As part of my outreach - my effort to help CPS victims find this site - I’ve joined a number of social media sites using either my own name, or the name of FightCPS.

I hope you’ll help me in supporting these efforts.

Do you have a MySpace profile? Fight CPS At MySpace wants you as a friend.	This is a blog promotion site. I’d very much appreciate your votes in getting FightCPS listed on the front page there so more people can find out about our issues with Child Protective Services false allegations.
Technorati is a site for finding blog postings that are on a topic you want to read about. If everyone who came here registered at Technorati and added this site to their favorites list, this blog might reach the top-100 list, and become an issue many thousands of Americans would notice.	Is anyone else here using Twitter? If so, feel free to follow me there: Linda at Twitter. This is my personal Twitter account and you’ll see I’m interested in numerous topics, not just fighting CPS - but that’s something I’m always willing to write about. If you want to get to know me better and find out where my head is REALLY at, this is the place.
Check out the Fight CPS Squidoo Lens for information about the history and goals of Fight CPS. You can make a Squidoo Lens web page to tell people about your CPS case and information. It is very easy to sign up and create a page, plus you may earn some money by doing it.	Fight CPS is on Hover Spot

Brenda Sullivan has been sentenced to twenty years in prison for caging a seventeen-year-old adopted child.

I became aware of this when I saw the headline, ” Mom who caged teen son gets 20 years behind bars”.

I thought - ‘What kind of mom would do that?’ - and knew that this person was most likely NOT the real mother. I suspected it was a foster parent or adopter. And I was right.

It irritates me when the news agencies use headlines that indicate a foster parent or adopter was a real mother or father. But I often know by looking at the headlines when the abusers are actually child collectors who took children out of the child welfare system - to get adoption subsidy payments.

This woman also had 13-year-old twin boys. They said they had also been in cages.

Some “mom”.

Newsflash: Foster parents and adopters do not have the genetic affinity for the children they claim to parent. Some may do an adequate job, but there’s no true love like the love of a real parent for his or her natural children.

Source: Mom who caged teen son gets 20 years behind bars, an AP article published at CNN.Com.

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

This is something I wrote and posted long ago; it has been linked on the right-side column for several years. I’m bringing it to the blog section of the site now because I’ve been getting a lot of comments and emails saying “Please someone, do something to help me!” I think these people need this message. Plus, I want to bring all those old articles into the blog, so expect to see a lot of old material crop up here in the coming months. - ljm
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The caseworkers almost always go to court working against you. At court the judge can and often does rule in favor of the families and against the social meddlers.

Be dignified around caseworkers - do not lose your temper. Do not let them see you in fear. Do not bother trying to kiss up to the caseworker. Do not try to give them more evidence of how good you are. Your evidence is to be shared with your lawyer and presented in court to the judge or juvenile court referee. If you give evidence to a caseworker you’ll find out everything you say can be twisted and used against you. This is a LEGAL case. Caseworkers are not nice friendly do-gooders trying to help you.

Caseworkers are your adversaries, though they are very deceptive and pretend to be your friend so they can get more evidence against you. What they do is practice sick deception for family destruction. They spend their days preparing a case against YOU.

To win in juvenile court and get a judge to rule in your favor, you must be able to present “a preponderance of the evidence”. That’s the standard of proof needed in juvenile court. To come up with a preponderance of the evidence, you must give the court more documentation & evidence than the other side.

Listen, very few of us are ever gifted with a good lawyer. We won (those of us who did) through our own hard work. We gathered the evidence. We documented things in writing and on tape. We typed up our own legal documents. We learned how to do it because we had to, for the wellbeing of our children trapped in the inhumane child “welfare” system.

If you feel you can’t type your own legal documents, then find a typist or paralegal to do it for you at a lot less than an attorney charges.

You can give your compiled legal documents and evidence to your attorney for review. Be sure to do it a few weeks before court so there’s time for the attorney to look it over and file it at the county clerk’s office for you. If the attorney won’t talk to you send the documents via certified mail along with a letter demanding his time and response on the documents so you’ll be prepared for court. You deserve fair representation - be sure your attorney knows you’re aware of the law.

If it’s too late for that - prepare legal documents anyway. The judge may accept them in court. Be sure you have plenty of copies for the judge, your attorney, the child’s attorney and the CPS attorney. You may have to ask for a continuance while your attorney deals with your compiled legal documents and evidence.

