Katie Wernecke, 14, was taken from her family by CPS two years ago, not because she was being abused or neglected, but because CPS agents and doctors didn’t agree with her parents’ decisions regarding her cancer treatment. At the age of 12 Katie, a resident of Agua Dulce, Texas, had Hodgkin’s disease. Her parents sought an alternative treatment for her. That right was denied to them.

CPS took Katie Wernecke from her family and forced her to undergo court ordered medical treatments. A judge allowed her to go home in November 2005, and though the family is grateful to have been reunited they believe their Constitutional Rights were violated. The lawsuit, filed by a Frisco, Texas attorney, is based on violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. CPS child detentions are considered a seizure. The Fourteenth Amendment protects property and legal rights, and ensures that citizens have due process rights.

Many people have sued CPS in Federal Courts based on the violation of these Constitutional Rights.

Source: Wernecke family suing Nueces County, CPS by Erin Cargile of KRIS-TV.

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The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution:

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

“The system is maxed,” Patrick Crimmins said. “The system as designed, depending on your point of view, either cannot or will not absorb more children.”

Because foster care providers refuse to house hundreds of foster children, the children are forced to sleep in hotels or even in CPS offices.

Rather than admitting that far too many of the children in the state’s custody have been unjustly and unfairly taken from viable and loving parents, Crimmins, who is spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, blames the current crisis on a law that allows foster parents to refuse children, and on the children themselves, some of whom are labeled “severely disturbed”.

Are the children “severely disturbed” because they’ve been unfairly ripped from loving parents? Are they “severely disturbed” because of childhood mental illnesses that the parents were trying to control when they lost custody? What’s the story behind having so many homeless “severely disturbed” children in the state’s care?

I’d be disturbed too if I was taken from my parents by state-paid ‘do-gooders’ and forced into homelessness with strangers. And do they really expect children to take this kind of abusive treatment, and remain calm? What does this say about our society that we allow such cruelty to exist against the most helpless citizens, the children?

Meanwhile Texas legislators may pass laws forcing foster care providers to take children they don’t want.

“Allowing providers to pick and choose among foster children and the services they deliver undermines the entire foster care system,” Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn said, adding, ”It also puts caseworkers in a bind when contractors can dictate which children they will serve.”

Source: Kids sleep in CPS offices after foster-care rejection

Two Texas toddlers have been placed in a fosterincarceration home for smoking pot. Their mother stands accused of falling asleep on the job. While asleep, two teenagers shared their stash with the toddlers, so the mom is not allowed to take care of her own kids.

If this is the only reason CPS is keeping those babies from their mother, it is a travesty. Why not just tell her the teenagers abused her kids, and warn her to keep the kids safe from the immature pot smoking teens? Why rip the babies from their mother?

Of course, I don’t know the people involved. All I know is what was written in a very short article, linked below. Most parents would respond positively toward a stiff warning; no need to tear the family apart and traumatize the kids. The mother didn’t give them the pot. Why blame her? Probably at least 90% of parents rely on teen babysitters at some time or another. So she chose the wrong one. What kind of crime is that?

Source: Pot-smoking toddlers placed in foster care

Foster children are endangered by being placed in incompetent out-of-home care by CPS social workers. Rather than helping parents resolve their issues while keeping families intact, CPS social workers rush to rip children out of the homes God gave them, placing them in state custody foster warehouses in order to get federal funding streams started. Consequently children’s lives are being endangered as many people hired as foster “parents” don’t care for them in foster homes as well as loving relatives could.

This week a former foster “parent” was convicted of “injury to a child” in the death of a three-year-old foster child in North Texas in 2005.

Sierra Odom was killed by injuries inflicted by Timothy Warner, 31, the foster “father” Texas CPS placed her and her brother with. Warner’s wife testified that even though she knew Sierra was dead, she dressed the child before Warner drove her to the hospital. Along the way he allegedly staged an automobile accident to make it look like Sierra’s death was not a homicide.

From the article by Nathaniel Jones in the Star-Telegram:

The child-care operation was “money in the till,” said prosecutor Rebecca McIntire. “If the business didn’t work, they had nothing.”

Apparently Warner’s entire income depended on warehousing of children for the department of “human resources”. He had foster children, plus did child care for parents who worked at night.

This is how child “protective” services takes care of kids!

Sources:
Foster dad is convicted in girl’s death
Details of time after girl’s death revealed