Saturday, June 23, 2007

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.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

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

A Parent's Worst Nightmare - CPS abuses in Fairfax/Alexandria Virginia

A Parent's Worst Nightmare - How Northern Virginia CPS accused a innocent father of Abusing his own children. - This story is from Readers Digest January 2007.

"Don't worry, honey, it won't be much longer," Miguel told Alice. Then he kissed Liliana, and she began to coo.

A few days before, Alice had found two little bumps over Liliana's left ribs. They felt bony, and bone problems ran in Alice's family. The couple decided to ask the doctor to do x-rays during the "well baby" visit.

Husband and wife were a study in contrasts: Alice, blonde, outgoing, excitable; Miguel, olive-skinned, quiet, placid. He kept her calm until their turn finally came. Alice took Liliana. Miguel grabbed the baby's diaper bag and toys, and they went into the exam room. It was the last moment of ordinary family routine they would have for the next five years.

"Healthy, four-month-old female, normal growth and development, gaining appropriately but on the smallish side," say the notes of the intern who first examined Liliana on that day, February 3, 2000. The intern dismissed their fears about the bumps, but Alice persisted. A pediatrician, Dr. Paul Reed, agreed to order x-rays.

"I knew as soon as I saw Dr. Reed's face that something was terribly wrong," Alice says. The x-rays showed that several of Liliana's ribs were broken. "These injuries are nonaccidental," Dr. Reed told them. Someone has squeezed your baby, probably to make her stop crying, Alice recalls him saying. The doctors did more tests to check for other injuries. Alice began sobbing loudly.

People in white coats peppered Miguel with questions. What had happened? Did he drink a lot? Get angry? Shake the baby? Miguel was shocked speechless.

Because fractures stemming from compression injuries are often an indicator of child abuse, and noting Miguel's seeming lack of emotion, Dr. Reed considered this a typical case of paternal mistreatment. He gave his opinion to his supervisor, Dr. Barbara Craig, head of the Armed Forces Center for Child Protection.

"We were so young and naive," Alice says now, ruefully. She was 20, Miguel, 28.

The radiologist reading the next round of x-rays said Liliana also had a broken wrist and possibly a broken leg. This report, later found to be inaccurate, further convinced doctors of abuse.

Liliana was admitted to the pediatric unit at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for her protection, and another doctor examined her there. A summary of Liliana's exam relates the following: no swelling, no bruises, no cuts, no burns. No evidence of pain. Well-nourished. Growing well. Not withdrawn. Clean clothes, earrings, painted toenails, very clean and well kept. Smiling, feeding, alert. Both parents attended all OB visits before the birth. Both parents bring her to clinic appointments.

The record also notes Alice mentioned bone problems in her family. Yet, medical experts would later testify, none of the many doctors at the Naval Medical Center or at Walter Reed recorded a thorough medical history, nor did they do a "differential diagnosis" to rule out what, besides abuse, could have caused Liliana's broken ribs. All other tests, including a brain scan, were normal.

Well into the night, a doctor, two social workers from the Alexandria, Virginia, Child Protective Services, two Alexandria police detectives, and a military police officer all questioned the Velasquezes. They asked open-ended questions like, "How do you think this might have happened?"



Arrested
The couple didn't comprehend the jeopardy they were in. During that interview and subsequent ones, they speculated and wondered aloud if it was possible they'd been too rough with the baby. In one session, Miguel told a social worker that he had massaged the baby's stomach when she was constipated. It was a folk treatment in his native San Salvador. His comment was heard in a very different way. What got written down was, "Father admitted to squeezing the baby."

The next day, the couple say, a social worker told them that, in light of Liliana's injuries and the interviews, the baby was going to be put in foster care. If either of them made a scene, it would hurt their chances of getting her back.

Alice began to cry but composed herself enough to write out the baby's schedule. Miguel filled the diaper bag while Alice nursed the baby one last time, and then they carried her to a car waiting in the snowy street. She buckled Liliana into a car seat, and the social worker closed the door. And Alice lost it. She sprinted after the car, crying, "They took my baby!" Miguel ran after her to stop her, and they both crumpled onto the slush-covered sidewalk, weeping.