Use online resources, and help from friends, but mainly - it’s up to YOU.

PREPARE for court.

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

In Germany a baby was offered on eBay by his parents. The ad was up only about two hours, and the mother, 23, insists it was a joke.

Child welfare agents there have confiscated the child, and law enforcement agents are investigating the couple for child trafficking.

Question: Do you think the child welfare agents overreacted? Should this baby have been detained?

Source: Baby offered on eBay now in state custody posted by Leslie Katz on the CNN News Blog.

(You can also leave your comments there at the CNN news blog.)

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

Is anyone else here using Twitter?

If so, feel free to follow me there: Linda at Twitter.

You can leave your Twitter URLs in the comment section to this message.

I noticed recently that someone said her comments weren’t posted. I don’t know why that was, but I know sometimes comments are caught in my spam-trap, particularly if they have links in them.

In the last two days, this site collected over six hundred spam comments. Right now I’m going through 14 pages of spam comments in my spam-trap, looking for comments that might have been left by actual visitors to this site. After rescuing them, I’ll delete the spam. This is not a pleasant task, particularly because I’m on dial up and there’s a long wait to get each lengthy page loaded into my browser. Also having to look at all that spammy writing is not how I’d like to spend my evening.

I rarely will delete a comment. If it isn’t something that looks like it could have legal liability to me, I usually won’t delete. So missing comments - I cannot tell you why they didn’t get posted. I don’t intentionally delete links from particular people for any reason, though I’ve been tempted by comments like those recently left by a self-righteous “all-knowing” (or so she seems to think) social worker. I leave it to YOU, the website visitors with the painful CPS experiences, to set her straight…. hopefully as kindly as possible. Remember, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Back to my daily or almost-daily spam deleting responsibilities.

Lynn Paddock, 47, and her husband, Johnny, adopted six children from foster care. For people who adopt so many, I use the term “child collectors”. Now Johnny has divorced Lynn and she is on trial for suffocating four-year-old Sean.

Lynn Paddock is accused of suffocating Sean by wrapping him in blankets so tightly that he couldn’t breathe. She allegedly did this to keep him from wandering around in the hallways. She is also accused of using tape to bind another adopted child. She may stand trial for first-degree murder and child abuse at the same time.

Sean’s grandparents are suing the Paddocks and the social services agencies who placed him with her. Although my source article didn’t state it, I wonder if this is one of those cases where the social services agency refused to place the child with his grandparents. He was originally placed with an aunt and uncle, but was taken from them and sent to foster care. The article states, “The case has revealed flaws in the state’s child welfare system.”

Source: Adoptive mother to stand trial in son’s suffocation - AP article published in The Fayetteville Observer on May 19, 2008.

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

A former foster child has written a memoir about her years living in abusive foster homes. My God Box has a Christian slant while exposing the damage done to children in foster homes. I discovered the book this morning by reading an editorial about it, Former Foster Child & Advocate Focuses on System Flaws in Foster Care. The editor who wrote that article seemed to totally understand our concerns about how foster care can be worse than a challenging family life.

The author of My God Box, Margaret Iuculano, was in foster care for five years. During that time she lived in fifteen different foster homes. In an interview on Tampa Bay News she said, “The foster families that I encountered, they were not positive experiences….Unfortunately for me, my foster experiences. were almost or more abusive than the environment I was removed from.” You can see this interview on the media page of her website: Margaret Iuculano.

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

A wheelchair-bound mother in Montana won a special needs trust of $50,000 from the state. Her child will receive $100,000, and her attorney fees and costs will be paid. The lawyer gets $180,000. The Health and Human “Services” agency, also known as Children and Family “Services” (CFS) gets mud on its face and a debt to pay.

Geri Glass filed suit against the state of Montana because CFS social workers violated her rights and then retaliated against her when she complained.

Very important to those of you fighting false child abuse and neglect charges, it should be noted that when Geri Glass’ case was reported on in the media, the CFS agency dropped its investigation. They were apparently more worried about their own reputation than about possible problems with Glass’ child.

Source: State settles with disabled mother by Matt Gouras of the Associated Press, published May 10, 2008 in the Helena Independent Record.

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

If you don’t agree with how a CPS caseworker handles your case and can’t get a helpful response from that person’s supervisor, you might get results by filing for a state administrative hearing.

Why file for an administrative hearing?

1. Regulations

Is your CPS caseworker following the state regulations for child protective services caseworkers? Have YOU read those regulations?

