Government wants your children

Every child is our child.  - UNICEF

Did you know that 4500 children are seized from their parents EVERY DAY in this country by our government ? Only 500 are for substantiated acts of abuse or neglect. 

Why are 4000 children a day taken away from non-abusive homes?

Sad Irony: This mural greets parents as they enter or leave the Northampton Massachusetts Juvenile Court, where their children are taken by Social Services.

 

 

What is the Problem?

       All across the USA the system mandated to protect children from abuse/neglect is snatching thousands of children a day from decent, loving homes and parents innocent of maltreating their children. (Child "Protective" Services is known by different initials in different states, e.g., DSS=Dept. of Social Services, DCFS=Dept. of Child & Family Services, etc.). Both state and federal laws have clear guidelines that children are only to be taken out of their homes as a last resort, and after repeated substantiated ACTUAL acts of abuse/neglect, when the child is at "imminent risk of serious harm" and when "reasonable efforts" have been made to ameliorate conditions that led to abuse/neglect.
       However, what is actually happening is that this agency is arbitrarily, and illegally, seizing children from their homes based on the most tenuous and frivolous of reasons: e.g., poverty issues, head lice, spanking, poor housekeeping, "parents argue in front of child," normal/common injuries incurred in the normal course of childhood play. If a normal, concerned parent takes their child to the E.R. too often, or appears "overly 'involved/interested' " in the child's treatment (and who wouldn't be?!) they are now being reported for "Munchausens-by-proxy Syndrome." Almost all cases of Brittlebone disease (OI) are reported as child abuse, as are SIDS. A little girl with yeast, urinary tract infections, or bedwetting, will most likely result in a sexual abuse allegation—as do those cute "nudie" pictures that EVERY parent takes of the kids in the tub or playing in the sprinkler. (Nev's note: They show them on America's Funniest Home Videos for crying out loud!)
 

       No verification, marks, injuries or bruises are needed. Children are not examined by independent medical personnel to document evidence of abuse or neglect. Children are isolated and questioned alone by caseworkers who employ the tactics of leading questioning, pressure and manipulation. Caseworkers may strip children and examine them in a state of nudity.

       OUR CHILDREN DON'T NEED THIS KIND OF PROTECTION.

       Without warning, children are whisked away from their homes and schools, their parents, families, friends, toys, pets, neighborhoods—everything that is safe, comforting and familiar to the child. Uniformed police officers (who must submit to the whims of CPS) may accompany caseworkers and children may be physically dragged, hysterical, out of their homes, and babies are literally pulled screaming from their mothers' arms. (We do not make this up. Scenarios represented are from actual cases. We have numerous cases where mothers hid in closets holding their babies protectively, only to have the above scenario ensue.)

       THIS IS AN ACT OF TERRORISM AGAINST OUR CHILDREN!

This type of behavior by government agents is intolerable and unconscionable. The abrupt and brutal severance of parental bonds in this manner is extremely terrorizing and traumatizing to children. It is cruel and inhumane and leaves lifelong scars. Every vestige of security and comfort within the child is shattered forever. The child's belief in their parents' ability to protect them is broken forever. Small children believe their parents to be all-powerful, so when parents are not able to stop the strangers from abducting the child, a fundamental belief system within the child is broken forever. As parents stand by placidly—under threat of arrest and never seeing their children again—small children may believe their parents "gave them away" because they were "bad." This is hideous psychological abuse.

       WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?

       The majority of parents are never alleged to have committed, nor are they charged with any ACTUAL specific acts of child abuse or neglect; rather, case files are built upon vague, obscure insinuations, innuendo; bizarre pseudo-psychological babble; and fabrications, distortions and inaccuracies. Court proceedings deteriorate into an exercise in character assassination of the parents, perjury, gross violation of law and due process, and obstruction of justice. Judges should be taking control of their own courtrooms; objecting and striking testimony based on relevance, and upholding their judicial canons by ensuring that the laws and Constitution are upheld, and procedural error is not occurring. But CPS rules the courtroom and the entire process is a sham.
 

Did you know that in Massachusetts, 20-25 CHILDREN ARE SEIZED EVERY DAY to uphold the $500 million annual budget?

    Many people are baffled by the bizarre allegations by CPS, particularly when they involve “psychological” allegations. In other words, rather than claiming specific, actual acts of child abuse or neglect, CPS will claim that the behaviors of the child are indications that there is some sort of obscure, hidden abuse in the home, and the child’s behavior is a result of some kind of trauma from the environment within the home. 