A series of emergency hearings took place over the next few days. Each time the Velasquezes appeared in court, friends, co-workers and members of their church came as character witnesses. Yet social workers did not interview any of them to ask what sort of parents the Velasquezes were.

A friend searched the Internet to find out what childhood diseases might result in broken bones. One condition jumped out: osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), "brittle bone disease."

OI is caused by a defect in the production of collagen, the protein that holds bones together. A person with OI doesn't have enough or has poor-quality collagen. In mild forms, a doctor looking at an x-ray can't always tell if the bones are right or not. Broken bones are often the first sign of the disease. "I've had parents tell me about breaking a baby's leg when they lifted them by the ankles to change a diaper," says Heller An Shapiro, executive director of the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. "We get calls about false accusations of abuse all the time."

On February 15, Alice told Dr. Barbara Craig why she suspected OI, listing her own history of broken bones. She would later ask that Liliana be tested -- but the infant never was.

"Please test her!" Alice begged every doctor and social worker she encountered. "All I heard was, 'You're just making excuses for your husband. You'd better cooperate if you want your baby back,'" Alice says.

At their first emotional reunion with Liliana, in a visitors room at the Alexandria Social Services office, the Velasquezes noticed she was wearing the same clothes she'd worn when she was taken away the week before.

"Maybe the foster provider washed them," Alice said hopefully to her husband. But when they changed Liliana, they knew it wasn't so. Her undergarment was stained and smelled bad. Alice says the baby had a diaper rash so severe her bottom was bloody.

The Alexandria police knew where and when the Velasquezes were seeing their baby. That's when they decided to arrest Miguel for felony child abuse.



Osteogenesis Imperfecta
Miguel was released on bond, but more problems began. He had been well into the process of becoming an American citizen. Now, because he had been charged with a felony, he faced possible deportation.

At her job at the Pentagon, Alice was reprimanded for crying on duty. Her weight plummeted. She fainted during physical training.

Every time the couple saw Liliana, they felt frantic. Their baby looked dirty, had diaper rash, or seemed feverish or weak. Once, they saw mold in her bottle. She didn't seem to be growing. The Velasquezes say they reported all this to their social worker and their court-appointed lawyers. Little was done; nothing changed.

In the spring, the public defender in Miguel's criminal case finally got a court order to test the child. The results didn't come back until September. But when they did, they confirmed Liliana had osteogenesis imperfecta type I. The main symptom: fractures.

When he heard about the diagnosis, the prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Roger Canaff, consulted Dr. Craig. She wrote later in a memo that the test was "experimental in nature," and that doctors looking at the x-rays of a child with OI should see evidence of the faulty bones. Liliana's bones, she said, looked "completely normal." Other military doctors, then and later on the witness stand, said the same.

In fact, the test of bone collagen had been the "gold standard" for OI since the late 1980s. Insurance companies routinely reimbursed for it. It was very reliable. If a test is negative for OI, there is a chance a child might still have the disease, but there are no false positives. The military doctors were simply wrong in their beliefs.

But then the doctors took the position that even if Liliana did have OI, she still had been physically abused. E-mails between prosecutor Canaff and Dr. Craig said that the Velasquezes "lie and exaggerate," make "bizarre statements" and "cannot be trusted."

Canaff offered to reduce the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor if Miguel would plead guilty. Miguel responded that he had not harmed his child and would never say he had.

In October 2000, about a month after the OI diagnosis, Alice and Miguel found a large, festering burn on the top of Liliana's right foot. The child was still in foster care. They photographed the burn and went before a judge, showing the pictures and citing other failures they perceived in her care. They wanted Liliana back. Failing that, they wanted her in a different foster home.

They lost.

A few months later, the social workers refused to let the Velasquezes see Liliana at all unless they agreed not to take anything but family photos, and not to change her clothes.

By this time in the ordeal, Alice's weight had dropped from 140 pounds to 82. She had to take a hardship discharge from the Army. That meant they had no income and no health insurance -- and Alexandria Social Services was charging them almost $700 a month for Liliana's child support. Miguel still had immigration issues, and his name had been put on Virginia's "abuser" registry. It became nearly impossible for him to find work.

