Monday, March 28, 2011

When Blue Ribbon Day was started to kick off of Child Abuse Prevention month, first in Virginia and then around the nation, Bubba, Audra, Sarah, Deonte and children whose deaths could have been predicted and prevented inspired me to offer public comment at Social Services State Board meetings for years—seemingly to no avail.

As long as "protection" and immunity is for official actors and Child Protective Services (the only legal responder) and the State Attorney General see-saw their dual mandates—child protection and family preservation for CPS and top law enforcer but also lawyer for offending state agencies with the AG—too many children are traumatized by needless interventions, too many die because of official malfeasance and families are dis-membered.

Take little Bubba, for example, whose story is heralded as the inspiration for the Blue Ribbon (Child Abuse Prevention Month) campaign. How much better do people (especially legislators who are pressed to fund anti-family child removal programs) feel walking around wearing blue ribbons?

Has anyone checked into how Bubba turned up in a tool box in a Tidewater Virginia swamp?

Well, it wasn't because his grandmother did not plead desperately to a court and to those charged with seeing he was safe with his drugged-up mother and her boyfriend to please, please, please remove Bubba from life-threatening conditions.

Far from publicly admitting error when his grandmother's poignant predictions came true, Bubba's protectors silenced her legitimate plaints with promise of a statewide and later full nation month-long Blue Ribbon campaign in his memory.

They Could Have Been Saved

Remembering Bubba and his helpless plight is precisely what we should do during Child Abuse Prevention Month. Just try forgetting that the protectors and "the court" had ample notice of the child's clear and present danger. They also had a tax-free safe home for him with a grandmother whose own protection efforts were ignored.

It is decades past time to get real about what is passed of as a case by case "fall through the cracks" problem in nearly every state. Check the income from the federal government to states that take children, cut parental rights ASAP (per federal laws and court "improvement" plans) and adopt out children to stranger families rather than allowing children to remain with relatives who are "fit," willing and able.

For every miserable example of needless child deaths and injury allowed by protectors that a child and family advocate across the country can produce there always will be the "Yeah, buts…."

No one can predict accurately in either direction every time; still, the huge numbers of gross errors that result in child deaths—especially in paid but too seldom monitored child minding (foster care)—should long ago have recognized America's ongoing Child Protection Racket as one that will appear in history books along with slavery, sterilizations, internment camps. All are examples of what happens when "law" goes awry, nearly all actors (lawmakers and judges in particular) are immune, and no one is accountable.

Yes, It Can Happen to You

Nearly three decades ago, with a background in investigative reporting, I had a life-changing experience that quickly persuaded me very few regular Americans could be assured of keeping their own children safely within their families. Government always has more money, police power and, well, professionals enjoying the same immunity from whatever they say and do because they, as the others, are presumed to be acting in "good faith."

There have been those, and surely still are, who always validate the accuser/protector story in ways that persuade a court in a direction that may end as did Bubba's life. That's true even if there is "only" a death of spirit or a child's lights are put out in other sad ways.

Either there are fewer protection takeovers from innocent families of never abused children or I have blessedly missed most of them. More likely there is less money for abuse finding where there is none. If so, there will be fewer cases of accidental incest as children, not knowing whence they came, fall for a kindred spirits and, oooops. That's "ooooops" with no accountability, of course.

If only the precious child who was examined for falsely alleged child sex abuse had a larger vocabulary or if only the evaluator had asked about her history of antibiotics that killed off her vaginal flora and left her tender in places her mother had treated with ointment. It was true that "My mommy touches me there and it hurts," but not for any reason a professional with common sense could not have learned before the child was removed from real safety.

The prosecutor of the child's killer—the man who sped through a two-day summer trial, purposely failing to call deputies who had taken pictures of the child brought to them by her mother, or the doctor who had treated her himself and called CPS to remove the child from her father's home with his pregnant live-in, or the careless child sex abuse evaluator—actually lied to the jury and later said he was sure they could figure out the truth anyway.

The truth was that they wanted out of the courtroom on a hot summer Friday afternoon and he was party to covering up horrendous misdeeds.

Protected to Death

Later, when the mother tried to get copies of the child's exams at the hospital, ones for which she was billed, she was refused. Turns out that the prosecutor, who later ran for state office, was also the hospital's attorney, on its board and its bill collector.

Those stories aren't very bad ones, frankly. Two precious youngsters were dead from neglect at the hands of the very (and only) agency allowed to protect them (see US Supreme Court DeShaney case); but, there are hundreds and thousands of others who have been taken from homes in which there never was any abuse, neglect or emotional trauma of any kind.

Regular law-abiding, truth-telling taxpayers sincerely believe (1) nothing similar could ever happen to them or to anyone they know because the truth (if anyone cares to check it out maybe) will set them free; and (2) no one in law enforcement would let "them" get away with stuff like that. Sorry, too often it is the official "them" enabling or turning a blind eye.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I'll bet in most states, there is an article in the State Constitution asserting that "all laws are presumed to be Constitutional."

Well, I presume that I am thin and rich; but, that's wishful thinking too.

People who genuinely care about the well-being of children and that also of families, who do love and nurture them as best they can, should try to follow directly the large amounts of money allocated through federal programs.

The government gravy train does a "pass through" at the State level and winds up allowing front line social workers—too often burned out and not always as mentally or emotionally stable as many whose removed children bring $$$ into the local system—to decide if a child has a chance somewhere in his family (think Bubba) or joins Bubba as an Unnecessary Angel.

Barbara Bryan

BHBryan@aol.com