Welcome to Junk Psychology for Dollars

The children are “acting out their inability to verbalize their trauma”. This is called the ”Clinical Model”.  CPS workers consider themselves “clinicians”. This is a marvelous concept for them because they can conveniently stretch the boundaries of definition to include ANY human behavior. (I call it an ingenious marketing scheme). Using the clinical model they can claim that any or all behaviors have some obscure meaning.  If your child is outgoing, active, quiet, placid, obedient, disobedient, neat, messy, loud, temperamental, or easy-going...EVERYTHING has some deep, dark, bizarre “meaning”, nothing can just be normal, predictable human behavior as it has been for the past six thousand years that the human race has, somehow, managed to birth & raise children without socialist workers in our homes telling us how to do it. However, the clinical model is necessary to support the CPS theory that ALL parents are inadequate and abusive, therefore children must be raised by the State.

The problems with the clinical model are many:

1)            Human behavior may have many different causes, i.e.: genetic, bio-chemical, neurological, emotional/psychological. Other than physiological damage to the brain as a result of physical trauma (which does not necessarily mean it was inflicted), there is no expert in the world who can determine cause.

 2)            Human behaviors encompass a wide spectrum - both positive and negative. Conflict is part of the human condition. Everything doesn’t have to have a “reason” or “meaning”, most is, well...just human behavior.

3)            Psychology is a SOFT SCIENCE, meaning it is comprised of theory and interpretation, as opposed to a HARD SCIENCE, like medicine or forensics, which can be proven by concrete means (like an x-ray), cat scan, or DNA. With a soft science we are using subjective opinions, rather than material facts that can be proven with concrete evidence. Interpretation can be whatever the interpreter wants it do be, which could be influenced by their motives. In CPS cases the “experts” usually are from agencies which hold multi- million dollar contracts with CPS, and are raping Medicaid by enforcing unnecessary, inappropriate, and excessive services which they fraudulently triple bill Medicaid for. Many of these places exist SOLELY on their CPS referrals. So, their motive is PROFIT. CPS dictates to their contracted vendors what they want their reports/testimony to say.

4)         CPS workers are not trained, licensed psychologists. However, even if they were, see above.

5)         A soft science, being subjective opinion and interpretation, cannot be either proven or disproven, and therefore cannot be used as a basis for the removal of children from their homes

Adoption Bonuses: The Money Behind the Madness
DSS and affiliates rewarded for breaking up families

By Nev Moore

Child "protection" is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12 billion a year on it. 

The money goes to tens of thousands of a) state employees, b) collateral professionals, such as lawyers, court personnel, court investigators, evaluators and guardians, judges, and c) DSS contracted vendors such as counselors, therapists, more "evaluators", junk psychologists, residential facilities, foster parents, adoptive parents, MSPCC, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, YMCA, etc. This newspaper is not big enough to list all of the people in this state who have a job, draw a paycheck, or make their profits off the kids in DSS custody. 

In this article I explain the financial infrastructure that provides the motivation for DSS to take people’s children – and not give them back. 

In 1974 Walter Mondale promoted the Child Abuse and Prevention Act which began feeding massive amounts of federal funding to states to set up programs to combat child abuse and neglect. From that came Child "Protective" Services, as we know it today. After the bill passed, Mondale himself expressed concerns that it could be misused. He worried that it could lead states to create a "business" in dealing with children. 

Then in 1997 President Clinton passed the "Adoption and Safe Families Act." The public relations campaign promoted it as a way to help abused and neglected children who languished in foster care for years, often being shuffled among dozens of foster homes, never having a real home and family. In a press release from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services dated November 24, 1999, it refers to "President Clinton’s initiative to double by 2002 the number of children in foster care who are adopted or otherwise permanently placed." 

It all sounded so heartwarming. We, the American public, are so easily led. We love to buy stereotypes; we just eat them up, no questions asked. But, my mother, bless her heart, taught me from the time I was young to "consider the source." In the stereotype that we’ve been sold about kids in foster care, we picture a forlorn, hollow-eyed child, thin and pale, looking up at us beseechingly through a dirt streaked face. Unconsciously, we pull up old pictures from Life magazine of children in Appalachia in the 1930s. We think of orphans and children abandoned by parents who look like Manson family members. We play a nostalgic movie in our heads of the little fellow shyly walking across an emerald green, manicured lawn to meet Ward and June Cleaver, his new adoptive parents, who lead him into their lovely suburban home. We imagine the little tyke’s eyes growing as big as saucers as the Cleavers show him his very own room, full of toys and sports gear. And we just feel so gosh darn good about ourselves. 