If you haven’t read the CPS regulations for your state, start there. See your local county law librarian if you need help finding the regulations. Make a note of every regulation that is being violated in your case. Start a list of issues that could be brought up during an administrative hearing that will decide whether your CPS case is being handled right.

2. Court Orders

Have you been to court? If so, you probably have a court order signed by a judge. Do you know what it says? Everything on that list of things you must do to regain custody of your child NEEDS to be done. That’s the service plan and in order to get your kids back, you MUST do everything in your power to complete the plan before the next court hearing.

There are two things CPS caseworkers might do to mess that up for you.

(a) They may take their time about making referrals for you to get their “services”. For example, your court order may say you must complete counseling. But your CPS caseworker won’t even tell you the name of a counselor you must see. Sometimes caseworkers delay service referrals then go back to court saying you haven’t had enough of their services. Even though they are to blame for you not getting the referrals, the judge will probably agree with them.

(b) Another thing they might do is to refer you to services that aren’t court ordered. For example, you might have a CPS caseworker forcing drug tests on you when they are not a part of the court-ordered service plan.

3. The Children

Do you have a court order that allows freer visitation than your CPS caseworker will permit? Review your court order to see exactly what it says. For example, a court order might not require visitation to be supervised, but the CPS caseworker insists that it should be. In this scenario the CPS caseworker is violating the court order.

Are you worried about injuries on your children in foster care, but find that the CPS caseworkers aren’t willing to move them to a safer environment?

If you feel your CPS caseworker is violating regulations, or trying to delay court ordered services, or referring you to services that are not court ordered, or in any way violating the court order in regards to visitation or any other issue, you may have just cause for filing for an administrative hearing.

How to file

EVERY UNITED STATES AGENCY HAS AN ADMINISTRATIVE HEARING PROCESS FOR AGGRIEVED CLIENTS. THIS INCLUDES CPS AGENCIES. If you run into bureaucrats that say there’s no internal review process like this, they’re wrong, and you’re talking to the wrong person.

Don’t bother asking your CPS caseworker about whether or not you can file for a hearing. Many CPS caseworkers may not know about administrative hearings. Maybe they’ve never had a client file for one. In any case, you don’t need to consult your adversary to file for an administrative hearing. (Also called a state hearing.)

You can use the telephone to contact the hearings department of your state department of human services to file a request for a hearing.

Another thing you can do is go to the front desk of the welfare office. Ask them for a hearing request form, and use it to file for a CPS administrative hearing. Welfare departments are part of social services, and they are used to getting hearing requests.

Be sure to keep a photocopy of your hearing request form.

What this does for you

When you request an administrative hearing, an employee of the state department of human services known as an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) will review your case. This means that injustices being done to you and your children on the county level will become known to the state department of human services, and all employee decisions will have to be reviewed.

This is likely to frighten and upset your social services caseworker and the caseworker’s supervisor. Is that what you want? Think that over; maybe you do and maybe you don’t.

The CPS caseworker will be called into a hearings room to meet with you and the ALJ. Most likely social services legal staff will have a position paper ready to give to you and the ALJ representing their side of the controversy. They might even have their lawyer there.

BE PREPARED with your own set of legal documents representing and proving your side of the case.

When you go to an administrative hearing you can appoint someone else to represent you. That other person could be an activist, an advocate, a lawyer, or anyone you feel is most competent. Or you can represent yourself.

Look through your state’s social services administrative hearing laws or regulations. You have a right to request that these laws or regulations be sent to you in preparation for your hearing. Or, go to your local county law library for help finding them.

Will your hearing help you?

Most hearings I’ve attended either to represent myself or another person involved with CPS did not have what I would consider a most positive outcome. Many of our requests were denied, but some were granted. Whether denied or granted, these issues were brought to the attention of the state and the CPS caseworkers had to have their actions reviewed.

I believe that many requests weren’t granted because the ALJ didn’t want to agree in a way that would give us grounds to sue the state. This is an INTERNAL agency hearing and you can expect some CYA (cover your a$$) type decisions.

Usually after the hearings, circumstances in the cases changed. This may have been because our hearing requests notified the CPS caseworkers that we were going to fight for our rights, not lay down and get walked on.

Before you file for an administrative hearing, think about whether or not this could have an adverse effect on your case. You don’t want to file just because you’re angry with the system. If you have a genuine issue with the way your CPS case is handled, and the local social services personnel won’t change their erroneous course of action, then the state administrative hearing might be a way to force action and state oversight of a CPS case.

