The Future of the FightCPS Website
I’m grateful that I’ve spent twenty years as an activist exposing America’s sick child welfare system to the light of day.
I’m grateful for the emails and comments I received telling me how much this site has helped. Those testimonials mean a lot to me and always will.
Twenty years ago this month, my fourth child was born in Central California. Before I could leave the hospital a social worker visited my room to talk to me about my history of being battered by my child’s father. Later I learned that while I was there I nearly died, and during that time my child’s father threatened the doctor, so he decided to report us to CPS. I had to leave my baby in the hospital because she was premature, and on the day she was released a social worker picked her up and left a slip of paper on my front porch.
Only a few days later I learned what it was like to go into Juvenile Court to be given a social worker’s report filled with lies. That was the day I realized that our justice system was broken, that social workers could lie and nobody cared - and that they could get away with perjury. That was the day I started learning that our Constitution doesn’t apply in Juvenile Court and that I couldn’t have a jury trial. That was the day I started realizing how ineffective public defenders are for child welfare victims.
Okay - it has been twenty years. I am one of the very lucky ones who fought back, found an activist to help me, and who succeeded in getting my child home again (after eight months of separation.) Lucky me. But I was traumatized to an extreme - not only by my shock at the injustice of the child welfare system, but also by my family’s non-support, my need to cope with being a battered woman, and the end of my relationship with the man who battered me.
Trauma takes a long time to wear off, and twenty years later — honestly, I’m still dealing with it!
When this happened to me I was working as a welfare worker in the same Department of Social Services that contained the CPS agency that attacked and lied about me. I was sickened to learn that my employer allowed these vile social workers in the CPS unit to perjure themselves, violate regulations, and be rude to young, traumatized, suffering parents. My thought was that if they were doing this to me (another DSS employee) WHAT WERE THEY DOING TO ALL THE YOUNG PARENTS WITH LESS EDUCATION AND MONEY THAN ME? I was appalled. Shocked. Disgusted. I wanted to do something to help other parents going through this wretched system of injustice, and from the time my case closed in 1990 until now, I’ve been doing what I could when I could.
My main goal at first was to expose, expose, expose. I wanted the public to know what was going on in the social services department. I was fortunately led to a local weekly paper with a similar goal - to expose local government corruption. I wrote some articles. I contacted some child welfare victims and helped a few of them to file for State Administrative Hearings. I burnt out - and needed to turn my attention to raising my two youngest children - both preschoolers at that time.
Next I started a computer bulletin board service (BBS) via the FidoNet network. Anyone here know about FidoNet? I did that for five years and during that time contacted a few child welfare victims including the woman who wrote Don’ts and Do’s When Falsely Accused… she lived nearby and we got together quite a few times. When her case closed she moved out of state.
The internet got my attention next. I was handicapped by my finances - I was unable to afford a worthy computer for quite a few years. I learned to do some webdesign, and in 2000 started the Child Protection Reform Yahoo Group (which I’ve since given away) and next I created Fight CPS And Win - now simply called FightCPS. I’ve been developing this site since October 2000 - almost nine years.
Here’s the bad news (or maybe it is good news) . . . I’m ready to do something else with my life. I feel my most important goal here has been fulfilled. That goal was to expose the system to the American public. I feel that has been done, and that we’ve reached CRITICAL MASS in that now many people are speaking out about the injustice including wonderful state legislators in Georgia and Washington. Also the news media, especially television news, is speaking out to expose the system. That didn’t happen back when I started my activism, twenty years ago. Back then even child murders in the foster system were not carried in the news media, so I’m excited when I see television news commentators exposing CPS injustice. There are also multiple developing websites to cover this issue on the internet now, many more than when I started, and I see the seeds of greatness in some of them. Very exciting stuff! So I know that when I leave, there will be others to take my place and fill in the gaps. My mission here is complete.
I will always feel as I do about the crazy, unjust, and cruel child welfare system. I have not changed but I have other things to do now. I have no more children under age eighteen. I need to focus on other things in my life now.
I don’t know what will become of FightCPS.Com — and am considering all the options at this point. I won’t leave this month or next, but I’m sure by the end of 2009 I’ll no longer be doing this. Therefore I’m ready to hear from other activists or advocates who feel able to own and maintain this website. This will require someone to move the entire site to another server, so I’m looking for someone with confidence and competency in the web skills arena. It also requires someone with outstanding writing skills.
This site has thousands of links pointing to it. It ranks well in the search engines. For that reason, I don’t want to just dump it. I worked hard to make it rank well so that people in need of help could easily find us. I think it is a valuable site for that reason, and that it would be a shame to just close it down. I really want someone else to take it over, love it, develop it, and leave it on the web as a beacon of hope to whoever goes to Google and types in “child protective services”. It is the only anti-CPS site that shows up in the first page of search results.
Anyhow, if you’re someone who could take on this project and make it work, please contact me. I’m interested in hearing from you. My webmaster email link is at the bottom of this page. Please note that if I don’t know who you are, that’s a problem. I don’t want some government-paid disinformation agent to take over this site and subvert its purpose. Getting the right person for site ownership is more important than any other consideration at this point.
