A continuing analysis comparing the rates of death in parental and foster care.

(July 2006) A set of charts showing the growth of child protection in Ontario from 1991 to the present. The budget got out of control after 1996.

US Health and Human Services yearly statistical reports on child abuse. The reports are subject to bias and falsification, but are incontestable when confronting the child protection bureaucracy.

The Fleecing of Foster Children by the Children's Advocacy Institute of the University of San Diego. Some foster children have assets, such as an inheritance, or income, usually from social security payments when an eligible parent has died. Social service agencies with custody of children scoop up all of these assets and incomes and account for them as reimbursement for care of the child. When the child eventually ages out of foster care he is left penniless.

Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare

When an Ontario coroner's inquest involves children's aid, the inquests are ritualized by giving the jury only the view of the professional bureaucracy. Views from outside the bureaucracy never reach the jury. The recommendations are always for more money and power for children's aid. Here are several of the reports from past inquests, in pdf images:

• Kasandra Hislop aka Shepherd April 11, 1991. Girl in custody dispute and under CAS supervision killed by stepmother.
• Trish Carpenter September 25, 1992. CAS runaway died on the streets.
• Shanay Jami Johnson October 26, 1993. Child returned by CAS to abusive mother.
• Mitchell and Kenneth Free-Parkin January 12, 1995. Unexplained deaths in family under CAS supervision.
• Margret and Wilson Kasonde May 25, 1995. Killed by father during custodody dispute.
• James Preston Lonnee September 7, 1996. Young offender killed by cellmate.
• Jennifer Anne Kateryna Koval's'kyj-England April 2, 1996. Girl killed by father on withdrawal from psychotropic drugs.
• Angela Dombroskie, David Dombroskie, Jamie Lee Burns, Devin Burns June 11, 1996. Four children died in a house fire.
• Jordan Desmond Heikamp June 23, 1997. CAS ward starved to death.
• Selena Wendy Sakanee November 23, 1997. Former CAS ward committed suicide by hanging.
• Stephanie Jobin June 20, 1998. Institutionalized crown ward died of restraint.
• William Edgar March 31, 1999. CAS ward asphyxiated by restraint.
• Joshua Douglas Durnford February 15, 2000. CAS ward poisoned by multiple psychotropic drugs.
• Daniel, David, Peter and Nicole Luft July 6, 2000. Familicide by father treated with psychotropic drugs.
• Paola Rosales July 3, 2001. CAS ward who committed suicide by hanging.
• Matthew David Reid December 15, 2005. Foster boy smothered by foster girl.

Researcher John Ioannidis demonstrates that most medical research produces erroneous conclusions. November 2010. Two TED talks by Ben Goldacre reach the same conclusion July 2011 and April 2012. Here is a medical journal article: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4): Report to Congress, January 2010. local copy.

Child Trends. This is a well-funded organization supported by governments and large charities. It produces lots of reports on children.

A copy of the policy and procedures manual of the Huron Perth children's aid society obtained in December 2010 by John Dunn under freedom of information.

This is a copy of the service agreement between the Children's Aid Society of Ottawa and its two supervising ministries. It was acquired in May 2010 by John Dunn as part of his years of litigation endeavoring to reform the society. The pdf version is what he got, we translated it to html for better indexing.

(pdf) Pre-budget consulatation 2010-11 by OACAS. February 1, 2010.

(pdf) A handbook for Illinois foster children, with information and misinformation. November 2009.

Vaccines and Childhood Illnesses: Beyond Thimerosal. David Ayoub, MD - 58:25. Presentation by David Ayoub, M.D., a radiologist from Springfield, Illinois. From the 65th Annual Meeting of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, September 12, 2008. Link is to Google video, local copy (mp4 200 megabytes).

This scientific talk on vaccines is suitable for any listener literate enough to understand the notion of concentration. Toward the end (at 48:20), Dr Ayoub shows how vaccine injury perfectly mimics the symptoms of shaken baby syndrome.

(May 2008) Australian researcher Greg Tooley checked death reports for young children and confirmed the Cinderella effect. Children with no natural parents (foster parents) are 6 or 37 times more likely to die than children with two natural parents.

Hearings by the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support of the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives held hearings, May 8, 2008. The linked page is the index of the testimony and submissions. There was just one witness not entirely within the protection/pharmacological system.

• Response by Misty Stenslie, MSW, Foster Care Alumni of America, Deputy Director and our local copy.

Rate your personality the way the professionals do. A nastygram required removing it from this site to protect the host from litigation under the DMCA. The current link is to a copy hosted in Russia. It is nearly identical to the version authenticated by the copyright owner's legal staff. The MMPI is a form of burglar tool used by psychiatrists to facilitate child theft. Examining the tool in advance can help victims thwart the thieves. Here is an analysis by James Roger Brown (pdf).

