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Child Protective Services laws and agencies are abusive to families and children. This site provides support and information to parents falsely accused of child abuse by Child Protective Services.
FightCPS does not advocate or condone violence or illiegal activities of any kind.
FightCPS is intended to help people learn enough about the law to be able to successfully defend themselves and their families against false accusations using legal documents and strategies that put parents in a stronger position when they go back to court.
For more information, see the FAQ.
Child Protective Services, CPS, has devastated and destroyed hundreds of thousands of families in America during the last thirty years leaving a trail of broken hearts, broken dreams, and shattered childhoods.
Rather than helping families, government agents have used unconstitutional laws in Juvenile Court to rip children away from their loving parents, break asunder God-given, natural, parent-child bonds, and adopt the children of the grieving out to others who profit financially with large monthly adoption subsidy payments.
Child Protective Services must be stopped! The law that started this, CAPTA, must be repealed. We must work tirelessly to inform the public of this very dangerous travesty of justice. We must keep faith knowing that if there is a God, there is an answer and a way to end this heartache.
Child Protective Services Agents - please come to your senses! Family destruction on false or trivial grounds is wrong, reprehensible, and inhumane.
Fosterers - be aware that for the money you get you are holding much-loved children away from their grieving families while the parents are forced to perform a service plan that is anything but a service to them. I call this hostage holding for the government. This is not kindness - to help misguided government agents destroy family relationships and break loving bonds.
CPS workers and fosterers - I ask that you now let the children of the innocent return to their homes where they are truly valued, adored, and loved by the parents God gave them.
Family rights are God-given rights. And they should not be ignored or postponed. Every moment these loving parents and children spend separated from one another is a torment beyond what anyone should ever have to bear.
It is unworthy of human dignity to allow this terrorism and torture of families to go on without saying something, speaking out, and trying to make a change.
Site mission: To provide information and support for families attacked by Child Protective Services and child welfare agents, especially those families facing false or trivial accusations of child abuse or neglect; and for researchers working to protect natural family rights.
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Fighting Child Protective Services False Accusations
July 6, 2007
Children are better off when left in troubled homes, and not detained in state custody foster homes.
Joseph Doyle Jr., an economics professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management did a study on foster children compared to children living in troubled homes, funded by the National Science Foundation. He used the analytic tools of applied economics to discover that “…children on the margin of foster care placement have better employment, delinquency, and teen motherhood outcomes when they remain at home.”
PLEASE, social workers, legislators, everyone. LISTEN. Most kids are better off when left in their natural family homes. If you care about children, if you want them to have good lives and turn out to be happy, productive citizens, don’t take them away from non-abusive parents.
Doyle’s study tracked more than 15,000 children in Illinois from 1990 to 2002. He chose Illinois because they provided the statistics he needed. He screened out extreme cases of abuse and concentrated only on children whose cases could have gone either way (remaining in their family homes, or going to foster homes).
A July 3, 2007 USA Today article by Wendy Koch states, “Studies . . . show that the 500,000 children in U.S. foster care are more likely than other kids to drop out of school, commit crimes, abuse drugs and become teen parents. . . . His research has shown that this holds true even when foster kids are compared with other disadvantaged youth.”
In conclusion, Doyle wrote: “With the child welfare system affecting so many children who appear to be at high risk of poor life outcomes, it would be useful to know whether abused children benefit from being removed from their families. The analysis here uses the effective randomization of abuse investigators, who differ somewhat in their tendency to have children placed in foster care, to estimate causal effects of placement on longer-term outcomes. Children assigned to investigators with higher removal rates are more likely to be placed in foster care themselves, and they are found to have higher delinquency rates, along with some evidence of higher teen birth rates and lower earnings.”
Thank you, Joseph Doyle Jr., for doing this study.
Sources:
Joseph Doyle Jr. – click on his research link and you’ll see a link to the paper he wrote about his study.
