The Corrupt Business of "Child Protection". Part Two: Money Changes Everything

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In a wealthy USA suburb, an eight-year-old boy named Michael Shea* jumped from a second-storey bedroom window after he was locked in by a nanny. He was living with his mother after his parents’ divorce. Child Protection Services (CPS) was called by the hospital, an investigation was conducted, and the case was dismissed as soon as CPS discovered that Michael’s father was a billionaire (mafioso operating in the pornography sector). Michael was left in the home with his psychiatric mother and her alimony-funded staff. Meanwhile, he had always been exposed to large quantities of pornography through involvement with his father.

All possible charges of sexual abuse, confinement, neglect, and even his mother’s unfitness due to untreated mental illness were overlooked in the face of his parents’ ability to pay dream teams of top lawyers to fight CPS. The second factor was wealthy family members with whom Michael could have been placed.

Placement in the child’s family or community is the first consideration through the court system and is required as a first measure before a child is placed in foster care or made a Crown Ward or Ward of the State (“Ward”). Crown or State wardship is always the true goal of CPS because the generous government funding received by CPS endures until the Ward is 18 years old – even longer if the Ward has “special needs”.

Creating Easy Targets

On the flip side, a mother in a small town Ontario women’s shelter was struggling to make ends meet when she lost her two children to foster care because of a misrepresentation by the local CPS. Marina* was reported for “confinement” by her children’s school after a teacher overheard the end of a conversation including one of Marina’s kids bragging about a hide-and-seek game: Marina’s son was proudly telling his classmates that he had hidden so well and waited in the closet for half an hour before he was found. CPS questioned the boy in isolation and without permission from his parents. Their (very leading, mostly “yes”/”no”) questions included, “You were in the closet?…Have you been in the closet before?…How many times per week?…Have you ever been in the closet at your grandmother’s house?…” He and his sister were immediately removed from their family. Marina had worked a minimum wage job, and could not pay a lawyer, yet her wages exceeded the allowable limit for Legal Aid. She was then forced to quit her job and go on welfare benefits in order to qualify for a Legal Aid lawyer, causing her to lose her apartment. The financial burden led to her boyfriend’s breakdown and landed Marina in a shelter. Three years later, she is still trying to recover both emotionally and financially.

Even “justifiable” apprehensions, such as situations of physical violence or substance abuse, often fail the children over both short and long-term. Karen* and her sister were taken out of their substance-using family at middle school age, but things went from bad to worse. By age 18, Karen was dependent on psychiatric medications, at risk of diabetes (5’4, 300 pounds), and in a mutually abusive live-in relationship. She admits to having rushed into this current arrangement because she needed to escape her many serial foster homes, where, she says, “they just don’t treat you like one of their own.”

Chicken or the Egg?

In many cases, children in foster care are made into guinea pigs for drug trials, and endure false mental health diagnoses and self-fulfilling behavioural evaluations, as well as ensuring courses of drug therapy in order to provide further income streams to CPS, which receives handsome compensation by drug companies as they help create daily clients for life. Secondary effects of many medications result in dependence and obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes, not to mention the neurological aftermath of chemical imbalances created in situations where psychoactive drugs are administered when there was nothing to correct in the first place.

Young brains are particularly susceptible to permanent and serious damage, considering many receptors for neurotransmitters are not developed by the time these drugs are being inflicted on them. The vulnerable brains of CPS kids are the test sample that allow drug companies to declare “safe” or “not safe” for children, regardless of the consequences, meaning CPS kids are being made into a second class of persons. Families in financial distress – or which are being placed under financial distress by CPS involvement – are treated as nothing more than merchandise, comparable to livestock, in a socioeconomic machine which scarcely differs from state-imposed child prostitution.

In developed countries, which enjoy public health care, and elaborate “Child Protection” programs, families would do well to recognize that it is less the tax base and more the pharmaceutical companies providing the majority of funding. This terrifying proposition is in stride with the cycle of wealth in Family Courts (which preside over CPS cases), wherein courts are kept in business by frivolous CPS actions and many children, unlike corporate interest, are anything but protected. Duty Counsel and numerous Legal Aid lawyers frequently represent their own interests within this incestuous Family Court structure by conceding to the wishes of the CPS in order to please the Court.

DISCLAIMER: This article is intended to be strictly informative and in no way seeks to advise against the reporting of bullying or other child abuse. In all cases, ABUSE (AND SUSPICION OF) MUST BE REPORTED.

Coming soon:

In our next segment, we will examine the role of parents’ disability and other illness as a consideration in CPS intervention and court rulings, and the impotence of Human Rights Law in such cases.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of survivors.

By Carol Ann