Charlotte Martin
I have perused several copies of CPS case files but reviewed only one in its entirety. One that was filled with such horrors that I will never forget it as long as I live. The mother and grandmother scraped up $200 to pay for a copy of their file, and as soon as they got it, they drove for over an hour to bring it to me, in hopes that I could find an attorney to help them get the child back.
A social worker had removed the autistic toddler with an Emergency Removal Petition where she claimed that the reason the child was in imminent danger of harm or death was because he had been left alone in a basement five times. FIVE TIMES! This was over ten years ago, so of course, I do not recall the dates, but I vividly recall that the dates the social worker claimed the child had been left alone in a basement, were two weeks apart. So, for this story, let’s say the dates were May 1, May 15, June 1, June 15 and July 1, and she removed the child three days later, so let’s say July 4 was the removal date.
There are ONLY TWO POSSIBILITIES with this case. Either the social worker lied… OR… the social worker should have been fired and NEVER ALLOWED to work with children again, due to gross incompetence and negligence for failure to call the police and remove an autistic toddler the VERY FIRST TIME he was left alone in a basement! OR the 2nd time!! OR the third time!!! OR the 4th time!!!! And not even the 5th time!!!!! She waited 3 more days!!! The social worker did not even contact the police UNTIL the day she went to take the child away from his mother, his grandmother, and everyone he loved, and everything familiar to him. This would be extremely terrifying and disturbing to even the strongest of grownups, to be dragged away from your home and everyone and everything you love.
Any ordinary, prudent person would have called the police THE FIRST TIME that they discovered that an autistic toddler had been left alone in a basement, called the police, and had the mother arrested, so that she could not have left her autistic toddler alone in a basement FOUR MORE TIMES!!
I had worked as a court reporter to five federal judges and several circuit court judges. I could not imagine even one of them signing that “Emergency” Removal Petition, but most likely, they would have held the social worker in contempt of Court for lying to them, and/or they would have likely gotten her fired for her gross incompetence in failing to remove an autistic toddler left alone in a basement even ONE TIME! I started making phone calls to attorneys, judges, senators, state representatives, the news media, the Ombudsmen’s Office, etc.
Someone in the news media told me they could not cover these kinds of stories and said THAT VERY DAY it had come across his desk that 15 mothers had proof that their social workers lied to judges to convince them to remove their children, and they wanted their stories told. He claimed they had tried to cover similar stories in the past, but that the social workers always ran away and refused to answer questions. He said they had to hear from both sides, in order to cover the stories.
Someone sent me a hard copy of Robert Benvenuti’s Investigative Report and “The ‘Other’ Kentucky Lottery” by David Richart. The Inspector General, Benvenuti told of a social worker in the 17 county Lincoln Trail Area of KY, who was at a park with a mother and her child. The mother left her child with the social worker while she ran to use the restroom, as they were leaving the park. They all left the park at the same time, but the social worker ran straight to a judge and got an “Emergency” Removal Petition signed, stating that the child had been “left alone in the park”. She also did not contact the police when she found the child “alone in the park”, but only got the police to accompany her as they removed the child from his mother.
One of the state representatives told me that she used to work as a social worker, and quit because of the lies, trickery and chicanery that were commonly used to take children away from parents. She said that she was very familiar with this particular ruse, and that is HOW the social workers KNEW the child was “left alone”, because they were there with the mother and child when a mother would run to use the restroom, check on something in the oven, or to answer the phone or a knock at the door.
I already knew not to try calling the Attorney General because some of the other parents who asked me to try to help them find an attorney, had told me that since Steve Beshear was our governor then, and the Attorney General was his son, Andy, they had already tried that and found it to be totally futile. (I do not understand how that could be allowed in state government, but we know it is allowed because Stacy Abram’s sister is a federal judge, and refused to hear the case of voter fraud in Georgia.)
This particular case was SO HORRIFIC that I oftentimes could not sleep at night, and sporadically reviewed it all night long, FOR OVER A YEAR! It was the same year that the Courier Journal, Lexington Herald, Todd County Standard and many other newspapers in Kentucky were covering stories about Kentucky’s children who had died after social workers took them away from their parents and entire families, and placed them in foster care with total strangers. They had died from drinking meth ingredients they found in the homes of foster parents, or from being bludgeoned to death in their foster or foster/adoptive homes – – their “forever homes”.
