental health systems. (For details see EVIDENCE BOOK SUBMITTED TO CONGRESS link on page 9.)

The current result is a nationwide organized criminal operation integrated across the child protection, mental health and social work systems that uses everything from sophisticated science fraud-based "evaluation" instruments structured to produce false positives (see EVIDENCE BOOK) to third-party State service contracts written to sustain a system of structural corruption in which State employees and contract service providers must falsify records and testimony or they will not continue to be employed or paid.

To maintain their existence, organized criminal operations such as these are no different from other bureaucracies that must construct policies, methods, and procedures necessary to sustain daily operations. The only special adaptation required to run criminal operations in government and quasi-government agencies is that organized crime bureaucracy policies, methods, and procedures must be integrated into the policies, methods and procedures of the umbrella agency or program and not be detected as criminal processes.

The existence of organized crime in the child protection system in any given State is not that difficult to detect. Prominent among the indicators (see EVIDENCE BOOK) are:


1. Systematic, consistent falsification of child protection agency records and testimony, contract mental health evaluations and testimony, and social work intervention records and testimony;

2. The annual number of "founded" child abuse allegations can be predicted from the number of conditional federal grant and reimbursement salary fund dollars needed to balance the State child protection agency payroll (the number of children taken into State custody each year will be the number sufficient to generate the federal fund claims necessary to balance the agency payroll); and

3. Third-party contracts to file State child protection agency federal fund claims will contain provisions that only compensate the contractor for increases in federal funds paid to the State over and above the amount paid in the previous contract for such claim filing services.

Inserting a contract provision that links a federal fund claims contractor's compensation to increasing annual federal fund dollars generated over the previous contract period is a classic example of structural corruption. If the contractor fails to increase paid federal fund claims for a specified time period (usually
quarterly), their contract can be cancelled.

The end result is a system in which everyone stays employed only if the annual number of founded child abuse cases always increases and never decreases, or annual paid federal fund claims increases and never decreases.

An important by product of this criminal process for
exploiting children, independent of the true child abuse rate, is the blind political support for the criminal operations generated by the constant flow of conditional federal funds into the respective State's economy.

In the Rilya Wilson case, even the Foster Mother continued to receive and accept payments for the care of Rilya over a year after the child disappeared. Caseworkers reportedly told her to take the money.

An ironic twist is that this corrupt modern child slave trade system is another example of history repeating itself. A criminal bureaucracy previously developed and operated in the Swiss social welfare system from about 1850 to 1950 under the same pretext of protecting children from alleged inadequacies of their parents.

The Swiss Verdingkinder system is described in Peter Neumann's documentary film "Verdingkinder" and Marco Leuenberger's Thesis, "Verdingkinder. Geschichte der armenrechtlichen Kinderfürsorge im Kanton Bern 1847-1945, 211 S., 1991." (An internet search using the term "Verdingkinder" will produce links to some English language articles.)

The Swiss "Verdingkinder" and United States child slave trade systems have the following social processes in common:

1. Poor families are required to register with the Government. (US Public Assistance, Welfare, Medicaid, Medicare and numerous other special programs.)

2. Once registered with the Government, Parents are subjected to ongoing monitoring to determine if "the best interest of the child" is served by removing the child from the home and placing the child in State "protective" custody.

3. Children who age out of the system are not intellectually and emotionally prepared for adult life, especially marital relationships.

4. Decisions about the "best interest of the child" are made by Government employees using vague subjective criteria and State or personal economic interest.

5. Children are auctioned off or distributed under government sanction. (US Child Protection Agencies post pictures of children held for adoption on the internet, and foster parents are enticed with additional household income generated by foster child "support" payments.)

6. Children are physically abused, starved, and malnourished by State and foster custodians.

7. Children are sexually abused by State and foster custodians.

8. Children are murdered by State and foster custodians.

9. Children are economically exploited. (In the Swiss system by the middlemen, farmers and businesses using the child slave labor; In the US system by State employees who wrongfully seize children for federal funds to meet the agency payroll; by psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers filing fraudulent insurance claims; by crime victim therapy service providers filing claims for nonexistent or fictitious child abuse crime victims; and by attorneys, prosecutors, child abuse investigators, juvenile court judges, and civil court judges who exploit false child abuse allegations to sustain their income, power or prestige.)

10. Criminal activity is concealed through falsified records, incomplete records and failure to keep records.

11. Government agencies pay fees and subsidies to State and foster custodians who physically abuse, murder, sexually abuse and economically exploit children.

