“Where Did All the Children Go?”: Part 7 – by Charlotte Martin

President Reagan said the nine scariest words in the English language are “I’m here from the government and I’m here to help”.

You cannot stand anywhere in KY and throw a rock in any direction without hitting a sign that says, “Foster Parents Needed”. That is because the government “helps” you with your children by taking them away from you and putting them in foster care.

It is indisputable that foster care has been an abysmal failure. Dr. Phil continually warns parents that the last thing they want for their child is for them to end up in foster care. When it was on “the news” night and day about the 2,500 children that had been taken away from parents at the border who came here illegally, I believe it was Chris Cuomo who said “God forbid that one of “these children” gets put in foster care.

Children are six times more likely to be sexually abused in foster care homes, and 20 times more likely to be sexually abused if they are placed in group homes.

The main hub for international sex trafficking of children is through foster care in America. Many children in foster care have been impregnated by the foster care father or an older foster care brother and were forced (by the foster care parents) to have abortions.

Once a child enters foster care, their future as adults also seems to be doomed. As with anything else, there are the rare and exceptional stories of success. Sadly, they seem to be so rare, that the stories are often told about in books and movies. After children age out of foster care, nearly 50% to 60% of them are either homeless, incarcerated or dead within two years. A small percentage of foster care children go to college, and of those who go to college, fewer than 10% of them graduate.

Children have been dying at an alarming rate in foster care. It is worth repeating that foster care has been an abysmal failure, and it certainly has not been a secret. Yet tens of millions of children have been placed in foster care over the past few decades. The news media told the public for decades that children who are taken away from parents and placed in foster care were only taken away when there was HORRIBLE neglect or abuse. We all believed the news media back then.

However, amongst ourselves as we watched one child after another being taken away from people in our church families and other groups, comments were made by everyone who observed them, that the parents seemed to be really good parents. We surmised that SURELY there must be something horrible going on behind closed doors that we knew nothing about. We figured that we must NOT have known those parents as well as we thought we did because surely the news media was telling the truth.

We believed the news media, that since there were social workers, social worker supervisors, regional supervisors, Guardian Ad Litems, attorneys and judges involved, that they surely had evidence of horrible abuse or neglect that we had never witnessed.

We were told that warrants were no longer used but had been replaced with Emergency Custody Orders (ECO) or Emergency Removal Orders because children were most often in extraordinary danger, and needed to be removed ASAP. It has been at least ten years since I have seen an ECO, so hopefully things are different now.

For about a decade prior to that, 20 to 25 parents had brought me their case files and asked if I could help them find an attorney who would file a lawsuit against the Cabinet For Protection of Children and Families (also referred to as CFC, CPS, DCS, etc.) for wrongful removals of their children. I called several attorneys and judges that I knew from working as a court reporter, and some of them made recommendations, which I passed along to desperate parents. However, none of them were ever able to come up with retainer fees of thousands of dollars. I had merely perused their case files, as the parents pointed out various notes in their files.

In my lifetime, I’ve only had the opportunity to properly review and scrutinize one case file to truly understand what took place. It took over a year, poring over it for hours every day. No wonder parents could not find attorneys to file a lawsuit. The one thing that really stuck out in my mind, was that all these children had been removed with Emergency Custody Orders, and all the children were removed because the parents had put them in “imminent danger of harm or death”. To take the children away from their families, the social workers had to list the “reasons” the children were in “imminent danger” of harm or death.

Using the same criteria that I saw used, I realized that back when I was raising my son and three stepchildren, our children could have been removed any day of any week. They were in FAR GREATER DANGER than anything that I saw listed as a “reason”. This would be true for every rich parent in America.

The “reasons” recorded in multiple case files that our children could have been easily removed for putting them in “imminent harm of danger or death” are as follows:

1. In-ground residential swimming pool
2. Two story rock waterfall in back yard
3. Whirlpool tubs
4. Treadmill
5. Go-carts
6. Private airplane (seriously)
7. Boat
8. Fireplaces
9. Heavy furniture
10. Treehouse for children
11. Garage full of poisonous chemicals and power tools
12. Two-story balconies
13. And perhaps “not enough food in the house” (as we normally dined out or ordered food in)
14. A time or two — “lice”

Yes, rich children get lice, too. Our children even flew in helicopters and jet planes that belonged to friends. But I have NEVER, EVER heard of a child being taken away from rich parents for putting them in imminent danger of harm or death, though rich parents clearly have the most dangerous things at their homes.

As I said, it has been decades since I have seen ECO’s, but I have a pretty good memory, and will provide a cumulative list of ALL the reasons that were listed, although no parent had ALL of these things listed as “reasons”. “

1. T.V. set on dresser or chest
2. Bleach setting out in bathroom
3. Dangling lamp or television cable cords
4. Stains on couches, chairs or carpets
5. A fork on the floor
6. Breakable nick-knacks setting on shelves or tables
7. A cluttered closet
8. A cluttered bedroom
9. Dirty or cluttered house (Thinking back, that probably would have applied at our house before the cleaning lady got there on Monday mornings.)
10. Not enough food in the house
11. Baby monitors turned off or unplugged
12. No locking cabinet for cookies, chips and sugared cereals (We did not have a locking cabinet for those items, either.)
13. Lice
14. Ants (We did not ever have ants, but we did attend a party where a judge was joking about that ants had invaded their home, and they could get their children taken away.)

The Cabinet for Protection of Children and Families continually told us that rich parents were just as likely to abuse or neglect their children, and just as likely to be alcoholics or on drugs as poor parents.

Have you EVER heard of even one child being taken away from rich parents, while tens of millions of children were taken away from poor parents? Did you ever wonder how much of your tax dollars went to taking children away from poor parents, only to have them sexually and physically abused in one foster care home after another?

I remember seeing former governor Matt Bevin on KET with a young woman who had been in foster care. She said that she was taken away from her grandmother for neglect. She stated further that she CERTAINLY NEVER FELT NEGLECTED by her grandmother, but she was TERRIBLY NEGLECTED and emotionally abused from the moment she entered foster care until she aged out of foster care.

Children are America’s forgotten people. Thank God for President Trump for passing the Families First Act. I hope and pray that Biden does not get in, as he will almost certainly undo the progress President Trump has accomplished for families.

Billions and perhaps even trillions of dollars can be made off of foster children from sex trafficking to Big Pharma putting them on psychotropic drugs and giving them vaccines (some unproven and untested) that some parents may not want to give their children. Foster parents would have to give them vaccines or 70 pills a day, as Diane Sawyer revealed in a documentary for ABC… if, that is, the foster parents want to keep their paycheck. Sadly, that is why way too many people become foster parents… for the paycheck, bonuses and paid vacation time.

God help the children, God help America. May God save us and these poor children from a tyrannical government from which we (and they) may never recover.