First

First of all, there is no difference between neglect in one state and neglect in another state. Abuse is abuse, Neglect is neglect no matter where you are. Our laws in each state need to be standardized and consequences unified to match.

Second, we need to simplify the system and take out all of the red tape and “extra” people who cause families to be separated for an overly excessive amount of time. There’s the judge (with little or no direct communication), the GAL “the child’s lawyer”, the DA, all sitting on the other side of the court room, all in opposition of the parents. In reality, the courts and judges have no business being involved at all. They are too far removed from the process in general to be able to make a sound, logical, fair decision.

The next thing that is necessary is the separation of the foster/child abuse neglect workers, judges, and attorneys from the adoption agencies or the incentives from such. Having your children removed should not mean that you now have to fear for your rights all together as a parent. Committing a crime doesn’t automatically mean life in prison or the death penalty. Except when you put it in the context of family court and the removal of our children. Parents continue to lose all rights and contact with their children over something as small as a messy house, or an anonymous, spiteful, false allegation with no proof provided. They are living normal lives like you and me, then one day out of nowhere the boy down the street that you yelled at for being disrespectful has now decided to get revenge and allege that you beat your daughter. With no warning or reasonable cause your daughter is taken from her classroom and you are told that you must comply with what these strangers tell you if you ever want to see her again. To a parent that is the equivalent, if not far worse, than being convicted of committing a traffic violation and being sentenced to death. Not lethal injection or the chair, but the kind of death where they take your heart out while you are alive and awake and you get to watch it beat in someone else’s hands before your life fades slowly out, like in Indiana Jones. Yes this may seem quite dramatic. So is the feeling of not being able to hear your child’s voice even though they may be right down the street from you. You ask why, and are told that it’s because you are not fit or capable of protecting them. Utterly shocking to any parent who even half way loves their children or has any kind of bond built with them at all. It is not even something that we can imagine…..letting something happen to the one thing in our lives we live for. The one thing we all feel alive and grateful for. It’s unbelievably absurd and horrifying.

Then you start to realize the lengths some of them will go through just to be able to have any reason at all to justify what they know is wrong. You soon discover that you are the only one who cares about the best interest or health and safety of your child. These “strangers’ claiming to, obviously don’t, and your family and friends who haven’t turned their back simply can’t understand.

If the circumstances that you already were facing in life have not gotten to you at this point, this situation will try every bit of courage and hope and strength you have and could easily break you if you’re not careful. The system is designed to help you fail. It’s constructed to overwhelm you and cause you to want to give up or let go. Sometimes it seems as if that would even be easier than fighting to gain custody once again. This is the point where the brokenhearted and the lionhearted separate. The broken give up and go on living with PTSD and many other mental disorders while their children are adopted and lose their family history and loving parents, as well as their sense of security and safety. The brave are, at this point, in a stage of fury and anguish, and frustration cause they simply don’t understand how this is happening and are clueless most times about which road to take or who to call for help. Even the smartest and most intelligent among us feel utterly stupefied at what is actually happening to us. We, as good citizens, can not understand how our government can completely disregard us. We are treated like criminals, or more accurately, servants who are being reprimanded for some horrible crime against our children that we would never allow.

Innocent people throughout history have been accused and convicted of terrible crimes that they could not have committed and most time none of us know any different from this bad person got “what we think he deserved.” That is the biggest problem with individuals and the perception society as a whole has when it comes to anything they have not experienced or don’t understand. People are so quick to judge and put their opinions into things they know little to nothing about instead of taking care of their own obviously boring lives.

We judge people everyday, every time we walk out of our house. It has become almost second nature to us. We form opinions within the first five seconds of seeing some one and everything we discover after that is influenced by our “first impression”, whether its good or bad. The State agency and the courts are no different except for the fact that they have the power to destroy or repair lives with the judge ment they are asked to make regarding our children and our families. They have greater responsibility to ensure that our rights are protected and that our loved ones remain safe and secure in our home and in our country. They have been given the privilege of defending this nation and its people, and upholding the founding principle of life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness to every man, woman, and child…………..So why are there so many stories of the exact opposite? Stories of how a mother or father reached out for help and instead were turned away or blamed for not being “good enough” and had them ripped from you. Kidnapped right from under you in broad daylight. Sold to some wealthy family, who put an order in for a child matching the description of your heart and soul. Can you stop for one minute and imagine the pain and suffering you might feel? Can you feel how these parents feel? Can you empathize with them? Would you stand up for them if they asked you for help? Or would you secretly gossip and whisper how they must have done something for CPS to have gotten involved and pretend like you don’t know how much they love their children. Pretend like you have never and don’t want to ever know the truth. These people are just as much of the problem as the ones in control of stopping it. These people make it easy for the guilty to continue destroying families lives one after the other slowly. These are the enablers, the ones who would stand by and watch as someone got robbed for fear of being shot themselves or worse yet accused of the crime they were a victim of.

The parents of these children are helpless to stop this trauma continuously being forced upon them. They are so tired of trying to make someone….anyone stand up for them, or do the right thing. They reach a point where they are tired of explaining anything to anyone because most don’t get it and the rest don’t care. We want someone to understand, but begin to feel as if it is just pointless to keep fighting and start to withdrawal from the world and people around us. We start to seclude ourselves from the things we once loved and easily get sucked into the black hole of anger, loneliness, pride, sorrow, and blame.

But we must not allow ourselves to dwell there. We have to pick our selves up and remember the whole reason we are so upset in the first place. Some one has kidnapped our babies. Someone who is supposed to help strengthen and enrich our lives by ensuring us safety and resources to help us regain footing to be able to be independent and self-sufficient. These ‘criminals” are the scariest ones, because they are given permission, at times even demanded, to kidnap our gifts by our own government. At times, those government officials are the ones committing the worse of acts against us, by denying us all the freedoms and rights that were guaranteed to us long before we were ever even thought of……………Why are we allowing this to keep happening. We are many, they are few. We are only asking to be allowed the basic right of man. We are just……. they are evil. We have heart and determination (though lack of ambition is an issue). We have the love of our kids to fight for. We are the only ones they have to stand up for them. They are counting on us. They don’t understand what these strangers are doing all of a sudden and I can promise you that no worker is going to be giving them straight answers, if they don’t go even farther to tell them you don’t love them to help the case they will surely be building against all of you

Cyn