Free Republic

PHOENIX — An Arizona couple accused of sexual abuse after taking bath-time photos of their children and then trying to have them developed at Walmart are suing the state and the retail giant. Lisa and Anthony "A.J." Demaree's three young daughters were taken away by Arizona Child Protective Services last fall when a Walmart employee found partially nude pictures of the girls on a camera memory stick taken to the store for processing, according to the suit. The Peoria couple's attorney said Walmart turned the photos over to police and the Demarees were not allowed to see their children for...

(Aug. 14) -- A California mother allegedly branded her young child by carving her first initial into the toddler's buttocks. Sergaye Lafayette, 23, was arrested Aug. 10 on a number of outstanding warrants after being pulled over with her children in the car, KCRA News reported. She does not have custody of the youngsters. The mark on her 15-month old daughter's bottom was discovered after her children were taken to a center for abused children. The kids were taken to a routine check-up where doctors discovered diaper rashes all over the baby as well as a letter "S" carved into...

Durham, N.C. — Duke University has fired an employee who faces federal child sex charges. Frank M. Lombard, 42, of 24 Indigo Creek Trail in Durham, was let go from his position as associate director of the Center for Health Policy at Duke, a spokesman said. Duke Vice President for Public Affairs Michael Schoenfeld said Lombard was placed on unpaid leave at the time of his arrest June 24 and was fired Monday. Schoenfeld added that the university was cooperating with the investigation. Lombard faces extradition to Washington, D.C., to face charges that he solicited an adult to have...

The link has not worked for too many so I will post the abstract below. I hope a freeper can access and if copyrighted, send me the article by freeper email. The train is on track to permanently removing our grandchildren (3 and 1 yr old) from our lives, forever. We suspect that we have an activist judge presiding over our family case and because of the color of different people involved, we may not be able to get a fair and balance outcome. So far the hearings have consistently gone against the biological paternal grandparents, solely based on social...

ELDORADO, Texas — It was a year ago that the outside world got its first glimpse beyond the battered green gate of the YFZ Ranch. And the view was mesmerizing: Women in pioneer-style dresses, their hair swept up in braids. Men who married multiple times — sometimes, it was said, to underage girls. Children snatched by authorities from their mothers, for fear that they might be abused. Officials had come looking for an abused teenage girl named "Sarah." Since then, it's become clear Sarah didn't exist, that calls made to a domestic abuse hot line were probably faked. And since...

A 16-year-old charter high school student allegedly struck out against a classmate who had been bullying him Wednesday by stabbing the youth with a scissors in a school hallway. Chicago Public Schools officials said the stabbing happened during a "conflict resolution" session -- in which the perpetrator and his father had come to meet with the dean of academics over how to address threats from the alleged bully. CPS officials said the father and son had been meeting with school officials on the issue just before 9 a.m., when the son left the dean's office and encountered the alleged bully...

SAN ANTONIO - Nearly two-thirds of the families living at a polygamist group's ranch - targeted in a high-profile raid last spring - had children who were abused or neglected, Texas child welfare officials said in a report released Tuesday.

System fails, kids die Agency workers' bad decisions leave children in hands of abusers Sunday, December 21, 2008 3:40 AM By Randy Ludlow THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH FAMILY PHOTO Nicholas Goodrich, 11 months old, died after his mother's boyfriend threw him across a room. Calls to social agencies were unheeded. Click here to enlarge Click here to enlarge Web Extra CHART: Ohio child abuse and neglect deaths by county, 2002-2007. Nicholas Goodrich would have been walking and talking by now. Instead, he rests beneath a stone, eternally 11 months old. He's dead in part because the government workers entrusted to protect...

Last year, Agustin Uribe’s conviction for sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl was overturned by California’s Sixth Court of Appeals. Why? The San Jose Mercury News reports that the hospital at which the girl was examined maintained a videotape of the examination which showed that no abuse had occurred. Read the story here. Now it develops that the hospital has some 3,000 videotapes of similar examinations in child abuse cases since 1991. As you might expect, defense attorneys in pending and closed cases are seeking access to those tapes. So far we don’t know what was on the tape in the...