(April 2008) State Secrecy and Child Deaths in the U.S. A joint report of the Children's Advocacy Institute and First Star on disclosure, or lack of it, following child fatalities from abuse and neglect. It rates every state by quality of disclosure.

The current undue emphasis on confidentiality only masks problems inherent in child protection systems. Public exposure is a necessary step toward fixing these problems. Each year, millions of taxpayer dollars go to support child protective services investigations. Accordingly, the public has a right to know if the laws for the protection of children are being followed and its tax dollars well-spent. Child abuse deaths and near deaths reflect the system's worst failures. Until state laws require the release of accurate and unfiltered information, we cannot identify the fault lines in the system, and cannot begin to fix them.

Adoption is a way to create disproportionate numbers of parricides and serial killers. Dr David Kirschner, September 2007.

(2007) Multiple Vaccinations And the Shaken Baby Syndrome by F. Edward Yazbak, MD. Vaccines can produce reactions easily mistaken for shaken baby syndrome.

(2007) Pediatric bipolar disorder: An object of study in the creation of an illness, by David Healy and Joanna Le Noury. The psychiatric industry extends a disease formerly found only in adults to children. Marketing is not only for treatments, but for the disease itself. A book for children, including a coloring book, promotes diagnosis of bipolarity. An active fetus kicking the mother's insides is now the basis for a diagnosis requiring life-long medication. The drug companies are forbidden to make claims that have not been substantiated by studies, so the promotion is carried out by nominally independent third parties. Drugs that cannot be promoted as treatments for bipolar disorder are pushed as "mood stabilizers". The substantial side-effects, such as shortening life by twenty years, are ignored.

(March 2007) Researcher Joseph J Doyle Jr found an ingenious way to measure whether foster care helps or harms the child, separating out the effects of pre-placement harm and caseworker bias. He compared outcomes of Illinois children handled by caseworkers with a high propensity toward placement to those with a low propensity. The marginal cases were removed from the home by the former group, left in the home by the latter. By comparing outcomes for the children several years later, he demonstrated that leaving the child in the home produced better results.

Daniel L Hatcher in the Cardozo Law Review analyzes the practice of child protectors stealing their wards' social security benefits. February 6, 2007.

(January 2007) A chart used by the social worker trade association to lobby for more money shows just how dangerous it is to go into foster care.

(January 2007, pdf) Kelly Colleen McDonald, Child Abuse: Approach and Management, published by the American Family Physician. This article for doctors advises them on how to spot and report cases of child abuse. It is notable for its implicit presumption (contrary to evidence) that children taken into protective care will get better treatment than from their parents, and for its candid admission (routinely denied in political statements by child protectors) that poverty is a risk factor for child abuse.

(Jan 2007, MS-Word) A scandal in Kentucky culminated in this report detailing the abuses endemic in child protection agencies. While it purports to be about Kentucky, the abuses are similar throughout the US and Canada. Here is a link to our local copy.

(July 2006) Elizabeth Marsh wrote a letter to the British Medical Journal titled The General Public needs legal protection too, suggesting that child abuse is inevitable, only excessive abuse needs response.

Research on a sample of 108 UK adoptions of older children, ages 5 to 11, shows that only half have good outcomes.

Hearings by the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support of the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives held hearings, May 23, 2006. The linked page is the index of the testimony and submissions. The testimony and letters linked below are only the ones from witnesses outside the child protection bureaucracy:

• Testimony of Richard Wexler, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
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• Testimony of William Tower, President of the American Family Rights Association
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• Statement of Barbara Bryan, Davidson, North Carolina
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• Statement of Kevin Hall, Boston, Massachusetts
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• Statement of Lisa E Gladwell, River Edge, New Jersey
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• Statement of Gail D Haymon, Grants, New Mexico
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• Statement of Helen Holder, Walton, Kentucky
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(May 2006, pdf) ACFC Family Violence report that is an expanded version of the article below. The portion on child protection runs from pages 41 to 55.

(April 2006) Professor Stephen Baskerville writes on how government creates the child abuse problem that it purports to solve.

(February 2006) Study by the C D Howe Institute What Can We Learn from Quebec's Universal Childcare Program? It shows that universal childcare for preschoolers decreases the wellbeing of both children and parents.

(February 2006) Three University of Minnesota researchers show that abused children fare better staying with their abusive parents than in foster care. Only the abstract is available online.

Storming the castle to save the children by Doriane Lambelet Coleman. Even if you are not interested in the legal issues, this scholarly article contains a number of examples of the devastating effects of an investigation into child abuse where no abuse was found. Converted to single page by Leonard Henderson.