Kids Gain More From Family Than Foster Care – from the MIT News Office
Study: Troubled homes better than foster care – by Wendy Koch, for USA Today
Filed under: CPS — Linda Martin @ 7:46 am
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Recent Comments
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I am a california teacher, and I saw first hand the tragedy of the CPS system. A beautiful 2 year old boy at the preschool I worked at, was with a foster care couple who wanted to adopt him. They were upper middle class, and loved him more than anything. CPS suddenly removed him from their home, placed him w/ a foster care family in a mobile home who were obviously trash, and he was beaten to death by them. It makes me sick, and I think of that boy when situations arise when I may need to call CPS for supposed help.
Comment by Bitter Teacher — July 6, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
Hopefully people like you and I and the rest of us working so hard to end the systematic abuse of innocent children are making headway! The public is becoming more aware and hopefully will stop using child protective services as a tool to hurt the adult, and also hopefully more and more people are seeing that children are far better left at home unless of course in cases of true abuse! I feel only a jury should be able to decide what is and what isn’t true abuse..
Louise
Comment by Louise — July 7, 2007 @ 9:52 am
Good article. It is definitely true. My cousins were in the system when I was little. One of my cousins has serious burn scars from being abused in the foster home. She doesn’t talk about it. My aunt won them back, thankfully. I don’t think that they would have the life they had now, if they were still in their abusive foster home.
Comment by startingover — July 7, 2007 @ 2:31 pm
Oh, same for my children. They will definately not be the same. Well, that has already started.
Comment by startingover — July 7, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
Amazing WONDERFUL STRONG Report that I am going to add to my copy of things to submit to this court house in WV.
Good research . Thank GOD for your sight for awareness and knowledge..
Comment by Angela Hawk — July 7, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
wow i thought that but now it is confirmed. i was thinking is it that horrible for a child to be in a messy home. not a dangerous home but messy, or for a parent to make a mistake in being a parent and they hound on it and remove the child. is that what is going on.
Comment by kwanie — July 9, 2007 @ 9:06 am
It is true and I believe this report because it confirms that our cousin was in foster care since he was 3 yrs old. He was in there until 21!!!
Look what happened to him? He committed crimes already as soon as he left the foster care home at age 21 for break and entering, and stealing money. He does not have a clue what to do because no one told him how to live his life and get a job. No one was there to educate him how to do life management. He was desperate, hungry, wanting money to buy food, and he went to food banks once a month. Stayed with us for a while but sadly he committed crimes and he was guilty in court and must pay retributions, about $500 to the victims he stole from, and stayed in jail for 30 days. His record is doomed because he was an Adult when he committed the crime. No one wants to hire him because of his “record”. He went back to his Mother that he had not seen much over the last 20 years. He had visits but it wasn’t much. He was a permanent crown ward in a foster care system. He succumbed to hard drugs and alcohol.
Really sad, sad because his life is going nowhere. This is what Foster Care taught him.
Comment by Frustrated — July 10, 2007 @ 6:32 am
validation at last. My family was in the system for abusive boyfriend/father. He put me in wheelchair, destroyed house, and molested his children. Cps says it was my fault that house was destroyed, and demanded i clean it from chair. Kids went to grandparents, with alcoholic grandfather rather then stay with messy, disabled mom.
p.s. they refuse to charge him with molestation as he is “mentally ill’.
Comment by bj davis — July 10, 2007 @ 9:29 am
During the 15 months my 16 year old step daughter was in my sole care, (along with 2 other kids) it was rough at times, and a lot of hurtful things were said and done.
She “decided” (along with her sister) that life beyond my home was bigger, brighter, more fun, less strict, etc,etc,etc. Both of these girls had the belief that if they could make enough allegations (which they did), CPS would remove them (which they did along with my biological son).
The older one was the luckier as she ended up being placed with her boyfriend’s parents, and she basically gets whatever she wants, so good for her.
The 16 year old has, since November been discharged from private residence foster care and FIVE group homes. She has been admitted to the psych ward twice, has been forced to change schools three times, acts out to the extent that she hardly ever has any privileges except going to school and staying in doors.
