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Email to California Child Welfare Services Stakeholders April 22, 2001 From: Joseph Sarandos -
josephsarandos@mac.com Greetings, First of all, I must say that I believe the governor had made a mistake by appointing financially-interested insiders to the task of improving the Child Welfare Services System, in that the prerequisite to "improvement" is "criticism," and self-criticism is always tainted by self-interests. Therefore, it cannot be reasonably expected that any group of employees would return findings that are detrimental to their self-interests, such as stating the needs for more supervision, less discretion, better psychological screening and record-checking, stiffer penalties for personal misconduct, etc.. Secondly, it must be acknowledged that the ultimate social value of any "well intentioned" set of laws and regulations lies not in its existence, but in its administration. Therefore, the prejudices and "mind sets" of the individual enforcers of laws and regulations, when combined with the discretionary powers so granted, inescapably result in discriminatory application of the laws. For instance, in the cases of the white policemen in south-central Los Angeles who considered the black residents as "inferior," it was quite impossible for them to enforce the laws "evenly and fairly," just as it is for CPS-workers who are themselves bitter toward the traditional male-headed family units, toward men in general, toward heterosexuals in general, toward welfare recipients in general, and/or toward religious and cultural values which differ from their own. Statistics clearly show that most of the children who had been removed by CPS-workers were from indigent, male-headed, Christian families. While there are no statistics kept in this regard, it is well known that the most zealous of CPS-workers are unmarried, and that many of them are also homosexual and/or atheistic. It is also well known that while there are no actual "quotas" set, the CPS-workers who take in the highest numbers of children, and build the best court-cases against the parents, become highly admired by their co-workers, highly regarded by their supervisors, given more discretionary freedoms and powers, and even receive higher pay. I am now in my 60's, and I am now retired as an injured veteran of the Korea and Vietnam war eras, but I had spent seven years, up to the end of 1993, as an unpaid, authorized representative of indigent parents in State Administrative Hearings, appealing the non-regulatory decisions and actions of county officials, employees and contractors in their zeal to unnecessarily initiate and build up very many cases of "child abuse" which would require Child Welfare Services to be provided by local contractors and financed out of Social Security funds via HHS. Such involvement allowed me to access and investigate hundreds of individual case files, to thereby learn the various patterns, or templates that were being employed and followed by the "child protection" consortiums of this and other counties and states, and to learn that such services were being provided mostly by the relatives, friends and political cronies of the same officials and judges who were ordering and authorizing payment for them. My youngest daughters were both under three years of age in 1986, and I was well known as a "dissident political activist" (having twice run for county-level offices), who had published hundreds of newspaper articles and editorials criticizing named judges and public officials for various financial schemes other than this worst one of which I was yet unaware. So, because this scheme was being controlled by many of the same officials and judges whom had come to despise me for exposing and ruining others of their dishonest schemes, I became targeted as an intended victim of it. As it were, I had been set up to be convicted of both physical and sexual abuse of my own babies. It was only because of my preexisting and particular combination of preparations, knowledge, skills, contacts and protections that I was able to extricate myself and my family from this cunning trap. In a relatively short time, and before any trials, all of the charges that had been built-up against me by the consortium while they had my wife and babies in their "protective custody" were dismissed with prejudice, and I was provided with copies of the extensive false evidence which would have been presented against me under oath. Because I so became aware of how simple it is for such, financially-motivated consortiums to build and prove false cases against innocent parents, it became morally impossible for me to turn my back on it. Fortunately, it also became possible for me to devote my full time toward investigating and gathering proofs against these corrupt consortiums, in that I finally became too physically disabled to continue operating my very small T-V repair business, and so became eligible for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (A.F.D.C.). Of course, I was (unknowingly) eligible for a Veterans Administration pension at that time, but the County Welfare Department preferred to keep me ignorant of this fact, so that I'd have to accept the "less dignified" form of assistance which would also allow the local consortium to "keep tabs" on me. In those times, Tulare County was the "power hub" of the conspiratorial system. The founder and president of the state-wide Foster Parents Association lived here, along with the attorney for both her and her association, which attorney was married to the then-publisher of the county's largest newspaper. Because of their longer-than-average tenures in office, Tulare County officials headed-up almost all of the state-wide associations of public officers. But most importantly, this was a "training base" for California CPS-workers, which training was being provided by specially-relocated "specialists" in the art of initiating and building-up false case of child abuse, one of which specialists was especially assigned to my own case. So, I know whereof I speak in these regards. For whatever value it might have in helping you to further understand the inherent flaws in the yet-standing "child protection industry," I append my recently-written, poetic treatise on it. Sincerely, Joseph Sarandos "A Call for Change" Still waiting for a response. Copyright retained by author. Please contact him directly for reprint permission. Taken from the internet archives of the FightCPSandWin website of Linda J Martin.
Posted by Dufferin VOCA.
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