Posted on 10/17/2005 12:14:30 PM PDT by Carry_Okie
Interested Parents,
Tuesday, October 18th at the Biltmore Hotel & Conference Center – 7:00 – 8:30pm, we are holding a meeting to inform, educate, and rally the public around the egregious abuse of power by the Santa Clara Social Services, Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) – Child Protective Services (CPS) as they attempt to rip my family, and many others apart. The Biltmore is located just south of Montague Expressway, east of highway 101 at 2151 Laurelwood Rd, Santa.
At issue are three key points that will be of interest to you as a parent:
Because we are home schoolers, we initially consulted the HSLDA who advised us not to allow CPS into our home or to interview our children unsupervised. We were further advised to seek the services of a local attorney to ensure that our rights as parents were not violated as we work to clear our names related to the allegations of child abuse, which we did.
The DFCS, as a result of our refusal to allow them to interrogate our young children without supervision, together with the fact that we home school and therefore they are unable to gain access to our children without our permission (as is commonly done when children attend school outside of the home), went to court and swore out a Protective Custody Warrant to force themselves into our home, to have their way with our children, and to remove my oldest son into their protective custody. Today, my wife and children are in hiding to protect our family, in a location not even know to me, while I have been engaged in a very distressing and disruptive court battle in an effort to have the Protective Custody Warrant quashed, a request that was denied last Friday.
To date, no one at DFCS has been interested in understanding our unique parenting needs, the resources we have used and the third parties who can speak to quality of our parenting, and love that we have for of all of our children. Their action, based on our stance of “tell us what you are concerned about so we can give you reasonable access to our family to resolve them”, has been to take the child and ask questions later. They have leveraged the courts in this effort.
Since DFCS has no interest, nor apparent requirements to ascertain the facts before they have ripped our family apart, we’ve decided to share them with you. Perhaps when you speak out someone in the agency will finally listen to how they are about to destroy yet another family in an effort to “protect” a child that does not need protection and initiate policy based changes. This is why I urge you to come out Tuesday evening! This is a completely free event paid for out of my paycheck.
Thank you for your support,
Mark I. Johnson
With the track record that some, and I reiterate some, Child Protective Service organizations have I don't see consulting someone who can advise you legally as any different from consulting a lawyer in the event of the police wanting to interview me because I may be accused of a crime. I mean, someone has obviously raise a red flag or they wouldn't be there. While I am confident that no crime has been comitted, I would be foolish to not seek the advice of a lawyer.
I just seems like common sense to me, not paranoia.
That said, even if I didn't homeschool I would want advice if CPS came knocking. While Homeschooling families are perhaps hypersensitive there are plenty of instances were wrong has been done, as you acknowlegded.
I have heard from a number of homeschoolers filling in me in on what I did not know. I appreciate the info.
The fact of the matter is that there are a few well-publicized cases, like the Yates, and the Jacksons in NJ, and the family in NC, who are indeed using home schooling as a cover for other problems. But, statistically, it is insignificant. The vast majority of families reported to CPS are families with children not yet of school age. See this link for a start:
http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/pubs/factsheets/fatality.cfm
It points out that from national statistics, only 12% of fatally abused children are kids 8 and older. As far as non-fatal abuse of older children is concerned, most is sexual abuse and most often occurs when a child lives with a single parent. Do you know how many single parents homeschool ? I can tell you that I am one, and after 4 years I have yet to meet any other single parent who homeschools.
So, substantiate your post, please.
Maybe they called the homeschool defense group because homeschoolers are often targeted by so-called Child Protective Services??? So they have much experience with the problem?
I don't get what you don't get.
I went to school with the author of "Anonymous Tip", (Mike Farrell).
The story is real, but written as fiction.
He wrote the book, not because of some isolated outrage, but because it happens all too often!
The therapist is LINDA IKEDA.
It was mentioned earlier.
LINDA IKEDA is the therapist.
It was mentioned earlier.
I read an awful lot and don't recall where I saw that info. But I'm pretty sure it applied only to school age children (hard to see how a toddler could be categorized as "homeschooled" in any formal statistics). Also would have applied only to reported cases, and unfortunately, most older children who are being sexually abused don't ever get reported. I know that pre-school aged children are certainly the biggest category of severe child abuse cases, and it's for the same reason that "homeschooled" children are disproportionately represented in abuse cases of older children -- nobody is in a position to see the early warning signs, so by the time the situation comes to light, it's usually because the child is found dead, or one parent has brought a critically injured and often unconscious child to a hospital emergency room, or a terrified emaciated battered child has escaped the home and been found in the streets.