Three weeks ago, she was arrested and charged with assualt and battery. Her biological Father refuses to allow her to live with him, and her Mother has voluntarily relinquished her own parental rights. Of course, she never figured ANY of this would happen, but that she would stay in the home of school friends and do what she wanted.
I have raised this child since she was 14 months old. I agreed to be sole custodian after her mother abandoned us all for men and drugs.
Despite the lies, the real hurt and pain this kid has caused, I cannot help but love her, and yet I also will likley never see or even speak to her until she ages out of the system in 2 more years.
I cannot see her being adopted at her age and with her track record. I hope I am wrong. I hope things will change for her and that she won’t spend two of the most crucial years of her life continuing to bounce from group home to jail to group home.
But in all reality, even if I were allowed to, I could not let her return to the home I have provided for her 13 years. When she made a false allegation of sexual abuse three years ago, my therapist who has worked with men released from prison for REAL sex crimes, (not the reason I was seeing him) told me flat out, he has seen men go to jail for less, and that if I allowed her THEN back into the home, she would make further allegations. He was right and I was wrong. Sadly, her parents are wrong too. But I have no control over that.
Once, I was able to really reach this kid unlike anyone else. She shoplifted several times, and I got all the merchandise and we rode all over town returning it and with her confessing to each store manager what she had done. Twice, she stole my credit card and made purchases without my knowledge or permission. I took her to the Juvenile authorities who read her the riot act, and she seemed to straighten up after that. This past year, I encouraged her to attend the auditions for a school play. She won the lead role, and this with NO prior drama experience. She started dating, and I did my best to try to help her navigate, but it was tough, since i was always reluctant to even speak about certain issues between young men and young women because of the allegations she had made. Funny, though, that even AFTER she made them the first time, and they were investigated and totally dismissed by DSS, they found me not only fit enough to have kinship guardian care over her, they practically threatened me if I did not do so. Yes, I was very wary being a single step father living with two teenage girls who both had “histories”. The oldest was expelled fropm school 4 years ago for alleging falsely that a male teacher had touched her inappropiatley. The poor man was placed on adminstrative leave, investigated out the wazoo, his name ruined, and I think he even took a polygraph. My step daughter was expelled for “assault”, which I imagine is the only indiscretion the school code would allow.
Because of these two girls, I was subjected to four months of a criminal investigation during which time my ex wife, my older children from that marriage, past employers, even nieces and nephews were all asked unbelievable things about me. I volunteered myself to be interrogated, without benefit of an attorney, and after 5 grueling hours, the Detective helped me draft a statment and in the end, BOTH step daughters were charged with felony sexual abuse (which they confessed to) for events which took place with my biological son a few years back. The DA dropped all charges, however and NOTHING was uncovered reagrding me, not even a parking violation.
I am starting to ramble….all this will be over soon, as after 9 months, we will finally have a hearing. My 13 year old son,. who is the real victim in all of this, was initially removed, placed in an unlicensed foster home with a convicted felon, and of course, was very emotionally abused. After 5 months, I was finally able to prevail upon my court appointed attorney to file a Motion to have my son removed not only from his abusive foster setting, but totally out of this county. in so doing, I knew that even the two hours a week I did get would be further diminished, and it has been. But, he is safe and with REAL family, living with one of my older sons and his wife. He knows I fought for him, that I believed him when he told the truth about his sisters, and when he made his case worker promise “not to tell until he was gone”, I believed him when he spoke about the abuse of his foster setting. They told him .I should “burn in hell for what I had done” and that “DSS is filling your head full of false hope, you will NEVER go home. They made him listen to a tape supposedly of “all the souls in Hell screaming in agony for their sins” and made him get on his knees in front of them and pray that God would forgive him and not send him to Hell.
The case worker promised my son he would never have to go back. He remained there 3 more months before I could get him away. My son knows I fought for him, but this has all been so much on him, and 9 months is an eternity to a kid, and well, I know he loves me, but he has “bonded” (who wouldnt after what he went through) with the array of brothers, uncles, cousins and grandparents my side of the family affords him. I told him he “wasn’t a foster kid anymore” and he beamed…..
