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For the second time in a month we report on Toronto Children's Aid doing it right. A baby, Xin Lei Huang, was found dead in her home and the two other children were left with their father. The facts in the story indicate nothing more serious than crib death, but police have charged the mother, Xiu Zheng, with homicide.

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Police stand in front of the house on Manning Avenue, near Queen and Bathurst Streets, after the baby was found unconscious on Saturday, Feb. 23, 2008.

Mother charged in baby girl's murder in Toronto

Updated Sun. Feb. 24 2008 6:23 PM ET, toronto.ctv.ca

A newborn baby girl is Toronto's latest homicide victim and her mother has been charged with the murder.

Police were called to an address on Manning Avenue, near Queen and Bathurst Streets, after the baby was found not breathing and unconscious Saturday night.

The baby, identified as Xin Lei Huang, was discovered by her father who came home around 9 p.m. He was preparing dinner and decided to check up on his daughter because it was about time to feed her. When he found her unconscious, he called 911.

Emergency officials said the baby was already dead when they arrived on scene.

She was 40 days old.

Det. Sgt. Gary Grinton told CTV.ca on Sunday that two older siblings and the baby's father were at home when the 911 call was made.

The siblings have not been taken into protective custody. They are staying with the father who is "absolutely not" a suspect, Grinton said.

Grinton wouldn't say if any obvious signs of trauma were found on the baby.

An autopsy is scheduled for Monday morning to officially determine the cause of death.

Friends of the family stopped by when they noticed they didn't come to church on Sunday the way they usually do.

Xiu Zheng, 38, has been charged with second-degree murder. She made a court appearance Sunday morning and was remanded in custody.

The baby is Toronto's ninth homicide.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Austin Delaney

Source: website of CTV

Addendum: The first set of pathologists could not find the cause of death. Will they send the case to the successor of Dr Charles Smith for a sure-fire finding of homicide?

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February 26, 2008

Baby's murder: 'The facts ... will disgust you'

By TAMARA CHERRY, SUN MEDIA

In a case shrouded by unanswered questions, there was one thing the lead homicide detective would say about a 40-day-old girl allegedly killed at the hands of her mother.

"When the facts come out, they'll disgust you," Toronto Police Det.-Sgt. Gary Grinton said yesterday.

Results of an autopsy done yesterday on the tiny body of Xin Lei Huang concluded her cause of death requires further forensic testing, which is not out of the ordinary when dealing with youngsters.

"The cause of death is not often really apparent, so if you have a theory, then you have to kind of rule everything else out," Grinton said.

By the time paramedics responded to a "baby-not-breathing" call at the downtown Manning Ave. home where Huang lived with her parents and two older sisters Saturday night, her body was already cold, Grinton said.

Within hours, "evidence was uncovered" by officers in the local police division that led homicide detectivies to charge 38-year-old Xiu Zheng with second-degree murder.

Grinton was "pretty sure (a charge of infanticide) would not be" an option for a plea bargain in this case.

Under the Criminal Code, the lesser charge of infanticide applies to mothers who kill their unborn children, "if at the time of the act or omission she is not fully recovered from the effects of giving birth to the child and by reason thereof or of the effect of lactation ... her mind is then disturbed."

While murder convictions carry life sentences, infanticide means a maximum of five years behind bars.

Zheng made a brief appearance at Old City Hall courts on Sunday and was remanded until next month. Her two surviving daughters, ages 4 and 11, remain with their father.

Source: website of the Toronto Sun

An article by David Kirby in the Huffington Post says the US government has conceded in a court case that vaccines can produce autism.

Vaccines have always harmed, or even killed, a small number of children, In the days of endemic smallpox, it was a risk well worth taking. Today, most contagious diseases are nearly extinct, and vaccines are essential for only a few, such as tetanus, that cannot be otherwise controlled.

The article attributes the damage to a pre-existing mitochondrial deficiency that in normal life causes no damage. The additional strain of a vaccine can overload the mitochondria, leading to permanent brain damage.

The article argues that children with mitochondrial deficiency might lead a normal life in the absence of vaccination. It omits the opposite possibility, that such children are doomed to brain damage at the first instance of activity overloading their mitochondria, such as running. Notwithstanding Mr Kirby's bias, we believe the conclusions below are valid.

Parents have no control over vaccination. Once child protectors find an unvaccinated child, they seize him for vaccination forthwith. When the issue gets to court it is moot. According to our bio-chemistry expert, mitochondrial deficiency is not the only problem conveying susceptibility to vaccine damage. While most cases of mitochondrial disease are sporadic, other conditions indicating vaccine danger can be predicted from family history, information that cannot now be used to protect the child.

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The Huffington Post

David Kirby

Government Concedes Vaccine-Autism Case in Federal Court - Now What?

Posted February 25, 2008 | 12:42 PM (EST)

After years of insisting there is no evidence to link vaccines with the onset of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the US government has quietly conceded a vaccine-autism case in the Court of Federal Claims.

The unprecedented concession was filed on November 9, and sealed to protect the plaintiff's identify. It was obtained through individuals unrelated to the case.

The claim, one of 4,900 autism cases currently pending in Federal "Vaccine Court," was conceded by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and other Justice Department officials, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, the "defendant" in all Vaccine Court cases.

The child's claim against the government -- that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism -- was supposed to be one of three "test cases" for the thimerosal-autism theory currently under consideration by a three-member panel of Special Masters, the presiding justices in Federal Claims Court.

Keisler wrote that medical personnel at the HHS Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation (DVIC) had reviewed the case and "concluded that compensation is appropriate."

The doctors conceded that the child was healthy and developing normally until her 18-month well-baby visit, when she received vaccinations against nine different diseases all at once (two contained thimerosal).

Days later, the girl began spiraling downward into a cascade of illnesses and setbacks that, within months, presented as symptoms of autism, including: No response to verbal direction; loss of language skills; no eye contact; loss of "relatedness;" insomnia; incessant screaming; arching; and "watching the florescent lights repeatedly during examination."

Seven months after vaccination, the patient was diagnosed by Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a leading neurologist at the Kennedy Krieger Children's Hospital Neurology Clinic, with "regressive encephalopathy (brain disease) with features consistent with autistic spectrum disorder, following normal development." The girl also met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) official criteria for autism.

In its written concession, the government said the child had a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder that was "aggravated" by her shots, and which ultimately resulted in an ASD diagnosis.

"The vaccinations received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder," the concession says, "which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of ASD."

This statement is good news for the girl and her family, who will now be compensated for the lifetime of care she will require. But its implications for the larger vaccine-autism debate, and for public health policy in general, are not as certain.

In fact, the government's concession seems to raise more questions than it answers.

1) Is there a connection between vaccines, mitochondrial disorders and a diagnosis of autism, at least in some cases?

Mitochondria, you may recall from biology class, are the little powerhouses within cells that convert food into electrical energy, partly through a complex process called "oxidative phosphorylation." If this process is impaired, mitochondrial disorder will ensue.

The child in this case had several markers for Mt disease, which was confirmed by muscle biopsy. Mt disease is often marked by lethargy, poor muscle tone, poor food digestion and bowel problems, something found in many children diagnosed with autism.

But mitochondrial disorders are rare in the general population, affecting some 2-per-10,000 people (or just 0.2%). So with 4,900 cases filed in Vaccine Court, this case should be the one and only, extremely rare instance of Mt disease in all the autism proceedings.

But it is not.

Mitochondrial disorders are now thought to be the most common disease associated with ASD. Some journal articles and other analyses have estimated that 10% to 20% of all autism cases may involve mitochondrial disorders, which would make them one thousand times more common among people with ASD than the general population.

Another article, published in the Journal of Child Neurology and co-authored by Dr. Zimmerman, showed that 38% of Kennedy Krieger Institute autism patients studied had one marker for impaired oxidative phosphorylation, and 47% had a second marker.

The authors -- who reported on a case-study of the same autism claim conceded in Vaccine Court -- noted that "children who have (mitochondrial-related) dysfunctional cellular energy metabolism might be more prone to undergo autistic regression between 18 and 30 months of age if they also have infections or immunizations at the same time."

An interesting aspect of Mt disease in autism is that, with ASD, the mitochondrial disease seems to be milder than in "classic" cases of Mt disorder. In fact, classic Mt disease is almost always inherited, either passed down by the mother through mitochondrial DNA, or by both parents through nuclear DNA.

In autism-related Mt disease, however, the disorder is not typically found in other family members, and instead appears to be largely of the sporadic variety, which may now account for 75% of all mitochondrial disorders.