Alice and Miguel had not seen their daughter for two months when they learned just before Christmas that she was in the hospital. Liliana had been brought in by ambulance, unconscious. Her blood sugar count was low. Seemingly she hadn't been fed.

A nurse privately told Alice, "Your baby has been hospitalized here many times before." Then she explained how to get Liliana's hospital records.

Alice discovered the baby had been hospitalized a total of seven times, often for dehydration. Neither the Velasquezes, Liliana's court-appointed attorney, nor her pediatrician had been informed.



Last Hope
A few days later at the hospital, Alice says, a social worker told them that if they didn't confess to causing Liliana's injuries, they might never get her back. "Pretty soon, we'll put Liliana up for adoption."

Giving in to the will of the bureaucracies aligned against them might have been the easiest way out. Alice and Miguel were penniless. Their church was feeding them and paying their rent. A long list of attorneys had refused to help them with a case against the state. They did not give in.

Fortunately, about that time they were referred to Dorothy Isaacs, a partner at Surovell Markle Isaacs & Levy. She agreed to take their case.

After more than a decade in the law, a lot of it in divorce court, Isaacs is no bleeding heart. She listened to Alice and Miguel, then read their documents and checked their backgrounds. And she grew enraged. "I believe there are a few things I was put on the planet to do," Isaacs says. "I came to feel getting Liliana back and clearing Miguel's name were on the list."

Isaacs first helped get Liliana moved to a different foster home. Then, in July of 2001, ten months after the OI diagnosis and 17 months after she had first been taken from them, Liliana came home. By spring of 2002, the Velasquezes had formal, legal custody.

Late in the summer of 2004, the Virginia Court of Appeals overturned the finding of abuse against Miguel, essentially declaring that the Department of Social Services had made an error. It was the first such ruling on an abuse case in the history of the state.

It took two more months to get Miguel's name off the state's central registry of abusers. "I owe Dorothy Isaacs everything," Miguel says softly. "She gave me back my baby. Then she gave me back my name."

Finally, Isaacs filed suit in federal district court against the government, accusing the doctors who had treated Liliana of medical negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and malicious prosecution.

On October 11, 2005, Isaacs and her co-counsel began laying out the details of how the family had been shattered. After reviewing a thousand pages of records, experts in both child abuse and OI concluded the military doctors "breached the standards of care" by too quickly assuming Liliana had been abused by her father, by not doing a differential diagnosis, by not testing her, and then by insisting she had been abused even after the OI diagnosis was made.

Even an expert witness hired by the military testified that the test used to determine Liliana's OI was reliable.

A settlement was reached, but there was no assignment of wrongdoing. The Velasquezes were, however, awarded $950,000. About half went for legal fees and expenses. A trust fund of $150,000 was set aside for Liliana. As far as is publicly known, no one at the hospitals or in social services was fired or reprimanded. The foster-care giver was not found negligent.

After the Velasquezes paid off their spiraling bills, they used the remaining money to buy a house for their family, which now also includes Tahlia, 5, and Korbin, 2. Tahlia has OI; her brother does not. Liliana, now 7, still has bad dreams but does not show overt problems arising from her terrible ordeal. She is not in therapy. She's at home with her parents, who are trying to give her a normal life.

After the papers had been signed, Judge Richard D. Bennett read a statement into the record outlining the "living nightmare" the Velasquezes had endured. He encouraged Miguel to become a citizen. Then the judge said something rarely heard in a courtroom, "I apologize on behalf of the United States government," and he came down off the bench and shook their hands.

Links:

Ms. Shannon Traore of Fairfax CPS colludes with Racist Lawyers in Virginia to fabricate Child Abuse.

Profile of Racist Lawyer Robert Machen

Shannon Traore aka Shannon Tyler - How this white collar child abuser manufactured child abuse.

Fairfax Lawyers crusades for Virginia's bygone laws

Abused by Judges, Lawyers and Judges