One thing your hearing isn’t likely to do is to force your CPS caseworker to give your child back to you right away. This is not the same as going to a juvenile courtroom and getting a judge there to agree to have your child sent home. The state administrative hearing is only a review to see if a CPS caseworker is going by social services rules to handle your case fairly. Administrative Law Judges can and do force CPS caseworkers to handle cases differently.

If for any reason your requests are not granted, do not be disappointed, but forge ahead by doing everything on your court-ordered service plan and by preparing a home to bring your children back to.

The state administrative hearing does not affect your juvenile court hearing, which is where a judge can decide to send your children home. The state administrative hearing is an internal state review of an agency’s work whereas the juvenile courtroom is an external review hearing presided over by county judges.

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

If you’re a single parent, you must see this site. This is a fairly new website advocating for single parents. Site owner Tiffani Howard has applied for non-profit status for One Out of Many, and is actively working to improve the lives of single parents and their children. She has a lot to say about CPS injustice and parental alienation.

I’m particularly encouraged to see this promising site because for years now I’ve been saying that my site is not enough. I am one dedicated person, but this problem of CPS injustice is huge, and victims of false accusations by CPS social workers need lots of help - more than just one person can provide. I want to see as many new websites about CPS as people can make. I want this issue to be prominent all over the internet.

Thanks, Tiffani, for making such a beautiful site, and for working to help single parents who are victimized by CPS.

.

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

I just got an email from Cindy (last name withheld) who subscribed by email to this site’s blog postings. She read my last post - the one about parents and drugs, and had this question, “…Don’t you think it is time that we mandate random drug screening for all CPS workers and contractors?”

That’s so true, Cindy. It is LONG past time. And I believe we can do something about this.

CPS caseworkers and social workers DO need to be tested for drugs. They also need psychological testing. They need to be screened for past legal offenses. They also need to be licensed.

Who agrees with that?

So here’s what we can do. Let’s go to work writing letters to our state legislators asking them to introduce legislation requiring that all CPS employees having any contact with children be investigated for past legal problems, psychologically tested, drug tested regularly, and licensed.

Let’s tell our state legislators that we’ve been victims of bad social workers who should be screened out if they have psychological or drug problems. Any social worker or caseworker that lies in a report to the court is obviously mentally unstable. These people should be weeded out of the social services jobs, just as we wouldn’t want unstable people getting law enforcement jobs.

Tell your state legislators to read the comments on the guestbook pages here on Fight CPS so they can see what a huge problem false accusations are. Nobody tells it better than the hundreds of people who come to this site due to victimization by bad social services agents.

Any suggestions or comments on this writing campaign are welcome.

If you write a letter to your state legislators, you’re welcome to post a copy of it here in the comments section.

Keep it brief and to the point. Your legislators are more likely to read a short letter than one that is many pages long.

LET’S KEEP THE HEAT ON THEM until something is done about this travesty of unstable and incompetent social services caseworkers. Only our state legislators can help us on this one. I’ll remember to bring it up from time to time and hope that many of you will get positive responses from your state legislators that you can share with us.

Is there anyone here capable of drafting sample legislation that we can send to our legislators for consideration? If so, email me at the webmaster link at the bottom of this page.

To find out who your state legislators are, see the Write To Your Legislators page here at Fight CPS. And remember, we’re targeting STATE legislators, not federal.

Write letters - hand written letters will be fine, or type them. Don’t send emails as they are too easily deleted.

Thanks to everyone who takes part in this letter writing campaign.

P.S. - THANKS, CINDY, for the great idea!

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

I know many of you don’t use drugs and this post doesn’t apply to you. This article is an appeal to people who think they can use drugs and be parents at the same time.

You never know how CPS agents will handle drug use. Sometimes they ignore it. Usually they’ll remove a child from the home even for suspected drug use. Sometimes drug-addicted parents can go through rehabilitation and get their children back. Sometimes they go through rehabilitation and still don’t get their children back. I find that the only consistent thing about CPS cases is that they are inconsistent.

If you are a parent and think it is okay to use drugs, even “just marijuana” - please consider this. Suppose that God is looking down on us and compassionately thinks marijuana use is okay. Suppose He put the plant here to be enjoyed, and in His sight you are not doing a bad thing.