Now it’s time to wake up to the reality of the adoption business. 

Very few children who are being used to supply the adoption market are hollow-eyed tykes from Appalachia. Very few are crack babies from the projects. [Oh… you thought those were the children they were saving? Think again]. When you are marketing a product you have to provide a desirable product that sells. In the adoption business that would be nice kids with reasonably good genetics who clean up good. An interesting point is that the Cape Cod & Islands office leads the state in terms of processing kids into the system and having them adopted out. More than the inner city areas, the projects, Mission Hill, Brockton, Lynn, etc. Interesting… 

With the implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, President Clinton tried to make himself look like a humanitarian who is responsible for saving the abused and neglected children. The drive of this initiative is to offer cash "bonuses" to states for every child they have adopted out of foster care, with the goal of doubling their adoptions by 2002, and sustaining that for each subsequent year. They actually call them "adoption incentive bonuses," to promote the adoption of children. 

Where to Find the Children

A whole new industry was put into motion. A sweet marketing scheme that even Bill Gates could envy. Now, if you have a basket of apples, and people start giving you $100 per apple, what are you going to do? Make sure that you have an unlimited supply of apples, right? 

The United States Department of Health & Human Services administers Child Protective Services. To accompany the ASF Act, the President requested, by executive memorandum, an initiative entitled Adoption 2002, to be implemented and managed by Health & Human Services. The initiative not only gives the cash adoption bonuses to the states, it also provides cash adoption subsidies to adoptive parents until the children turn eighteen. 

Everybody makes money. If anyone really believes that these people are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, then I’ve got some bad news for you. The fact that this program is run by HHS, ordered from the very top, explains why the citizens who are victims of DSS get no response from their legislators. It explains why no one in the Administration cares about the abuse and fatalities of children in the "care" of DSS, and no one wants to hear about the broken arms, verbal abuse, or rapes. They are just business casualties. It explains why the legislators I’ve talked to for the past three years look at me with pity. Because I’m preaching to the already damned. 

The legislators have forgotten who funds their paychecks and who they need to account to, as has the Governor. Because it isn’t the President. It’s us. 

How DSS Is Helped

The way that the adoption bonuses work is that each state is given a baseline number of expected adoptions based on population. 

For every child that DSS can get adopted, there is a bonus of $4,000 to $6,000. 

But that is just the starting figure in a complex mathematical formula in which each bonus is multiplied by the percentage that the state has managed to exceed its baseline adoption number. The states must maintain this increase in each successive year. [Like compound interest.] The bill reads: "$4,000 to $6,000 will be multiplied by the amount (if any) by which the number of foster child adoptions in the State exceeds the base number of foster child adoptions for the State for the fiscal year." In the "technical assistance" section of the bill it states that, "the Secretary [of HHS] may, directly or through grants or contracts, provide technical assistance to assist states and local communities to reach their targets for increased numbers of adoptions for children in foster care." The technical assistance is to support "the goal of encouraging more adoptions out of the foster care system; the development of best practice guidelines for expediting the termination of parental rights; the development of special units and expertise in moving children toward adoption as a permanent goal; models to encourage the fast tracking of children who have not attained 1 year of age into pre-adoptive placements; and the development of programs that place children into pre-adoptive placements without waiting for termination of parental rights." 

In the November press release from HHS it continues, " HHS awarded the first ever adoption bonuses to States for increases in the adoption of children from the public foster care system." Some of the other incentives offered are "innovative grants" to reduce barriers to adoption [i.e., parents], more State support for adoptive families, making adoption affordable for families by providing cash subsides and tax credits. 

A report from a private think tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis, reads: "The way the federal government reimburses States rewards a growth in the size of the program instead of the effective care of children." Another incentive being promoted is the use of the Internet to make adoption easier. Clinton directed HHS to develop an Internet site to "link children in foster care with adoptive families." So we will be able to window shop for children on a government web site. If you don’t find anything you like there, you can surf on over to the "Adopt Shoppe." 

If you prefer to actually be able to kick tires instead of just looking at pictures you could attend one of DSS’s quaint "Adoption Fairs," where live children are put on display and you can walk around and browse. Like a flea market to sell kids. If one of them begs you to take him home you can always say, "Sorry. Just looking." The incentives for government child snatching are so good that I’m surprised we don’t have government agents breaking down people’s doors and just shooting the parents in the heads and grabbing the kids. But then, if you need more apples you don’t chop down your apple trees. 