After years on the run, the saga of Tina Loesch and her lover, Sky Hanson, ended hours after AMW aired their story on Nov. 15, 2008. While the couple took their own lives in what cops are calling a suicide pact, the investigation is far from over as authorities in three states search for Kristopher Loesch. Capture archive: http://www.amw.com/fugitives/capture.cfm?id=59857

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — A Gresham man has been sentenced to 6 years in prison for attempted rape after a mother discovered his inappropriate text messages on her 12-year-old daughter's cell phone. Prosecutors said 29-year-old Patrick Lee Kenney also pleaded no contest to attempted sexual abuse and furnishing obscene material to a minor. Kenney met the girl on the MySpace site.

Texas officials say more than 440 children seized during an April raid on a polygamist ranch can safely live with their parents or guardians. Authorities feared some girls were being forced into underage marriages and boys were being raised to be perpetrators. The Texas Supreme Court later ruled the action was too broad and ordered the children back to their parents. The Associated Press has learned that so far the custody cases for 235 children have been dropped, and Texas Child Protective Services says more cases are likely to be dropped. Only one child - a girl allegedly married FLDS...

ELDORADO, Texas — When a grand jury meets here later this month, criminal indictments could be handed down against more members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church. .... Some of that evidence has been used in child-custody cases over the hundreds of FLDS children taken into state protective custody during the raid. Texas Child Protective Services has said it has evidence of at least 10 underage marriages. A CPS caseworker testified during a court hearing last week that an investigation revealed "48 percent of the men at the ranch were involved in underage marriage practices." ..... "Sheriff Doran advised affiant that...

I was too tough on Illinois State Senator James Meeks. Last week, I offered both a commentary and rigorous interview of Rev. Meeks on the WLS airwaves as to Meeks' controversial declaration that he will bus thousands of Chicago Public School (CPS) students up to New Trier High School on Chicago's ritzy North Shore for the first day of school next month to protest state education funding inequities. While I stand by the substance of what I said, I violated a cardinal rule of politics in making the perfect the enemy of the good. On The Don & Roma Morning...

A month after their children were returned, FLDS parents are getting the first word about parenting classes the state of Texas has required them to complete. Marleigh Meisner, a Texas Department of Family and Protective Services spokeswoman, said the classes will begin to be scheduled within the next 10 days. They will be standard parenting classes consisting of two four-hour sessions. "The curriculum will be much like those that the agency uses with other clients," Meisner said in a statement. "The instructors will be trained on how to best deliver this information to these FLDS parents."

Josh Raykin had never spent even a night away from his parents. That is, until Arapahoe County snatched the 8-year-old from his home after an abuse allegation that social workers dragged their feet investigating. The ordeal began while Josh was playing outside one day before dinner in April. A neighbor knocked on the door to tell his dad that police had come to take Josh away. The strawberry-blond kid with pale blue eyes was born in 1999 after Michael and Melanie Raykin tried for 15 years to conceive. Michael, a courier, and Melanie, a hairstylist, work extra hours to send...

As Texas officials sort evidence that could lead to new criminal charges against polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs, charges against him in another state are shrinking. Just two of five cases originally brought against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leader in Arizona are still in play, and a significant portion of those two cases have been dismissed. Now, a judge has set a July 11 hearing on whether the remaining charges, based on Jeffs' alleged role conducting marriages for underage girls, came out of a tainted grand jury proceeding. Defense attorney Michael Piccarreta argues...

FORT WORTH, Texas — The cost of the April raid on a polygamist compound in West Texas is expected to top $14 million, about one-third of it in lawyers' fees, according to a published analysis of state records. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram published its findings Saturday after reviewing more than 400 pages of invoices, e-mails and other state records that it obtained under an open-records law request. More invoices for overtime, travel and professional services are expected to boost the final tab, the records indicate.

Lawyers for the Fundamentalist LDS Church are preparing for what could become a series of lawsuits against Texas authorities for the raid on the YFZ Ranch. "There is a desire and a need for compensation, so I think you will see something come," said Rod Parker, a Salt Lake attorney who is acting as a spokesman for the FLDS people. The lawsuits would likely focus on the removal of the children, the raid itself and damage to the FLDS Church's first-ever temple on the Eldorado property.

