Multiple Medical Workers Lose Custody of Children During Coronavirus Outbreak

The post
Multiple Medical Workers Lose Custody of Children During
Coronavirus Outbreak appeared first on National File. Visit
NationalFile.com for more hard-hitting investigative
journalism.

Multiple mothers have had their children taken away from them as
a direct result of working in the medical profession during the
Coronavirus outbreak. Will these disturbing cases register with our
political leaders, who are voicing public calls to stand with our
medical workers during the pandemic? Additionally, NATIONAL FILE
caught a Child Protective Services worker attempting to use the
Coronavirus outbreak to suspend all visits for parents of a child
in the government system, citing a statewide policy that the state
government says does not exist. What is going on?

The
Washington Examiner reports:

“A divorced emergency room physician temporarily lost custody
of her daughter because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Theresa Greene, a doctor in South Florida, previously shared
custody of her 4-year-old daughter with her ex-husband, Eric
Greene, but a judge granted an emergency order granting him sole
custody until the ordeal is over, according to
NBC Miami.

In the court’s decision, Circuit Judge Bernard Shapiro wrote,
“In order to protect the best interests of the minor child,
including but not limited to the minor child’s safety and
welfare, this Court temporarily suspends the Former Wife’s
timesharing until further Order of Court. The suspension is solely
related to the outbreak of COVID-19.â€â€¦

…Theresa Greene responded to the judge’s ruling by saying
that “the family court system now is stressing me almost more
than the virus.â€

“I was just shocked that the judge would take this stance
without talking to medical experts and knowing the facts and take
it so lightly, take my child from me, and not think of the effect
on her, her mental and psychological well-being,†she added.

The doctor noted that the custody battle will not stop her from
following the “oath†she took to help people.â€

Washington Examiner passage ends

Greene is appealing.

Meanwhile, I recently reported:

An Oklahoma medical worker has been stripped of her parental
custody at this time because she works in a medical clinic and
could possibly be exposed to Coronavirus during the outbreak,
according to court documents.

A district judge for the Sac and Fox District Court took medical
worker Katherine Spencer’s children after the father petitioned
the court. “The Petitioner alleged, and submitted documents in
support, that the Respondent alleged proximity to Coronavirus,â€
the court order states. Court dockets
show no record of a hearing on March 20, the day the court laid
down its order to confiscate Spencer’s children.

Katherine Spencer told her story on Facebook and denied that she
has any history of “neglect†prior to getting hit with a gag
order by the judge.

I recently reported:

(UPDATE: Since NATIONAL FILE broke this story, the parents in
question have had multiple short video visits with their
daughter)

A Child Protective Services (CPS) worker in Oklahoma used the
Coronavirus outbreak to cut off a mother and father’s visits with
their 20-month old daughter, even though the Department of Human
Services, the state agency that oversees CPS, claims to be keeping
parental visits open.

“DHS statewide has suspended all visitations due to
the virus so after today’s visit, we cannot approve any more
visitations until it is reinstated,†said CPS permanency
worker Danelle Dillman in a Friday morning text message to Andrew
Ritter regarding his 20-month old daughter, who was seized by the
government for “Failure To Thrive†due to low infant birth
weight after the girl’s mother chose to breastfeed her. Ritter
and his wife said they preferred not to place their daughter on a
particular appetite enhancer due to perceived conflict with the
girl’s Zyrtec Antihistemine.

An Oklahoma DHS official told National File in a confusing,
defensive interview that the state agency does not have a policy in
place to suspend all visitations at this time, but rather to
continue visitations using technology like Skype and FaceTime. But
the official does not know if visitations are actually still
occurring. Ritter and his wife never received an offer to hold a
cyber-visit. Here is the text that permanency worker Dillman sent
to Ritter:

When National File called up the headquarters for Oklahoma DHS,
a woman who answered the phone told us that parental visits were
indeed “suspended†for the time being, “until they get this
virus under control.†The woman refused to give us her name.

But Keeley McEwan, head of the Oklahoma DHS communications
office, told National File that “We have not suspended visitation
across the board in any way.†She pointed to the agency’s daily
guidance for case workers, which she noted is “fluid†and
“changes day to day.â€Â

“As of today we are highly encouraging continuing
visitation†utilizing iphones and programs including Skype and
FaceTime. “Whether a visitation is cancelled is on a case by case
basis.â€Â

She did not know whether any visitations have been recently held
since the Coronavirus outbreak using Skype or FaceTime. Permanency
worker Danelle Dillman did not respond to repeated requests for
comment. McEwan did not confirm whether or not she spoke to Dillman
or Dillman’s superviser following our conversation.