Benefits for Foster Parents

That covers the goodies the State gets. Now let’s have a look at how the Cleavers make out financially after the adoption is finalized. 

After the adoption is finalized, the State and federal subsidies continue. The adoptive parents may collect cash subsidies until the child is 18. If the child stays in school, subsidies continue to the age of 22. There are State funded subsidies as well as federal funds through the Title IV-E section of the Social Security Act. The daily rate for State funds is the same as the foster care payments, which range from $410-$486 per month per child. Unless the child can be designated "special needs," which of course, they all can. 

According to the NAATRIN State Subsidy profile from DSS, "special needs" may be defined as: "Physical disability, mental disability, emotional disturbance; a significant emotional tie with the foster parents where the child has resided with the foster parents for one or more years and separation would adversely affect the child’s development if not adopted by them." [But their significant emotional ties with their parents, since birth, never enter the equation.] 

Additional "special needs" designations are: a child twelve years of age or older; racial or ethnic factors; child having siblings or half-siblings. In their report on the State of the Children, Boston’s Institute for Children says: "In part because the States can garner extra federal funds for special needs children the designation has been broadened so far as to become meaningless." "Special needs" children may also get an additional Social Security check. 

The adoptive parents also receive Medicaid for the child, a clothing allowance and reimbursement for adoption costs such as adoption fees, court and attorney fees, cost of adoption home study, and "reasonable costs of food and lodging for the child and adoptive parents when necessary to complete the adoption process." Under Title XX of the Social Security Act adoptive parents are also entitled to post adoption services "that may be helpful in keeping the family intact," including "daycare, specialized daycare, respite care, in-house support services such as housekeeping, and personal care, counseling, and other child welfare services". [Wow! Everything short of being knighted by the Queen!] 

The subsidy profile actually states that it does not include money to remodel the home to accommodate the child. But, as subsidies can be negotiated, remodeling could possibly be accomplished under the "innovative incentives to remove barriers to adoption" section. The subsidy regulations read that "adoption assistance is based solely on the needs of the child without regard to the income of the family." What an interesting government policy when compared to the welfare program that the same child’s mother may have been on before losing her children, and in which she may not own anything, must prove that she has no money in the bank; no boats, real estate, stocks or bonds; and cannot even own a car that is safe to drive worth over $1000. This is all so she can collect $539 per month for herself and two children. The foster parent who gets her children gets $820 plus. We spit on the mother on welfare as a parasite who is bleeding the taxpayers, yet we hold the foster and adoptive parents [who are bleeding ten times as much from the taxpayers] up as saints. The adoptive and foster parents aren’t subjected to psychological evaluations, ink blot tests, MMPI’s, drug & alcohol evaluations, or urine screens as the parents are. 

Adoption subsidies may be negotiated on a case by case basis. [Anyone ever tried to "negotiate" with the Welfare Department?] There are many e-mail lists and books published to teach adoptive parents how to negotiate to maximize their subsidies. As one pro writes on an e-mail list: "We receive a subsidy for our kids of $1,900 per month plus another $500 from the State of Florida. We are trying to adopt three more teens and we will get subsidies for them, too. It sure helps out with the bills." 

I can’t help but wonder why we don’t give this same level of support to the children’s parents in the first place? According to Cornell University, about 68% of all child protective cases "do not involve child maltreatment." The largest percentage of CPS/DSS cases are for "deprivation of necessities" due to poverty. So, if the natural parents were given the incredible incentives and services listed above that are provided to the adoptive parents, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the causes for removing children in the first place would be eliminated? How many less children would enter foster care in the first place? The child protective budget would be reduced from $12 billion to around $4 billion. Granted, tens of thousands of social workers, administrators, lawyers, juvenile court personnel, therapists, and foster parents would be out of business, but we would have safe, healthy, intact families, which are the foundation of any society. 

That’s just a fantasy, of course. The reality is that maybe we will see Kathleen Crowley’s children on the government home-shopping-for-children web site and some one out there can buy them.

May is national adoption month. To support "Adoption 2002," the U.S. Postal Service is issuing special adoption stamps. Let us hope they don’t feature pictures of kids who are for sale. I urge everyone to boycott these stamps and register complaints with the post office.

I know that I’m feeling pretty smug and superior about being part of such a socially advanced and compassionate society. How about you?

The Money Behind the Madness

DSS: Social Engineers of the Brave New World

 The questioning mind might wonder why the federal government continues to enable this terribly dysfunctional and destructive system that harms and kills more children than it “saves.” This leads us to the next phase: the madness behind the federal money.