As a district judge heard the state's case for keeping children from a polygamous sect in custody, hundreds of electronic and telephone messages were pouring into Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office. They came from around the country - including Utah - and most made the same point: Send the children home to their mothers. By April 17, three days after separating mothers from their children, the office had received 449 messages opposed to the removal of the children and just 32 from people who supported it. "If you do nothing to protect these rights, you can be assured that you...

SAN ANGELO, Texas - All the children taken from the Yearning for Zion Ranch are out of state custody and have been reunited with parents, the sect and state officials said Wednesday. Just 53 children had been waiting at shelters Wednesday morning - by the end of business Tuesday, 397 FLDS children had been released to their parents. "It's gone pretty smoothly," said Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services. But also with some sadness for caretakers who watched over the children for nearly six weeks. Dan Adams, director of Cal Farley's Boys Ranch in...

The lies to justify this outrageous behavior started from the beginning. First, it was an affidavit from police officers about the children all being in danger to the brain-washing culture of the FLDS. Then it was the accusation that bedsheets were found "used" in the FLDS temple. Then it was the alleged discovery of dozens of pregnant underage girls. --- Bit-by-bit we have seen the accusations made by law enforcement to support their Nazi-like detainment of a religious group and confinement of others lose credibility. First, we learned that these underage pregnant women were actually adults -- in one case...

We've often discussed anti-father bias in Child Protective Services cases. Fathers are frequently marginalized and deprived of custody of their children when their wives/ex-wives/ex-girlfriends abuse their children. This terrible Nebraska case detailed below is another example. In the case, a mother abused her daughter and child protective services took the girl. There were no accusations of abuse against the father. Nevertheless, they deceived and manipulated the father into relinquishing custody of his daughter. The girl was left fatherless -- can anyone guess what's going to happen to her?Surprise, surprise -- without her father, the girl's life, in the words of...

CORPUS CHRISTI - On Monday, 129 polygamist sect children across the state were returned to their parents.All but one child taken from a Schleicher County polygamist ranch and being housed at a Corpus Christi shelter were released to family after a court order Monday vacated state custody. The remaining Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints child is expected to be released today, state officials said.Twenty of the 21 youths left the Ark Assessment Center and Emergency Shelter after the court determined family could begin picking up members 10 a.m. Monday. In Abilene, nine children were returned from...

ELDORADO, TEXAS -- As officials haggled Friday over how to return more than 400 children to their parents, it was becoming increasingly clear that Texas' audacious attempt to rein in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had backfired -- and become a lesson in the difficulty of cracking down on the 10,000-member polygamist sect. .... The town also was abuzz over an anticipated mass voter registration by the FLDS. Hours after the court first ruled against the state, two members of the sect walked into the county clerk's office and requested 300 voter registration forms, a...

SAN ANGELO, Texas -- A Texas judge today signed an order that said hundreds of children seized during a raid on a polygamous sect's ranch must immediately be released to their families. Signed by 51st District Judge Barbara Walther, the order provides for parents to retrieve their children from the various foster care facilities where they have been placed beginning today at 8 a.m. and extending through 8 p.m.

SAN ANGELO, Texas — A judge has signed an order to release dozens of children taken in a raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ ranch. "We gave her an order and we're pleased she signed an order," said Julie Balovich, a lawyer for the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid Society which represents 38 mothers who challenged the decision to place their children in foster care. The order allows children to be released as early as today.

The Texas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state's Child Protective Services exceeded its authority and broke the law when the department seized more than 460 youngsters from a polygamist community near the town of Eldorado last month. Actually, they seized many more people than that, but authorities -- supposedly child welfare experts -- have since had to concede many of the people they hauled away, believing them to be "children," actually turn out to be adults. Authorities staged a massive raid on the 1,900-acre Schleicher County ranch on April 3, saying they had received a tip from someone claiming...

