Don Bortz on DFCS

February 12, 2006 permalink

When baby Dylan Bortz died from an accident (the autopsy cannot determine a definitive cause), Georgia child protectors snatched the other child from the family. The family has established a blog at www.savejacksonbortz.com/. The entry for February 11 is an essay on child protection. The second half, not dealing with the facts of his own case, appears below. We can confirm his conclusion, in six years and hundreds of families interviewed, we have not found a single parent or foster child who reports a good experience with child protectors.

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You have no business being in 70% of your cases from the get-go, let alone the amount of cases where you "substantiate abuse", and later find that judgment was a wrong one. Those are thousands of families you do, YOU DO TERRORIZE, persecute, and wrongfully abuse. As long as DFCS continues to wield a broadsword for a neurosurgery situation, they will continue to destroy family by family. Thousands of families in danger because your protocol works on a system of unfairness, biased opinions, non-existent paperwork, and this idea that all children are in need of saving.

What is the need to seal the child's name in a deprivation case? Please explain. The reason Jackson is known is because he has so many hands trying to pull him away from this system.

Our children have no faces, no names. They get kidnapped and muzzled. They are removed from us under false pretenses, false paperwork, and empty threats and at no time does DFCS concern themselves with their rights. My son represents a percentage pay increase to someone's annual paycheck.

How is that his best interest? The more kids in the system, right or wrong, it doesn't really matter, the more money YOU make. From Case worker to Foster parent, it is a business; from government funds to garnishing wages for child support (even in relative placement where things can be handled privately.)

If anyone from DFCS wants to work WITH us and not AGAINST us, we welcome it. But we tried that in the beginning. You were innocent; you proved yourselves guilty. I wish we had been given that same chance.

Bottom line is - Our children are placed in danger by this system.

Children have a right to an identity in deprivation cases. They have rights that need ensuring. There is no bonus check for ensuring those rights, is there? No, I don't get a check for trying to save my son from YOUR system of shadows, do I? I bet I do it because I love my child.

I bet that's why an enormous amount of families fight this system.

When a system is established that gives those identities back to the children, when we have a system that is not over-zealous, when we have a system where the accused families can face those that accused them, when we have a system that holds its operators accountable for their lack of judgment and their mistakes, when we have a system that operates with some common sense, then we have arrived at THE STARTING POINT of a system that works.

You are facing families that you have wronged. That you have refused to not just believe, but to listen to in the first place.

A lack of due process in this agency is what keeps the Smiths from their child. A lack of common sense by this agency is what keeps Ms. Gomez from her baby. An over abundance of biased opinion by this agency is what keeps the Lane family and the Barnett family sundered. Stubbornness by this agency is what keeps the Bortz family apart.

I am still waiting for one post, just one post from someone who has benefited from DFCS intervention. You call this website "one-sided", why aren't any persons you have "helped" stepping forward? The truth is NO ONE sees all the great magic wonderful things in a child when you strip them of identity and rights. You DO see a lot of tears, pain and anguish.

If you do not like being called terrorists, then do not terrorize. Revise the system.

Don Bortz
Father of Dylan and Jackson

Source: Save Jackson Bortz website, entry for February 11, 2006