The Nanny State Nightmare with Judicial Teeth
In other words, unelected, unaccountable bureaucracies will use taxpayer dollars to fund a private organization’s agenda on child welfare. These policies will circumvent the legislative process and go directly to the recruitment of activist judges to enact “expert” policies.
There will be no need for a bill to pass through Congress defining “spanking” as child abuse. The newly created National Court Teams Resources Center can simply define what is and isn’t child abuse. Recruited judges will be able to simply follow those new federal guidelines to render their decisions based on the center’s interpretation of laws. Unchallenged, these policies can supersede state and local laws.
In anticipation of such an event, part of the stated duties of the National Court Teams Resource Center is to produce “methods to change state and local government systems to better address the needs of infants and toddlers in foster care and their families.”
Local court teams are obligated to “utilize resource materials disseminated by the National Court Teams Resource Center to guide judges in the decision making process regarding maltreated infants and toddlers, and to provide training for Court Team members.”
Expert consensus seems to be replacing common sense with groupthink. Say, isn’t that the same way we ended up with so-called climate experts? I seem to recall a purported consensus on man-made global warming and calling dissenters flat-earthers and Holocaust deniers. These “experts” steamrolled their opposition, denied grants, and rejected publication of conflicting reports. I wish I could remember how all that environmental mumbo-jumbo ended. Oh well. I’m sure giving federal powers to “experts” won’t serve to obliterate political opposition, ostracize those daring to think for themselves, and infringe on our rights … again.
Local court teams will also be used as a tool to get other related groups on the same page. Under “Required Activities,” local court teams must “organize the provision of local training (provided by the National Court Teams Resource Center) to community members of the jurisdiction in which the local Court Team is located, including court officials, child welfare agencies, attorneys, Guardians Ad Litem, court-appointed special advocates, and other individuals and organizations providing services to infants and toddlers in foster care.”
This legislation, introduced in both the House and Senate, is one of the most audacious assaults on parental rights so far. There is no accountability to the taxpayer for policy makers and the bill blatantly advocates for judicial activism and legislation from the bench. The most disgusting part of this bill is that it has very little to do with children, and everything to do with consolidating power.
Mysterious, how these bills “appear.”
Who is promoting this? Is it coming from one of the Czars? From a particular Congressman? Has there been any Congressional opposition to it? When will it be up for a vote? Or is it already law? Is it in the “Budget?” Was it funded by the “Stimulous?”
“When restricted to children with more than one reported incident of abuse (a more realistic indicator of actual problems), the number of cases drops to less than one-tenth of one percent of the total population of children in the U.S.”
That’s probably about the same percentage of people who accidentally get hurt crossing the street. Maybe we should have another statist bureaucracy to prevent people from doing that, too?
I wonder who’s relative came up with the idea?
We have never needed a bureaucracy like this before, and we don’t need one now! We have to get our people in at every level of the government, and unwind all that the Progressives have put in over the years – all the way up to Social Security.
I hate to tell you, guys, but the damage was done long ago. As a veteran of divorce court, I can relate horror stories of watching my rights being taken away because of my gender. In fact, if my ex hadn’t been such a colossal screw-up, I might not have been given much in the way of custody at all. It galled me to the depths of my being to listen while a judge, who knew nothing of the case, arbitrarily decided what was best for my child and proceed to put him in the worst possible situation. I was helpless. Much needs to change. I ended up with full custody only because my ex-wife (whose life was beyond chaotic) basically handed him over. At least she had that much integrity- most people don’t
The money would be better spent teaching social workers how to get a back bone. I read an artice recently (sorry I cant cite it, cant remember where I read it) where a social worker admitted that many child abuse reports dont even get investigated. Not because the system is overwhelmed and doesn’t have enough investigators, but because they just don’t have the stomach for it.
There are bills to have the state “model” correct parenting and make home visits. There’s the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child, which requires parents to negociate with their children; this treaty has been used to have judges undo curfews and punishments of parents. In Britain parents can’t give their children a kiss good-bye at school, can’t enter their children’s schools without a criminal background check, can’t carpool other children, can’t baby-sit unless they get government permission; There are many families required to live with cameras in their homes to make them do as the gov’t says in rearing their children. It will be like that here soon if we don’t oppose this madenss. Please see attached article from the UK Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245190/Mother-clever-raise-child-baby-removed-social-workers-running-away.html
This will turn out to be another attack on fathers and men. The family courts are already hostile towards men and seem to see their mission as protecting women with total disregard to the welfare of the children.
#3 Bill is right – the system is already out of control. I, too, am a veteran (although in a different respect from Bill) of divorce court, and have seen many travesties occur in custody awards. It needs revamping and really, when two people have gotten together produced and brought another human being into the world, there should be a presumption of joint custody – but there’s not. The standard in most states is “best interests” of the child, although some older judges still adhere to the “tender years” doctrine, whereby it’s presumed a child should be with the nurturing mother during his/her “tender years,” which in Bill’s case it sounds like, often result in horrendous environments in which to place a child/ren.
I read that claim that one in a thousand children are abused and I thought ‘No. Thats rubbish; Its made up.’
And I reckon most people who read that article will think the same. Think about how many people you know. Think about how many you know well enough to talk about this stuff. If you know ONE person who has been abused then the real rate must be higher than one in a thousand.
I checked the numbers in the document Andie linked too.
5% PER YEAR are investigated.
1% PER YEAR are found to have been maltreated
0.4% PER YEAR are found to have suffered physical or sexual abuse.
