In Midland, Michigan an adopted child attacked and killed Faith Baden’s son, Justin Baden, age 17, early in August, 2009. Justin and his younger siblings were removed from Faith Baden’s home by CPS and eventually adopted out to Jessica Pribbernow, a Michigan child-collector.

The newspaper reported that Pribbernow had custody of five boys adopted from foster care. The accused, known as Steven Jeffrey Pribbernow Jr., 15, is not the biological brother of the boys he is said to have attacked.

Two others boys, both sons of Faith Baden, were injured severely in the knife attack.

Faith left a number of news articles, emails, and comments on FightCPS yesterday. You can read them here and here.

Faith, my heartfelt sympathy to you on the loss of your son, and prayers for the healing of his younger brothers. We here at FightCPS do understand that your children should not have been separated from their loving parents.

Obviously the child collecting adopters were not capable of keeping the children safe. This is one more sign that the foster-adoption system in this country doesn’t work. I wonder if these children, in particular the one said to be the attacker, were on medications as “special needs” children. Many pharmaceutical medications given to foster and adoptive children are believed to have produced suicidal or homicidal tendencies. One of the emails posted stated that Jessica and her husband were unemployed and living off the adoption subsidy payments received for adopting the boys - a clear indicator that these were probably medicated children.

A fine way our country pretends to keep children safe.

We’ve known for a long time that children are being overly medicated in foster care. State lawmakers seem very resistant to making laws to prevent this, probably because of pressure from the pharmaceutical industry.

Meanwhile thousands of children are mentally injured by psychotropic drugs after being placed in “chemical restraints” to control and subdue them.

Recently - just last April - a drugged seven-year-old foster child in Florida took his own life, and once again the spotlight is on this issue. Florida legislators, feeling the heat, are making the motions to do something about this. I looked through the FightCPS archives and found the same issue discussed in the news in 2001 and 2004, in Florida. They didn’t do anything about it then. What makes anyone think they’ll do it now?

I’ve had this issue bubbling under the surface of my usually calm demeanor for many months. Make that years. Well.. today I let it out. I compiled my research, found numerous YouTube videos exposing the matter, and put it all on one page, which you’re now welcome to visit: Drugging Foster Children. I look forward to getting some feedback on that page!

In Yreka California a foster child, Craig Britton, is dead. He was almost two years old. He had visitation with his family the day before and seemed fine then. His elderly foster parent didn’t check on him for eleven hours after putting him to bed at 9pm. When she went in to see him in the morning, he was dead. His stomach was empty except for some unidentified leaves.

Did he wake up in the middle of the night hungry, and eat a house plant? Nobody seems to know at this point.

Community members are distressed and confused. Why did this child die? Why was he taken from a loving mother? Why were the grandparents refused kinship care of their beloved grandson? Why are some people blaming the young parents because their non-abused child was in foster care?

Would you like to tell them how you feel about this? Go to: Mother, foster mother want answers in death of toddler by Mike Slizewski, published on September 17, 2009 in the Siskiyou Daily News.

The New Jersey Office of the Child Advocate wants to stop issuing information on individual cases of children killed in foster homes, preferring to focus on “annual reports on trends” instead, through their Child Fatality and Near-Fatality Review Board.

New Jersey’s State Department of Children and Families apparently intends to continue to release details about cases in which children are killed when under supervision of the state child welfare system.

There have been some terrible, mind-bending deaths of children in foster homes in New Jersey, including starvations. You can search the FightCPS archives for more New Jersey foster child death information.

Source: Clarification: Child welfare deaths story published on August 3, 2009 at Philly.Com.

The Cover-Up

Back when I started investigating child protective services, it was rare to hear about children killed while in foster homes. It seemed foster child deaths were covered up, white washed, and forgotten. In one California county a series of file cabinets full of reports of children abused in foster homes were found in a back room, the reports uninvestigated.

Child abuse in foster homes didn’t warrant investigations because there was no federal money to be made by taking children from bad foster homes. It still seems to be low-priority to many CPS social workers.

Federal funding is only given for taking children from their natural family homes, not from foster homes.

Things have changed in the last twenty years. Now foster child deaths are being reported on in newspapers more often, and those media businesses are demanding access to child welfare records about foster children killed while in state custody.

In Los Angeles County, California, child welfare workers were probably too busy tending to non-abused children by ripping their families to shreds, so they overlooked the 12 or so calls about the abuse of six-year-old Dae’von Bailey, now deceased.

But he wasn’t the only one. Apparently they have about a dozen similar cases of children killed because the social workers didn’t have time or motivation to save them.

If they would leave non-abused children with their loving families, they’d have more time for the ones that are in real peril.

Good reading material for social workers who feel overworked: Study concludes that kids are better off in troubled homes than in foster care.

Simple solution: Detain children who are being severely physically abused and leave children of marginal cases, cases without real proof, and neglect cases at home with loving parents. What a concept! Isn’t that what we were told CPS was going to do way back in 1974 when this all started? Who ever knew the definition of “severe child abuse” would become so broad in the imaginations of so many systemites?