12. Law enforcement agencies ignore or cover up criminal acts against children by State and foster custodians.

13. When prosecutions do occur for crimes against Verdingkinder or foster children, the punishment is minor compared to the crime.

14. The operation intended to benefit poor families and children becomes an organized criminal enterprise that economically, physically, and sexually exploits children.

15. Government officials and media not directly involved in the criminal activity refuse to believe that a child slave trade could develop in a civilized nation like Switzerland or the United States.

16. The economic exploitation of children in the Swiss Verdingkinder system coincidently did not end until machinery was developed that provided a cheaper means of farm and factory production than child slave labor. The United States child exploitation system will not end without intervention unless States find easier methods of obtaining federal fund revenues equal to the amount currently generated by taking children into State "protective" custody.

17. Both the Swiss and United States child slave trade systems expanded and operated outside of Government control. (The private purchasing and sale of children in the US are conducted by private child brokers and child adoption attorneys.)


Relevant insights can also be extracted from parallels in the embarrassment of the Bush Administration over numerous ignored warnings that Osama bin Laden planned to hijack planes and fly them into buildings, and the embarrassment of Florida Officials having to explain fifteen months of falsified child protection records, sworn court testimony that Rilya Wilson was in Florida State custody and doing fine, and falsified federal fund claims for services delivered to a child who may have been dead the entire time.

After the collapse of the World Trade Center, both the
American Public and terrorists worldwide now know the United States is vulnerable to attack,due in large part to corruption, incompetence and mismanagement in intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

As a consequence of the Rilya Wilson case in Florida, the Public and every child molester, pornographer and other criminals who need children for their misdeeds know that the corruption, incompetence and mismanagement in the child protection system can be exploited as cover to acquire children for their own illicit purposes.


What happened to Rilya Wilson in Florida can, does, and will happen in any State where the current organized criminal exploitation of children is allowed to continue.
Sooner or later other criminals are going to become sufficiently aware of the mechanisms the current child protection system organized criminals use to manage their criminal bureaucracy, that child molesters, pornographers, pimps, and drug smugglers will also be able to exploit the system, as were the people who reportedly kidnapped Rilya Wilson and returned a week later to collect her clothes.

This was the behavior of persons who believed they had no reason to fear being held accountable for kidnapping or any other criminal offense.

Among the obvious criminal opportunities is obtaining information about the illicit activity (falsifying federal claims, official reports, insurance claims, etc.) of individual State employees or licensed professionals, such as psychiatrists and psychologists, and blackmailing or otherwise compelling them to allow access to children for criminal exploitation or perversion.

Of major importance to prosecutors is that the systematic
falsification of records by child protection system crime participants in psychiatry, psychology, social work and
child abuse investigation units, results in the systematic falsification of evidence used in child-related criminal and civil judicial proceedings. (See EVIDENCE BOOK.)

It may be tempting for police and prosecutors not to look too closely at experts and evidence which make convictions easier, but relying on criminals who protect themselves by providing tainted essential services and corrupted evidence to the people who should be arresting and prosecuting them is a house of cards that will collapse locally or nationally at some point.

We have contemporary examples of chaos created by the falsification of evidence in the Los Angeles Police
Department, and the newlydocumented error rate in death row convictions.

Several decades of both Los Angeles and death row cases have to be reviewed and readjudicated. When the disastrous consequences of entering the fourth decade of organized criminal administration of the child protection system are finally disclosed, State Governments and the Federal Government face having to remedy the chaos and carnage caused by malicious prosecutions, false child abuse allegations and convictions, falsified adoptions, bankrupted families, damaged children and adult lives, and the children stolen by State employees and diverted into prostitution and other criminal activities.

In addition to the Swiss Verdingkinder scandal, at least one other historical precedent exists with several parallels to the manner in which the United States child protection system currently engages in the now-documented systematic abuse and atrocities with the tacit approval of State Officials and Federal Agencies and
Officials. From 1976 to 1983, the government of Argentina under the control of a military junta conducted a "Dirty War" against anyone perceived as "leftist."


Just as with child protection agencies, the Argentine Military Junta went after anyone who criticized either the way it operated or its policies. Most of the same types of people targeted by the Military Junta are likewise targeted by child protection agency organized crime managers: the poor, critics of the system, social activists, people who resist personal intimidation and the abuse of fellow citizens, and people who ask too many questions.

