Free Republic

It all started with an unwanted knock on the door by a government worker and it’s being answered with a $60 million lawsuit. A New Jersey family is suing the state child-protection agency after it allegedly sent a caseworker to their home to interrogate them on everything from their son’s homeschool education to questions about vaccines and guns in the house. Christopher Zimmer and his wife Nicole of Belvidere filed a civil rights complaint in April in U.S. District Court in Trenton alleging “unlawful and unconstitutional home intrusion.” “I won’t forget that morning for a long, long time,” said Christopher...

Quick action by horrified guests at a Park Ridge hotel saved a 20-month-old boy who had been thrown into a pool by a man police said was high on drugs. “These good Samaritans are heroes,” Capt. Joseph Rampolla of the Park Ridge Police Department said Monday. “They would be planning a toddler’s funeral if they did not step up.” The boy, who was unconscious and turning blue when he was pulled from the water, was recovering Monday at Hackensack University Medical Center, where he is in his mother’s custody, police said. “The child is doing well,” Rampolla said. Debbi Katcher,...

TRENTON — The state will pay a Pennsylvania family $5 million in damages for the physical and sexual abuse their adopted daughter suffered as a baby while under the care of New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services. The state settled with the family today after a jury awarded damages, plus attorney’s fees. Because the state chose to settle, the jury’s verdict is vacated.

Slapping a teenager or taking money from her paycheck to pay family bills is hardly admirable, but doesn’t constitute child neglect or abuse, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In a 7-0 decision, the court found the state Division of Youth and Family Services lacked sufficient evidence to remove a teenager from her father and stepmother’s home in 2008, and dropped the abuse and neglect judgement against her stepmother. "The parental decisions made within this family unit may not have been exemplars of stellar parenting, but they did not rise to the level of Title Nine violations," wrote Justice Jaynee...

NEWARK, N.J. -- An infant died Thursday after being stricken at a downtown office of the state child welfare agency, police said. The month-old boy, who has been in foster care since birth, had just arrived about noon at an office of the state Division of Youth and Family Services from a doctor's visit. He had received immunizations for hepatitis B and polio at the doctor's, said DYFS spokesman Andy Williams. (snip) "It appears the baby had a reaction to an immunization," Williams said. An autopsy is to be done to determine the cause of death, police said. (snip)

The parents of a 13-year-old foster child who made her bring food to a dead man who lay rotting in their Clark home pleaded guilty Tuesday to elderly neglect and child cruelty. Kenneth Keaveney and his wife, Donna, pleaded guilty in state Superior Court, admitting that Donna's father was left to rot upstairs for weeks before being found on the floor of a room littered with flies, maggots and dog feces. Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said the plea ends any doubts as to what happened to Nicola Lombardi, whose decomposed corpse was discovered nearly mummified in the August...

<p>From the HSLDA E-lert Service...</p> <p>A bill that would force New Jersey homeschool children to submit to the same statewide assessment tests required of public school students, and force their parents to give the local school board proof the student had received an annual medical examination, is set to be introduced in the New Jersey legislature this Thursday.</p>

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Many of the child abuse and neglect cases dealt with by the state Division of Youth and Family Services involve people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Money apparently wasn't a problem for the Calbis. They lived in an upscale Bergen County town and, according to one official, the family was "fairly well off." But Linda Calbi, who is charged with murdering her 14-year-old son, Matthew, in July, apparently had one thing in common with the parents in up to 85 percent of all child abuse and neglect cases. She had a substance abuse...

<p>Gov. James E. McGreevey today will appoint a panel of experts in education, health, social services and juvenile justice to guide and critique the ongoing reform of the state's failing child welfare system.</p> <p>The panel, dubbed the "Governor's Cabinet for Children," will make recommendations for improving the Division of Youth and Family Services and then evaluate the agency's progress in bimonthly public reports.</p>

Three young brothers allegedly taken by their parents from a Florida foster home will return to that state rather than stay with family members in North Plainfield, authorities said Thursday. The state Division of Youth and Family Services is working with Florida officials to returned the children "as soon as possible," spokesman Joe Delmar told the Courier News of Bridgewater. New Jersey DYFS officials took custody of the children, ages 4, 6 and 8, after their parents, Donna and Giovanni Conigliaro, were arrested Saturday in North Plainfield near the home of one of their relatives. Police said the Conigliaros assaulted...

<p>January 9, 2003 -- The go-go dancer who's being sought in the Newark House of Horrors child-abuse case refused to return the youngsters to their mother because she wanted the welfare money, relatives charged yesterday.</p> <p>"She was getting money to take care of the kids," Lynella Gaddie said of Sherry Murphy, the exotic dancer entrusted with taking care of three boys by their mother, Melinda Williams.</p>

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- The woman who was supposed to be taking care of the three brothers in the Newark torture and abuse case was captured early Thursday in a city apartment. Sherry Murphy was sleeping when police found her around 2 a.m., Lt. Derek Glenn said. She had been sought since the body of a 7-year-old boy was found in a storage bin on Sunday, a day after his two brothers were found starving in a locked room. Murphy, who was wanted on child endangerment charges, had been caring for the boys since their mother, Melinda Williams, was jailed...