The criminalization of parents

Exclusive: Stephen Baskerville slams 'government behemoth' destroying families

Published: 03/14/2008 at 12:00 AM
World Net Daily(WND)

The California appeals court decision criminalizing parents who homeschool their children is only the tip of an iceberg. Nationwide, parents are already being criminalized in huge numbers, and it is not limited to homeschoolers.

During the Clinton years, the trend toward turning children into tools for expanding government power increased rapidly. Otherwise indefensible programs and regulations are now rationalized as “for the children.”
As a result, government now has so many ways to incarcerate parents that hardly a family in America has not been touched. The criminalization of parents is highly bureaucratic, effected through a bureaucratic judiciary and supported by a vast “social services” machinery that few understand until it strikes them. They then find themselves against a faceless government behemoth from which they are powerless to protect their children or defend themselves.

Homeschoolers are usually accused of “educational neglect,” a form of child abuse. Like other child abuse accusations, it does not usually involve a formal charge, uniformed police, or a jury trial. Instead the accusations are leveled by social workers, whose subjective judgment is minimally restrained by due-process protections. As Susan Orr, head of the federal Children’s Bureau points out, these social workers are in effect plainclothes police – but they are not trained or restricted like regular police.

Homeschoolers are not alone. Any parents can be charged with “child abuse” on the flimsiest of pretexts, because child abuse has no definition. Because of our presumption of innocence, crimes are generally defined as they are adjudicated: A crime has been committed if a jury convicts. But the roughly 1 million cases of child abuse annually (out of 3 million accusations) are “confirmed” or “substantiated” not by jury trials but by social workers or (sometimes) judges. Most such parents are not imprisoned. They merely lose their children.

Virtually every American can now tell of a relative or friend visited by the feared Child Protective Services because of a playground injury or a routine bruise. Too many dismiss these frightening ordeals as aberrations. In fact, they proceed from a bureaucratic logic that is driven by federal funding. The more “abuse” the social workers find, the more money they get to combat it.

But serious as this is, it is still mild compared to the largest sector of semi-criminalized parents: the involuntarily divorced. The moment one parent files for divorce, even when no grounds are evinced, the government automatically and immediately seizes control of the children, who become effectively wards of the state. Astoundingly, they are then almost always placed in the “custody” of the parent that initiates the divorce, placing the divorcing parent and the state in collusion against the parent that is faithful to the marriage and family. The non-divorcing parent, even if legally unimpeachable, can then be arrested for unauthorized contact with his or her own children. Here too abuse accusations can be readily fabricated out of thin air, further criminalizing the innocent parent. He (it is usually, though not always, the father) can then be arrested, even without a shred of evidence that any abuse has occurred. He can also be arrested if he cannot pay child support that may consume most or even all his income. He can even be arrested for not paying a lawyer or psychotherapist he has not hired.

But what is most striking here – in contrast to homeschoolers – is the absence of opposition. The genius of the feminists is to vilify fathers in terms designed to incur the revulsion of decent people – “pedophiles,” “batterers,” “deadbeat dads” – and too many conservatives and Christians are fooled.
In fact, the social science data are clear that these alleged malefactors are rare among biological fathers and almost entirely the creation of feminist propaganda. Accused fathers are no more likely to be criminals or child abusers than are homeschooling parents. They have merely fallen into the clutches of another sector of the child exploitation bureaucracy.

Indeed, it is well-known among scholars that true child abuse takes place overwhelmingly in single parent homes – homes without fathers. By removing fathers under trumped-up abuse accusations, the child abuse apparatchiks create the environment for real abuse, further expanding their business.

 Campaigns against homeschoolers and fathers are only the extreme manifestations of the larger attack on all parents. They indicate where we all may be headed if we do not take a united stand for parental rights against a judicial-bureaucratic machine that is not only destroying families but justifying its own expansion in the process.

Though conservatives often misuse the term, two features used by scholars to define totalitarian government were its highly bureaucratic methods and its willingness to invade and destroy the private sphere of life, particularly family life. Both these tendencies come together in the governmental leviathan that now administers our children: the education establishments, family courts, child protective services, child support enforcement agents, “human services” agencies, counseling services, domestic violence programs and much more.

The very idea that the criminal justice system has been diverted from its role of protecting society from dangerous criminals and instead used to threaten law-abiding parents with jail for educating or raising or simply being with their children should be seen by all Americans as a serious threat to our families and our freedom.

