Allison Newman’s mother wanted to recover from an addiction to crack cocaine, so she asked an acquaintance to watch her six month old baby temporarily. When Michigan social workers got into the act, the baby ended up in the home of Carol Poole, 42, a barren woman living in an expensive upscale home, who wanted children. She has now been convicted of murdering Allison when she was only two.

Allison’s grandfather, Kenneth Newman said:

• “She cracked that baby’s skull open, dressed her and put her to bed to die.”
• “People (child welfare workers) turned their heads because these people lived out in Canton and had a few dollars in the bank.”
• “There was evidence that Allison started being abused seven or eight weeks before her death. When Ann (the girl’s mother) went into rehab, the date to sever parental rights got postponed and Carol Poole realized she wasn’t going to get to adopt Allison. We think that’s when everything went bad.”

(Source: Doug Guthrie of The Detroit News - see link below.)

Carol Poole has now been convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 to 30 years in prison. She also got 10 to 15 years for child abuse.

Quoting from Guthrie’s article:

“During her trial, two workers at the Childtime Learning Center day care in Plymouth said they noticed scratches and bruises on Allison long before her death. They reported the findings to their supervisor, who was charged but not convicted of failing to comply with state law by reporting the injuries.”

During 2005 and 2006 three children died in Michigan foster and adoptive homes: Allison Newman, Issac Lethbridge, and Ricky Holland.

Source: Foster mother gets 20-35 years in prison for girl’s death - by Doug Guthrie, written for The Detroit News, published February 27, 2008.

A New York based advocacy group called Children’s Rights is suing the state of Michigan in federal court on behalf of 19,000 foster children who may be endangered by maltreatment in the foster care system.

The Michigan Department of Human Services refused to provide documentation on sixty-seven foster children who died in state care there since 2004. At least three of those children were killed in state licensed foster homes. Circumstances regarding the other deaths are unclear as the state refuses to release records.

At a hearing on Tuesday, August 7, 2007 U.S. District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds ruled that an expert must be hired to assess the Michigan foster care system’s adequacy. The expert, Christopher Baird of the Children’s Research Center, will study 460 random Michigan foster care files

Judge Edmunds also ordered the state to release certain foster care documents by August 31, 2007.

Sources:
Court fight over Mich. foster care system set for Tuesday by Jack Kresnak, Free Press Staff Writer

U.S. judge names expert to assess Michigan foster care system, an AP article posted at WoodTV.Com.

I received this a few days ago from a mother on MySpace. She gave me her permission to publish this here:

“I am from Tuscolsa County, Michigan and I have been fighting CPS my whole life and I am only 23 years old. CPS got involved with my family when I was about 5 years old.

“CPS has harassed us for years and in 2003 I became a proud mother of a new baby boy. Of course CPS tracked me down again and took my son on May 19, 2004. CPS came to my home at 7:30 AM and ripped my son right out of my arms.

“I fought them so hard they placed me under arrest until they left my home, then the police officer said he was very sorry and that he never wanted to handle this kind of issue and he let me go, but he told me he was sorry and that he was only doing his job.

“Anyway, I was court ordered to follow the case plans to get my son back. I did everything I was told but I had a caseworker that didn’t like me because I would not play her game, so she worked against me and made up lies about how my son was scared of me, and how I was causing him to become sick. However that’s not true.

“My rights were then terminated December 5, 2005, just before Christmas. How sad. I later appealed my rights before the Michigan Appellant Courts and they agreed to follow the termination, so my rights are terminated, and I still keep fighting and will never give up hope, ’cause that is all I have. I love my son and I miss him so much. He’s my life!!!!!!!!”

Thank you, Lisa, for sharing your story with us.

I hope that Lisa’s son will be returned to her loving arms, and that someone who knows him will see this here and know that he is a wanted, loved child whose mother did everything she could to keep him.

Received in email:

Monday, July 30, 2007, WJR 760 AM Radio between 10 and 11 a.m. will, for the first time in Michigan (perhaps the nation) will allow the public to know what happens to parents and children with their tax dollars.

800-859-0957
Monday, July 30, 2007
10:00 to 11:00 a.m.

If you, or anyone you know (preferably in Michigan, but it does not have to be) has a story, now is the first opportunity for the public to know what goes on behind the scenes of Child Protective Services.

You do not have to provide you name, but try to keep your stories to a condensed 6 sentences, under 60 seconds. WJR is providing you with the freedom of speech and has opened the window of opportunity to redress governance.

Share your pain with the public and elected officials.

Even if you do not have a personal story, or do not know anyone who has had involvement with the state, call in and share your wisdom with the citizens of Michigan who deserve to be educated in the functioning of government.

Let’s let the general media know that we, as citizens, can no longer be silenced. The power of government is at the behest of us.

800-859-0957
Monday, July 30, 2007
10:00 to 11:00 a.m.

Note from Linda: Michigan is one of the states I’ve received complaints about most. I encourage all Fight CPS readers to consider sharing your story with this radio show. Remember to keep it brief, as they said. Only sixty seconds - one minute - about six short sentences. Think first about what you can say that will make the most impact, then make your call.

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.

If you’re a parent living in the USA with young children, and if you don’t know what the Fourth Amendment is, please pay attention. This information could save your family.

The Fourth Amendment states that government workers can’t enter your home without your permission, unless they have a warrant based on ‘probable cause’.

Here’s the exact text of the Fourth Amendment:

“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.”

