Letters From Carole
Arrogance of Power
As a long time child advocate and for many years a watchdog for them in Judicial/Family and Social Services Administration proceedings, I’ve witnessed first hand the abuses children have endured in what is billed as a legal theater, but is really a show of arrogance of power.
The Indiana Department of Children Services along with the judicial system have created a quagmire of turf battles, egos, and political maneuvering in which children are moved around under different headings for funding purposes. We need an independent outside audit of this corrupt “system” . The dynamic duo (Judicial/D.C.S) has contributed to the demise of children’s lives. At any given time numerous children are unaccounted for in the “system” under the auspices of state care. Many of these children have family members and loved ones who are willing and able to provide love and care for these children (CAPTA Natural Families); but the “system” has control and positions themselves on the family tree with the pseudo parents (sperm donors and incubators) Loved ones are forbidden to know anything about their well being or even visit these disadvantaged children. Indiana has created genocidal conditions among families. Family can’t be simplified according to values of religious groups, and you can’t legislate love! A child is the only human being forced to live with their abuser.
Children have died while under the misnomer Department of Children Services (DCS). The Judicial/DCS have abused their discretion when they can take a child under the guise of the law, it’s nothing more than kidnapping. There is nothing as viable as the Amber alert to rescue these children.
The state is a party to violating its children’s civil rights. There is no uniformity in our 92 counties for protecting children. 150 law makers are terrified of losing votes and of the DCS mantra “confidentiality”, they continually try to shore up with soft supports a structure that’s imploded, it’s a Humpty Dumpty “system”. It’s the only business that grows with its failures is immune to responsibility and accountability, yet touts success.
Two Indiana social workers along with a brother to one of them have met with suspicious deaths while trying to expose this vile “system”. The continued growth of child maltreatment has to be partly attributed to the outright fraud of DCS under reporting child deaths, the unprecedented length of term served by the former Senate pro team along with so many legislators serving a multitude of years and to our Chief Justice of the supreme court.
I have long contended if we follow the money trail and set up a data system of some kind we could track children in the system with out identifying children by name.
There are only two reasons for the epidemic of child maltreatment Ignorance & Indifference !
Ignorance can be cured with education, Indifference ?
Carole Davis
Children in Need
My focus has always been on children in need. I have been astounded at the priorities the Indiana legislators and the United States Congress have deemed important. We are a hypocritical nation who denounces other countries for human rights violations, when we have murdered more children than any other industrialized country. We have hundreds of higher learning institutions in this country, but not one single chair for research into child maltreatment.
In Indiana we have legislators overly concerned about adopting an amendment against gay marriage. We have statutes prohibiting this already. The Indiana Attorney General is adamant about pursing his own moral values as a public office holder, but he will not address the fraud, corruption, and even suspicious deaths of state whistle blowers in the Family and Social Services Agency. The F.S.S.A. has defrauded the taxpayers and the Federal Government under reporting child maltreatment and deaths. The courts have been an autonomy that legislates from the bench amid deceit and corruption.
A Congressional hearing on steroids in baseball seems ill placed on the list of importance when we have 10 million plus children at risk in this country and thousands dying yearly. My Congressman believes a fight for a rock on a courthouse lawn is his high moral value. He said the maltreatment and the death of children is a state issue. That is ludicrous, of course.
The maltreatment of children is of national importance because it goes to the heart of American values: The American Family. We can no longer define “family” by a 50′s TV sitcom; they were never really anyway. Nor can we as a nation always accept organized religions’ – or the courts’ – narrow boundaries of what makes an acceptable family for the child who is at risk. Tragically, those families all too often have become battle grounds in which children are the innocent victims. A family should provide a loving, safe environment in which respect is given and potential is nourished.
Children in risky environments are in similar situations as adults in perilous partnerships. Children are all too often forced to live with their abusers. Simply because someone has been s sperm donor or an incubator, a birth certificate for a child becomes a right of ownership. Most of their fatalities are a result of these children being returned to the same housing where they were originally abused and/or neglected.
This epidemic of neglect and maltreatment of children simply must be stopped. We as a nation must respond to the desperate needs of millions of children who look to adults for love, nourishment, and protection.
The System
The “system”, judicial and child-welfare particularly, is discriminatory towards children. It considers the procreators first in deciding the well-being of children and not the children’s best interest. A child is not a sub-person. Children are afforded rights under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The “system” abandons due process for children, as persons protected under the constitution, and has set their own standards of deciding the fate of children. By giving first consideration to procreators they are making a statement that the procreators have an absolute possesory interest in a child as if they were nothing more than chattel. By attempting to enforce an unwritten law, ordering a procreator to love a child merely because they were born of them is playing a game of chance with the child’s life. This is antiquated thinking and not representative of the Constitution.
The tern “parent” in the sense it is intended invokes a picture of a warm and fuzzy procreator loving, holding, and protecting their offspring. This is an assumption that the judicial and child-welfare has used to automatically determine a child’s well being. (A farmer knows to take a piglet from the mother sow when she is trying to harm it! “Just because you can procreate does not a parent make”.) The courts are supposed to deal in facts without emotion. They have been discriminative towards children. They have violate their civil rights, but giving consideration to the female first and then male procreators in custody issues. This “pecking order” clearly violates what s best for the child and is a judge’s sense of correct social conduct, not the law. Should either of these procreators fail in their responsibilities, the child-welfare has absolute power and total immunity from any and all adverse consequences in sealing the fate of a child’s life.
Child-welfare should not have the power to usurp family members and/or caretakers with whom the child has had or may have a loving bond and who offers a loving and stable home. The term family is defined as the procreators, but is not limited to these two individuals. Incarceration of children into a loveless institution operated by a bureaucracy of red tape and absolute power is self-serving, and denies children love and stability.
Adults can seek relief from a loveless marriage in a court of law. A convicted criminal has many rights to fair and unbiased discipline. A child is treated as if they are an abstract by the government. The courts have set a precedent in deciding a child’s well being and have established a business-as-usual mentality while ignoring the facts. Facts are used for decisions with adults in a court of law. The “system” we have in operation in addressing the best interest of our most prized assets and our future – this nation’s children is akin to “Jurassic Park”!
We have a colossal epidemic of child maltreatment by the government and sadly by the people who we “assume” should be nurturers. The most chilling admission by child welfare personnel is that a child’s unhappiness and emotions don’t count is very sickening. Having justice served for this country’s youth is long overdue. A congressional and individual state investigation into serving what is truly in the child’s best interest and well-being is in order.
Carole Davis
C.H.I.L.D.
The Present is a Gift
You Can’t Exchange
Or Return