Meanwhile, an informal survey of seven families of children with cases currently pending in Vaccine Court revealed that all seven showed markers for mitochondrial dysfunction, dating back to their earliest medical tests. The facts in all seven claims mirror the case just conceded by the government: Normal development followed by vaccination, immediate illness, and rapid decline culminating in an autism diagnosis.

2) With 4,900 cases pending, and more coming, will the government concede those with underlying Mt disease -- and if it not, will the Court award compensation?

The Court will soon begin processing the 4900 cases pending before it. What if 10% to 20% of them can demonstrate the same Mt disease and same set of facts as those in the conceded case? Would the government be obliged to concede 500, or even 1,000 cases? What impact would that have on public opinion? And is there enough money currently in the vaccine injury fund to cover so many settlements?

When asked for a comment last week about the court settlement, a spokesman for HHS furnished the following written statement:

"DVIC has reviewed the scientific information concerning the allegation that vaccines cause autism and has found no credible evidence to support the claim. Accordingly, in every case under the Vaccine Act, DVIC has maintained the position that vaccines do not cause autism, and has never concluded in any case that autism was caused by vaccination."

3) If the government is claiming that vaccines did not "cause" autism, but instead aggravated a condition to "manifest" as autism, isn't that a very fine distinction?

For most affected families, such linguistic gymnastics is not so important. And even if a vaccine injury "manifested" as autism in only one case, isn't that still a significant development worthy of informing the public?

On the other hand, perhaps what the government is claiming is that vaccination resulted in the symptoms of autism, but not in an actual, factually correct diagnosis of autism itself.

4) If the government is claiming that this child does NOT have autism, then how many other children might also have something else that merely "mimics" autism?

Is it possible that 10%-20% of the cases that we now label as "autism," are not autism at all, but rather some previously undefined "look-alike" syndrome that merely presents as "features" of autism?

This question gets to the heart of what autism actually is. The disorder is defined solely as a collection of features, nothing more. If you have the features (and the diagnosis), you have the disorder. The underlying biology is the great unknown.

But let's say the government does determine that these kids don't have actual "autism" (something I speculated on HuffPost a year ago). Then shouldn't the Feds go back and test all people with ASD for impaired oxidative phosphorylation, perhaps reclassifying many of them?

If so, will we then see "autism" cases drop by tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people? Will there be a corresponding ascension of a newly described disorder, perhaps something like "Vaccine Aggravated Mitochondrial Disease with Features of ASD?"

And if this child was technically "misdiagnosed" with DSM-IV autism by Dr Zimmerman, how does he feel about HHS doctors issuing a second opinion re-diagnosis of his patient, whom they presumably had neither met nor examined? (Zimmerman declined an interview).

And along those lines, aren't Bush administration officials somewhat wary of making long-distance, retroactive diagnoses from Washington, given that the Terry Schiavo incident has not yet faded from national memory?

5) Was this child's Mt disease caused by a genetic mutation, as the government implies, and wouldn't that have manifested as "ASD features" anyway?

In the concession, the government notes that the patient had a "single nucleotide change" in the mitochondrial DNA gene T2387C, implying that this was the underlying cause of her manifested "features" of autism.

While it's true that some inherited forms of Mt disease can manifest as developmental delays, (and even ASD in the form of Rhett Syndrome) these forms are linked to identified genetic mutations, of which T2387C is not involved. In fact little, if anything, is known about the function of this particular gene.

What's more, there is no evidence that this girl, prior to vaccination, suffered from any kind of "disorder" at all- genetic, mitochondrial or otherwise. Some forms of Mt disease are so mild that the person is unaware of being affected. This perfectly developing girl may have had Mt disorder at the time of vaccination, but nobody detected, or even suspected it.

And, there is no evidence to suggest that this girl would have regressed into symptoms consistent with a DSM-IV autism diagnosis without her vaccinations. If there was such evidence, then why on earth would these extremely well-funded government attorneys compensate this alleged injury in Vaccine Court? Why wouldn't they move to dismiss, or at least fight the case at trial?

6) What are the implications for research?

The concession raises at least two critical research questions: What are the causes of Mt dysfunction; and how could vaccines aggravate that dysfunction to the point of "autistic features?"

While some Mt disorders are clearly inherited, the "sporadic" form is thought to account for 75% of all cases, according to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. So what causes sporadic Mt disease? "Medicines or other toxins," says the Cleveland Clinic, a leading authority on the subject.

Use of the AIDS drug AZT, for example, can cause Mt disorders by deleting large segments of mitochondrial DNA. If that is the case, might other exposures to drugs or toxins (i.e., thimerosal, mercury in fish, air pollution, pesticides, live viruses) also cause sporadic Mt disease in certain subsets of children, through similar genotoxic mechanisms?

Among the prime cellular targets of mercury are mitochondria, and thimerosal-induced cell death has been associated with the depolarization of mitochondrial membrane, according to the International Journal of Molecular Medicine among several others. (Coincidently, the first case of Mt disease was diagnosed in 1959, just 15 years after the first autism case was named, and two decades after thimerosal's introduction as a vaccine preservative.)

Regardless of its cause, shouldn't HHS sponsor research into Mt disease and the biological mechanisms by which vaccines could aggravate the disorder? We still do not know what it was, exactly, about this girl's vaccines that aggravated her condition. Was it the thimerosal? The three live viruses? The two attenuated viruses? Other ingredients like aluminum? A combination of the above?

And of course, if vaccine injuries can aggravate Mt disease to the point of manifesting as autism features, then what other underlying disorders or conditions (genetic, autoimmune, allergic, etc.) might also be aggravated to the same extent?

7) What are the implications for medicine and public health?

Should the government develop and approve new treatments for "aggravated mitochondrial disease with ASD features?" Interestingly, many of the treatments currently deployed in Mt disease (i.e., coenzyme Q10, vitamin B-12, lipoic acid, biotin, dietary changes, etc.) are part of the alternative treatment regimen that many parents use on their children with ASD.

And, if a significant minority of autism cases can be linked to Mt disease and vaccines, shouldn't these products one day carry an FDA Black Box warning label, and shouldn't children with Mt disorders be exempt from mandatory immunization?

8) What are the implications for the vaccine-autism debate?

It's too early to tell. But this concession could conceivably make it more difficult for some officials to continue insisting there is "absolutely no link" between vaccines and autism.

It also puts the Federal Government's Vaccine Court defense strategy somewhat into jeopardy. DOJ lawyers and witnesses have argued that autism is genetic, with no evidence to support an environmental component. And, they insist, it's simply impossible to construct a chain of events linking immunizations to the disorder.

Government officials may need to rethink their legal strategy, as well as their public relations campaigns, given their own slightly contradictory concession in this case.

9) What is the bottom line here?

The public, (including world leaders) will demand to know what is going on inside the US Federal health establishment. Yes, as of now, n=1, a solitary vaccine-autism concession. But what if n=10% or 20%? Who will pay to clean up that mess?

The significance of this concession will unfortunately be fought over in the usual, vitriolic way -- and I fully expect to be slammed for even raising these questions. Despite that, the language of this concession cannot be changed, or swept away.

Its key words are "aggravated" and "manifested." Without the aggravation of the vaccines, it is uncertain that the manifestation would have occurred at all.

When a kid with peanut allergy eats a peanut and dies, we don't say "his underlying metabolic condition was significantly aggravated to the extent of manifesting as an anaphylactic shock with features of death."

No, we say the peanut killed the poor boy. Remove the peanut from the equation, and he would still be with us today.

Many people look forward to hearing more from HHS officials about why they are settling this claim. But whatever their explanation, they cannot change the fundamental facts of this extraordinary case:

The United State government is compensating at least one child for vaccine injuries that resulted in a diagnosis of autism.

And that is big news, no matter how you want to say it.

David Kirby is the author of "Evidence of Harm - Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Controversy" (St. Martins Press 2005.

Source: website of the Huffington Post

Addendum: A reader replies:

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The [article above] is WRONG! In Canada, no professional, agent of the government or government itself may force a person to vaccinate themselves or their children as per the Charter of Rights sir. There are conscious, philosophical, medical and religious exemptions for vaccination in the three provinces (Ontario included) that a parent can retain and give to the school system or (gods forbid) a CAS that exempt them from vaccinations. Being a mother of 5 children and non-vaxers (as we are labeled) I have my philosophical and religious exemptions for vaccination for the province of Ontario. My youngest is not vaccinated at all and my older children are now no longer vaccinated due to the multiple dangers associated with vaccinations. It's not just autism that vaccines can cause, most are full of toxins such as thimerosal (flu shot), aluminum, neomycin (antibiotic known to be an ototoxic or destroys hearing on a neurological level) and other unmentionables like human aborted fetal cells, bovine cells, simian fetal cells and other animal tissues as well as bacterial cross contaminations. It has been proven in numerous studies that most vaccines do NOT confer life-long immunity.