And if what Andie says about repeat cases being rare is true (a big if obviously), then we’re looking at child abuse rates which are about 40 times higher than Andie says.
You know, I really don’t get it. What is the point of writing an article AND JUST MAKING STUFF UP?
Last thing. Think again about the people you know who suffered abuse as a child. How many of those reported it? How many of those would have turned up in the statistics?
The secular-humanist Utopians, aka marxists, and their legal arm, the ACLU, have all but succeeded in erasing from our mass culture the positive influence of Christian morality (by marginalizing it and legislating against it), and with it, individual accountability for decent behavior.
Now we’re all just a bunch of cells, no different from Toucans or tarantulas, and like them, with no obligation or capacity to aspire to know what is good or right.
This is the “paradise” for which the statist exerts his life’s blood to achieve, the worship of the state and with it the state’s power/authority to dictate what should be and what ought not to be for those whose thumb it pushes down.
Our government was designed for a moral people, and that morality, based on Judeo-Christian principles, a belief in the transcendant, and a belief that man has a soul. Without such restraints on the populace, our government must now exert an increasingly heavy legal hand to deal with the consequences of actions by people who serve no higher purpose than the satisfaction of their own egotistical and selfish desires — many of which are harmful to others and which are conducive to chaos.
#8
“Roy”
“less than one percent of all U.S. children have been investigated as abused” Should read “less than one percent of all U.S. children have been investigated and found to be abused…” My apologies if this confused you. The numbers, however, ARE correct.
As for what I say about repeat cases… from the link above: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm07/chapter3.htm
“…the Children’s Bureau has established the current national standard for the absence of maltreatment recurrence as 94.6 percent…” http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm07/chapter3.htm
In other words, about 1 in 20 abused children were repeat cases, hence my less than one tenth of one percent for the _whole population of children_ figure.
–Andie
Interesting that the mother acting alone as abuser is more than double that of fathers acting alone.
Yes and women have such a great record of reproducing responsibly, why regulate what they do with their progeny after that.
What is frightening is allowing anyone to have the legal force to apply their opinion regarding the welfare of any child. Like Bill, I suffered from the horrendous gender bias of our local court system, and watched helplessly as my three girls were sent to live with their less than admirable mother and her bi-annual man d’jour. To give that kind of power to people who think they “know what’s best” is akin to condemning countless children to a horrible life, being used as pawns by one parent against the other, and invariably growing up with a deep distrust of the legal system as a whole, and a very real contempt for the very system that was supposed to know what they wanted better than they did. Fortunately…my ex wife’s drug habit finally caught up with her, and the two youngest were freed from that private hell that is child “services”. It is appalling how ignorant to reality they are…but how quick they can condemn a person simply because they happen to be male….and it is the rule, not the exception in the majority of family courts.
gverdi27
the numnbers are for maltreatment which can be neglect or abuse. So if father leaves a mother holding the baby and then the mother neglects a child that is counted as ‘the mother alone’ neglecting the child.
Andie,
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
The numbers are correct; they came from the report. Its the sentences you wrote around them that are so disasterous. Particularly the claim that only 1 in a thousand children are maltreated.
About 20% of adults report suffering sexual abuse during their childhood[1]. Now there are levels to this kind of thing, but taking sexual abuse and physical abuse together we can be pretty sure that a substantial minority of children suffer abuse during their childhhod.
The numbers in “chapter 3″ say that 1% of children per year are found o have been maltreated. 40% of that total suffer abuse. So thats 0.4% per year. Childhood here is 0-15 so that is 6% are discovered to have been abused.
Once they have been discovered to have been abused 95% are never found to be abused again.
Lets recap.
A) About 20% of adults were abused as a child.
B) 6% of children are discovered to be abused while they are still a child
C) When abuse is discovered it is stopped from recurring 95% of the time.
You see, that facts seem to point in the direction of:
A) its a big problem.
B) We currently catch only a small proportion of abuse.
C) But when it is caught very effective action can be taken to stop it.
[1] Finkelhor D, Hotaling G, Lewis IA, Smith C., 1990, Sexual abuse in a national survey of adult men and women: prevalence, characteristics, and risk factors, Child Abuse and Neglect, 14(1):19-28
@#15
You seem to be concerned more with statistics based on moral degradation that results in child abuse. The study you cited mentioned higher rates of abuse were among those in “unhappy homes” with a missing parent. My opinion is that crime rates will go down as individuals start to (again) hold themselves to a standard of personal responsibility, morality and dedication to the family. Take the ideals of the American Revolution v/s the French Revolution as a prime example of the success for established order and morality under –individualism– rather than the collective will imposed by bureaucracy.
There are many successful (non-governmental) institutions dedicated to the cause of individual betterment and responsibility for the sake of family: BOND and Focus on The Family are just two examples. Morality is ultimately a personal decision but it can be nurtured and expedited by returning to our cultural roots of Judeo-Christian values.
I do not believe the solution to child abuse is to create more bureaucracy that infringes on parental rights for the sake of protecting children. Crimes against children can be adjudicated the same as crimes against adults. There is no need for an alternative system of justice based on age. Anything else is government meddling and acting as a “nanny state”.
The only legitimate purpose for government-sponsored “child protection” is to take a child from an unfit, criminal parent. In which case, it is imperative that an institution with the power to sever parental rights not be a self-regulated entity that operates outside of the rule of law and is presided over by a judge who is obligated to carry out the agenda of an unelected body. –As described in my article.
–Andie
This is what happens in a nation awash with lawyers that can only find work in GOVERNMENT.
God help us!