In Argentina, thousands of individuals and entire families were rounded up and executed by being beaten to death, shot in the back of the head, or sedated and thrown alive from an airplane over the open ocean. Concurrently, the Argentine Military maintained a list of soldiers wanting children.

Pregnant women taken into custody were kept alive until their babies were born, then executed. Infant children of the pregnant women and murdered families were distributed among the soldiers who killed them. [Criminal investigations and prosecutions of Argentine soldiers involved in the atrocities are still going on.] (See
htp://www.yendor.com/vanished/junta/caraballo.html and
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ht...gentina21.html.)

On October 7, 1976, United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with Argentina's Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti. At the time of this meeting, Congress was preparing to approve sanctions against the Argentine Junta because of widespread reports of human rights abuses. Henry Kissinger communicated to Guzzetti United States Government approval of the Junta's use of mass arrests, torture, and mass executions to deal with suspected leftists.

According to a declassified transcript of the meeting, Kissinger stated: "Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better…

The human rights problem is a growing one. Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help." National Intelligence Archives:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/

Those working to obtain justice for the victims of abuse and atrocities committed by perpetrators embedded in the United States child protection system should keep Kissinger's words in mind as another parallel. Even with the possibility of congressional action on the horizon, reform efforts can be undermined by friendship or economic ties between Federal Officials and State-level cronies directly participating in the child protection system organized crime.

Some of the more brutal foster care abuse and death scandals were cases in which children taken into State custody were placed in the homes of case workers in violation of regulations prohibiting it. In some cases the abuse and deaths occurred in the homes of the very case workers who had seized the children. (See EVIDENCE BOOK.)

One disturbing parallel is that for Argentina's Military Junta and for the United States child protection system, proof of guilt is not a requirement to be placed under government control; allegation or suspicion of guilt alone is sufficient. In both systems, whether you die or survive the process, the life you had before is completely destroyed and you are tainted for the rest of
your life by the mere fact of an allegation or suspicion.

Unless something is done to shut down the organized criminal activity in every State in which it currently exists, Rilya Wilson is not going to be the last horror story to capture national attention. Similar incidents in the future will continue to ruin careers as the Rilya Wilson kidnapping did in Florida. People will end up in prison for crimes far more severe than falsifying a few reports to obtain federal funds for their State, or filing fraudulent insurance claims.

Prosecutors, Legislators, and other State officials who thought they were benefitting their State by ignoring criminal acts in the child protection system which bring federal fund dollars into the State's economy may end up having to face situations far uglier than they ever
thought.

Former Arkansas State Senator Nick Wilson was sentenced to federal prison for his sponsorship of and participation in one such legislated criminal enterprise to exploit children. Several Arkansas attorneys involved in this scam lost their licenses to practice law.

During the 2001 Arkansas Legislative Session, Senate Bill 860, drafted by Arkansas Department of Human Services employees, was discovered to contain provisions that would have required employees to lie about records and facts, even if subpoenaed. The bill was withdrawn once the Legislator duped into being the primary sponsor was made aware of its contents.

An Austin, Texas, DHS Supervisor committed suicide after being arrested for operating a foster child prostitution ring from his office computer. Also, the Texas Comptroller has issued a report on the exploitation and abuse of children in State custody, including some who were forced to live outdoors in tents year-round. (See CHILD SLAVE TRADE PAGE link below.)

Congress is now in the preliminary phase of possibly holding hearings on corruption in the child protection system. Public hearings on the abuse of children and parents involved in the child protection system have been held in at least two States. Reforming the child protection system is currently part of the platform of candidates who are running for public office in at least three States.

For information regarding the status of a possible Congressional Investigation of the child protection system, contact local United States Representatives and Senators. The handwriting may or may not be on the wall now, but child protection system criminals will continue to push the envelope on everything they can get away with until they are stopped and prosecuted. The important issue is how much more obvious, sophisticated, brutal and embarrassing organized crime in the child protection system will be allowed to become before it is addressed - and stopped.

While the current state of knowledge about interlinked organized crime in the child protection, mental health, and social work systems paints a dismal picture, it also reveals practical solutions to the problem of how to arrest and prosecute participants in this organized crime bureaucracy. Information publicly available now makes it possible to catalogue the criminal acts used to sustain the child protection system organized crime bureaucracy.