I urge you to point your readers to VRAN for all their legal exemption needs (particularly those who live in Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick). The affidavit (or form) can be notarized at city hall for a nominal fee or at a banking institution for even smaller fees.

Unlike some countries, immunization is not mandatory in Canada; *it cannot be made mandatory because of the Canadian Constitution*. Only three provinces have legislation or regulations under their health-protection acts to require proof of immunization for school entrance. Ontario and New Brunswick require proof for diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella immunization. In Manitoba, only measles vaccination is covered. It must be emphasized that, in these three provinces, *exceptions are permitted on medical or religious grounds and reasons of conscience*; *legislation and regulations must not be interpreted to imply compulsory immunization*.

• Immunization in Canada (Government Site).
• Vaccine Risk Awareness Network (VRAN).

Source: email from reader SM, [ darquevixen at gmail.com ]

We have the story of another family broken up by CAS. The family deftly complies with the law prohibiting identification of foster children by leaving no hint of their name or location. It looks like three boys and two girls were ripped from their family, with one boy suffering a severe beating. Watch the two YouTube videos.

In another now-routine story, Louise Mason had her three children taken into foster care for no valid reason. At least they lucked out and avoided the fate of the foster kids in our other British story today, being entombed in a cellar. Even after legal reunification, one girl was too alienated to live with her mother.

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Nightmare of mother wrongly accused of abuse

By Tom Peterkin, Ireland Correspondent, Last Updated: 3:34am GMT 26/02/2008

A mother told yesterday how she endured five years of hell after she was wrongly accused of injuring her newborn baby and her children were taken into care.

Louise Mason was alleged to have deliberately harmed her four-week-old daughter when the child became ill and doctors suspected she had been abused.

Despite her protestations that she had not hurt the girl, Miss Mason was charged with two counts of causing grievous bodily harm to her baby and had to fight through the courts to clear her name.

Yet even when she won the case, she was still not allowed to care for her children.

Miss Mason's ordeal began in October 2002 when her baby became ill with internal bleeding and was taken to Altnagelvin Hospital, Co Londonderry, and then to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Belfast.

At first she was told her daughter was suffering from neuroblastoma, a form of cancer, but a few days later a doctor asked her if "anything had happened" to the baby.

Miss Mason said: "I was told social services and the police had been called.

"I didn't know what this was about, but it was very distressing. They thought it was a non-accidental injury and that someone had hurt the baby on purpose. I was shocked."

Her baby remained in hospital for a further six weeks, but in the meantime a court order was obtained and the girl was put under the care of foster parents, along with Miss Mason's oldest child, then aged 20 months. Miss Mason, 38, who is originally from Northampton, said: "You simply do not think that one moment you can be a normal mother bringing up your children and the next moment you are being portrayed as this big monster."

In 2004 Miss Mason appeared in court, where the jury was told how the injuries inflicted on the baby were consistent with it being dropped from a first-floor window.

She was unanimously acquitted on both charges, but her two children remained in care. When Miss Mason had a third child in February 2006, the baby was handed over for fostering at just 10 days old.

Miss Mason began an attempt to get her children back but the care order was still in place and Foyle Health and Social Services Trust in Londonderry had applied for adoption papers to be served on the eldest pair.

A breakthrough came when the doctor who had first treated Miss Mason's baby and made the neuro­blastoma diagnosis contacted her lawyer.

The medic, known as Dr D, expressed concerns that investigations for the cancer not been carried out.

He also advised that independent paediatricians should re-examine the evidence and during this investigation it was suggested that a naturally occurring spontaneous haemorrhage caused the baby's illness.

This enabled Miss Mason's legal team to persuade the courts to adjourn the adoption papers and, in March 2006, the care order was quashed and the case was remitted to the High Court.

This week Mr Justice Gillen reheard the case in Belfast and allowed the children, now aged seven, five and two, to go back to their mother.

However, Miss Mason is still struggling because although her second child overcame her illness, the girl has formed a strong relationship with her foster parents.

The girl's only overnight stay with Miss Mason saw "uncontrollable sobbing" and contact is limited to twice a week until they become more familiar with each other.

Miss Mason, who split from the children's father and is in a new relationship, added: "I suppose I'm happy the way things have turned out. My life's now normal compared to what it used to be."

Source: website of the Daily Telegraph

In this block we have two stories from Britain relating to the same problem — abuse of children in institutions. After a children's home in Jersey was remodeled, the skull of a child was found, from the days when it was an orphanage. In the second article one of the victims of the abuses of that era tells his personal story. Pedophiles got into the child care staff by misrepresenting themselves as the more respectable gay. This is where real child abuse occurs, not with mom and dad.

The Haut de la Garenne stories have been moved to their own page, along with later material.

The knock on the door evokes the same fear for Connecticut homeschoolers that it formerly did for Jews during the holocaust.

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Home-School Support

Parents Advocate Bill On Leaving Public School

By COLIN POITRAS

Courant Staff Writer, February 20, 2008

Anita Formichella is tired of hiding like a criminal.

"The sound of the doorbell literally strikes terror in my heart," said Formichella, a bespectacled, middle-aged former school volunteer from Redding in her testimony to members of the legislature's select committee on children on Tuesday.

For the past two years, Formichella said she has hidden in her house, shouting through the door when people knock because she fears the person on the other side might be a state social worker coming to take her children away.

Formichella isn't a child abuser. She has never been cited for child neglect. She is a teacher. A home-school teacher. And therein lies the rub.

Within weeks of pulling her children from the public school system in 2006, Formichella received a letter from the local school superintendent requiring her to sign a form and submit more evidence that her children were being properly schooled. If she didn't, Formichella said, she would risk a neglect investigation by the state Department of Children and Families. Formichella was frightened at first, then incensed.

"That's a heinous, heinous thing to threaten a parent," Formichella said outside the hearing room Tuesday. "And [the school superintendent] knew me!"

On Tuesday, Formichella and dozens of other home schooling supporters came to the Legislative Office Building in Hartford to convince lawmakers to clarify the rights of parents who home-school their children.

The current law is silent as to how parents can withdraw their children from public school. It only says that if they do, they must show local school officials that the child is receiving "equivalent" instruction.

In some school districts, that is as simple as filling out a form that is placed in the school record and releases the school district from liability. In other districts, officials get more involved, scheduling detailed curriculum reviews and seeking face-to-face meetings with parents.

Most of about 2,100 parents educating their children at home in Connecticut do so without any friction, according to Tom Murphy, a spokesman for the state Department of Education. But, in some cases, families and school officials clash over just how much information needs to be shared. And when that happens, parents and advocates say, calls are made to DCF.

"We must end the use of DCF as a nuclear weapon against these parents," said attorney Deborah G. Stevenson, executive director of the National Home Education Legal Defense Fund.

"Parents should not have to fear the loss of custody of their children simply because they are exercising their right to home school," Stevenson said.

For the record, DCF spokesman Gary Kleeblatt said Tuesday his department no longer investigates complaints of educational neglect from local school systems simply because a child is being home-schooled. The agency will, however, send an investigator if there are other issues suspected behind a child being educated at home, such as possible physical abuse or neglect, bullying or behavioral health concerns, Kleeblatt said.

A bill proposed by Rep. Arthur J. O'Neill, R-Southbury, would allow parents to simply send a certified letter to their local school system if they want to home-school their children.

State education officials said they have been trying to strike a balance between a parent's right to educate their child and the responsibility of local public school systems to make sure every child under 16 years of age receives an education. Murphy said Connecticut's requirements are much less intrusive than those in nearby states like Massachusetts and New York.

Rep. Pamela Z. Sawyer, R-Bolton, said she would support O'Neill's bill and urged the committee to keep it simple, so families don't need to hire lawyers to home-school.

"No public school is right for every child," said Sawyer, a former teacher, school board member and long-standing member on the legislature's education committee. "We do the best we can. Sometimes we do a fabulous job. Sometimes we fall down on the job."

Contact Colin Poitras at cpoitras@courant.com.

Source: website of The Hartford Courant

Jack Stratton is running for Congress. Mr Stratton had his ten interracial children taken by the State of North Carolina. In 2004, he ran for the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners and got 13 thousand votes. Now he is running for congress in the ninth district (Charlotte suburbs).

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Sun, 24 Feb 2008 02:41:38 -0000

I am running for U.S. House from the 9th District of North Carolina.

Here is what we're about:

First, we will get our ten children back and put their kidnappers in prison.

