Non-custodial parents have such a difficult path to walk. They miss their children like crazy, have to send child support to the other parent monthly (or to the county!) and often the children are brainwashed into hating them. That’s what happened to me, with one of my children – my middle daughter.

My husband and his girlfriend had control of two of my children, did everything they could to shut me out of their lives, and caused me years of intense grief. Worse, they trained my daughter to hate me, and even now, many years later, she still hasn’t talked to me in any kind of loving daughter-to-mother way. She’s now 29.

So you non-custodial parents who are suffering grief because your children are with the other parent, or with foster parents, or have aged out and now hate you due to PAS (Parental Alienation Syndrome) . . . this is a special day for you. A day of appreciation and love.

Appreciation and love? You may be wondering if your child will ever be able to love and appreciate you. The problem is complex and doesn’t start with your child. If your child has been ripped from your loving embrace, and brainwashed by being given positive feedback for expressing negativity about you, the child isn’t likely to be the first one to recover from the experience. It is essential that non-custodial parents are able to love and appreciate themselves. We can also appreciate each other because we’re aware of the pain this entails.

Do something good for yourself today. Here’s a few ideas: start a journal if you don’t have one going yet. Start writing poetry about your missing child. Take walks to help work out your feelings. Leave a prayer request on my prayer request page which will signal me to pray for you for the next thirty days. Be gentle on yourself, even when others are cruel. You can get through this, and things will get better, of that I am sure.

This is the first Non-Custodial Parents Day ever. I chose it because it is my daughter’s 29th birthday. I couldn’t face writing her name on my calendar another year, knowing she doesn’t care about me one bit. PAS is heart-wrenching! So this year when I looked at my January calendar I wrote “Mother Appreciation Day” . . . and then I thought, why not make it a day for ALL non-custodial parents?

Please spread this message far and wide to other parents who are missing their children. Give them my love, and my appreciation for the strength they show in the face of extreme ignorance and traumatizing cruelty.

(Yes, you can copy and paste this post – I want everyone to know that we’ve got our own day now. I’d very much appreciate if you would give a link back to FightCPS: http://www.fightcps.com)

Have a great day.

A hearing on December 18, 2008 informed Connecticut state legislators of DCF injustice and cruelty to families. One participant, an out-of-state aunt, told legislators that family members were denied kinship care rights because the court ruled they had no bond with the child, a girl now totally separated from her natural family. Many others came forward to tell legislators their stories of injustice, trauma and distress at the hands of DCF caseworkers.

According to the article written by Arielle Levin Becker, State Representative Toni Walker, a Democrat from New Haven, wept and said, “We as a state have failed miserably in this situation.” One hundred and thirty eight people signed up to testify at this hearing, the last hearing of four, and apparently the only hearing allowing the public to testify. People spoke out about rude DCF social workers and unjust family devastation practices.

The hearings were scheduled in response to the death of an infant in foster care last May.

Source: Familiar Complaints Aired At Hearing On DCF by Arielle Levin Becker published on December 19, 2008 by the Hartford Courant.

The Hampshire Social Services caseworkers don’t want us to read this story. In fact, they placed an injunction against the Mail Online news site when they found out the story was in the hands of an investigative reporter there. That was two months ago; the Mail pursued a legal fight to get the injunction lifted so that Michael Shergold’s CPS story could be told.

Michael Shergold, 55, is the father of four children – the three he raised and the one he wasn’t aware of until social workers sent him a letter asking him to get in touch. They told him a woman he’d had a brief relationship with had a child which was taken from her on child cruelty charges.

They found the child an adoptive home in 2006 and didn’t bother contacting Michael Shergold until January 2007 even though he’s lived in the same house for the last 11 years and wasn’t hard to find. At first they strung him along, pretending they would evaluate his home as a permanent home for the boy. The evaluations included a series of invasive questioning sessions.

The true reason that Social Services caseworkers contacted Michael Shergold was that they wanted him to donate one of his organs to the boy because the boy’s mother has already refused. Her reason: she wants to have more children!

Last November a judge ruled that Michael Shergold could not have custody because it would be too disruptive to the child. Was it because he had remarried – this time to an American woman of color? Two days later the child was formally adopted out to his foster parents.