The trauma kids go through by being ripped away from everything they know, whether it is good or not so good, and being plopped amidst total starngers, not being told anything, not being able to see their Mom or Dad, the hours and hours spent silently sobbing, hoping no one else in this strange place will hear, having no one familiar, not knowing when or if they will ever go “home” just literally kills something in children. Even under optimal conditions (unless there truly was horrific abuse), no one knows how much suffering these children endure, how vulnerable it makes them, how pliable—until that thing, whatever it is, hope or caring or whatever—whithers and you can see it in their eyes during visits. Those of you who have been through this know exacty what I mean.
Nothing in your life or theirs will ever be the same again.
God bless all the hurting parents, and God protect all the children, the light fading from their eyes a little dimmer each passing day. Amen.
Comment by Ken Ashworth — July 13, 2007 @ 8:30 pm
Very interesting, scholarly piece of economics research.
“Freakonomics “( economic research ) tying together what seems to be unrelated topics has been a NYT bestseller for over a year.
The fact that this study was commissioned is very heartening especially to folks like Mr. Ashworth above & the debacle which took place with his bio son.
We simply CANNOT AFFORD THESE FOSTER CARE DEBACLES ANY MORE.
These studies are not done cheaply, and interest in the topic indicates that realization about the trauma of FC is spreading.
Families will win their rights, slowly, since so many people feed off FC and related CPS non-issues.
This struggle is certainly similar to the struggle for civil rights in the US which took around 100 years.
With Internet exposure and folks like Len, Linda, Suzanne, Cheryl, etc., hopefully we are approaching the end of this tragedy for blameless families.
Comment by Fern — July 15, 2007 @ 7:00 am
CPS took my 10 year old because I had a bad/adverse reaction to anti-depressants. They felt he was in harm because I could not wake up. My attorney thinks this case is ridiculous, but meanwhile my son is in a foster home and very confused. CPS does not have a clue!
Comment by Kim — March 26, 2009 @ 6:56 am
Kim, I agree with your attorney – a ten year old would not be in danger, though he might be frightened. That’s old enough to get a neighbor or relative to help revive you. This is one of those cases where the child is being harmed by separation from you. I hope you can get him released from foster incarceration soon.
Comment by LindaJoMartin — March 26, 2009 @ 7:40 pm
Don’t forget who is behind it all it these Judges who makes these decisions these Judges are stupid to believe DHS lies and county attorney and attorney general is DHS laywers they are the crooked ones everybody should write to NBC dateline
Comment by Terri Rote — August 13, 2009 @ 11:38 am
I to have seen cps remove children wrongly but i was one of the lucky ones i had made a arrangment with the courts that i would no longer contact my kids if my brother could adopt my 2 children this was a 2 1/2 yr fight all because i am a prop 215 user and supporter.
Comment by Antoinette — August 21, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
There adoption was final on nov 12,2009 ihave not seen my children since2006 march. i am at peace knowing there with family and one day we will be together. My suggestion is that anyone who loses there kids to cps contact family and friends with no criminal recored and see if they can foster your child. my GOD be with all the families hurting to nite because of cps.
Comment by Antoinette — August 21, 2009 @ 4:16 pm
I was very lucky and my daughter was sent to a foster family that was nothing like we know of. I actually keep a close contact with them and they help my family out. I let them adopt my youngest son since my social worker said he was going to be removed from me sine I had an on going case.
My case was based fully on “he said she said”. CPS placed my son with his father and grandmother who is abusive. I had the proof also but it was 2 years old and no use. Honestly if CPS had a brain they would know that people need help to get over mental disorders and what not. Isnt that what the use against us? Oh they arent mentally stable they need therapy right? Well when someone says they have a gun and want to shoot themselves or say they are mentally unstable thats a red flag and should be investigated even if its 2 years old. You dont get over that on your own in my opinon. Pretty backwards dont you think?
