In every spiritual tradition there is an underline often unsaid expectation, that is essential—if one wants to master their religion, spiritual practice or tradition. That is… to adopt a Cause to better humanity. The Zen Mountain Monastery in NY places great significance on this step, they are progressive activists for environmental issues and wildlife concerns. They also regularly reach out to local communities, struggling with poverty, death, illness, and incarceration. I know of other Zen Buddhist communities that are active in Animals Rights and Human Rights. The Catholic Church is known for their Catholic Charities; Founding hundreds of non-for profits from a wide wage of categories world wide.
This step within our devotional practices is fundamental to our spiritual journeys and will awaken us to the reality of this world. Reminding us, of our intentions to rectify falsehoods, hatred, violence, greed and despair. We don’t pretend that the world is at peace, or that injustices don’t exists; nor do we practice magical wishful thinking; for example, throwing up our arms saying; “‘everything happens for a reason’ or ‘for the best’ or ‘it must be Gods Will’ or ‘the universe is not supporting me, thus it’s not meant to be.'” These are victimizing thoughts, beliefs and words that will paralyze our ability to create positive change in our homes, communities and in the world.
In other words, as spiritual warriors leading the flock to spiritual evolution—we need to get down and dirty and into the mud. Into reality, so we can reconstruct what is not working, so we can pursue reform and change in our communities, nation and world. Without including this real-world step of embracing a Cause, we’ll lose site of the purpose of our spiritual journeys, and our efforts will be in vain. So today I am sharing with all of you, knowledge pertaining to the Cause I represent. My Cause is to bring Awareness, Change and Reform to the Family Courts and Child Protective Services CPS; whom are responsible for hundreds of thousands of American children being unjustly separated from their loving law-abiding American parents every year. I’ve written many articles on this subject matter, many published in the Huffington Post. I created a 5O1c3 charity Patricia’s Children Inc. to bring awareness and change to the corruption occurring in these State agencies. Both agencies fall under the umbrella of the ‘Department of Health and Human Services’ DHHS also known as HHS on the State level. I was invited by Senator Debbie Stabenow to speak to the House of Representatives and to The Governors Private Task Force Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect; after Stabenow read my 38-page Report entitled, The 2015 Child Protective Services Comprehensive Report; later published in the Huffington Post. Since 2017, HHS along with CPS has worked in conjunction with Department of Homeland Security DHS, in regards to children being separated from their parents at the border. ——–Department of Health Human Service “DHHS/HHS” —–State Branches are called Child Protective Services ‘CPS’ in conjunction with the Family Courts, routinely take American children from law abiding Parents; Parents who have not committed a crime nor have an allegation of using drugs; and have not been abusive or neglectful to their children.
John Moore is the photographer who took the photograph of the toddler looking up at the border patrol, crying on the cover of the Daily News and Time magazine. Moore said about the photo, “it’s not unlike other photographs I have shot of children at the border being taken from their parents for the past 20 years.” And when Congress members asked former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about the tens of thousands of children being taken from their parents at the border; she said “this is no difference then what we do every day throughout the US, we take children away from parents every day for committing crimes.”
The truth is, American parents do not have to commit a crime or use drugs or been abusive or neglectful to have their children taken from them.
The public is learning for the first time what many of us advocates for children have known for years; that Health Human Services HHS and Child Protective Services CPS consistently separate law-abiding American parents from their children. It is America’s ugliest secret that CPS commits with brutality every day, in every county in America; which is federally funded by HHS; snatching children, toddlers, babies and infants from their homes, bedrooms, hospitals, and schools every day without due process, without one day in court, without warning the parent, without cause, or accusation of abuse, neglect or drug use and without the parent committing a crime. Federal Funding for these state agencies, depends on how many children are in the system though their local CPS branch, and the more children in their custody the more funding that state agency receives.