It’s no surprise to any of us (is it?) that there are many people who will sell their souls for a little bit of dirty money. Under the label of “liberal”, these brave new socialists are control freaks who are working out their own inner feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy by dominating others. These are the soldiers, passive-aggressive drones who tell you: “We’re here to ‘help’ you  - whether you like it or not.” It’s easy to seduce small-minded, bitter people by offering a little money and unlimited power. The power to harm - without consequences - is irresistible to many.

Behind the money is a faction of people who are intent on bringing to fruition Aldous Huxley’s nightmare vision of a brave new world: a homogenized population of compliant, controllable, government-raised citizens.

Reported in Detail
Massachusetts News reported all of this in detail in its August 2000 edition, including the work of Dr. C. Henry Kemp and his protégé, Richard Krugman, who was chairman of the U.S. Advisory Board  on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1991. (See “home visitation” on our library archives.)

The elite behind this movement are narcissistic men and women who wish to see the United States under a totalitarian regime which, of course, will not apply to them, only to the general population. The architects and engineers of this plan are, in reality, about as “liberal” as Pol Pot or Idi Amin. The plan is being implemented through the bill entitled “Goals 2000” which was enacted in 1994.

It’s the end result of thirty years of work by others who work out of the public eye. Goals 2000 was presented as “education reform.” Considering that our kids graduate from high school not knowing how to read or write, on the surface it sounds like a good thing. It sounds as if the education system will be reformed to bring back higher standards, which would be the logical inference. But, the real intent of Goals 2000 is to “dumb down” our children, rather than to raise their intellectual level.

Goals 2000 is about much more than just education reform. It is the blueprint of a plan to take control of our nation’s children - the next generation of adults. A chilling clue to its true intent is that, among its proponents it is sub-titled: “the Restructuring of American Society - from Cradle to Grave.” The government will be the “parent” of every citizen born in the United States. Each citizen will have an electronic portfolio that begins at birth and will track the person throughout his life. Their education and future place in the work force will be determined by the government. The schools will subject all children to psychological testing. Every parent will have a social worker who will make home visits, conduct a family assessment, and record “risk factors.” Risk factors include not enough toys, too many toys, birth of a sibling, death or divorce in the family, homeschooling, etc.

The unholy trinity that is enforcing Goals 2000 is: Child Protective Services (CPS), known as DSS in Massachusetts, the Home Visitation Program (see the August 2000 edition of MassNews), and Outcome Based Education (OBE).

The public is deliberately being kept in the dark as to how these elements are connected because the original proponents of this plan stated that it must be implemented quietly. Why is the intent of OBE to “dumb down” our children? Because a “dumbed down” citizen will not have the capability of independent thinking, will be less likely to challenge, and is therefore more easily controlled. OBE is also responsible for eroding values, boundaries, and morals. The schools, while paying lip-service to the need for discipline and structure in child rearing, in practice undermine parental authority and any form of discipline, self-restraint, or values that parents try to instill in their children. Children are being taught that they must accept the state’s politically correct ideas rather than their families’ values and that their parents do not have the right to discipline them or make any decisions for them.

OBE amounts to thought reform - and thought reform is mind control. The December 1999 edition of WorldNetDaily contained an excellent review by Samuel L. Blumenfeld, a scholar who lives in Waltham, on The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, a book written by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. Blumenfeld wrote: “Anyone who has any lingering hope that what educators have been doing is a result of error, accident, or stupidity will be shocked by the way American social engineers have systematically gone about destroying the intellect of millions of American children for the purpose of leading the American people into a socialist world government controlled by behavioral and social scientists.”

Example Close to Home
An example of deliberate dumbing down occurred close to home recently when my assistant, Stacie Hevener, noticed that her 9-year-old daughter’s graded homework contained misspelled words that the teacher hadn’t corrected. When Stacie called the teacher to ask her why the spelling errors weren’t corrected, the teacher said it wasn’t important.

While OBE and DSS stories initially sound nonsensical and far-fetched – all logic and reason turned upside down – they fall into place when considered in the context of implementing a socialist agenda. To gain control of the populace the government must break down the existing systems that give people strength, character, and community cohesion: family, marriage, faith, and intellect. This explains the puzzling fact that DSS is not targeting the drug-ridden ghettos where many families do live in filth and chaos and many children are truly neglected and abused. Those families are already broken down, and that is what DSS’ role is - to act as the jackboots who will enforce compliance by the citizens and, ultimately, break down the institution of family until it is eliminated completely leaving individuals isolated, vulnerable and dependent on the government.