(July 2005) Mismanagement: Social and Family Policy by Bruce Clark. This document recounts the policy failings stemming from false allegations of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy in the UK. Starting on page 70 it has fourteen chilling case studies including shotgun divorce and several iatrogenic deaths. Here is a link to the original document.

(Winter 2005) For persons who have experienced foster care this is an unnecessary study. Three researchers from the University of Minnesota find that foster care harms children. The full article came from a reader with a subscription.

Legal Aid made submissions to the legislature on then-pending bill 210 on December 5, 2005. While mostly bureaucratic speak, it contained a short factual table:

• Approximately 70 percent of children served in their own homes by children's aid societies live at or below the poverty line;
• 60 percent of children's aid society families are led by single parents (i.e. young mothers) compared to a national average of 17 percent;
• 40 percent of children's aid society service recipients rely on social assistance;
• One in sixteen live in a shelter or are homeless;
• 50 percent of the families are relatively new to Canada from a cultural or racial minority; and
• More Aboriginal children are admitted to care due to attendant issues of extreme poverty, domestic violence, and high suicide rates that are two to five times the national average.

A father's account of his encounter with child protectors in Texas, November 19, 2005.

October 2005. Research by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson of McMaster University shows that stepparents are ten to a hundred times more likely to abuse a child than a natural parent. It is called the Cinderella effect.

Hearings by the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives held hearings, July 9, 2005. The linked page is the index of the testimony and submissions. At this kind of hearing, large numbers of persons earning a living from the family destruction industry give testimony favoring the appropriation, suggesting only band-aid improvements. Below are the submissions from persons outside the industry:

• Statement of James Roger Brown, The Sociology Center, North Little Rock, Arkansas
• Statement of Barbara Bryan, Davidson, North Carolina
• Statement of Lisa Gladwell, River Edge, New Jersey
• Glenna Bible Mullenix, Jefferson City, Tennessee
• Statement of Cheryl Renee Reese, Round Rock, Texas
• Statement of Daniel Allen Roberts, Dunnellon, Florida

(pdf) A study of foster care. It is most famous for its finding that children in foster care suffer more stress than soldiers in battle. March 2005, local copy (pdf).

(2004, pdf) Paul Chill shows that most child removals are done under pretext of emergency, regardless of the facts. AFRA has an html version.

On July 13 2004 the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives held hearings. The linked page is the index of the testimony and submissions. Among the interesting submissions:

• Cynthia Huckelberry, Redlands, California, and Sushanna Khamis, Yucaipa, California
• J Holderbaum, Child Protection Reform, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• John R. Seita, Battle Creek, Michigan

Forgotten Children, April 2004 (pdf). Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn produced a report detailing the appaling condition of Texas foster children. We have a partial summary of the pictures.

Finding Words, Kansas (2004). Document used for training prosecutors to break up families (788 pages). It is easier to read with Firefox than with Internet Explorer. Copy hosted outside the USA.

Balancing the Right to Privacy and The Right of Access: Access to Child-Abuse Records in the 50 States. Thesis by Courtney Anne Barclay (2003, pdf) giving in chapter 6 a list of the US states and requirements for confidentiality and disclosure of child protection records. Disclosure is mostly restricted to other parts of the bureaucracy, disclosure even to the parties involved in restricted in many states. Only two states have any provision for disclosure to journalists. local copy (pdf).

Listening to Parents: Overcoming Barriers to the Adoption of Children from Foster Care. The last two are pdf.

This study by the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute and Harvard University shows that most prospective adoptive parents are turned off by the bureaucracy, and do not adopt. It mimics our experience in Dufferin, where upper-crust families have been given the cold shoulder by Children's Aid.

The study does not take account of the financial incentives for keeping children in foster care.

Study shows that home visits by social workers are worthless except for single teen-aged mothers. (pdf).

Richard Wexler reports that hysteria about methamphetamine duplicates the hysteria about crack-cocaine of a generation earlier. The real addiction problem is addiction to foster care.

In this article professor Stephen Baskerville shows that there is more at stake in family law than unhappy parents. The very structure of our way of life is under attack.

This article is written by a law student who is a former caseworker for the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) of New York City.

It features experiences from his career in child removal, and a recitation of the uselessness of the foster care system, every assertion backed up with a footnote.