I have been reporting on the nationwide scourge of CPS removing
children from parents’ homes for highly disputable reasons or no
reason at all, which many parents feel is due to the for-profit
nature of the government’s child removal industry.

I reported for The Epoch Times:

On Oct. 1, President Donald Trump’s Family First Prevention
Services Act—which he passed by attaching it to a February 2018
spending bill—goes into effect. Trump’s law seeks to reverse
some of the damage caused by the Adoption and Safe Families Act
(ASFA), which President Clinton signed in 1997.

Critics say Clinton’s law created financial incentives to
remove children from their homes and place them in foster care,
thus sparking a lucrative government-run business of child
removal.

The ASFA created a program in which the federal government cuts
checks to states, courtesy of Social Security, for every child
adopted out of foster care. The ASFA also requires the termination
of most parents’ custodial rights after a child has spent 15 out
of the past 22 months in foster care. Then-First Lady Hillary
Clinton spearheaded the push to pass the ASFA through Congress.

“After the passage of that legislation, foster adoptions
increased 64% nationwide from 31,030 the year the law passed to
51,000 last year,†Hillary Clinton wrote in the introduction to
the 2006
edition of her book, “It Takes a Village.â€Â

ASFA was drafted in response to what was perceived as a failure
in the previous legal framework for caring for foster children.

“The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was enacted in 1997
in response to concerns that many children were remaining in foster
care for long periods or experiencing multiple placements. This
landmark legislation requires timely permanency planning for
children and emphasizes that the child’s safety is the paramount
concern,†states a Health and Human Services government
training website.

‘Ready for Adoption’

Parents affected by the ASFA say it gives the government a blank
check to traffic children.

“As soon as you hit the 15-month period, you automatically get
your rights terminated,†Jeremy Powell of Oklahoma told The Epoch
Times on Sept. 24, immediately after losing any chance of getting
back his four children, all under the age of 10. “They [CPS] were
ready for adoption day one. They didn’t help us in any
way.â€Â

“I have 30 days to appeal,†said Powell, a former Chili’s
cook who entered the CPS system when the cleanliness of his house
declined, due to a health episode at work that led to his firing.
Powell said his manager, who is an illegal immigrant, chose to fire
him rather than file an official report that might have led to the
manager’s deportation.

“I looked at Trump’s law about returning kids to their
families, compared to Bill Clinton’s law. Trump’s law is on our
side,†Powell said.

“The law should be stretched out for people in poverty because
they only give you three months. … Even if you make it by the
90-day mark, they still ignore because you’re too poor to carry
on. The jurors, the lawyers, everything. There has to be an
extension of time for poor people to catch up,†Powell said.

“One of our kids has already been through six different
fosters. They say they care about the children. They’re torturing
them! As long as CPS can get a child’s parents to the 15-month
line, they get a kickback for the kid,†Powell said. “It’s
like the kids are cattle.â€Â

“One of my reports said because I have a problem with the
church, my kids shouldn’t be returned. So I have no First
Amendment rights. I don’t know why I’m still in America,
because I have to pay these taxes and I don’t have any family or
any rights,†Powell said.

A National Issue

Powell’s story is similar to traumas suffered by parents all
over the United States.

“I have at least 200 cases on file with evidence from people
all over the nation,†Audra Terry of Texas told The Epoch Times,
referring to whistleblowers who sent their stories to Terry through
her RicoCPS.com database, which put out an open call for CPS abuse
cases. “There are 10 people alleging sexual abuse.â€Â

The RicoCPS website demands “solid evidence†be presented.
Its goal is to “demand a federal RICO investigation to
investigate every CPS agency nationwide for the purpose of
transparency and justice.â€Â

Terry is planning to give her information to Texas state senator
Bob Hall, who is leading a push to reform CPS, and to Ted Cruz’s
father, Rafael, at an upcoming event.

“The incentive money is the bonus check that goes to the
state. They have different classifications for it. It is strictly a
bonus check. It is really hard to track,†parental rights
advocate Connie Reguli told The Epoch Times, referring to the
checks that the federal government sends to states for each foster
care adoption. Reguli practices family law in Tennessee and is the
founder of the Family Forward
Project.