Since then, 4-year-old Hunter Payton was starved and beaten to death in foster care with two married men in Radcliffe, KY. In Bell County, KY children were rescued from the foster home of two married men where they were filming child pornography of the children.
Editorial boards said that Steve Beshear had appointed a “fox to look over the hen house” for the Children’s Fatalities Review Panel, which cost KY taxpayers $48,000. “The fox” repeatedly refused to obey Court Orders to turn over those case files of the children who had died. They were eventually fined $500,000 for continually refusing to obey Court Orders, which hard working KY taxpayers also had to pay. News reporters continually asked what they had to hide, and some accused them of caring more about protecting themselves than protecting children. It was only in looking back, that I began to understand the INTENSE FURY that some state employees unleashed on me when they learned that I had a case file in my possession, even though it was unrelated to the cases of foster care deaths. Perhaps they feared that it could show the kinds of things they were being accused of trying to hide. I do not know. My focus was 99% on the case file I was scrutinizing, and 1% on what the news media was reporting.
I was like Barbara Walters on steroids as I worked my way up the ladder, talking to people who worked at the Cabinet for “Protection” of Children and Families. Many Kentuckians called it “The Cabinet for ‘Destruction’ of Children and Families.” Some of the state employees REALLY SCARED me with their anger as they yelled at me when I told them I had possession of this case file, and had questions I would like to see if someone could answer. They yelled at me that case files were confidential!! And reporters in the news media continued to ask if case files were confidential to protect the children or to protect themselves. Steve Beshear had the news media to tell Kentuckians that he had some judges, attorneys and some of his cronies to review 500 case files in a short amount of time, and he assured us that CPS was doing a good job. THREE CHILDREN WERE DEAD, and he called that a GOOD JOB??!!!
Social workers had already told the Inspector General, Robert Benvenuti, that the case files were so thick, that it was impossible to figure out what was going on with cases. I was determined to figure out what happened in the case I was reviewing, but it took me over a year. I had been taught by one of the best attorneys in the country how to review medical malpractice files, and that you needed to go through them once to see what was there, and then AGAIN to “see” what WAS NOT there.
There were notes in there made by the social worker about how obvious it was that the child loved his mother and the mother clearly loved her child. There were notes about what a supportive family mother and child had, as they lived in the lower level (“the basement” as the social worker called it) of a tri-level town house with the grandmother. The mother’s sister lived right next door with her children, and another sister lived on the 3rd floor. Notes stated that there were ample resources to care for the child, and he had everything he needed. Other notes claimed that the mother did a really good job redirecting her son when he was doing something he should not be doing. However, the social worker wanted her to use THEIR PREFERRED METHODS, which were “Time Out” and “1,2,3 Magic”. In some cases (especially with autistic children) the children tend to start screaming by the time a parent counts to two (2). But the mother MUST do this, or the social worker could tell the judge that the mother did NOT complete her case plan, and she would NOT get her child back.
Even “Super Nanny” suffers great trials and tribulations with the “Time Out” experience from hell, while living with parents and children for weeks, to try to keep the entire family from TOTALLY FALLING APART. But when a social worker has your life and the life of your child in her hands, you MUST accomplish whatever she demands of you, if you want to have a chance at getting your child back. This mother HAD TO accomplish this during her one-hour visitation time while social worker and supervisor watched her every move through glass where they could see mother and child, but they could not see her. The mother had babysat five children for a couple years, without incident, prior to having her own child. That is probably where she learned how well the redirection method worked, that the social worker had noted the mother was very good with. But CPS had their rules, and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was NOT ONE OF THEM.
Senators and State Representatives had called Kentucky’s Cabinet for “Protection” of Children and Families “TOO BIG AND TOO BROKEN TO BE FIXED”. This mother had just had tubes surgically placed in her child’s ears, and had a speech therapist working with her toddler. The entire townhouse complex had a problem with mice, but the mother and grandmother were killing them with mouse traps. And there was one incident where the child had on a “saggy” diaper. Parents get so many points against them if they have ants in the house or mice in the house, which is beyond me why that matters AS LONG AS THE CHILD IS OKAY, and protected from creatures that somehow find their way into the best houses.