My positions are as follows:

1. 100% Pro-Life. Life begins at conception. No exceptions.

2. Repeal all federal child abuse laws, abolish "Child Protective Services", and turn child abuse investigations over to local police departments. No interference with the family unit unless an arrest is made and the arrested person is afforded all constitutional protections. Remove the alleged perpetrator instead of the child (ren).

3. Repeal VAWA and all federal "domestic violence" laws.

4. Get the U.S. out of the UN and the UN out of the U.S.

5. Abolish the Department of Education. Absolute protection for parent's right to educate their children without state interference.

7. Abolish all federal social programs and return the money to the people who worked for it.

8. NUREMBERG II trials for those who have perpetrated crimes against children and crimes against humanity.

Join our NUREMBERG II Yahoo group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nuremberg2/?yguid=220728672

9. We can beat the incumbent because we have evidence of her coverup of federal crimes, including crimes against our children.

12. My office will be open to people in all 50 states. I will fight corruption wherever it is found.

13. I will fight corruption through DIRECT NON-VIOLENT ACTION and if necessary NON-VIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. I have proven I will do this, as I have already been arrested several times had at least two physical attempts on my life. I don't just "vote" for what's right, I fight for what's right.

Our campaign could use Windows XP Pro or VISTA software and DREAMWEAVER or FRONTPAGE software. If anyone has used copies (must be legit, not pirated) of the above software you're no longer using, please consider donating it to the campaign. Sorry it is not tax deductible.

If anyone would like to contribute to our campaign for U.S. House please make checks payable to AMERICAN FREEDOM CAMPAIGN.

You can call for more info or to just talk to me or Kathy.

Jack and Kathy Stratton
615 W. Second Ave.
Gastonia, NC 28052
704-864-6650

Thanks.

Jack and Kathy

Source: email from Jack Stratton

A columnist for the Washington Post profiles the Caplan family that last August had a baby girl bump her head and recover after one day's observation. Child protectors grabbed the girl and her twin, and have not left the family alone since. The family is down $75,000 and counting. Stories like this now appear regularly in the UK and the USA, so far nothing in the Canadian print press.

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The Washington Post

Raw Fisher The Cold Splash of Reality, With A Side of Sizzle

A Bump, A Panic, Two Babies Torn From Home

On the Thursday before Labor Day, while Julianna Caplan was changing the diaper on one of her twins, she heard a dull thud. She turned around to see her other 8-month-old trying to push herself up from the floor, where she'd been playing, and knock her head.

There were no bumps or bruises, but over the next few hours, the little girl acted fussy, then altogether out of sorts. After she began throwing up and drifting off to sleep, her parents grew concerned, called the doctor and ended up at Children's Hospital.

The baby recovered fully within 24 hours, but almost six months later, Caplan and her husband, Greg, remain trapped in the District's frightening child-abuse system. It is a quicksand of bureaucratic paralysis, a warped mirror image of the indifference that permitted Banita Jacks's four girls to die in Southeast last year.

The city took both Caplan twins away from home and placed them in foster care for a time. The parents are still on the city's child-abuse registry, even though a court and police have found no evidence of abuse.

After Mayor Adrian Fenty fired six Child and Family Services Agency workers because they "just didn't do their job" in the Jacks case, social workers predicted that the pendulum would swing to the point that the slightest whisper of possible abuse would result in knee-jerk reactions against parents.

The Caplans' ordeal started before the horror of the Jacks case, but the Georgetown couple is convinced that their names are not being removed from the city's child protection registry largely because of the District's embarrassment over the Jacks case.

The parents believe the city was right to suspect abuse, right to investigate, right to run tests. But they say the case went off the rails when city lawyers continued to press abuse allegations even after the judge found no cause to proceed.

The twists in the case fill hundreds of pages of reports, but the bottom line is: The baby suffered retinal hemorrhaging, sometimes a sign of child abuse. When a doctor noted that, Child and Family Services intervened.

Because it was a holiday, the hospital had to wait several days to conduct tests to see if the baby had been abused. Those tests would find no reason to believe abuse had occurred. The police investigator would write that "all five examining physicians made no medical diagnoses or cause to support physical abuse." And D.C. Magistrate Judge Mary Grace Rook would find that "there are not reasonable grounds to believe that [the baby] was abused."

But Child and Family Services neither waited nor investigated. With lights flashing and four police officers on hand, social workers arrived at the Caplan house at midnight on the night after the baby entered the hospital. They took the infant's uninjured sister out of her father's embrace and put her in foster care in Prince George's County.

It was the first night she had ever spent away from her parents and her sister. It would not be the last.

She was forced to spend nearly two weeks at the foster care facility in Hyattsville. The injured sister, after her recovery, was kept in the hospital awaiting test results. Afterward, she was in foster care for five days. Both sisters were then reunited at home under their grandmothers' care, but on condition that the Caplans move out of their own house.

At a hearing, the city sought to keep the children separated from their parents, but the court rejected the abuse allegations, and the family was allowed back together.

"If they had had their way, we would have been out of our house for months," says Julianna, a former CNN publicist who now works from home as a freelancer. Greg is a manager for Lockheed Martin. They wiped out their savings and borrowed from relatives to raise $75,000 for legal help.

Just as disturbing as the agency's rush to judgment was their fixation on the Caplans because of their class, or, as CFSA head Sharlynn Bobo put it, their "privilege."

"This family is privileged and able to marshal significant resources to accomplish its goals and fight the allegations," Bobo wrote to her staff in September. "I believe that we made the right decision" to take the girls away from their parents.

Even after the court found for the Caplans, the city offered to end its investigation only if the parents submitted to counseling, anger management classes and unannounced visits from social workers. The Caplans declined the deal.

"It was like, what is the price of our morals?" Julianna says. "Do we lie and say someone abused our daughters to make this go away?"

Not everyone at CFSA was comfortable with what happened. In an e-mail to one of the children's grandparents, Deputy Director Roque Gerald criticized "defensive child welfare. In our attempt to protect, we have also lost the ability of balance for fear of retribution." Neither Gerald nor Bobo returned my calls.

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles says the city was right not to give the Caplans special treatment. "I am not going to treat you differently because you are an attractive, articulate couple," he says. "I'm not saying I would have done this the same way, but I see the law working its way."

Nickles says the Caplans may appeal to a neutral party -- an outside expert -- to be removed from the registry, which means they are automatic suspects if their children are injured and need care.

"They treat us with contempt because we fought back," Julianna says. "Who would not sell every stitch of clothing off their backs to fight for their children?"

Two days before the Jacks case broke, Nickles, then the mayor's legal adviser, met with the Caplans after Greg called Fenty on WAMU's "Kojo Nnamdi Show." Nickles then described the couple's ordeal as "Kafkaesque." But after the Jacks story broke, city leaders changed their tune.

Nickles denies any shift in his attitude. "It may very well be that the weight of the evidence supports the Caplans' position," he said. "But the law is skewed properly toward the protection of the child."

He says he agonized over the Caplan case, in part because one of his own children once fell out of a crib and was taken to the hospital. But he concluded that "the city was not overly aggressive."

Taking the girls from their parents was "traumatic, but this is a very law-driven process that can have very unsatisfying results. If this had been shaken-baby syndrome and something had happened to the second child, the public would have come down hard on us, quite appropriately."

Fenty says he "would rather err on the side of getting too many calls about abuse. That's exactly what we want to have happen."

The Caplans reject the idea that the city is only doing its job well by being on hair-trigger alert. "Do you believe innocent families have to get caught up in this?" Greg asks. "This is a false choice. What has to happen is not overreaction, but competence."

The Caplans plan to sue the District, seeking reforms in the child welfare system and reimbursement of what they spent fighting the allegations. The twins are happy and playful children now, but the daughter who spent two weeks in foster care "freaks out if I leave the room," Julianna says. "Before, she would let anyone hold her. Now, she screams."

By Marc Fisher | February 24, 2008; 2:51 AM ET

Source: website of the Washington Post

A popular myth says that rich people don't have to worry about courts, because they are protected by their money. Proving the contrary, writer Mac Koch-Lebel follows a Massachusetts family with two million dollars of net worth now reduced to nothing through collusion between lawyers and judges. Readers with an hour to spare can read the story Lynched By Court Order from the blog of Mac Koch-Lebel, and we have our local copy.

Children's Rights Inc, lead by Marcia Lowry, has filed suit against the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS). Past lawsuits have claimed more resources (appropriated funds) to correct outrageous abuses against children found in other states. The only lasting change, if any, is to make the child protectors even more powerful. Is it possible that state child protection agencies welcome this kind of litigation?

