Also I would like to point out that as of July there are over 686,000 registered sex offenders in America. That number is expected to rise by 25,000 each year. My question is: of the 686,000 offenders, how many are parents? And if your crime does not or cannot affect your child should cps have the right to be involved? Again my bf’s offense was 16 yrs ago long before he was the 33 yr old first time dad. Cps told me they would have to investigate anyone who is registered and has children. I think that is bogus. They should have seen the registry & the date of offense & realized that there is no connection w the children. I agree that they need to step in if a person has recently offended or offended young children or something. But not EVERYONE. And if that is true that they need to investigate all offenders w children then they need to get to work because sex offenders lives are public. They aren’t hiding from the government so why aren’t they actively seeking out all of them since their info is all over the Internet & gov databases??!

My 2 children, 3 months & 8 yrs old, have been declared dependant. I have custody. However my boyfriend, father of the baby, is only allowed 2 hours a day visitation & cannot live with us. The reason is that 16 yrs ago at the age of 17 he plead no contest to rape. He maintained his innocense & maxed out his sentence for doing so, serving 10 yrs. He spent his entire life in cps custody & the alleged victims family sued cps for $3,000,000 blaming them for the rape. The complaint called into cps is that he is a registered sex offender, lowest level for 10 yrs from date of release, & that they feel he should not be allowed to be a father. The court has ordered that he must complete a sex offenders treatment program in order to get custody back. The problem is that the therapist testified in court that she will only kick him out for refusing to admit to the crime & to sign an affadavit of admission. They have set my family up to fail. After my children were declared dependant they did not do a background check on the adults I was living with until 11 weeks had passed. They still have not done any home inspection either. I feel that this is only to get back at my boyfriend & that they are not concerned about my childrens well being. After our last court hearing the supervisor asked me if he will now start to cooperate & I told her that’s a decision he must make not me. I told her that he cannot complete the therapy & she knows it because he maintains his innocense. I said I believe he is innocent. She said that was a problem & that he is nothing but a liar & that I should watch out for myself! I honestly believe they are going to start to bully me to turn against him. Granted I am standing seperate from him & complying w everything because I will never choose anyone over my children. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love him & that I don’t want our family reunited. It only means that I will do anything to keep my kids. If anyone can give me any advice please do. I am miserable. He is a wonderful man & father. His goal everyday is to make me happy. He has helped me through so much & i couldn’t ask for a better partner. Please help our family.

Can you tell me what good will that do? How can this month away from my child change anything, when I was having a good progress with him, as he was beginning to warm up to me? As I said to both counselor and social worker, the only way for my child to learn to respect me is for him to be with me. How does separation will help that? And doesn’t my child have the right to be around his mother? I also asked both counselor and social worker how do I change my child’s antagonism towards me? No answers. Can you tell me Sara?
Is it by staying away from him that the antagonism will go away? Why separation? Is this a good procedure? Was my child in danger?

I can tell you that 1. The only way for my child and I to rekindle our relationship is by HAVING A RELATIONSHIP with him. A relationship cannot be develop in absence. 2. Separation is the wrong decision. 3. My child was never in danger. He can tell you that, but he was never asked that question.

I wonder if and how you, Sara, will respond to this one.

The problem lies on the vague and open to personal interpretation statement: “if the child is in danger”. What does constitute a child in danger? How does a social worker determine that a child is in danger? These definitions unfortunately are interpreted at the social worker’s own discretion, which many times over are erroneous, exaggerated, and extreme in the manner which they address these issues. The problem also lies in the way social workers punish the parents, and by punishing the parents they are also punishing the children, adding yet another layer of abuse in the children’s lives. The problem lies in yet another realm: human rights. Parents are being deprived of their rights to be human, to make a mistake and to learn from it.

Briefly, in my case, my partner and I separated last year, and I moved away for a year. We agreed that our son was going to spend Christmas and Summer vacations with me. Seeing that our son was having problems adjusting to this new situation, I cut my two year training in half and returned to the area where my son resides with his father. His father and I have an arrangement that my son would spend one week with me and one week with his father, for this reason I moved 5 blocks away from my son’s home. I also initiated a family counseling to ease this transition and seek professional help to adjust to our new family arrangement. The counselor was not very helpful, as she took the side of the father in 5 out of 6 sessions we had. My frustrations grew when my son, on the third day of this arrangement, lied to me saying that he was at a friend’s home when he was at his father’s home. His father never let me know that my son was at his house. I was being lied to by both my ex and my son. I went to my ex’s home to retrieve my son, and I caught him there in his lie. I told my ex that he should return home because he had lied to me - he was at a concert with my 18 year old daughter; he did not, and turned off the phone. I left a message saying that I would trash his house if he didn’t come home. Apparently, this last statement was enough to deem my child to be in danger, and for the social worker to label me as “terrorist”.

On our last session at the Southern California Counseling Center (anyone out there, avoid this place at all cost), I called the counselor on her actions, and told that I was being lied to, and told her of the episode where my son lied to me, and also was instructed by his father to call the police. The police came, and heard the entire story, as I told here, to the counselor, and social worker. The police did not take any action because it was obvious that nothing was wrong in that situation. Yet, the counselor and social worker think I am putting my son in danger (?). The social worker tactics was very aggressive, extreme, using of over-generalizations, pushing me to see if I lost my temper, in an attempt to set me up. I felt my rights were grossly violated by both SCCC and the social worker.

Please, Sara, review your definitions of “child in danger” what does it say? Is it vague or well defined? Does it imply or specify situations? The crux of the problem is in the individual interpretation of a grossly vague statement as “child in danger”. And as we know, we are only human, and are moved by subconscious messages (which vary from racism to preconceived ideas and motivations) that affect our decision making. So, please, do not come to me talking of fairness of social workers; to me people who take on this profession has an ulterior motive of getting back at someone in their on past - be it a parent or anyone else who has abuse them. Sorry, I have no sympathy for you.

I’ll be interested to see if this is posted