“The Adoption and Safe Families Act originally established
incentive payments equal to $4,000 for each foster child whose
adoption was finalized over a certain base level and $6,000 for
each special needs adoption above the base level,†according to a

2004 Congressional Research Service report.

In fiscal year 2016, the federal government paid 47 states a
total of $55.2 million in adoption incentive payments under the
ASFA, according to congressional
budget records. As of April 2018, the federal government had
paid states a total of $613.9 million in ASFA incentive money.

Foster parents who adopt their foster children are also entitled
to checks, courtesy of the ASFA.

Perjury

The parents and their advocates see these financial incentives
as distorting the entire system.

“They have social workers in place whose main objective is to
commit perjury in the courtroom, to create a rationale for why to
take the children and get paid. It’s almost like perjury is part
of their job description,†Andrea Packwood, president of
California Family Advocacy, told The Epoch Times, noting social
workers’ proclivity to coach children about what to say in
cases.

“If, for example, you have a neighbor who doesn’t like you
or your politics, their allegations against you don’t even have
to be substantiated. You could be the perfect parent, but if your
garbageman doesn’t like you, that gets submitted as evidence,â€Â
Packwood said. “There’s a movement of people like Antifa who
are using this for political motivations.â€Â

In October
2016, lawyers for officials in California’s Orange County
argued in a civil case that social workers whose lies resulted in
the removal of children from their parents had the right to commit
perjury in the case and were entitled to immunity. The U.S.
District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
rejected the argument.

Experts

Expert opinion has begun to validate the parents’ complaints
that there’s something wrong with ASFA’s incentives.

DeLeith Gossett, a law professor at Texas Tech University, said
in a 2018 Memphis Law Review article:
“The act’s financial incentives have disrupted families
permanently by the speedy termination of parental rights, without
the accompanying move from foster care to adoptive homes. The
programs that the Adoption and Safe Families Act govern thwart its
very purpose as children continue to languish in foster care
waiting for permanent adoptive homes, often until they age out of
the system into negative life outcomes.â€Â

Cassie Statuto Bevan helped
draft the ASFA. She told the
Chronicle of Social Change: “ASFA was blamed for leaving a
lot of children as orphans, and that certainly wasn’t the
intention of ASFA. There has been concern we moved to permanency,
but didn’t pay attention to the parents’ needs.â€Â

The ideology of the Clinton bureaucrats who worked on the law
might explain its focus.

“What happens to children depends not only on what happens in
the homes, but what happens in the outside world,†Mary Jo Bane,
who served
as the Clinton administration Department of Health and Human
Services’ assistant secretary of children and families, said in

a 1977 interview.

“We really don’t know how to raise children. If we want to
talk about equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that
children are raised in families means there’s no equality. It’s
a dilemma. In order to raise children with equality, we must take
them away from families and communally raise them.â€Â

Calls for Reform

Thousands of parents are expected to attend a rally at the
California state capitol in Sacramento on Oct. 4 calling for CPS
reform, the same day the Department of Health and Human Services’
Administration for Children and Families
holds a meeting in Alexandria, Virginia, to discuss its
response to the child sex trafficking crisis.

The Epoch Times recently
uncovered multiple cases of alleged child sex abuse in the
Contra Costa County foster care system in California. The State
Department’s 2019 human trafficking report confirms that the
foster care system
is a breeding ground of human trafficking.

President Trump’s Family First Prevention Services Act fights
back against the financial incentives that move children quickly to
foster care, but parents are unsure whether Trump’s law will be
enough to reverse the systemic damage.

With the Family First Prevention Services Act, states,
territories, and tribes with an approved Title IV-E plan have the
option to use these funds for prevention services that would allow
‘candidates for foster care’ to stay with parents or relatives.
“States will be reimbursed for prevention services for up to 12
months,â€Â
according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“The Family First Prevention Services Act also seeks to
curtail the use of congregate or group care for children and
instead places a new emphasis on family foster homes. With limited
exceptions, the federal government will not reimburse states for
children placed in group care settings for more than two weeks,â€Â
the National Council of State Legislatures states.

“Approved settings, known as qualified residential treatment
programs, must use a trauma-informed treatment model and employ
registered or licensed nursing staff and other licensed clinical
staff. The child must be formally assessed within 30 days of
placement to determine if his or her needs can be met by family
members, in a family foster home or another approved
setting.â€Â

Follow Patrick Howley on twitter: @HowleyReporter

The post
Multiple Medical Workers Lose Custody of Children During
Coronavirus Outbreak appeared first on National File. Visit
NationalFile.com for more hard-hitting investigative
journalism.

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