So, instead of saving children who are abused, neglected, and abandoned, DSS targets Christians, homeschoolers, and families with strong marriages where two parents are committed to raising their children to be decent and self-sufficient, with a solid foundation of values and the capability to think independently. Most of us still believe that is the caring and responsible way to raise children, but this is exactly what the government doesn’t want, as that takes the control away from Big Brother. During the Communist takeovers in Russia and China, the aristocracy and the intellectuals were murdered en masse as they would be the people most likely to see the larger picture and be capable of organizing to halt it. By the time the average working citizen, distracted by the details of daily survival, sees what’s happening and stands to defend his freedom, it’s too late. It’s interesting to add the gun control issue into the equation, as disarming citizens is a key factor for successful government control. We have plenty of gun-control laws already, the problem is that only law-abiding citizens follow the law, and those aren’t the people we need to worry about. Obviously, a person who has no compunction about shooting a stranger in the head is not worried about violating other laws.

There is no question that there is a powerful anti-father agenda in this country today, but we need to recognize that the anti-father agenda is a component of the anti-family agenda. The vicious feminist movement not only attacks men, but also attacks women who desire to be in a marriage and raise a family with their husbands. By removing husbands, the government can create isolation and vulnerability in women, as well as making them financially dependent on the state. Children may be questioned about whether their parents ever argue or yell. Any conflict or disagreement between spouses is documented as “domestic violence” and opens up a whole new funding floodgate.

Documented in Our Case Files
Anyone who thinks I am exaggerating can see copies of service plans from our case files which state “parents will not yell” and “parents will not have loud or angry arguments.” All people disagree at some time or another. Most people, at some time, become angry, argue and even raise their voices. Conflict is part of the human condition. Children have witnessed their parents argue for millions of years. It is not always comfortable, but not necessarily damaging either. Perhaps, by witnessing things we learn how to do things differently. By grossly stretching the boundaries of definition for domestic violence, DSS has managed to remove thousands of men from their homes and from the lives of their children. There is plenty of sound, scientific literature on the negative effects of fatherless households on children, and the degree to which fatherlessness contributes to the emotional and behavioral decline of children. That is the goal of DSS, backed by the feminists.

This begins to explain why the funding to “combat domestic violence” is channeled through DSS. It is an anti-family, anti-Christian, pro-feminist, pro-gay organization. This is far, far removed from the original purpose of protecting children from abuse and serious neglect that place a child at “imminent risk of serious harm.” Their function is to act as social engineers enforcing a plan of “social restructuring” through coercion, threats, and intimidation by seizing or threatening to seize, our children. Remember, it is DSS who the police, the schools, the day care centers and the doctors call to turn parents in, not necessarily for acts of abuse or neglect, but because the parents are resistant to enforced government programs. Enforced programs such as home visitation, parent “training,” drugging or unnecessary vaccinations, explicit sexual instruction or participation in batterers “treatment” by parents. The threat of having your children seized, or never seeing them again, is a powerful weapon to force citizens to submit to government control.         

While breaking down the intellectual development and moral fiber of our children at school, the schools are also subversively intruding into our homes. Many shocked parents are reporting bizarre and invasive questionnaires given to their children in school. Children may be asked if their parents argue or “yell,” if the parents drink, if daddy travels on business, or if there has been a death in the family and if any of the above frighten or upset the child. These are all considered “risk factors” in the Goals 2000 family assessment and will red flag a family for DSS intervention. Home visitation social workers will also note allergies, mother being overweight, baby crying, and letting kids stay up too late as “risk factors”.

YMCA Has Joined in
When our daughter was ten, her school called and told me that the YMCA was offering an after school  “adventure” course on the grounds of their summer camp. It would involve the rope course and other outdoor, physical activities. This was offered during the winter so we thought it would be a great chance for her to beat the winter indoor doldrums. The YMCA sent home paperwork for us to complete. I was expecting the usual forms for contact information, emergency contacts, medical information. Instead I received a four-page interrogation. After name/address/child’s age, the third question was: “Has there been a history of foster care placement?” Some of the rest of the questions asked if any of the following applied to our child:

√ Poor attitude towards authority

√ Swearing

√ Yelling

√ Argumentative

√ Listens to first request (are there really children who do this?)

√ Family history of drug, alcohol, or tobacco use

√ Poor choice of friends

√ Please include any police involvement or arrests (of child’s)  

√ Age at first arrest

√ DSS contact

√ Fire setting

√ Diagnosed mental health issues

√ Sexual identity issues

Bear in mind that this questionnaire was for 9- and 10-year-old little girls. When I said that I felt the form to be inappropriate and invasive and that I would not fill out anything other than necessary information, our daughter was denied participation.