I ask the father for pictures and get nothing. I havent seen my son in almost a year and when my brother asked him where mommy was he said I DONT KNOW. That hurts. The father just refuses to let me see him and my social worker is ok with it.
Comment by Karina — September 16, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
My grand daughters have been in foster care for a year and a half now. The oldest one has been trying to tell the caseworkers and fosterparents that she doesn’t want to be there. She wants to be with her mother. When we met with the caseworkers a few months ago they told us they were thinking of bringing the girls to my house since they believed it to be a stable home where the girls could live till mom could find a place of her own to live with the girls. I have since been convinced that these were lies to give us a false sense of hope. None of us have seen the girls in over two months. My daughter was told that the reason was transportation issues. They didn’t want to have to transport the girls to my house to visit which is where my daughter has been living. The three girls were together in the same home but have since been separated, the oldest in a different home than her younger sisters. I think it is criminal what they have done to these girls and to our family!!! All because of one spanking that the oldest one got for mouthing off to her mom.
What do we do? How can we get these girls out of this EVIL system?
We need help!!!
Comment by LeAnn — October 20, 2009 @ 10:26 am
my six daughters who whom we are decendants of native american indian and hispanic ancestors adopted by cocausan families ,have been placed in two separate homes which removed due to molestation by biological son of foster family placed new home,which sexual abuse occurred by adoptive dad 0ct 2005 too three out of my 4 youngest daughter and i reported to authorities and cps in several counties no action taken courts were aware of sexual abuse/neglect by foster&adopted families heard in courts overlooked by several judges who failed to protect my daughters who may today being victimized currently live with the predator(adoptive dad)!In hopes my strong belief and faith in jesus christ protects my innocent daughters
my dream is to break out of this depression, i loved to start therapy with my children one on one to start healing process regain mother daughter loving caring uncondionally start of a long process i want JUSTICE
Comment by CHRISTINA — December 5, 2009 @ 2:58 pm
I have recently lost my four children to the system, all based on lies. My oldest daughter never did like my boyfriend, as all kids, they would dream to have both parents back together. This did not happen and my 16 yr old daughter decided to try to get rid of my boyfriend of 6 yrs by crying sexual abuse.
Since it didn’t work when my 12 yr old daughter last summer cried abuse and had him arrested, saying that he beat her head into the wall 15 times. There was no marks, no bruises, and my boyfriend was founded not guilty by a court of law and the CPS report came back unfounded. My 15 yr old daughter was questioned, after the accusations started by CPS worker and was asked if my boyfriend ever touched her in places that made her feel uncomfortable in anyway and when my daughter replied NO he would never do that…the worker did not believe her!
That very same CPS worker testified in court saying that the department feels it was happening to her as well but she was denying all of it….which is because it wasnt true. They tell us their best interests is with the children, but if a child tells you it was all lies and you don’t believe them, how are they looking out for the best interests of the children. Since they was all taken, my girls are in one county and my son, who is mentally disabled, is by himself. This has traumatized him so bad being separated from me that he has started wetting the bed at night. He never did that before…I told the social worker that it wasn’t normal and she just shrugged her shoulders at me.
I want my kids home….my kids want to come home, but CPS worker is saying that my kids won’t be returned to me unless my boyfriend is out of my life. There goes my civil rights!! We’ve been together 6 years where do they get off demanding that of me or him for that matter? We was planning to marry this year…with everything that has happened its been placed on the back burner for a while. I thank god everyday for him!! He has been standing by my side helping the fight to get my kids returned to me…and they aren’t even his children.
Comment by Teresa — February 10, 2010 @ 7:03 pm
Teresa, I’m so sorry but it may be true that they will not let your children return home so long as your boyfriend is there. It is a rough decision to make, and bear in mind that you are not responsible for the heartache of your children – that guilt lies on the caseworkers and on whoever is lying. If you choose to stay with your boyfriend then I hope your children will seek to reunite with you as soon as they are out of CPS care when they are eighteen.