In litigation, once legitimate issues are before the court, the parties can engage in discovery, to find out evidence in possession of the other party. No such discovery is possible before litigation begins. The complaint in the Oklahoma case (pdf), dated February 13, 2008, has the case histories of nine foster children, running from paragraph 158 to 235. These histories are in such detail that they could only have come from the files of DHS. One possibility is that DHS has colluded with Children's Rights Inc to initiate the litigation. Children's Rights' lawyers protect DHS by refraining from the one act that could really benefit their "clients": they do not publish their names, nor do they ask the court for permission to do so.

Among critics of child protectors, most have been fooled by these lawsuits, hoping they will lead to reform. Only Richard Wexler has been critical of Marcia Lowry.

The story below from Argentina illustrates a future that may be in store for Canada.

During Argentina's Dirty War from 1976 to 1983, thousands of leftists were arrested and killed by police. The families were not notified, and the police refused to provide information, giving the victims the name desaparecidos, the disappeared. In some cases, infant children of the victims were adopted through irregular channels. One of those adoptees, Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragán, born in 1978, is suing her adoptive parents for kidnapping her.

In Argentina the junta running the government lost power in 1983, and since then the political winds have shifted against the army. There is a possibility of a similar political change in Canada, and other countries now conducting mass kidnappings of children under pretense of protection. If and when that happens, there will be legal repercussions. Maybe small scale actions such and the one in Argentina, maybe larger ones such as the American civil rights movement or even the Nuremburg trials. Participants in the child protection rackets should be prepared for future accountability for their crimes.

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Adoptee Sues Parents for Kidnapping

By MAYRA PERTOSSI, AP Posted: 2008-02-20 07:04:04

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Feb. 19) - A 30-year-old woman is suing her adoptive parents for kidnapping in a case that opened in an Argentine court Tuesday, becoming the first child of disappeared political prisoners to press such charges.

Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragan accused her adoptive parents Osvaldo Rivas and Maria Cristina Gomez Pinto of falsifying adoption documents to hide her identity. She made no comments on leaving court Tuesday.

Natacha Pisarenk, AP Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragan, 30, leaves a federal court building in Buenos Aires on Tuesday. She is suing her adoptive parents, saying they concealed that she was stolen as a baby from political prisoners who disappeared during Argentina's "dirty war."

Thousands of leftists and dissidents vanished after being abducted by security forces during Argentina's 1976-1983 military regime, and human rights groups say more than 200 of their children were taken and given to military or politically connected families to raise.

Sampallo, who in 2001 learned that she is the daughter of missing political prisoners Mirta Mable Barragan and Leonardo Ruben Sampallo, is one of 88 young people who determined their identity with DNA tests coordinated by the human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Sampallo's mother was six months pregnant when she and her father were abducted on Dec. 6, 1977, said Sampallo's lawyer, Tomas Ojea Quentin. He said Sampallo was born in February 1978, while her mother was being held at a clandestine torture center.

Ojea Quentin said former army captain Enrich Berthier is facing related baby theft charges in the case. He is being held at a military unit, while Sampallo's adoptive parents are reportedly free.

Lawyers for Berthier and the Gomez Pintos declined to comment when they left the courthouse where an Associated Press writer and other journalists were waiting.

The case marks the first time a woman has taken her adoptive parents to court in Argentina. There have been at least three earlier trials involving suspected illegal adoptions dating to the dictatorship that resulted in convictions - but the plaintiffs were not the adopted children.

Also Tuesday, a former military officer wanted in connection with the 1972 execution of 16 leftist guerrillas surrendered, hours after returning from the United States, government news agency Telam said.

Carlos Marandino is the fourth former naval officer arrested this month on torture and murder charges linked to the "Trelew Massacre" of 16 leftist rebels who fled an Argentine prison, presaging the excesses of Argentina's so-called dirty war.

Marandino walked off a jet at Buenos Aires's Ezeiza Airport and was detained, Telam reported.

Marandino's co-defendants include Ruben Paccagnini, 81, former head of the Almirante Zar Trelew southern military base; Emilio Del Real, 73, a frigate captain who allegedly witnessed the 1972 executions; and Luis Emilio Sosa, 73, a former navy captain who allegedly captured the escapees.

Lawyers for the three men have protested their innocence, but it was not immediately known if Marandino had hired a lawyer.

Some 25 leftist guerrillas escaped a southern Argentine penitentiary in a 1972 jailbreak. Six fled by plane to Chile, where they were granted political asylum and allowed to proceed to Cuba. The other 19 were taken to a nearby naval base, where 16 were shot dead in their cells, prosecutors say.

Source: AOL news website

Today's story taken from an internet posting is a typical case of the scenario we call divorce continuation. The parents were already divorced when children's aid intervened. Here they applied their favorite remedy, taking kids from the parent who had been awarded custody by the family court and giving them to the other parent. The judge was unhappy with children's aid? They don't care.

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Children's Aid Society

child protection???

Silent_No_More by Silent_No_More on Feb. 20, 2008 at 01:32pm

I used to think that the Children's Aid Society was an organization that was there to help families and protect children. I'd often hear about children being removed from their parent's care and people would often say "I can't believe so and so's child was taken" and I would think to myself and often say to people, "The Children's Aid doesn't take children without a reason"

I was so naive.

The past few months of my life isn't much different from a bad dream, a book or even a movie for that matter. It's very surreal.

An accident happened at my home and I explained to my child's teacher what happened.. little did I know that would cause the Children's Aid to ambush my house with a police officer in tow. They interrogated and intimidated my family. In their affidavit they state that they requested me to sign a consent when in fact what happened is they threatened me to sign the consent stating if I didn't they were taking my children.

I know what happened in my home, they do not. They came in my house accusing and not listening. The following day they removed my children because I didn't agree with them on what they thought happened.

Since this event occurred I have spent thousands of dollars trying to get my family back. The CAS has lied to my face, in affidavits and in court. Research I have done has showed me that this is all common practice and is them undermining me as they sent my 2 older children to my ex husband knowing we are in a custody dispute and knowing that he practices Parental Alienation. They excuse his behaviour and they excuse theirs.

I witnessed a judge in court tell the CAS that they have no case, everything is hearsay and they did no investigation. I heard with my own ears that the judge isn't satisfied they took the least intrusive action. So did the CAS admit their mistake? NO. that is unheard of research has showed me that too.

They claim everything they do is in the best interest of the children. I have yet to see that. My children have been traumatized, brainwashed, separated from each other all because someone decided to go on a power trip.

I recently learned that the government funds this agency based on how many children are in care and how many files are open. I'm sure that explains the rise in cases that the CAS handles. I've also learned Ontario, Canada is one of the few places with out a legislative body that governs the CAS, I guess that explains also why Ontario has the highest apprehension rates.

I'll be silent no more. I will expose this agency one post at a time.

Source: posting to thisisby.us website by an Ontario woman with screen name Silent_No_More

Today's story of social worker incompetence comes from Endwell New York where a social worker entered the home of her ward and reported him well, though the boy had been dead for three days. Twelve-year-old Peter Munck is the latest addition to our list of children who died after separation from their parents. We used to say this was a fair measure of abuse in foster care since there can't be controversy about whether a person is dead or alive. Maybe we were wrong.

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posted Tuesday February 19, 2008

DSS worker unaware boy had died

Official visited house Friday, met at door by brother

By Brian Liberatore, Press & Sun-Bulletin

ENDWELL -- A Broome County child protective services employee, who was dispatched Friday to check on 12-year-old Peter Munck, did not know the boy had been dead since Wednesday, according to the Broome County Sheriff's Office.

"Whatever the worker did to verify the well-being of Peter, he wasn't able to detect that Peter was deceased," Detective Lt. Patrick Isenburg said Monday. "Whether (the CPS employee) didn't get close enough (to the boy), I don't know."

After the visit, a CPS official did call an aunt who went to 228 Hastings Ave. early Friday night and discovered Peter's lifeless body, Isenburg said.

"We know from the autopsy and the investigation that (Peter) was deceased for some time (by Friday night)," Isenburg said.

Deputies have determined that Peter's brother, 22-year-old Shawn Munck, on Tuesday night put his foot on the boy's midsection and pushed down with enough force to cause internal bleeding during what police described as "a physical altercation."

Peter then went to bed and died sometime late Tuesday night or early Wednesday.

Shawn Munck has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, a felony, and committed to Broome County Jail.

Isenburg said that when a CPS employee visited the home, Shawn Munck answered the door and let the CPS employee into the house. Munck's friend, Joseph Menard, 23, of Endicott, was also at the house at the time.