SAN ANGELO, Texas — For nearly two months, Texas child-welfare officials had insisted conditions at a polygamist group's ranch were so abusive that none of its members should be allowed to keep their children. Now, some are looking for what went wrong when the state raided the Yearning For Zion Ranch and removed more than 400 children.

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — For nearly two months, Texas child welfare officials had insisted conditions at a polygamist group's ranch were so abusive that none of its members should be allowed to keep their children. Now, however, one of the of the largest custody cases in U.S. history is unraveling, and some are looking for what went wrong when the state raided the Yearning For Zion Ranch and removed more than 400 children. Since the state Supreme Court ruled that the Texas Department of Child Protective Services overreached when it swept the children into foster care, agency officials have...

SAN ANGELO, Texas - The Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the state must return some 130 children taken into state custody following an early April raid on a polygamous sect's West Texas ranch.     However, the decision likely will affect about 320 other children from the ranch who now are living in foster homes and shelters throughout the state, attorneys for their parents said.     By a six-to-three majority, the justices decided that a district court judge improperly removed the children, like their parents members of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.     The...

The Texas Supreme Court affirmed a lower court today and ordered a San Angelo judge to vacate her ruling that gave the state custody of some 450 children removed from a Schleicher County polygamist compound. The order stops short, however, of ordering an outright, unconditional return of the children in question. "We are not inclined to disturb the court of appeals' decision," according to the unsigned opinion, from which three of the court's nine justices dissented in part. "On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted." The court did indicate that 51st District Court Judge Barbara...

It was the call for help that launched one of the largest raids on a religious compound in U.S. history. But on Monday, a Child Protective Services attorney asked for the case involving a 16-year-old known as "Sarah," who claimed sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her husband, to be dropped. The state has all but declared the call a hoax after the phone number was traced to a Colorado woman with a history of pretending to be an abused child. The Texas Department of Public Safety even withdrew its arrest warrant against Dale Barlow, alleged husband and...

Authorities acknowledge that if the appellate court decision is not thrown out, the state may have to return more than 400 children. A judge allows 12 children to reunite with their parents.

"The raid ­- resulting in the largest child custody case in American history - was based on a lie." "Police traced the calls to 33-year-old Colorado Springs woman named Rozita Swinton. Swinton had earlier been arrested for making a false report, and accused of posing as "Jennifer," 16, who called 911 to report that her father had locked her in a basement for days. Swinton may also have posed as thirteen-year-old Dana Anderson, who was being sexually abused by her pastor and raped by her father. There is no evidence that Sarah, Jennifer, or Dana exist. Swinton remains a "person...

AUSTIN – Texas Child Protective Services will ask the state's highest court to keep a polygamist sect's children in state custody, following a Thursday appeals court ruling that ordered the youngsters be returned to their homes. Texas Supreme Court spokesman Osler McCarthy said attorneys for the state called Friday morning and said they'd be "filing an action in this court" later in the day. On Thursday, a state appeals court ordered many though perhaps not all of a polygamist sect's children returned to their parents Thursday, saying Texas failed to prove they were in physical jeopardy and urgently needed to...

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — A Texas appeals court said Thursday that the state had no right to take more than 400 children from a polygamist sect's ranch, a ruling that could unravel one of the biggest child-custody cases in U.S. history. The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the state offered "legally and factually insufficient" grounds for the "extreme" measure of removing all children from the ranch, from babies to teenagers. The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without...

Wiating for story.

Apparently it is more egregious to oversleep in Hemet, California than it is to commit armed robbery. After delivering a pizza Jeremy Queen was robbed at gunpoint then hit on the head with the weapon. The police were called, the report was made and the police drove Mr. Queen around in their squad car to see if they could find who had attacked him. They couldn't and have said they probably never will. Back at work Mr. Queen was chastised for taking so long to make the delivery and told that since the delivery was made, he was no longer...

Sarah Steed and Gladys Jessop knew they'd face a stark choice when Child Protective Services removed their children: remain on their Yearning for Zion Ranch outside Eldorado or relocate to a faraway city near their kids. They chose to relocate. The women, followers of a breakaway Mormon sect that practices polygamy as a religious requirement, soon faced a crueler choice: which child to be near. Though child welfare workers promised to make every effort to keep siblings together, it hasn't always happened. Steed's six young children have been scattered across the state, at four foster care facilities in three cities:...