So, children are systematically taken from vulnerable American parents—by CPS and the Family Courts to pay their bills so to speak and for the agency’s doors to stay open. Although the amount changes from State to State, the federal funds depend on the age and race of the child. Disabled children with special needs going for the most—the feds will give CPS branches approximately $9,000 to $28,000 per month for every disabled child in their custody. {note the amount that a local CPS agencies receive changes drastically from report to report and from state to state; from $6000 up to $3600 in some states} These agencies have become ‘big business’ and it’s all about a number game. And according to whistle blower Marilyn Rainwater, ex CPS Supervisor for 30 years of Oklahoma’s Child Protective Services; “CPS agencies and the family courts need to get their numbers up, which means, their agency must make their monthly mandates—-they must have a certain number of children placed into State Custody {foster care or with Guardian} to qualify for their federal funding. So, it is common for CPS caseworkers to regularly make up reasons to take children from their homes and to keep children in State Custody.”
So, CPS caseworkers/agents {also known as social workers} seek out vulnerable parents, so called soft targets, including grandparents who have legal custody of their grandchildren. Over the years the corruption within CPS/Family Court industry has become extreme, as CPS agents look for reasons to remove children from their parents. For example, one can lose their children for refusing to vaccinate their child, or for homeschooling, or when a single parent is working long hours {at two minimal wage jobs} CPS will claim “Abandonment.” Other reasons are, medical marijuana/cannabis oil use, or when a single parent is hospitalized, and even stating “age” as reasons to take a child from their grandparents. Every year thousands of grandparents are losing custody of their grandchildren to foster care. It appears that CPS is taking the children from these traumatized grandparents simply because it’s easy to do so, which keeps their “numbers up” allowing CPS agencies and Family Courts to stay in business. These grandparents are often low-income citizens and don’t have an educated background or the resources for the numerous court costs and attorneys.
But the most common reason for a child taken from a law-abiding parent is domestic violence. Parents that are victims of domestic violence, often lose custody of their children. Shockingly the abuser usually receives full custody of the children. This happens for a number of reasons. Mainly because the Family Court Judges wrongly assume that the victim {protective parent} will alienate the child/children from the abusive parent, thus giving full custody to the abusive parent. In Keith Snow’s book, The Worst Interest of the Child, he describes these situations this way; “The victims of domestic violence are punished by HHS/Child Protective Services often more harshly then the perpetrator, at best the same as the abuser, thus the victim of the abuse often loses the Rights to their children.”
Another soft target CPS aims for, is children of legal immigrants. If a child of a legal immigrant gets into a fight at school or in trouble at school, the schools are calling CPS instead of the parents. The child is taken directly into State Custody by CPS from school and placed into foster care.
Yet another alarming CPS practice, is to take children with disabilities into state custody without cause, because they are worth up to 3 to 4 times more than a healthy child in State Custody. I wish I could say that this money that comes from the Federal Government DHHS, is going to benefit the disabled child like it was intended to, but this is far from the truth.
So when a single parent goes to DHHS requesting assistance with their disabled or troubled child, {after seeing a commercial or ad funded by DHHS for parents struggling with a child with special needs} it’s become a common practice for the CPS agent to take the disabled child/or troubled child from the parent, placing the child in foster care with a complete stranger. CPS then uses the parents own words against them, claiming the parent felt overwhelmed and was requesting assistance, thus is unable to give proper care to the child. The treatment in foster care to disabled children and children with special needs is barbaric, they are over medicated, and forced to take drugs, sedating these children 24/7; and are often left in a locked dark room with no lights on for months at a time. Every child that is placed in state custody gets a prescription of sedation, in some cases sedating children as young as 6 months old. HHS has a long-standing contract with the pharmaceutical companies.
Still here is another excuse for CPS and the Family Courts to take a child from a loving a law-abiding good parent—–after a child was sexually abused outside of their home, i.e. a neighbor or at school. The mother seeks justice through the police or takes the child to a counselor. In these cases, the child is often taken from the parent by HHS/CPS, stating the child was not safe under the care of this parent and is not being properly looked after.