Arthur Johnson, commissioner of the Broome County Department of Social Services, which heads CPS, said confidentiality laws forbid him from commenting.

Maine-Endwell school officials had called CPS on Feb. 12, which was the day of the "altercation," deputies said. Isenburg said he did not know whether CPS employees responded to the Feb. 12 complaint.

M-E officials called CPS again Thursday, when Peter failed to show up to classes, according to district Superintendent Joseph Stoner. Peter was a sixth- grader at Maine-Endwell Middle School.

Peter Munck's legal guardian and grandmother, Carolyn Mitrus, 71, was not in the house at the time because she was reportedly in an area hospital for heart surgery. Since 2000, Mitrus has had custody of Peter (and Shawn, too, although he is now an adult).

The boys' father, Erik A. Munck, 39, has been in Southport state prison since 1999 serving a 10-12 year sentence imposed by Broome County Court for attempted burglary, criminal possession of a weapon and attempted assault.

Their mother, Carol Wilbur, is not incarcerated, Isenburg said. Sheriff David E. Harder had said Saturday that he believed the mother was also in prison.

A woman claiming to be Wilbur called the Press & Sun-Bulletin on Monday to refute Harder's claim. The woman, who talked with a newsroom clerk, would not stay on the line long enough to talk with a reporter.

At the time of Peter's death, only Munck and Menard were in the home, said police, who do not intend to charge Menard with any crime.

"There's no indication he (Menard) knew the situation," Isenburg said. Menard told a Press & Sun-Bulletin reporter Saturday that he heard Shawn and Peter "horsing around" in a different room at the time deputies believe Shawn put his foot on his younger brother's midsection.

Peter and Shawn Munck's aunt, whose identity was not released, arrived at the house about 7 p.m. Friday after receiving a call from CPS. She called emergency personnel at 7:15 p.m.

Deputies initially ruled the death suspicious. Law enforcement cordoned off the house, which is located between Watson Boulevard and Country Club Road, and took Peter's body to Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton for an autopsy.

Shawn Munck stayed at Menard's house Friday night. Deputies arrested Munck there on Saturday and charged him with his younger brother's death.

A woman presumed to be Peter's aunt did not want to talk about the child or the circumstances surrounding his death when contacted Sunday. A phone call Monday to the same number was quickly aborted.

The boy's sister, Cara Munck, who did not live at the Hastings Avenue address, did not return messages sent to her college e-mail account.

Johnson said DSS was "cooperating fully with police and the District Attorney's Office.

The state Office of Children and Family Services investigates all circumstances where a child dies and a social services department is involved, Johnson said. That report, by law, would be available to the public upon its completion.

Staff writer William Moyer contributed to this report.

Source: webiste of the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

Addendum: A reader points out the irony that social workers claim the insight to spot child abuse from telltale signs, yet cannot tell whether a boy is dead or alive.

Georgia state senator Nancy Schaefer has introduced legislation to reform child protection in her state. Some provisions are:

• Requires DHR to place children with relatives where possible
• Discovery in termination proceedings. We presume this is the legal meaning of discovery, requiring DHR to disclose the entire case to the parents before terminating their rights to their children.
• Requires DHR to respond to emergencies within 72 hours.
• Requires a court order to enter a home.
• Removes immunity for social workers who administer medicine to a child over objection of the parents.
• Outlaws double jeopardy in termination actions.
• Court hearings will be conducted in public.

You can read the February 18, 2008 press release (pdf) or the entire legal text.

Child protectors have a warm-sounding word for every atrocity. Richard Wexler comments today on the way group homes (euphemism for orphanage) subject their wards to regimentation. They call it "structure". Below is an abridged version of his comments.

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February 19, 2008

THE NEVER-ENDING GAME OF “MAY I?”

Last month, The New York Times published a column about a teenager torn between a “mentor family” that wasn’t prepared to adopt him and someone he barely knew in a state far away who was.

It was one small part of the column, mentioned only in passing, that was truly striking.

Here’s what one of the parents in the “mentor family” remembers of the first time they invited the young man to spend a weekend with them:

His first visit we're all waiting for him to come down to breakfast. I go up, he'd been in the group home so long, he was making hospital corners on his bed. He thought he couldn't eat breakfast until the bed was perfect.

And here’s a former resident of a group home in California, writing in L.A. Youth, in an essay reprinted in the trade journal Youth Today:

You have to ask permission for everything: to get food from the fridge, cook, watch TV, use the phone, go in the backyard or take a shower.

If the mountain of research such as the Surgeon General’s review of the literature, and the University of North Carolina review of the literature showing the failure of “congregate care” be it in group homes, orphanages or “residential treatment centers” (which are essentially orphanages rebranded) isn’t enough reason to get rid of a lot of them and scale back the rest, listening to the young people describe life there ought to be. Even when the residents are not abused by staff or abusing each other, which happens all too often, life in congregate care is an almost sadistic, never-ending game of “May I?”

No wonder one study found that seven years after getting out of institutions, 75 percent of the residents were back in the only setting where they knew how to live: Institutions. They were in jails or psychiatric centers.

Of course the residential treatment providers, who scarf up huge sums of government money, have a euphemism for this regimentation of day-to-day living. They call it “structure.” Whenever you hear a residential treatment provider babble about how his program provides young people with “structure” what he means is: Nobody gets breakfast until they get those hospital corners right!

Children don’t need this kind of rigidity – but institutions do. They need it in order to keep large numbers of troubled children in line and prevent their institutions from descending into chaos. So they turn around and claim that, by amazing coincidence, all the things that ensure that their institutions run smoothly happen to be “therapeutic” for children.

If that were true, we wouldn’t have that mountain of evidence showing institutionalization doesn’t work. If that were true, even Shay Bilchik, the former head of the trade association for residential treatment providers and other child welfare agencies, the Child Welfare League of America, would not have been compelled to admit that they lack "good research" showing residential treatment's effectiveness and "we find it hard to demonstrate success.”

But then, common sense should be enough to figure that out. Imagine if we were starting from scratch to figure out how best to help severely-troubled young people. And suppose somebody said, “I’ve got a great idea! Let’s take teenagers with the most difficult problems and throw them all together in one place – just at the time in their lives when they are most influenced by their peers.” If anyone suggested that, people might well wonder about his mental health. And yet, thanks to an accident of history – and the enormous political clout of the group home industry - that is exactly what we do.

To top it off, residential treatment is a prime example of an iron law of child welfare: The worse the option, the more it costs. Residential treatment bleeds child welfare systems of huge amounts of money, leaving very little for better alternatives.

Occasionally, institutions themselves have crises of conscience, shut down most of their institutional beds and embrace better alternatives. But then they come up against what the director of one such conscience-stricken institution called “the group home industry” which opposes any attempt to change government funding formulas to redirect money from their largely worthless, incredibly expensive institutions into better alternatives.

Source: Richard Wexler's blog

No medical records have been released, but we now know that the Northern Illinois University shooter used Prozac. This is from a CNN interview with Jessica Baty, the girlfriend of shooter Stephen Kazmierczak. The best summary of this kind of killing is on a website aggregated by Sara Bostock, whose daughter committed suicide in 2002 after two weeks on Paxil.

Every Ontario child has a bounty on his head, paid to any children's aid society that can successfully wrest him from his parents. That bounty is going up by $250 per year, and in a few years by $1100 per year. In the tradition of the Easter Grinch, it is unlikely any of the money will make life better for the children.

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Benefit bypasses foster kids

AARON HARRIS/TORONTO STAR Melanie Bento, 17, front, and Julaine Skyers, 18, who are under the care of Toronto’s Catholic CAS, are among about 20,000 Ontario kids who are not getting the province’s new child benefit.

20,000 Ontario children haven't received money under new Liberal plan to alleviate poverty

February 18, 2008, Tanya Talaga, Laurie Monsebraaten, Staff Reporters

Ontario Liberals are trumpeting the new child benefit as the cornerstone of their pledge to fight poverty, but child advocates say the government forgot to include the 20,000 kids living in foster care.

They want Queen's Park to correct the oversight so provincial money meant to help low-income parents cover the costs of raising a child – such as buying books, paying for sports or saving for university – helps kids in care too.

The benefit, unveiled in last spring's budget, put a lump-sum payment of up to $250 per child in the hands of low-income families last July. By 2011, it will grow to an annual maximum of $1,100 per child under age 18.

"Our children, the most vulnerable, aren't benefiting from this announcement and it should be changed," said Marcelo Gomez-Wiuckstern, of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, which represents 51 societies in the province. "It's shocking."

The association first noticed the oversight during the budget lock-up last year and has been lobbying the province ever since.