Comment by LindaJoMartin — February 10, 2010 @ 11:01 pm
While it is true that there are foster families out there who are not any better than the birth families, it is not true that all are that way. It is too easy to blame the foster parents. True that there are times CPS gets it wrong, the vast majority of cases are dead on. It is interesting to see a parent blame the custody loss of their children on CPS when they are an admitted illegal drug user.
On the cusp of entering my first year of fostering two precious little girls, I can certainly attest that not all foster parents are bad, just like not all birth parents are bad. The reality is that the laws in this nation need to change. Birth parents are given 2 FULL years, in most states, to get their act together and provide a more stable home for their children. If they do not, then termination of parental rights ensues.
On top of this, there are so many restrictions put on what foster parents can and cannot do, there is no wonder that many foster children do not feel wanted in those homes.
With all of this, you have hundreds of thousands of parents out there who would willingly adopt a young child from foster care. In my state, the rate of children becoming available for adoption is so low that an adoptive parent to be might have to wait 3-4 years, of not longer, to get a <6 year old child.
So what happens is a vicious cycle. CPS takes child into custody. Child is 3-5 at the time. Child spends 15 months with foster parent while birth parent attempts to get it together. So to avoid the TPR, CPS gives child back to birth parent at 15 months. Birth parent screws up again 3-6 months later. CPS asks Foster parent #1 if they want child back. Well, no, sorry, but I took placement of this other child, and I am only authorized to have 1 child. So, child, now 4.5 – 7.5 in age, goes to yet another foster family. 3-6 months later, CPS successfully issues TPR.
As luck would have it, current foster family does not desire to adopt, but only provide foster care. So child, now pushing 5 – 8, is sent to either another preparatory foster family, or directly to the potential adoptive parent. Well, I got news for you. THe percentage of potential adoptive parents who want to take on an 8 year is very low. So what happens, this child stays in foster care, and has good odds to age out of foster care.
Let’s rewind and change things up a bit. Birth parent is given 6 months to get it together. Child is 3.5 – 5.5 at TPR. Large percentage of adoptive/foster parents desire this age range as the child has been least affected by foster home changes, and still has plenty of time for emotional recovery. Child is adopted by a loving and caring foster family. Child is raised by loving and caring parents. Child has successful life.
My foster children are far better off in my home than with their birth mother whose idea of caring for her children was to leave them alone with a bed ridden mother, in a filthy, feces infested home, and whose idea of fixing things was to move out of that home into the home of her much younger boyfriend, sorry, now husband’s, family, with no job, no home, and who can’t even find the time to take parenting classes. Did I mention she doesn’t have a job? Oh, but wait, she is a fabulous actress for each and every weekly visit that is sometimes overseen by an CPS agent and mostly not.
Anyone can find statistics to back up any theory that they want. Making claims about what children will be better off living with natural abusive families vs potential loving foster families is a dangerous thing.
I do feel for what I believe to be the small percentage of birth families that get caught up in this CPS hell, but let’s face it, most of the “good” parents get their kids back fast. In my case, the CPS worker is an idiot and thinks that “mom” is the best thing since sliced bread. It is only for the sake of a 20 year experienced real GAL (she is an attorney) that the children were not placed back with this mother. The older child has certainly been exposed to things that she should not have been, if not had actual things happen to her. Fortunately the younger child was young enough that she doesn’t have long lasting effects, YET.
So, let’s not make blanket, generalized statements about all foster parents. As with anything, the media only reports on the bad cases. Of all of the foster families I know, there are far more that are doing this for the good of their hearts. In most states, the per-diem rate is not enough to keep the kid in food let alone clothing, so most parents are not doing it for the $, which is a common misconception.
Comment by SingleFosterMom — February 27, 2010 @ 9:03 pm
Single fosterer, ((not MOM))… you are underestimating the importance of a real MOM to the children… and seem to give no validity to the emotion of LOVE that MOM has for her children. You don’t seem to care if her heart is broken, and if those children have to grow up wondering what happened to their real family. What a lot of heart break… for both mom and kids. Why would you want to hurt people this way?
Comment by LindaJoMartin — February 28, 2010 @ 1:24 pm