I'm not quite as old-fashioned as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), which hews to the early-marriage customs of the 19th century and the polygamous practices of biblical times. But I'm old-fashioned enough to believe the government needs a good reason to pull a crying, clinging child away from her mother and hand her over to the care of strangers.The possibility that the child might marry an older man 10 or 12 or 14 years from now does not cut it. Citing that long-term, speculative danger to justify the certain, immediate damage it has done by...

DFPS Provides Senate Committee With Eldorado UpdateThe Department of Family and Protective Services provided the Senate Health and Human Services Committee with an update Wednesday, April 30, 2008 on the children removed from an Eldorado ranch. The update included information about some of the key challenges for investigators, the findings to date, and the care of the children.Challenge in determining family relationshipsOne of the many challenges that makes these cases unique is that we don’t have any degree of certainty about the identities of the parents of children in our care.* The women who left the ranch with the...

If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade. And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television. The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage...

NOTE FROM A FOSTER MOTHERA FReeper mom who doesn't have time to post, has shared her experience with me and graciously given me permission to post her thoughts. Here is the first note from her:"Here’s my deal. I am totally transfixed on this polygamous cult issue but don’t have the time or inclination to actively participate on the board. It must have something to do with my six kids, one of whom is disabled. I am a foster mom BTW so I’m sorta torked out of shape about all the shoddy accusations against foster parents. I know that for...

<p>Imagine: One day you’re frolicking in the open air on a large compound, doing your daily chores, and feasting on hearty homegrown fare; the next you’re gagging on a diet of T&A courtesy of MTV, and fast-food compliments of your fat foster mom. As the makeshift mom hollers at you to swallow your zombifying meds—the Texas foster care system is notorious for pumping its charges full of psychotropic drugs—her flaccid live-in lover eyes you lustily.</p>

After doing tons of research on CPS over the years (and learning more than I'm sure they would care that I know), the public should be aware of why CPS uses the illegal ways that they do to obtain custody of literally THOUSANDS of children in Texas alone! Because of some courageous parents whose children have been illegally taken from them by CPS have decided they MUST speak up for the sake of the VERY LIVES of their children in CPS custody, it is coming to the attention of the media, more and more, NATIONWIDE, about the way parents have...

ELDORADO — Mothers separated from their children as part of a wide-ranging abuse investigation within a polygamist retreat accuse state officials of misleading them before taking their offspring into custody. Authorities raided the sect's ranch more than a week ago in response to allegations that underage girls were forced to marry older men. Women and children from the secretive community were taken to a West Texas fort-turned-museum and a rodeo pavilion, but on Monday officials began separating women and some of their offspring without warning, members of the sect said. While some women and children were taken from the shelters...

One of the big stories out of the southwest this week has been the abduction of a toddler from Child Protective Services--apparently abducted by his parents, apparently with the complicity of someone who has worked with CPS. According to Parents suspected of abuse accused of abducting tot (Arizona Republic, 3/15/08): "A 17-month-old who police say was abducted by his parents and presumably taken to Mexico has been in the care of Child Protective Services since he was about 2 months old, when abuse allegations surfaced. Authorities' efforts to find little Miguel Echave-Felix continued Friday... "Police said Miguel was kidnapped Wednesday...

Hello. I am a long time lurker here going back to 1998. This is my first post and one I am writing somewhat in desperation. I am a Christian who is the father of six kids ranging in age between 1yr. to 16yrs old. Almost a month ago my 8 year got the idea she was going to walk to see her mother at her job about five miles from our home. I was upstairs at the time trying to get my 1 year old (who was being really fussy) to sleep. She got about 2 miles before found by...

It's a typical morning in the court system designed to protect California's children from abuse and neglect: Justice is being strangled by the clock. In this Sacramento courtroom, attorneys spend two minutes on the case of a 3-year-old sent to the children's shelter after being found in a filthy home.