I’ve met a mother that lost her children permanently for driving with a suspended driver’s license. The children were in the car when the police pulled the mother over, the protocol is to arrest the driver for the suspension, impound the car and the children go into foster care, regardless of the parent’s pleas to place the children with the grandparents or relative. With the exception of ‘driving with a suspended driver’s license’ all these cases above— the parent did not commit a crime and did not have an allegation of drugs, neglect or abuse against them, yet their children were taken from them—-in some cases permanently.
As mentioned earlier, once the children are in foster care, CPS case workers frequently make up reasons to keep the children into state custody. Then it becomes a money game; the parent or grandparent has to pay to visit their children, pay for the supervisor that supervises their visitation, pay for court costs, pay for their attorney, pay for the children’s attorney, pay for counseling for themselves and the children, pay for parenting classes, the list is endless making it very difficult for vulnerable parents and grandparents to reunited with their children. It has nothing to do with being a good parent or a law-abiding parent, it is simply the way the system is currently set up, encouraging CPS supervisors and case workers to keep the children in State Custody for financial purposes.
Adding to the horror of being separated from their children, these parents and grandparents are not given the reasons for why their children were taken into State Custody. They are kept in the dark for weeks, traumatized and bewildered. Although the States have internal policies and rules—such as ‘returning the child in three weeks’—or in some States its ‘seven days.’ However, no one is enforcing these internal rules, resulting in children sitting in foster care for three to four agonizing months, without so much as court hearing and the parent’s hands are tied. There are no legal options or recourse for the parents to take, they are forced to sit and wait for the CPS courts to contact them. When the CPS agent discovers the child was never in danger or neglected, they do not return the child to the parents immediately. The parents or grandparents are ordered to appear in an informal court to hear for the first time the frivolous biased and unjustified allegations against them. The CPS agent frequently presents HEARSAY to the courts. Thus, the parents are obligated to listen to a one-sided argument against them; time after time there is no evidence or proof given to the courts against the parents, but rather Hearsay. The Judges in Family/CPS Courts rely 100% on the recommendations of the HHS/CPS case workers/agents, who are known to be misinformed, uneducated and overwhelmed with hundreds of cases, resulting in false complaints against parents/grandparents. In many cases children are abandoned in foster care for years without a substantial allegation of abuse or neglect against the parent. Many of these children do not survive foster care; their lives end after a violent rape or sadistic act of cruelty at the hands of these strangers called a foster parent. Again and again these deaths are ruled accidental deaths by CPS officials. Needlessly destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of American children and their law-abiding loving American parents.
So, when the universal outrage broke out in regard to the thousands of children being separated from parents at the border. I knew I had to seize this moment to bring attention to the hundreds of thousands of American children being separated from their law-abiding parents every day here in the USA.
In a CNN interview with Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar accidentally reveals the true number of children taken from parents at the border. Azar in frustration was attempting to explain how his department was overwhelmed and was justifying the thousands of children under six years old that have not yet been reunited with their parents, Azar said: “currently the Health and Human Services has more than 40,000 children in DHHS custody that came over the border.”
Department of Health and Human Services {HHS} as well as their State branch’s Child Protective Services {CPS} ought to be dismantled, gutted and shut down and replaced with a new humane system that places the lives of American children and their parents with respect and dignity. The barbarous carnage these agencies have caused to millions of people for the past 20 years—most of them children, is so vast that it is unmeasurable. This is an ongoing dirty and deadly American secret, that must be stopped. Bringing awareness to these heinous practices is the first action towards change and reform.
Please consider supporting Patricia’s Children Inc. or any organization that is dedicated to bringing change and reform to Child Protective Services CPS and the Family Courts. Through these two State agencies, hundreds of thousands of American children’s lives are brutally destroyed after these criminal enterprises enter into their lives.