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.
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 The law that started this, CAPTA, must be repealed.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.
Two child protective services social workers, an attorney, and five law enforcement officers were sued in 2006 for coercing an Arizona homeschool family to allow unlawful entry into their home, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution. The lawsuit is ongoing; this week a judge denied the state’s motion for summary judgment, so now it will be up to a jury to decide whether entry into the Loudermilk home was coerced and unconstitutional.
It started when someone phoned an anonymous tip to a child protective services hotline stating that the new home wasn’t fit for children to live in. Six weeks later two CPS social workers showed up at the door to investigate with two sheriff’s deputies. Entry was denied, and more law enforcement officers arrived on the scene. The family was told their children would be removed if they didn’t allow entry.
They were on the phone with Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) attorney Thomas Schmidt, who advised them to refuse entry. HSLDA wrote, “After an escalating confrontation at the front door that lasted 40 minutes, the social workers, backed by no fewer than four deputies, threatened to take the Loudermilks’ children into custody and place them in foster care if the Loudermilks continued to deny them entry into their home.” (Source)
Assistant Attorney General Julie Rhodes was also on the phone, and she repeated the threat to the HSLDA attorney. Big Mistake, Julie!!!
Under duress, the illegal, unconstitutional entry was allowed. Within five minutes the CPS social workers realized they’d received a false tip, and left. They were probably unwilling to continue with the case because they didn’t want to bother with victimizing parents who had an attorney on the phone! Too much work!
The Loudermilk family consented to the lawsuit filed on their behalf by HSLDA attorneys.
HSLDA has a track record of helping homeschooling families (who have purchased memberships) with CPS related legal problems. In 1995 a similar case was heard in the Federal Court of Appeals, Calabretta v. Floyd. This landmark case ruled that in the 9th Circuit (US Western states) social workers cannot violate the Fourth Amendment. This was already binding case law in Arizona and other Western states when the Arizona caseworkers coerced their way into the Loudermilk home on March 9, 2005.
How many other people does this still happen to? Probably thousands – who are unaware of the laws, and who don’t have a homeschooling attorney to call on the phone. This practice of coercion is totally illegal, immoral, and a violation of a standing court order in Arizona, California, and other Western states.
Here are the rulings from Calabretta v. Floyd as found on the HSLDA website: (1) “…unless there is evidence of an emergency, a social worker and police officer investigating a report of child abuse must have a warrant…” and (2) “…reasonable expectation of privacy of individuals in their homes includes the interests of both parents and children in not having government officials coerce entry in violation of the Fourth Amendment and humiliate parents in front of the children.”
Apparently child protective services social workers in Arizona forgot Calabretta v. Floyd, or perhaps this constitutional violation and coercion technique is still standard operating procedure in many of our counties. Perhaps it is time for these lawless, immoral and/or forgetful government agents to get their hands slapped again.
Anthony and Lisa Demaree lost their children to CPS agents after a clerk at Walmart reported that they had bath-time photos developed there. CPS didn’t accept that the photos were innocent. The parents were charged with child sexual maltreatment of their children. Apparently they requested a trial and fought the charges because their children were returned after only a month. The judge agreed that the pictures were harmless.
Unfortunately a lot of damage was done by that time. Lisa Demaree was suspended from her job at a school for a year, and they’re both now on the Arizona list of sex offenders.
They’re fighting back with a lawsuit against Walmart and the city of Peoria, Arizona.
I like this video because it show two people who have probably never had CPS problems… and they see how CPS has totally overstepped its bounds. The public is realizing that CPS is taking children that have never been abused.
A three-year-old female foster child died in a Goodyear, Arizona foster home, and it sounds like the foster parents are under investigation. They lost their other two foster children and their own two children are now in a foster home.
There’s not much additional information at this time. I searched the news site for updates but there’s nothing newer than the article published on August 3.
Have you seen Cheryl’s comment on the chat room thread? She says 159 Arizona CPS caseworkers are being laid off due to the economic downturn. Now caseworkers there will be limited to following up only on cases where children are truly being harmed. Hopefully all these trivial cases of discretionary, subjective family wrecking will end. I would love to see this happen in every state!
Please, counties and states, put me out of business… I would love to be able to close this site because it is no longer needed!
Arizona CPS social workers are now using a “new” risk assessment tool that the state spent a lot of money to develop. Apparently the goal of the risk assessment is for investigations to be more thorough and comprehensive.
A sample risk assessment distributed to employees had 81 pages, which astounded CPS social workers who are expected to complete this process each time they do an investigation. It could be that caseworkers will spend more time doing paperwork and less time detaining children.
According to one child welfare expert, the risk assessment tool is based on 20-year-old standards and will do nothing to make children safer. However state officials say the assessment is used in other states and that Arizona CPS staff contributed feedback for development of the project.
From the June 4, 2007 article in the Arizona Daily Star:
Without the changes, “we weren’t able to see how they (investigators) made their decisions,” said Janice Mickens, an administrator with CPS. “We need to have something that guides us throughout this process.”
Risk assessment tools have been used by CPS agencies for years. The “new” Arizona risk assessment is based on a Washington risk assessment developed in 1986, and some experts consider it antiquated. The state of Washington also considers it out of date and is working on developing new methods.
From the article:
The general philosophy behind it and the Arizona model is what is known as a “consensus-based” approach, meaning the case manager assesses risk from a number of areas like the child’s behavior and development, severity of abuse and the qualities of the caretaker, among others.
Such an approach has been criticized in social work academic journals for being subjective, overly broad and using the same variables to predict different types of abuse and neglect.
Using a risk assessment, CPS social workers can detain children based on what might happen, even when nothing has happened. Questions on the risk assessment may include questions such as “are the parents legally married?” and “how many children are in the home?”.
Rep. Jonathan Paton of Tucson said “81 pages seems excessive. I can envision a lot of frustration from workers who have too many cases as it is.” But Mickens, the CPS administrator, said she didn’t think the risk assessment will add much time to the investigation process because social workers are already filling out some of the same forms.
The agency didn’t study the time factor so they don’t know how long it will take Arizona CPS social workers to fill out the form, but they feel this risk assessment is a “critical tool” as it will force CPS caseworkers to “ask the right questions”.
Arizona CPS has been responsible for several recent high-profile deaths of children who had open CPS cases: Tyler Payne, 5; his sister Ariana, 4; and Brandon Williams, 5.
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