"This is a substantial amount of money. It would make a difference to a lot of kids," added Virginia Rowden, the association's social policy director.

Last summer's $250 payment would have translated to about $5 million for the 20,000 kids in care, the association says. This year, when the annual benefit rises to $600, these kids would be owed $12 million.

And in 2011,when the total benefit hits the maximum of $1,100, about $22 million would be owing.

Ontario Children's Minister Deb Matthews said the government is working to fix the problem and hopes to extend benefits to children in care by July.

"These kids are something special, they deserve to get the support they need," she said in an interview. "We'll make sure they do get it. We're not exactly sure what form that will take."

Matthews, who also chairs Ontario's new poverty-reduction committee, said bureaucrats are trying to hammer out the details on how the money will be delivered.

"By this July the ministry will have it worked out," she said.

Julaine Skyers, 18, and Melanie Bento, 17, two young women in the care of Toronto's Catholic Children's Aid Society, say they need the money to help in their efforts to save for college.

The young women, who moved out of their foster home in December and are renting an apartment in the city's east end, are stunned the province would introduce a measure to help low-income kids and leave them out.

"It's really hurtful," said Skyers, who met with Matthews earlier this month as part of a delegation of youth in care.

"We don't have families that can help us, so we need all the help we can get."

Although Skyers and Bento are each receiving about $800 a month in "maintenance" from children's aid to cover living expenses, the money doesn't go very far. And they will no longer be eligible for any help when they turn 21.

"If we got the benefit, I think the best thing would be to invest that money for school," said Skyers, who is working full-time to save for college next year.

She is hoping to get accepted in a program to become a child and youth worker, but tuition and books will cost about $3,000 a year, she said.

Bento, who is working part-time while she completes high school, wants to study hospitality or mechanics in college next year.

Although the children's aid association says the simplest solution to the problem would be to transfer the child benefit funds to them on behalf of the kids, others believe the money should flow directly into registered education savings plans for each child.

That way, children in care would also be eligible for federal education grants of up to $550 a year.

"Money coming from a child benefit should be going into funds that any other child can get," said John Stapleton, an independent social policy consultant who used to work for the provincial social services ministry.

Any or all money paid out on behalf of children in any other family can be used to open an education savings plan, so it should be the same for kids in care, he said.

There are about 3,300 children under the care of the Toronto and Catholic children's aid societies.

About 63 per cent live in poverty, said Toronto CAS executive director David Rivard.

"When it comes to escaping poverty, education is crucial," he said. "Opening education savings plans for these kids is certainly one option that should be considered."

The Child Welfare League of Canada, which advocates on behalf of vulnerable kids, including those with mental health issues, in trouble with the law and in the care of Children's Aid, has been lobbying Ottawa and the provinces to help these children access federal education grants.

"We live in a knowledge-based society," said executive director Peter Dudding.

"We have to lever the resources of government and the private sector to ensure these kids succeed."

Source: website of the Toronto Star

An insider has posted a report on the Children's Aid Society of Toronto to YouTube. We missed this when it was first posted three months ago. We also have a local copy (flv).

Can anyone understand why the father of a stolen baby feels hostile toward the thief? Any normal parent can, but the worker herself pretends she cannot. A Vaughan father who apparently thought he was posting to a private area on Facebook has been criminally charged for making a death threat. People habitually use the word "kill" to privately express anger without any threat to the peace. See, for example, the movie Twelve Angry Men starring Henry Fonda. In the Facebook case the cops penetrated privacy to expose the angry outburst.

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Man allegedly threatened to suicide-bomb CAS

February 13, 2008

A Vaughan man whose baby was seized by the Children's Aid Society allegedly threatened to suicide-bomb the CAS and kill the nurse who notified the agency in a graphic Facebook message, court heard this week. "When I find what nurse called the CAS, may God have mercy on my soul because I'm going straight to hell with a 25-year pit stop in prison", a message on the man's Facebook site stated, alluding to the minimum term for first-degree murder. "Plan B we have firearms and the manpower."

Another posting stated: Bob (not his name) is going to suicidal-bomb the CAS.

The 26-year-old man, who cannot be identified because his now five-month-old son is in CAS care, has pleaded not guilty to writing a death threat to York Central nursing instructor Debora Flachner and members of York Region CAS as well as three breaches of a weapons prohibition (a pellet-gun).

The accused man's son was apprehended by York Regional Children's Aid Society two weeks after he was born on Sept. 5, 2007, at York Central Hospital in Richmond Hill. "I felt absolutely terrified in reading it because it was possible this person was thinking about planning a murder-suicide", testified Flachner as she recalled reading the Facebook postings on Nov. 20, 2007.

Flachner was unaware of the Facebook threats which were posted in mid-September last year until York Regional Police brought them to her attention in late November.

"I happened to be the person who filled out the paperwork, to put financial assistance in place for the mother.

"I put a question mark whether the child's mother was developmentally delayed."

But the child went home with the mother and grandmother,she told the court.

"I felt absolutely terrified that I was his focus. He sounded unpredictable.

"I didn't go home. I went into hiding and stayed in a hotel (until the accused was arrested Nov. 23)", Flachner told Justice Richard Blouin of the Ontario Court of Justice.

Flachner was unaware of the Facebook threats which were posted in mid-September last year until York Regional Police brought them to her attention in late November.

Flachner admitted under cross-examination by the father's lawyer, Sam Goldstein, that the father never had any contact with her, never appeared at her home or the hospital where she works or on the street.

She also read a blunt warning from one of the accused's friends on his Facebook, stating: Don't do anything stupid.

"I can't believe you put those threats in public."

Goldstein said his client's behaviour is inappropriate, not criminal, and the father interacted with the Childrens Aid Society for 65 days without incident, showing the threats weren't real.

His client met with Childrens Aid Society officials in October and early November, agreeing to take parenting courses and indicating he wanted to take legal action to regain custody of his child, court heard.

Contact between the father and the Childrens Aid Society was abruptly cut off once a Childrens Aid Society employee surfing Childrens Aid Society-related Facebook websites discovered the disturbing messages and alerted her employer.

Source: website of Northern News

Addendum: Our original post erroneously said a guilty plea had been entered in the case. In fact, the trial continued and the accused was found not guilty.

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National Post, Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Facebook threats showed no intent

Judge Issues Acquittal

Shannon Kari, National Post Published: Tuesday, March 04, 2008

NEWMARKET, Ont. - A 26-year-old man who wrote of a plan to bomb a Toronto-area children's aid society in postings on his Facebook page has been acquitted of threatening charges after a judge accepted that writings on the popular site are part of a fantasy environment that should not necessarily be taken seriously.

Justice Richard Blouin accepted that D.S. (who cannot be identified because his son is in the care of children's aid) was "blowing off steam" with his postings and did not have the intent to prove a criminal charge of threatening.

The postings were misguided, yet "they were not meant to intimidate," the provincial court judge said yesterday.

D.S. started a group on the social networking site after his infant son was apprehended by the York Region Children's Aid Society. The group included a discussion board called "C.A.S. sucks" where D.S. posted messages that detailed his frustration.

He stated that if he found out the name of the hospital nurse who contacted children's aid, he would be going "straight to Hell" with a "25-year pit stop" in prison. There were also postings that talked of a suicide bomb attack.

Police were contacted last November after a children's aid employee searched Facebook for any references to the York Region C.A.S. and found the postings.

"I fully understand the response of the hospital, C.A.S. and the police," said Judge Blouin. But he said he accepted the testimony of D.S. and that of an expert on Facebook to provide context to the postings.

Jesse Hirsh, who consults to businesses about the use of Facebook, testified last month that it is a "fantasy-based environment" where people embellish their comments to try to attract online "friends."

Facebook users "in effect, construct an alternate persona," Judge Blouin noted in his ruling, in reference to the expert testimony.

As well, the judge said he accepted the testimony of D.S. and observed that while the postings were online, the young man had regular contact with children's aid, where he was polite and concerned about his son.

skari@nationalpost.com

Source: website of the National Post

Fathers 4 Justice demonstrated outside the Newmarket courthouse on Valentines day with the theme Heartbreak Hotel. Demonstrators included Denis Van Decker, Elvis (Dorian Baxter) and a mother, Mary Palminteri. Rogers News (mms video stream link) covered the event on television. The F4J story runs from 4:19 to 6:45. We regret that these links often expire within a few days.

We have not before posted favorable stories about children's aid, not out of reluctance, but because there have not been any. Until now. On January 30 an abandoned baby girl was found in a stairwell of a parking garage in Toronto. Toronto Children's Aid has cared for the girl, and dubbed her "Angelica Leslie". Today the Toronto Police Service released two new photographs of the baby in hopes of having her recognized.