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

U.N. treaty threatens U.S. homeschoolers

As re-posted from :  WND Education

DeMint: U.N. treaty threatens U.S. homeschoolers

Republican defends against liberals intent on imposing backdoor globalism

In the past few weeks, two proposed United Nations treaties failed to advance. The small-arms treaty failed at the U.N. while opponents of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) amassed enough votes to block it in the U.S. Senate.
Now, Sen. Jim DeMint,R-S.C., says another U.N. treaty that threatens American sovereignty has been put back on the table by foreign diplomats and their internationalist allies in the federal government. It’s called the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Disabled, which calls for government agents to supersede the authority of parents of disabled children and even covers abortion.
Proponents, including many Republicans, claim it will help to expand rights and opportunities for disabled people in all nations, but DeMint isn’t buying it.
“When you look at the language in the treaty you realize there are other things at stake here. A lot of language in there that has nothing to do with disabilities and that is likely to push the U.S. toward more international law,” DeMint told WND.
DeMint says the language of the treaty suggests it will promote abortion and chip away at parental rights — particularly the rights of homeschooling parents.
“Homeschoolers are up in arms. We already have some judges in our country that are using international law to change our laws.

“We’re afraid that if the language suggests that parental authority is not absolute, we’re going to have an international body telling our parents they can’t homeschool.”

The senator says the U.S. is by far the most accommodating nation in the world for people with disabilities and he sees no need to sign this or most other U.N.treaties because it can only erode American sovereignty.
“We’re well entangled at this point, we don’t need another treaty.”
DeMint explains what he thinks supporters of the treaty are missing and how he thinks a Senate vote on the treaty would go if it were held today.
“America needs to be the model of the world. We need to be the light rather than trying to submit ourselves to other nations.”

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

School paperwork failure costs mom custody of son

Moved into social services agency over 'unexcused' absences

The fact that a New York school district simply delayed processing the paperwork for a mother who decided to homeschool her son cost the mother custody – at least temporarily – of her son, according to a new report.
The Home School Legal Defense Association reports that what should have been no more than a simple misunderstanding or paperwork mixup resulted in the child being taken into custody by social services agencies.
The organization which works worldwide to promote the rights of parents and students and to advocate for homeschooling said it was using pseudonyms, Sherry and Carson Fleming, to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

The report posted online said the conflict developed in the Albany school district and escalated unchecked until the New York Department of Children, Youth, and Families removed the child, Carson, from the family home.

Find out why classes seem so different these days, in “The Harsh Truth About Public Schools”

“One of the problems that homeschoolers face in New York is that school districts are very quick to involve DCYF when there is even a minor dispute over paperwork,” said Darren Jones, a litigation attorney for the HSLDA who worked on the case.

The case developed after Fleming submitted to the district her notice of intent and began homeschooling Carson at the start of the 2011-2012 year. As it’s normal for school districts to allow weeks to pass before they process such paperwork, it’s not unusual for schools to total up weeks’ worth of unexcused absences, the HSLDA said.

“While Ms. Fleming waited for the school to review her information, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) received an anonymous accusation, presumably from a schoolteacher, that Carson had unexcused absences from school. Blaming Ms. Fleming for refusing to cooperate with school officials, DCYF charged her with educational neglect. At her hearing, the judge, unfamiliar with New York’s homeschooling laws, refused to recognize that Ms. Fleming was in compliance with the law and ordered that Carson attend public school. But after Ms. Fleming visited the school officials the next day, they approved her homeschool and informed the court,” the organization reported.

simply refused and ordered that because Carson was not enrolled in the public However, the trials were just beginning, because while Fleming believed the neglect charges would be dropped with the approval of her actions, the judge school he must be removed from his mother and put into a foster home.

The HSLDA said it was able to sort out the information and obtain from the DCYF a dismissal of the charges, allowing Carson to return home.

It was just days ago when WND reported that position was exactly what a politician has begun advocating.
The issue arose after Lotta Edholm, a prominent leader of Sweden’s liberal party, opined in an article in Aftonbladet, a Swedish newspaper, that the nation’s social service laws should be changed to encourage social workers to take children away from homeschooling families.
“That the deputy minister of social affairs, Maria Larsson … should take an initiative to change the social services act so that the social authorities can intervene when children are kept away from school by their parents,” she wrote on her blog.
“A country that does not permit home education is not really a free country,” noted Michael Donnelly, director of international affairs for the HSLDA.
Donnelly, who has worked closely in support of homeschooling families in a number of nations where they are being persecuted, said the change in Sweden is a turn for the worse.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/school-paperwork-failure-costs-mom-custody-of-son/



*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207