These criminal acts include but are not limited to:
1. Murder;
2. Manslaughter;
3. Kidnapping;
4. Conspiracy;
5. Blackmail;
6. Terroristic threatening;
7. Witness tampering;
8. Evidence tampering;
9. Perjury;
10. Fraud;
a. Medicaid
b. Medicare
c. Federal grant and reimbursement programs
d. Insurance claims
e. Crime victim reparation claims
f. Psychological testing results
g. Psychological diagnoses
11. Tampering with government records;
12. Falsifying government records;
13. Deceptive and unconscionable trade practices by psychiatric,
psychological
and social work practitioners operating as public businesses;
14. Emotional, mental and physical child abuse;
15. Racketeering;
16. Human trafficking;
17. Production and possession of child pornography;
18. Child prostitution; and
19. Organized crime generated child abuse statistics collected from States and reported to Congress and the public violate the Federal Data Quality
Act.

One simple achievable remedy would be the establishment of a special organized crime task force in each State specifically targeting interlinked organized crime in the child protection, mental health, and social work systems. Associated with this crime control effort would be the enactment of legislation prohibiting science fraud-based insurance claims and the establishment of science fraud detection protocols within State insurance fraud divisions. Currently, no State or Federal Code exists prohibiting the use of science fraud for illicit purposes.

Governors facing State budget deficit crises could find this approach a useful tool for shutting down corrupt agencies and programs with minimum political backlash. What special interest group could publicly protest an effort to shut down organized crime in the child protection, mental health, and social work systems without raising questions about their own motives and credibility?

Creating an organized crime task force to go after criminals in the child protection, mental health, and social work systems, and establishing science fraud detection protocols to control fraudulent psychiatric, psychological, and social work service provider insurance claims are attainable goals for those individuals and groups seeking to end the current atrocities committed in the name of child protection.

Objections that sovereign immunity applies to state employees and expert witness immunity applies to the testimony of mental health and social work practitioners are not valid in many States when gross negligence, gross incompetence, or acting with malice are present.

To provide additional and future updated information on the criminal exploitation of children in the child protection, mental health, and social work systems, a page on THE SOCIOLOGY CENTER web site has been dedicated to monitoring the child slave trade in the United States. The Child Slave Trade Page currently contains information on how to contact the FBI Human Trafficking Task Force; downloadable PDF format copies of some evidence books submitted to Congress (including mine); child protection system criminal intelligence; links to support organizations and other information.

In the hope this National Advisory will alert the public to the organized criminal threat to families concealed behind the veil of child protection system secrecy and help prevent any repeats of the Rilya Wilson horror story, I draw the following material to your attention:

1. The Child Slave Trade Page at
http://www.thesociologycenter.com/slavetrade.html

2. EVIDENCE BOOK SUBMITTED TO CONGRESS: The Compendium of
Documentation of Organized Crime Methods and Procedures Integrated into State and Federal Agencies for the
Purpose of Political and Economic Exploitation of Children and Families Through State and Federal Child Protection, Mental Health, and Social Work Systems. (356 pages summarizing more than ten years research on organized crime methods and procedures in the child protection, mental health and social work systems. (File size: 3.6 MB.) at
http://www.thesociologycenter.com/E.../COMPENDIUM.pdf

2. "Forgotten Children: A Special Report on the Texas Foster Care System" Texas Comptroller, April 2004
http://www.window.state.tx.us/forgottenchildren/

3. "UK firm tried HIV drug on [New York] orphans: GlaxoSmithKline embroiled in scandal in which babies and children were allegedly used as 'laboratory animals'."
Antony Barnett in New York, Sunday April 4, 2004, The Observer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/...1185360,00.html

Contact Information Below :

ALSO: Two national organizations have been working to obtain Congressional and State level hearings on fraud, corruption, and abuse of power in the child protection, mental health, and social work systems. Contact these organizations for information on their current activities and reports:

American Family Rights Association
See "Contact Us" for Board of Directors, attorneys and other contact information at
http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/


Government Watch
Laura Koepke, President
Executive Editor and Publisher, Justice Journal/Bear Valley Bulletin
Published by Government Watch, Inc.
PO Box 1031, Big Bear Lake, CA 92315
Laura Koepke: Phone: 909-585-4633 909-217-1787
Gina Wagner, Vice President: Phone 909-585-4385
Fax: 909-585-5906
E-mail: GovrnWatch@aol.com, JusticeJournal76@aol.com


If I may be of further assistance, please contact me at:
James Roger Brown
Director
THE SOCIOLOGY CENTER
P.O. Box 2075
Little Rock, AR 72115
(501) 374-1788
thesociologist@earthlink.net
www.thesociologycenter.com