If only truly abused children were placed in foster homes, we could probably cut the staff requirements for CPS in half within a few months. Please think about that, state lawmakers!

Source article about Dae’von Bailey: LA Co. wants report on child welfare department, published on July 28, 2009 in the San Jose Mercury News.

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.

The source article: Goodyear police investigate death of 3-year-old foster girl by Elias C. Arnold, published on August 3, 2009 at AZCentral.Com.

Tamekca Evett Walker, 26, has been convicted of killing a 17-month-old girl who was a foster child in her home. She said the child cried constantly and so she held her hand over the girl’s mouth until she was quiet.

Walker was found guilty of second-degree-murder. The foster child also had internal injuries and a diaper rash so severe she’d been bleeding.

Source: Sacto woman guilty of murdering foster child - AP article published July 21, 2009 in the Silicon Valley Mercury News.

My comment is that it is about time that foster parents are found guilty of murder, rather than of some lesser charge like child maltreatment, when foster children are killed.

On May 22, 2009 a Corpus Christi TX judge sentenced Grizelda Lopez-Hess, 38, to 90 days in jail. I wonder if she’s out yet. She plead guilty to making a false report of abuse.

According to reporter Mary Ann Cavazos, Grizelda Lopez-Hess phoned the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services on October 9 to make a false report of “indecency with a child”. She accused Ricardo Jimenez of molesting his girlfriend’s daughter, claiming she learned about the abusive situation from her daughter, a friend of the supposed child victim.

But Grizelda Lopez-Hess doesn’t even have a daughter! She made the whole thing up! And she was an investigator forensic interviewer for the Children’s Advocacy Center - a former CPS caseworker, child-taker, and supervisor! What a manipulator!

The victim of this lie, Ricardo Jimenez, is called upon to testify as an expert witness, and this false allegation has already been brought up in criminal cases wherein he’s been asked to testify as an expert. But this was not Grizelda Lopez-Hess’ motivation for making such a sick and dreadful false accusation of child abuse.

Grizelda Lopez-Hess said she made the false accusation in retaliation against Ricardo Jimenez’ girlfriend, Misty Guajardo. Grizelda Lopez-Hess blamed Misty Guajardo for a job transfer forced on Lopez-Hess’ husband. But county officials said that the job transfer (a demotion?) was done because Grizelda Lopez-Hess and her husband did yet another dirty deed: they tipped off a suspect in a criminal case. The suspect and his family members testified that indeed they had been tipped off by Grizelda Lopez-Hess and her husband.

Grizelda Lopez-Hess plea bargained. She was to get a two year prison sentence, but that was changed to three years probation and the 90 days in jail. Plus she has to pay a fine and complete 100 hours of community service and attend anger management classes.

Hess’ husband tried to get her off easy. He testified that Grizelda Lopez-Hess would be in danger because while she was in a holding cell two fellow prisoners recognized her as a child-taking CPS agent! But she went to jail anyway and was to be isolated from the other prisoners. Solitary confinement for 90 days? I hope she’s still serving the entire 90 day sentence and that she’s had plenty of time to think about what it means to LIE and falsely accuse people of child abuse.

So there you have it, folks… the truth coming out about a really bad character that the county used against American families. They put Grizelda Lopez-Hess in a position of power and she used it to knowingly harm and harass decent people.

This is the tip of the iceberg! There are THOUSANDS of false accusations happening in this country… and it is time for all these lying idiots to get investigated, prosecuted, and IMPRISONED. Forget jail! One year isn’t enough to pay for the massive amounts of grief they’ve caused!

Every child taken away from a parent due to a false accusation of child abuse is a child that is being abused by the government child protective services agency and its agents.

So now you have my opinion. What’s yours? What would be the proper sentence for a child protective services social worker who knowingly makes a false accusation of child abuse or neglect?

Source: Former CPS Supervisor to Spend 90 Days in Jail by Mary Ann Cavazos, published on June 1, 2009 at Caller.com.

From the inception of the FightCPS.Com site in October, 2000, I was aware of North Carolina CPS abuses and always have thought of North Carolina as one of the most corrupt states (for child welfare) in our country. This impression comes because there have been many North Carolina residents online complaining about child welfare injustice there, whereas for other states like North Dakota or West Virginia, you rarely meet anyone with a complaint.

For example, the Candace case: A five-year-old girl was ripped from her loving mother because mom couldn’t find a ride to go pick her up from Head Start on time one day. Candace was adopted out to a nurse practitioner who took her to Colorado for “rebirthing therapy”… which caused Candace’s death at the age of ten.

Now another ten year old child needs to be rescued from North Carolina’s child welfare industry. He belongs in the state of Texas and his father has court documents to prove it. But North Carolina not only won’t let go of Joshua William Smith, they seem to be hiding this child. The full story is on the Stop Corrupt DSS blog. Here’s the link: Where is Joshua William Smith?