Licensing of Parents
In addition to the Home Visitation program, which brings the government in control of the child before school age, Goals 2000 is being implemented through parent licensing, parent-teacher compacts, and parental report cards issued by the schools. These programs, under various names, are either in place or being proposed across the nation. Parental Licensing is still a point of controversial discussion, although legislation to pass it into law has been submitted in other states.

The government will determine who may have children and who may not. Jack C. Westman, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin and author of Licensing Parents: Can We Prevent Child Abuse?, explains. “A parent license would place the responsibility on parents to be competent. The burden of proof would be on the parents to demonstrate that they are not abusing and neglecting their children rather than on the state to prove through quasi-legal proceedings that parents are unfit after they have damaged their children.” So, parents will be in the position of having to disprove a negative, and having to prove that they will not commit future acts.

As one of the most prominent advocates for parental licensing, he adds, “We must create a new paradigm in which parenthood is a privilege.” Most parents feel that being a parent is a privilege, a gift from God that gives our lives meaning and purpose. But, should it be an entitlement given to us by the government? Does this mean that some citizens will be deemed workers, and others breeders? If the government will select who may propagate and who may not, how many steps away are we from mandatory sterilization of those deemed unfit by the government, or those who do not conform to a societal ideal established by the government? Or will we allow “them” to breed to provide children to others?

David Lykken, author of Antisocial Personalities, and a strong advocate of parental licensing, calls for the immediate removal of newborns from unlicensed mothers so that they may be placed directly into foster homes and quickly adopted.

Who will determine who gets the privilege of a license? Will it be used as a perk for those who “go along” and do not resist the socialist regime? Who will make the determination of who may have children and who may not? Will it be done randomly by a computer? The Illinois legislation established that not having a license would be grounds for the social workers to remove the children. An interesting sidebar is that although parental licensing advocates are adamant about the issue, they do not feel that it is necessary for social workers or foster parents to have licenses.      

Parent Training
Paving the way towards parent licensing is the “Parent Training” program, also enacted in 1994, which is already firmly entrenched. In the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1994, local education agencies are required to reserve a percentage of their Title I, section 1118, “Parental Involvement” funds for programs that teach “parenting skills,” not to teens in school, but to parents who have children enrolled in the schools.

Schools are directed to “coordinate and integrate” their parental involvement strategies with programs like the “Parents as Teachers” program that was initiated in Missouri and became mandatory for all Missouri school districts in 1984. The program, which is a “home/school partnership that begins at birth” has spread to 44 states, including Massachusetts. In this mandatory program, parents are “trained” by “parent educator trainers” (PETs - can you stand it!). The program is based on the offensive assumption that all parents are in need of “training” and the majority are “at risk.” Which explains the condescending, overbearing attitude that we see in DSS.

The PETs use a Goals 2000 assessment tool called a “risk factor matrix” which includes 12 categories of “at risk” parents. As there is no code to indicate a normal, well-functioning family, any family can fit into the “at risk” category. Some of the questions from the Parents as Teachers workbook are:

√ Does mother respond to child’s vocalizations with verbal response?

√ Is mother’s speech distinct, clear, and audible?

√ Mother occasionally allows child to engage in messy types of play.

√ Mother does not scold child.

√ At least ten books are present and visible during a PET visit.

√ Parent comments verbally on child’s hunger cues.

√ Parent does not offer food while child looks down or turns away.

√ Parent does not compress lips, grimace, or frown when making eye contact with child.

√ Parent verbalizes to child within five seconds after child has vocalized.

√ Parent does not talk baby talk to child.

√ Child stops displaying distress cues within fifteen seconds after parents soothing attempts. 

Other observations to be documented by PETs include:

√ Does child express distress during grooming (hair brushing, face washing, nail clipping)?

√ Does child withdraw from splashing water?

√ Does child have difficulty standing in line?

√ Does child avoid certain tastes or smells?

√ Is child a picky eater?

√ Child seeks all kinds of movement.

√ Child doesn’t seem to notice when face or hands are messy.

√ Does child jump from one activity to another?

√ Does child leave clothing twisted on body?

√ Child appears not to hear what parent says.

√ Child watches people move around room.

√ Does child squint in bright light?

Anyone who holds the same Ph.D. that I do, a Ph.D. in common sense, will immediately recognize these symptoms as the “pathology” of any child. However, the government agents who are using this workbook to assess your adequacy as a parent claim that these behaviors indicate child abuse and neglect. Perpetrated by you - the parents. They also include “passive abuse” which includes “neglecting to fill out school forms.”

