CPS, the Child Protective Services, was exposed in 2007 for legally kidnapping and selling children for adoption out of foster care.
The woman who exposed them, Senator Nancy Schaefer, from the State of Georgia, was murdered, in 2010. She, at the age of 73, together with her husband, Bruce, 74 were shot dead on 26th March in their home. It was their daughter who discovered the bodies in their bedroom. Suicide was ruled out. It was instead called ‘a murder made to look like suicide.’
Here is her speech:
“I will share with you the unlimited power of Child Protective Services. I served in the Georgia State Senate and after four years of viewing the ruthless and unsparing actions of Child Protective Services, also called CPS, I wrote a scathing report entitled ‘The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services.’ The report cost me my Senate seat. Here’s some copies of the report if you’d like to get one. However, there are causes worth losing over and this is one. I’m going to talk about some of the problems and then some realistic, maybe solutions for families and children. And maybe look to some steps that we can take. This is not to say that there are not those children in wretched situations who need to be removed. There are, and we all agree. But tonight, I’m talking about those children removed from their homes intentionally, for profit. Children are seized, unnecessarily, from their families, due to the federal aid created in 1974 entitled ‘The Adoption and Safe Families Act.’ It offers financial incentives to the states that increase adoption numbers. To receive the adoption incentives or bonuses, local CPS must have more children. They must have more merchandise to sell. Funding is available when a child is placed in a foster home with strangers or placed in a mental health facility and medicated, usually against the parents’ wishes. Parents are victimized by the system, that makes a profit for holding children longer and bonuses for not returning children to their parents. This is abuse of power. It is lack of accountability. And it is a growing, criminal, political phenomenon spreading around the globe. Often times but not always, poor parents are targeted to lose their children because they do not have the wherewithal to hire an attorney or fight the system. Being poor, and lacking proper housing, does not mean your children should be removed. CPS has redefined ‘poor’ to mean psychologically inferior. Therefore, it is ‘in the best interest’ of the child to be removed. ‘Best interest’ of course, has also been redefined, at the child’s expense. It has been reported over and over that six times as many children died in foster care, than in the general public. Once a child is legally kidnapped, and placed in ‘official safety’, the child is far more likely to suffer abuse, including sexual molestation, and/or rape.
Case workers, and social workers, are often guilty of fraud. They withhold and destroy evidence and they seek wrongly to terminate parental rights while being protected by state immunity. Ther is a huge bureaucracy made up of judges, court-appointed attorneys, guardian ad litems, social workers, state employees, court investigators, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, foster parents, adoptive parents, and on and on, who are looking to the children in state care for their job security. Judges have control over private, living arrangements and income of 48.3 million Americans. The United States Census Bureau reported in 2002 that 40 billion in transfer payments were made between households of custody parents and other parents. That money, 40 billion, is under the direction and control of family court judges in environments covered with confidentiality laws that protect the wrong people. Fathers are victims of this unjust system. Child support payments, even without having visits with their children, are choking the very life out of fathers. Three fathers, of whom I am aware and have been in touch with, committed suicide in the last twelve months, because they lost the opportunity to even visit with their children. These are crimes against humanity for financial gain. Rights are removed parents. Human rights, civil rights and even religious rights.
One illustration, of what took place in my district, is that after so many calls, I decided to call a meeting in one of the counties of my own district. I personally called 37 familes that had been in touch with me who had all lost their children, grandchildren. I had to meet them in the library one Saturday morning. We started at nine o’clock and we ended at nine o’clock. We had fifty families standing outside the door that could not get in. We didn’t have time to talk with them. There was incredible anguish and profound suffering from these families. Some children had been taken off the school bus, taken out of the hospitals, or taken out of their homes in the middle of the night or even worse. It was just an incredible ordeal. These parents, trapped in the system, become like refugees. They’re dazed and glazed and have no one of whom to turn. They do not know what to do and the loss of their children is devastating.
After having worked in this arena for several years, I do not believe that a single child comes out whole after having been in this system. Many foster children make up the homeless population of today.
I introduced legislation, Senate Bill 415 in my last session. A substitute bill was written at the last minute by the Chairman of the Judicial Committee. All the strong points of my bill had been compromised. I was told ‘Accept it, Senator. At least you will get some of your legislation passed.’ And I answered with ‘Obviously, you do not know me. I did not come to the capital to get legislation passed. I came to make a difference.’
What can be done? An independent audit should be called on every state of all Child Protective Services Departments. I am in touch with Congressmen and state officials and the door, may be, possibly opening very slowly. A federal congressional hearing is needed but let me add due to the hundreds upon hundreds of cases that I’ve been called to consider, I placed calls to state senators representatives, in their respective states across the country asking them to help me with certain families. And I was told, ‘If I helped that family, or if I help you, I will lose my job.’ Remove, abolish, the federal and state financial incentives and those are taxpayer dollars. Those dollars have turned CPS into a business, that takes children and separates families for money. Open family court. Remove the confidentiality laws. Give parents their rights verbally and in writing. I even feel that to terminate the rights of parents, the case should be heard before a jury. Family rights and parents rights must be protected. We do not need more influence like the UN’s convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s anti-parent, anti-child, and anti-common sense for the family. There has to be perseverance for any great reform and great reform is needed in this area.
As Charles Spurgeon put it: ‘how do you tame a lion that is well fed?’ First, he must be brought down. Second, his stomach must be lured. How do you tame Child Protective Services? It may be only by closing it completely and starting over at the beginning with pro-family values. In closing, let me remind you that there is case law from state appellate and federal district courts and up to the United States Supreme Court all of which affirm the constitutionality of the rights of parents to actually be parents to their children. There’s Biblical law too. It goes like this: ‘Speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves and for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly. Defend the rights of the poor and the needy.’ Thank you.”