It has been established that this protection applies to Child Protective Services (CPS) caseworkers just as it applies to law enforcement officers. Despite the clear text of this section of the Bill of Rights, many caseworkers still think they can force parents to allow them into their homes.

Recently, near the end of January 2007, a child protection caseworker showed up at the door of a Michigan homeschooling family. She would not read a paper the mother handed her regarding her rights, and yelled at the mother, insisting that she should be allowed to enter immediately to do a “strip search” of one of the children. She was basing her intrusion on an anonymous tip stating that the children listened only to Christian music, that they “ate their cheerios dry”, that their only socialization was through the church, and that the mother pinched and hit her children in church to keep them quiet.

Since when is listening to Christian music or socializing in church a form of child neglect? And eating dry cheerios - is that a crime? If the caseworker had kept her complaint to ‘pinching and hitting’ she wouldn’t have lost her credibility and we wouldn’t be laughing at her now. However remember, this was all based on an anonymous tip, and who knows what the motivation of that phone call might have been?

The mother contacted an attorney, Chris Klicka, of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). He sent the caseworker a letter regarding her rude and unprofessional behavior toward the family. He noted that she obviously hadn’t received the social worker training in the Fourth Amendment. A year and a half earlier HSLDA helped pass a law in that state which requires all caseworkers to be trained in their “duty to protect both statutory and constitutional rights of those being investigated.” Klicka also informed the caseworker that she would be held liable for violating the family’s civil rights.

Meanwhile the mother responded to the investigation by getting a statement from her children’s doctor indicating that her children were not abused. She also got letters from people who stated that they were good parents to their children.

The caseworker continued to try to interview the children and strip search them, and threatened to get a court order to do so. Klicka informed her that she had no ‘probable cause’ for a warrant because anonymous tips don’t qualify as credible evidence. The caseworker insisted she would get a court order, but instead, a few days later she contacted the family saying she would drop the case.

I guess she finally figured out what the Fourth Amendment was, and what ‘probable cause’ meant.

HSLDA, the Home School Legal Defense Association, serves mostly homeschooling Christians, but will provide legal defense for any homeschooler regardless of religion, so long as the dues are paid. This defense extends to homeschooling families facing accusations and investigations from Child Protective Services. HSLDA lawyers have been instrumental in going to court for homeschooling families with CPS problems, and have managed to establish very positive case law protecting anyone facing false accusations of abuse. For that, HSLDA lawyers should be praised by all families, forever.

[Note: I am not a member of HSLDA and never have been. I am not trying to get new memberships for them. However I very much appreciate what they’ve done for families facing false child abuse allegations.]

References:

Homeschooler Listening Only to Christian Music Turned in for Child Abuse

US Constitution, Fourth Amendment

Two-year-old Isaac Lethbridge died on August 16, 2006 because child welfare caseworkers took him from his parents and placed him in an unsafe foster home environment. He was beaten and burned while in state custody foster “care”. His fosterer, Charlsie Adams-Rogers, 59, is on trial for manslaughter.

According to a Detroit Free Press article, Adams-Rogers “had a history of complaints alleging mistreatment of children in her home. Though Child Protective Services never substantiated any of the nine complaints, people familiar with the child welfare system say the allegations should have raised red flags about what was going on in the brick home on Greenlawn in northwest Detroit.” But Adams-Rogers may not have been the one who inflicted the fatal blows. Her twelve-year-old daughter, one of three children Adams-Rogers adopted from foster care, stands accused of inflicting the final injury. There were at least seven children in the home at the time of Isaac’s death.

According to news reports, before his death Isaac’s child welfare caseworker was aware of bruises on the child, inflicted while he was in custody, but did nothing to move the child from his dangerous foster home or protect him from further injury. His sister, who had been placed in the same home, also bore the signs of injuries at the time of her younger brother’s death.

I’d like to say this is a unique situation, but tragically, it is not. Hundreds of children have died violently in foster homes, many at the hands of the adults paid to take care of them. Caseworkers often don’t remove children from abusive foster homes because there’s no financial motivation for the agency to do so. They remove children from their natural family homes much more readily because as soon as they do, federal financial streams are available to enrich the counties that detain children.

In Isaac’s case, his parents are accused of neglect due to poverty. They are not accused of abuse. He could have been better served by allowing the parents to learn to take appropriate care of their child while keeping custody of him. But now it is too late; he’s dead due to our country’s child welfare laws that destroy and harm nearly every family they affect.

According to an article in the Isaac Lethbridge file, he is the third child to die violently in a Michigan foster home within the last 18 months. Ricky Holland, age 7, was adopted out of foster care then killed by his adopters in July 2005. Allison Newman, age 2, died from blunt-force trauma injuries of unknown origin in September 2006. Apparently someone suggested she was “accidentally flung over a 12-foot balcony onto a hardwood floor.” Who, I ask, “accidentally” throws a 2-year-old over a balcony? Allison’s licensed foster ‘mother’ is jailed, charged with felony murder and involuntary manslaughter.

These children are the tip of the iceberg. An online memorial, In Memory of Children Protected to Death by CPS, posts dozens of names and photos of children who died in state custody foster homes in nearly every state of this nation. And these are only the ones that site owner, Suncana Sesic Alvarado, can find names and photos for. Many more children have died in foster homes without coming to the public’s attention.

[Note: I incorrectly wrote that the owner of the site was Charlie Whitman. I corrected this information on June 13, 2007. - LJM]

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