I know of NO ONE who doesn’t try to get rid of those creatures. The true nightmarish horrors began the very moment the social worker tugged, pulled and pried the child out of his mother’s arms, as the mother and her sister wept bitterly and begged her to please not take the child. They said the social worker laughed and said, “I told you I’d get you”. The child was screaming, kicking, crying and began head butting anyone who came near him. It was as though he had turned into an incredibly terrified, angry, and grieving little “incredible hulk”, even though he was not a large toddler.
When the mother asked about bruises, bumps and cuts on the child’s forehead and legs that she observed during visitations, she was told that her son kept head butting, mirrors, pictures in glass frames, and taking his fists and beating his own legs and head. He toppled tables, chairs, and even a dresser, so his bedroom in foster care was turned into what is called a “scream room” with nothing but a mattress. With his bare, tiny hands, he ripped apart three mattresses and literally tore them inside out, according to the social worker’s notes. One note said the toddler was caught standing on his bed naked and peeing on the mattress. WHERE ELSE WOULD A CHILD PEE WHEN HE IS LOCKED IN A ROOM ALONE, WITH NOTHING BUT A MATTRESS??!! I CANNOT begin to imagine the adrenaline flowing through their bodies with such fear, anger and EXTREME STRESS!
At the time, I had a cheap mattress, a better mattress, and a really good mattress in my home, and as an adult I COULD NOT even put a comparable scratch in any of them, but somehow this toddler was supposed to have torn through three of them with his bare hands.
I can’t imagine how long the child was TRULY LEFT ALONE in the scream room, to do all that “damage”! When mother and grandmother visited at CPS, they had to put a black hood over the child’s head, so he could not see them when they were returning him to the foster parents, because they knew he would start crying and screaming to go with his mother and grandmother. There was a note about three teachers who were physically restraining him at school. (A 16-year-old died of a heart attack a couple months ago when he was physically restrained by seven staff members at the Clarinda Academy in Iowa, known as just one of many “dumping grounds” for foster children). There were notes made about the very strong odor of cigarette smoke in the foster care home for this child, even though he had just had tubes in his ears, the social worker placed him with heavy smokers. The social worker also made notes where she placed two infants in the same home with heavy cigarette smokers! You already know what happened. OF COURSE, he head butted the infants! OF COURSE, HE DID! Any reasonable person would know that was going to happen!
There were notes about the child breaking out with sores all over him, and even inside his mouth, but he did not get medical care because the social worker HAD NOT gotten a signed note from the mother, even though the child had been in foster care nearly six months! After she got the mother to sign the form, she decided she wanted the child to have Botox shots in his feet just to see if it would help stop him from walking on his tip toes. The mother did not want him to have those experimental shots, “just to see if they might possibly help”, but she had no say in the matter. And of course, the experimental shots DID NOT WORK! Except that it helped Big Pharma.
Big Pharma makes a fortune experimenting on children in foster care whose parents have no say in what they try. Parents have no say, even when Big Pharma puts them on 70 pills a day to experiment with what will MAYBE – – POSSIBLY – – PERHAPS calm them down when they are terrified, grieving and angry, and foster parents CANNOT get them to stop screaming and crying for the only parents they love, and desperately yearn to be back in the only home they feel safe in.
The parents with the infants placed in this home had no say about their babies being placed in a home with a heavy cigarette smoker, and with an incredibly desperate and angry child who had become a living wrecking ball, who OF COURSE would head butt their infants, or perhaps do something even worse. In all likelihood, they were not able to afford to buy their case file that costs hundreds of dollars, to know what was happening to their children. If they ever got their babies back, they could be blamed later on for a brain injury that may have been caused when their infants were head butted. No one WILL EVER know how many case files are like this one. Was that the ONLY ONE filled with horrors like that, or could there be a hundred? A thousand? A million? Who knows?