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Police issue two new photographs of abandoned child "Angelica Leslie"

Broadcast time: 11:40
Friday, February 15, 2008

33 Division
416−808−3304

On Wednesday, January 30, 2008, at 12:30 p.m., police found an eight−month old baby girl in the stairwell of a plaza parking lot at the intersection of Leslie Street and Finch Avenue East.

See previous release (pdf).

Police are releasing two new photographs of baby "Angelica Leslie" that were taken on Friday, February 15, 2008, in the hope that someone might recognize her and identify her.

The Children's Aid Society advise police that "Angelica Leslie" is doing very well.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416−808−3304, Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416−222−TIPS (8477), or online at www.222tips.com.

Constable Wendy Drummond, Public Information, for Detective Keith Moxley, 33 Division

Source: (pdf) website of the Toronto Police Service
The original document has high resolution photos each with 6.2 megapixels

Barrie CAS has overspent its budget and will get supplemental funding. Since there is no consumer demand for its services, the claims in the story are false.

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CAS slated for extra funding

February 15, 2008

The Simcoe County Children's Aid Society will receive an extra $2.4 million to offset an increase in demand which includes a staggering jump in reported abuse and neglect cases.

The local CAS has experienced a 40 per cent rise in the number of abuse investigations during the past year.

Neglect cases were up 36 per cent.

The overall demand for service was up 30 per cent.

"We're seeing some serious concerns that many of our children are at risk of harm," said CAS spokeswoman Judi Shields. "It's quite troubling for all of us here."

Source: website of the Barrie Examiner

Yesterday Stephen Kazmierczak killed six people including himself at Northern Illinois University.

ABC News reports the killer was a student at the university's school of social work studying mental health issues. Further along, the news says "Kazmierczak's behavior had become erratic in the past few weeks, and it is believed he had stopped taking his medication". The kind of medication is not given, but if it is psychotropic medication, it continues a long pattern in school shootings. In the Virginia Tech shooting, the exact drug prescription of killer Cho Seung-Hui was suppressed on grounds of confidentiality. Even the Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel (August 2007) does not disclose his medication. Maybe big pharma will do the same for Mr Kazmierczak's records.

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ABC News

Who Was the Illinois School Shooter?

Kazmierczak, 27, Killer of 5 Students, Studied Mental Health Issues, Worked at Prison

(AP Photo/Courtesy Daily Herald inset)

By EMILY FRIEDMAN, Feb. 15, 2008 —

Stephen Kazmierczak, the 27-year-old who opened fire on a crowded Northern Illinois University lecture hall, killing five and then himself Thursday, was studying mental health issues at another college and had recently taken a job at a prison, according to his academic adviser.

"It was very difficult and overwhelming to hear the news," said Jan Carter-Black, an associate professor of sociology who was both Kazmierczak's professor and adviser at the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois. "I found Stephen to be a very committed student — extremely respectful of me. … I enjoyed having him as a student."

Kazmierczak was a student of Carter-Black's for about a month in the fall of 2007, when he was enrolled in a class called Human Behavior and the Social Environment.

The course, said Carter-Black, focused on the connection between human behavior and the surrounding environment and met once a week for three-hour sessions. There were around 30 students in the class, and Carter-Black said Kazmierczak always interacted with his peers well during group work, and participated regularly in the class discussion.

Toward the end of September, Kazmierczak withdrew from Carter-Black's course to take a job in the prison system and became a part-time student. In January 2008, Kazmierczak returned to full-time status. Carter-Black didn't know the name or location of the prison.

Despite advising him on his courses on mental health issues, Carter-Black said that she never noticed anything out of the ordinary about Kazmierczak and said that he "looked like all the other students."

Earlier reports by NIU campus Police Chief Donald Grady indicated that Kazmierczak's behavior had become erratic in the past few weeks, and it is believed he had stopped taking his medication. The chief declined to specify the type of medication the gunman was on.

Carter-Black said she had no knowledge of Kazmierczak's medical history or treatment.

Kazmierczak had served as a member of the NIU Academic Criminal Justice Association, was a teaching aid during his undergraduate years and in 2006 even received a Dean's Award from the sociology department.

In 2006 Kazmierczak was a co-author of an essay entitled "Self-Injury in Correctional Settings: 'Pathology' of Prisons or of Prisoners," in which an attached biography describes him as having just begun his graduate work at NIU.

Kazmierczak's interests are listed as corrections, political violence and peace and social justice, according to the essay, and he had plans to co-author a manuscript on the role of religion in the formation of early prisons.

In another biography, apparently written by Kazmierczak for the Academic Criminal Justice Association's Web site, he pledged his commitment to social justice and his academic work.

"I've worked very hard as a student," the entry reads.

Kazmierczak worked as the Pirates Cove Children's Theme Park in his hometown in 1995, according to the park's director. He had an acceptable employee record.

On a music site message board from 2006, posters who claimed to be his co-workers wrote, "I remember Steve Kazmierczak … the kind of person who injured kids on the train ride cuz he was mental and he shouldn't be given domain over kids on little faux-traincars with an aluminum baseball bat … "

Originally from Champaign, Ill., Kazmierczak had been a student at NIU in the spring of 2007, where he had majored in sociology. He had been studying at the University of Illinois - Campaign most recently, according to NIU school officials.

Grady said that those who knew him "revered him as an outstanding student" and had no inclination that Kazmierczak was capable of such carnage.

But law enforcement authorities told ABC News that Kazmierczak had likely planned the assault on the school for at least five days — all four guns involved in the NIU shooting were purchased legally from the same Champagne, Ill., gun dealer, ABC News has learned. The Remington shotgun and the Glock 9 mm were purchased on Feb. 9, 2008. The Highpoint 380 was purchased on Dec. 30, 2007 and the Sig Sauer 9 mm was purchased on Aug. 6, 2007 from the same gun dealer.

Authorities were still checking where he obtained two other pistols, a 9 mm Sig Sauer and a Hi Point 380.

He brought the shotgun in a guitar case, police said, and hid the others underneath his jacket.

At approximately 3:15 p.m. Thursday, Kazmierczak — dressed in black and armed with three handguns and a shotgun — entered an introductory geology class and opened fire.

While students ran for cover and hid under their desks, Kazmierczak wounded 16 people, killed five others and then himself.

"The assailant began firing into the assembled class from the stage — from the front," NIU president John Peters told ABC News.

"It didn't seem like he was aiming. He just raised a gun and shot immediately," said Paul Sundstrom, a student who was sitting in the class with his brother Kevin when the gunman opened fire.

With additional reporting by Marcus Baram.

Source: website of ABC News

City News has reported the real reason the parents of Alana Livas abducted their five-year-old girl from the children's aid society. She had been taught sexual activity while under CAS care.

Two weeks ago there was a flurry of articles on Alana in the press, one copied below. There were pleas from the foster parent, actually Alana's maternal aunt Jean Chin, to protect the girl by returning her where she could get treatment for rickets. Examination of the aunt's website discloses that she is alienated from Alana's parents. Look at the uncomplimentary photos for mom and dad. So far no basis for alienation has been published.

Our research into rickets found that vitamin D has a half-life in the body of two months. Press reports at the end of November said Alana had a vitamin D deficiency at the time. The February 1 story said her stored supply of vitamin D was running out, exposing her to danger from rickets. These two stories cannot both be correct. More likely the girl had the same supply of vitamin D as any other girl of Asian descent, a bit low, but not pathological.

A reader reported hearing the Alana Livas story on the CBC this morning. There may be a repeat on the CBC this evening.

If children's aid or the police find this family, the parents will be jailed and the girl will be sent back to her abuser. This is a case where the only safe option for the family is to leave Canada.

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Parents Of Abducted Ailing Girl Say They Acted Over Signs Of Sexual Abuse

Thursday February 14, 2008, CityNews.ca Staff

The story of an abducted little girl with serious health problems has taken a strange and disturbing twist. Her parents have surfaced and claim they had good reasons for taking the child away.

Alana Livas was removed from her parent's home by the Children's Aid Society last year, when case workers alleged she was being neglected and there was evidence that a marijuana grow-op was operating out of their home.

She was turned over to her aunt, who helped treat the girl for rickets, a disease caused by a vitamin deficiency.

But when her folks got access to a CAS report on the child, they were startled. It apparently told them the caretaker aunt saw the child acting out sexually and her parents later saw her supposedly moving in a 'sensual way' during a scheduled visit. It was something they feared the five-year-old couldn't possibly have done innocently.

They say they ca