However all around you there are people who think marijuana use is not okay. They are trained to report your drug use to CPS, and CPS agents are trained to consider your drug use as a form of child neglect. They think that if you’re using drugs of any kind, even just marijuana, you are not able to concentrate on watching your children. They think you spend your money on drugs rather than on your children. So you are on their list of people to take children away from.

In this scenario, it doesn’t matter what God thinks of you if the CPS worker is here on earth to take children away, and chooses yours.

I’m not saying that I think God approves of drugs. I’m just saying that if you think it is okay, then that’s your decision, for yourself. But once you have children to take care of, you’re responsible for them and if you know that CPS agents are looking for drug users to take children away from, you’re risking your children’s well-being and your own, because being in a CPS case is one of the most devastating things you can go through in life.

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Another type of drug use is that of CPS victim parents who are terribly depressed, confused, traumatized, lost without their children, and miserable. The temptation to turn to drugs during the course of a CPS case is very common. I know of way too many parents who could have had their children back, but instead went out and smoked marijuana during the course of the case… and somehow their CPS agent social workers found out and told the judge. Those children were adopted out to strangers.

Please don’t let this happen to you! If you’re a CPS victim parent, don’t give in to the temptation to use drugs no matter how miserable and depressed you are. This is the worst time ever to start using drugs of any kind, including cigarettes. Don’t do anything the CPS agents can use against you. It simply isn’t worth it.

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While I’m on the subject of drugs - let me tell you how I feel about CPS cases where the parents have lost their children due to drug use. First of all, I feel that drug use while parenting is foolhardy given the current laws in which children are taken away for that reason. But when a parent for some reason doesn’t realize that and doesn’t quit for the well-being of their children, if their children are taken, I do feel some sympathy for them. I want all parents to quit using drugs so they can keep their children. I want parents with children in CPS custody to rehabilitate themselves. I want families to be reunited.

No matter what, I believe it is wrong to adopt out the children of the living. I feel better about legal guardianships than I do about adoptions. I believe it is wrong to tell children to call someone else “Mom” or “Dad”… to tell them they have new “parents”. I believe that children have one set of parents and to tell them someone else took their place is like telling them it is okay to lie about who their real parents are.

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If you’re a parent, don’t use drugs unless a doctor prescribes them. If your doctor prescribes medical marijuana, find out if CPS workers in your state take children from medical marijuana users before deciding to use it. If you’re not a parent, I have nothing to say about whether you’re using drugs or not. Everyone makes their own decisions and I’m a “live and let live” kind of person. But when you have children at home - your first responsibility is to them. Doing something that could get them taken away from you by CPS is not a good idea.

I have owned this site for more than seven years. Before that I did what I could as an anti-CPS activist for ten years, including writing scathing articles about CPS that were published in newspapers. I’ve been publicly known as an activist in this field for about 18 years now, and even though I’ve had my own children living in my home all that time, they were never removed from my custody again.

I want to tell you why.

The main reason why my children were never removed from my home again is that I lived an impeccably straight and upright kind of existence. I lived for my children. I didn’t use drugs, didn’t drink to excess, didn’t do anything that could be construed as abusive. The other reason why my children were never removed from my home was that I was extremely lucky. As most of you know, if a CPS agent really wants to take your child, they can make things up, twist the truth to make you look wicked, or any number of tricks. I was disturbed that a local CPS agent came to my door several times during the last seven years, but despite his apparent interest in me due to my outspoken opinions and this website, he never had a reason to detain my children.

All I am asking, with this article, is to PLEASE not give CPS workers any reasons to take or keep your children. Drugs, whether good or bad, are a reason, so please turn away from the drug using lifestyle if that is how you’ve been living. Cure yourself with that wonderful, amazing will-power deep within you. It is right there in your heart, right next to your love for your children. Cure yourself and be free, and know that you’re doing the right thing for yourself and for your kids.

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Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

This is the guestbook for May 2008.

If you want feedback on your case, register at the Fight CPS Message Forum where there are advocates and activists waiting to hear from you. Please note it may take 10 to 48 hours to get your message board account approved. We need to approve them all individually.

Note: This thread is closed to new comments. Please refer to the most recent guestbook thread to leave your message.

This is the place for Fight CPS prayer requests during May 2008.

Please refer to the most recent prayer requests page to leave your request.

People who need CPS defense lawyers.

Note: This thread is closed to new comments. Please refer to the most recent lawyer request thread.