Worcester School Has Parental Report Cards
To justify the need for parent training programs, the schools have initiated “Parent-Teacher Compacts” and parental “report cards.” Some compacts are simple, others can consist of dozens of pages of invasive questioning. Douglas Elementary School in Worcester, MA sends out a compact  for parents to sign that states that they will “ensure their children get to school on time, well-rested and well-nourished in addition to monitoring their homework and leisure time.” Who is going to judge if you have adequately performed these duties? If the schools do not sent out the questionnaires they will lose their federal aid.

The irony is that the federal aid is only channeled to districts that need it because they are considered “disadvantaged.” So, parents in wealthier districts will be exempt from this governmental intrusion and judgment and will not face admonishment if their children ate candy bars for breakfast, or are not “well-rested” or the parents forgot to sign the orange homework folder each night.

In some school districts the wording has already changed from “compact” to contract, and mandates that all parents contribute a specified number of “volunteer” hours to the school. This may include baby-sitting for school employees.

Parent report cards document their compliance with the parent/school compact. One parent report card that we have obtained includes the following areas and questions: (on the report card, a check mark indicates that the parent is “successfully nurturing the home/school connection”):

√ Attendance: Children should be absent only for the following reasons: illness, death of an immediate family member, observance of a religious holiday, or extreme family emergency.

√ Punctuality: the parent has the child to school on time each day.

√ Student health & safety: Has the child eaten healthy meals and snacks; dresses child appropriately for the weather; registers child for school aftercare program.

√ Parent-school communications: parent supports school policies; parent attends school functions; completes and returns school documents; has child return completed homework each day.

√ Parent involvement: signs and returns the daily parent homework checklist; attends parent-teacher conferences; volunteers in classroom; praises child often; follows through on school’s suggested plans for child’s success; spends quality time with child.

Given the extremely interpretive nature of the questions, who could we trust enough to make these assessments? Why should we be “assessed” when we haven’t done anything wrong? Do we really want to give government agents the right to assess us as human beings and as moms and dads for interpretive social reasons and in the absence of acts of maltreatment towards our children? Who is to judge if the time you spend with your child is “quality time,” or if you have dressed them “appropriately?” Is this before or after they lost their hats and mittens between your home and the school? Is that sugary fruit juice and chemically sprayed celery a “healthy snack?” I know that I, for one, can never remember to sign the orange homework folder, but then I failed all the other questions, too. My child definitely cannot stand still in a line, and, I confess, she absolutely squints in bright light, so I might as well just turn myself in to a “parental training camp,” which is where parents who fail their report cards in Illinois have to go. I’d better start packing right away.

The recent case in Massachusetts about the boy who wanted to wear girls clothes to school and use the girls’ bathroom illustrates the hypocrisy of this system. When we teach children about homosexual sex in school, we cannot pretend to be surprised when they assert their “right” to act it out. At the same time, the national media has been giving exposure to another story about a boy who was taken away from his parents by social services because they allowed him to wear girls clothes to school. In the Massachusetts case the lesbian Judge Linda Giles wrote: “This court trusts that exposing children to diversity at an early age serves the important social goals of increasing their ability to tolerate differences and teaching them respect for everyone’s experience,” in the ‘Brave New World’ out there.

How does DSS fit in? They are the enforcers who will remove your children if you don’t “go along.” A state police sergeant recently told me that DSS is the ultimate authority over all issues regarding children in Massachusetts. Experience and statistics tell us that DSS is neither a caring nor safe caretaker of our children. When DSS clients call the legislators for help they are told: “We can’t help you, we have no power over DSS.” Yet, I have a letter from U.S. Health & Human Services in Washington that says it is indeed the state legislators’ responsibility to hold DSS accountable. The buck is passing faster here than a three-card Monty game in Times Square.

In the not-so-brave New World of Goals 2000, which already has much of it in effect, the government will dictate how we think and behave, how we interact in our marriages and relationships, even what tone of voice we use. Literature on battered women’s syndrome teaches us that batterers are motivated by the need to control. This is accomplished over time by tearing down the victim’s individuality, self-esteem and free will until the person no longer resists or attempts to assert any independence. This includes their thinking process. The victim becomes apathetic, submissive, and compliant - robot-like. This insidious tearing down process is also the foundation of brainwashing and hostage taking techniques and is clearly seen in the coercive government intrusion and control that we are seeing in this country today: the insidious removal of our free will.