I don't think the highly publicized horror story cases are anywhere near the majority of homeschooling-as-cover cases. They're just the ones with most awful outcomes. Especially in rural areas, most not-really-homeschooling cases probably wouldn't even get reported to authorities. And most that do get reported usually end up being resolved with nothing more dramatic than a court order requiring that the child be sent to school, after a court-ordered assessment test finds that the child is many years behind grade-level standards and that there is no evidence of organized educational activity at home. Most of the not-really-homeschooling that goes on doesn't involve vicious beatings or starvation or sexual abuse, but just keeping the child at home without teaching him or her basic academic skills, and usually requiring the child to spend an inordinate amount of time doing chores that the adults ought to be doing. Still legitimate for the state to intervene IMO, especially since reams of studies have shoen that a child who hasn't learned to read well by around age 10 has missed teh neurological window and will never be able to learn to read really well.
Where was it mentioned earlier?
She was given as AN "attachment therapist" operating in the area, not THE therapist working this case.
"Killpack dad guilty, jurors say [Killed daughter with waaay too much water. Father mis-charged.]"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1504677/posts
An update on the story of the 4 year old girl whose mother killed her with "therapy" for "attachment disorder"
The info in this story is confirming a sneaking suspicion I've had about this "disorder/therapy". I think about 99.999% of the practitioners of this pseudo-treatment are stay-at-home mothers. Someone capable of holding down a paying job in the real job would have too much common sense, and too much day-to-day exposure reality, to buy into this. And it appears that in this particular case, the degree to which this "therapy" was being practiced was not fully known by the father.
They may have a cause to be suspicious
Good point. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't investigate the claim at all, but it is odd that this allegation has sat around all this time uninvestigated. There is also a diagnosis of FAE/FAS from the documented alcohol and substance abuse of the birth mother. This can hamper his ability to attach, that can be a difficult diagnosis for a child and for his/her parents, in this case the adoptive parents. It is possible the RAD manifested because of an inability of the child to form attachments as a result of the FAS/FAE, but that is something for the experts.
Repressed memory syndrome certainly turned out to be ridiculous. But attachment is different in many ways and necessary for each of us. There seems no doubt that some attachment (supposed) therapies are scams, some have done more harm than good. But as for the theory of attachment, how humans bond and it's importance, that is still a valuable part of any persons development. And it can be hindered by illness or abusive parenting methods (not that I'm suggesting it for these folks) or institutionalization. Or medical conditions like FAS/FAE. If there is any dispute as to the therapist's testimony, a medical doctor can diagnosis the FAS/FAE and measure it's severity.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) EMDR is promoted for the treatment of post-traumatic stress, phobias, learning disorders, and many other mental and emotional problems. The method involves asking the client to recall the traumatic event as vividly as possible and rate certain feelings before and after visually tracking the therapist's finger as it is moved back and forth in front of the client's eyes [6]. EMDR's developer and leading proponent, Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., received her nonaccredited doctoral degree in 1988 and established the EMDR Institute to train mental health professionals. She and her associates have trained more than 22,000 clinicians worldwide in workshops that in 1997 cost $385 [7]. EMDR resembles various traditional behavioral therapies for reducing fears in that it requires clients to imagine traumatic events in a gradual fashion in the presence of a supportive therapist. However, controlled research has shown that EMDR's most distinctive feature (visual tracking) is unnecessary and is irrelevant to whatever benefits the patient may receive [8]. Recent reviews have concluded that the data claimed to support EMDR derive mostly from uncontrolled case reports and poorly designed controlled experiments and that the theory of EMDR clashes with scientific knowledge of the role of eye movements [9,10].
The above was from quackwatch
Here is her business page:
http://hometown.aol.com/rmikeda/new_page_3.htm
Nevertheless, "attachment therapy" as practiced in the US today is, to use an old and honorable cavalry epithet, "more horse**** than gunsmoke." From my reading on the topic, it seems that legitimate practitioners are a minority.
What again is the connection to the homeschooling?
the connection with homeschooling is simple. child services is allowed to go talk to your child at school, and the principal has to oblige. however, if they ask you first, and you tell them no, they cannot. so most take the advantage by going to the school first. if you homeschool, they have no choice but to ask first. homeschooling "hinders" CPS.
maybe its just me, but it would seem that if a child has problems attaching themself to someone, wouldn't forcing them just push them further away?
i know in training animals, if you just grab an animal and try to force it, it will try to either escape, hurt or kill you, or both. its a long process of earning its trust, and developing a bond. wouldn't it make more sense to treat this "attachment disorder" the same way?
Common sense on dealing with a kid who doesn't trust anyone would be to show, by example, that you are loving and can be trusted. Of course, nobody would pay for that advice.
LOL, that a good analogy! It does seem like a lot of charlatans have sprung up, posers, doing more harm than good. I, too, have read a lot on attachment and attachment theories and am familiar with some of the therapies. I do agree that some seem silly and even counter-indicated and harmful. But attachment itself is important and the ways that attachment or lack of it affects us are astounding. Ways to foster attachment should be and are included in parenting books (and some of them good, some not), some of it is common sense, but some of it seems lost in our materialistic society where some children are often just additional possessions.
stepping off soap box... ;-)
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