Among those assertions:

A child is more than twice as likely to die of abuse in foster care than in the general population. The rate of sexual abuse in foster homes has been shown to be two to four times higher than in the general population, while physical abuse is three times higher. In group homes, the rate of physical abuse is ten times higher than in the general population, while the rate of sexual abuse is twenty-eight times higher. The high rate of abuse in group homes is due to the frequency of abuse between children. The Los Angeles Times, relying on a 1997 grand jury report, reported that "many of the nearly 5,000 foster children housed in Los Angeles County group homes are physically abused and drugged excessively while being forced to live without proper food, clothing, education and counseling." Reports of long-term residents in New York City's group homes subjecting newcomers to rape, robbery, and assault are common. Also common are reports that girls in New York City's group homes are being pimped out by local gang members.

Besides being endangered while in the state's custody, many, if not most, of the children in foster care were unnecessarily removed from their homes.

Whether or not the child is removed, the family becomes a funding source for a variety of professionals and agencies. It is difficult to "indicate" a report, or find that there is some credible evidence to believe that maltreatment has occurred, without providing services to the family and the child. After a child has been removed, the parents are assigned services that they must complete if they want to be reunited with their children. In 2001, the federal government spent $295 million on such services. The caseworker picks from a menu of "cookie cutter" services which may or may not have any relevance to the family's problems. Services include drug testing, parenting classes, counseling, homemaking, or even the provision of a child's bed. Although these services have been shown to be ineffective, "[t]he issue is no longer whether the child may be safely returned to the home, but whether the mother has attended every parenting class, made every urine drop, [and] participated in every therapy session." Thus, "[t]he agency's service plan usually has little to do with services for the family. It is typically a list of requirements parents must fulfill in order to keep their children or get them back."

The theme of the article compares the treatment of foster children and their natural parents to slaves. Aside from coerced labor, their condition is identical. This view likely has more use as a moral paradigm than as a legal theory that will put an end to wholesale child removal.

Children as Chattel in the original pdf format.

For two centuries Switzerland sold unwanted or stolen children to the lowest bidder as Verdingkinder.

One of the strongest proponents of child protection criticizes the current system. February, 2003.

Researchers Heather Hammer, David Finkelhor and Andrea J. Sedlak find that in 1999 the US had 115 stereotypical kidnappings (by strangers), 58,200 less serious incidents of non-family abduction, and 203,900 cases of family abduction. Not mentioned, there were about 250,000 instances of forced child removal under pretext of protection.

PBS has posted an extract from the book Shattered Bonds, The Color of Child Welfare (2002) by Dorothy Roberts. It discusses changes in child welfare policy, leading the the current emphasis on adoption ahead of family preservation.

Professor Stephen Baskerville in the Catholic World Report.

This May 2001 report by Patricia Schene of the Edmund S Muskie School of Public Service supports the idea of arranging for adoption before your child has legally been separated from the family. They call it concurrent planning. local copy (pdf).

Risk assessments are biased by social workers.

Interview in Reason magazine with a physician critical of the psychiatric profession. Mr Szasz originated the term "therapeutic state" for the social control exerted by labeling forms of behavior as disorders requiring compulsory treatment. The article includes a link to his own interesting home page.

Oppostion to psychiatry

Many reports on the child protection system by Richard Wexler. Mr Wexler retired from NCCPR in 2012.

Susan Orr does a study of whole child protection system in the US. October, 1999. The original link is dead, but here is an archive copy

Swedish article Smacking Parents by James Hartfield. See also Angels of Antichrist at the bottom of the page.

From the Nordic Committee for Human Rights, a lecture by lawyer Siv Westerberg on child care in Sweden. She develops the idea that the twentieth century police state is being superseded by the therapeutic state, which he dubs the socio-medical totalitarian state. Instead of controlling the people with the army and police, the state now recruits the social and medical services as its soldiers.

Identifying and Dealing with "Child Savers" by Thomas D Oellerich. A study suggests childhood sexual abuse may be less damaging than professional intervention by therapists. (local copy, html).

Books related to child protection.

A study by Florida researchers compared the progress of babies born to cocaine addicted mothers raised in foster care or parental care. Even for these disadvantaged babies, parental care produced better results. The original article is not on the web, the link is to a summary by a journalist. Richard Wexler cites the study as: Kathleen Wobie, Marylou Behnke et. al., To Have and To Hold: A Descriptive Study of Custody Status Following Prenatal Exposure to Cocaine, paper presented at joint annual meeting of the American Pediatric Society and the Society for Pediatric Research, May 3, 1998. (conference in New Orleans).

The Duluth Model, founded in 1981, forms the intellectual basis for policies of family destruction.

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, The hinterland of child abuse. Published in 1977, it was the start of the MSBP theory. Thousands of blameless parents have lost their children to this junk-science theory. Dr Meadow shredded his own notes in the matter, and none of the characters mentioned in the article have come forward to authenticate it.