Though Michael Sherwood and his other children are not allowed to see this child, the social worker still wants him to agree to donate his body part so the child won’t die.

The statement Social Services made on this matter is jaw dropping:

What kind of NONSENSE is that? This man was robbed of his child under color of law. Those responsible have apparently committed what I consider a treasonous offense against a British citizen. This is shameful and reprehensible. These social workers and the judge(s) that agreed to this injustice should be held liable and punished.

The mother who concealed this child from Michael Shergold was found guilty of child cruelty, but is allowed to see her son even though he’s been adopted. Mr. Shergold, who is guilty of nothing, and who has a long-time steady job, a stable home and marriage, and plenty of successful parenting experience, is not allowed to see his son. He is only allowed that “contribution he could make to his son’s life” meaning an operation to remove one of his vital organs.

Where’s the justice?

Source: ‘You can’t see your son – but can he have one of your organs?’: how social workers left one man with a terrible moral dilemma by Alison Smith Squire, published on November 2, 2008 in the MailOnline.

I really don’t like to read stories like this.

Last Friday a couple felt compelled to leave a hospital in Michigan with their newborn infant because CPS social workers in Saginaw asked Lucas County CPS social workers to interview them.

If I remember right, CPS in Michigan is called FIA – the Family Independence Agency – or have they changed their name again?

My feelings are always so divided when I read about things like this. I scanned the article for clues to what led this couple to make this life-changing decision.

The results so far: The couple and baby are on the run. CPS now has legal custody of the baby according to a Toledo police sergeant, William Wauford, though before they left CPS had tried to get a court order and failed. And there are warrants out for the arrest of Fredrick and Margaret Badenhoop.

Why my feelings are divided:

I never advise parents to run with their children because I know, over the years, that in most cases where this happened, the parents were apprehended and the children ended up in foster homes anyhow. Plus I have a policy of never advising a parent to do something illegal, or something that would get them in worse trouble with the law. I believe that staying firm and fighting CPS in a court of law is a better choice. But this may be one of those cases where it wouldn’t have worked to do so. At the end of the article it says, “Child Protective Services had taken at least one other child from Margaret Badenhoop.”

According to a law passed in 1996, the Adoptions and Safe Families Act (ASFA), if anyone has had their rights to another child terminated, CPS can take future babies without benefits of any kind of service plan or visitations. This can lead to incredibly cruel and heartrending scenes in hospitals where CPS worker have walked in and pulled infants from the arms of loving mothers, for no reason except that another child was already taken.

I swear I cannot help but hate social workers who allow themselves to be the agents of such cruelty. Why on earth would anyone want the bad karma associated with someone who would do such a deed?

I don’t know what the issues are with the Badenhoops, or what their motivation was, but I do know that their problems are severe and they need all the prayers we can give them and their child.

I really, really don’t like it when things like this happen. My heart hurts so much for the people involved.

Source: Parents take their baby, flee hospital, face charges by Lania Coleman for The Saginaw News published on July 23, 2007.

The featured topic of the July 23, 2007 issue of The New American magazine is “Families Separated By The State.” Attorney Greg Hession has a feature article in this magazine, titled, “This Is Child Protection?”

The magazine is available for sale for only $2.95 – 2007 New American Back Issues – though you can read Hession’s article online: This Is Child Protection?.

Hession writes about the terror of a government child-snatching home invasion, the snitch network, the court process, statistical evidence, and what can be done about it. He concludes, “Change will likely come only when its cruelties have been exposed, and the public reaffirms that raising children is the responsibility of families, not the state.”

I have been working to expose CPS cruelty for eighteen years now. With the advent of the internet, the word is getting out much better than before. Every one of you who builds a website, or starts a new MySpace or Squidoo Lens, or other similar type of page explaining what CPS does to families, or who goes onto a parenting message board and tells people the truth about CPS, is helping to get the word out. Please keep up the good effort. Write letters to the editors of newspapers. Write to your state and federal legislators. Keep the heat on CPS and the cruel system of family abuse. That’s one of the best ways of seeking change.