Michigan: Parents Flee With Their Infant To Avoid CPS
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.