The Inspector General wrote in his report that more investigations were needed besides the one in the Lincoln Trail Area, because they expected the problems with “bad apple” social workers lying to judges to convince them to take children away from parents was much more widespread. I believe that would have been the responsibility of then-Governor Steve Beshear, or perhaps the then-Attorney General, Andy Beshear. Steve Beshear assured Kentuckians that his son would do just as good of a job as he did.
As far as keeping children separated from their grandparents for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Family reunions, family funerals, church services on Easter, he certainly has done just as good of a job as his father. At least, his father did not take the rights away for children to breathe in fresh air, instead of forcing them to breathe in their own body waste (Carbon Dioxide or Co2) in the face diapers we call Covid masks. We all know that must be REALLY GOOD to deprive children of the air God gave them to breathe. We ALL KNOW THAT! YES WE DO! We listen to the science. We behave and do as we are told, and we do to our children WHAT WE ARE TOLD.
Since Steve Beshear believed CPS did a “good job” after they placed three children in homes where they were killed, then he would no doubt, think they did a good job in this case, as well. Just as Gov. Andy Beshear believes he has done a good job, in spite of the fact that he never bothered to find out which masks were made with cancer causing chemicals, according to cancer specialist, Dr. Judy Mikovitz, or whether they cause brain damage, according to Dr. Dolores Cahill. However, I feel pretty sure that Andy never wore masks for 8-10-12 hours a day in hot factories for even one full day, much less one full week, as he forced Kentuckians to do for the common good week after week and month after month for over a year.
And even after he learned that separating children from their parents, scars them for life and even destroys their health, he continues to do so. After I had reviewed that file for six months and began having the mother to call me after the social worker visited, so I could also make notes, I began to get suspicious, as she was acting just like some of the “bad apples” that a grand jury desperately wanted to indict in the Lincoln Trail Area. The grand jury learned that social workers have full immunity for lying to judges to convince them to take children away from parents, and the grand jury asked that those laws be changed. Only a couple of the social workers were fired, and the others were transferred to other counties. I began to wonder if this mother had gotten one of the social workers who had been transferred. I called CPS in Elizabethtown, Kentucky and asked to speak to the social worker. I was told that she had been transferred some time ago, I could only wonder if she was the same social worker who claimed the child had been “left alone in the park”. I wondered WHY she said this child was “left alone in a basement” FIVE TIMES, and if she had used two times, three times, four times so many times that she needed a new number.
When she terminated the rights of this mother, I agreed to attend the “hearing” with no judge present, no attorney present, and no recording of the “hearing”, I took shorthand notes of the “hearing”. The mother, grandmother and I noticed that the social worker and her supervisor, visibly began shaking when they saw me taking verbatim notes. At the end I asked if I could ask a question, and they said I could. I explained to them that I had driven all the way there for every hearing, but each time the mother asked the judge why she could not have witnesses and present evidence, the judge told her she would have to ask the social worker. EACH AND EVERY TIME, the social worker told her she could have witnesses and produce evidence at THE NEXT HEARING. I had to drive an hour and a half back home each and every time. All I had planned to do was to present their Emergency Removal Petition and establish that it was either proof that the social worker lied, OR that she was grossly incompetent to work anywhere for the protection of children.
The mother’s court-appointed attorney certainly did not pick up on that. Or the judge. Or the social worker’s supervisor. Or the Guardian Ad Litem. Or the CPS attorney. The social worker told us that it was either the court appointed attorney’s fault or the judge’s fault that this was the FIRST TIME that she was allowed to have witnesses and present evidence. It was TOO LATE. Her rights were terminated, and the foster parents adopted her child. And just as often happens to parents and grandparents who lose a child to death, they had several times where ambulances were called with them having stroke-like symptoms or heart attack-like symptoms. Too many parents actually take their own lives after losing their child to CPS or to death.
The Beshears SHOULD HAVE done the same as Jeb Bush did in Florida when he was governor, and changed the law so that social workers who lie, can be sent to prison for 5 to 15 years. In the Lincoln Trail Area good social workers were punished when they reported “bad apples”, and the “bad apples” were rewarded and promoted, according to Robert Benvenuti’s Investigative Report.
In 2017 a Harvard study claimed that Kentucky was the most corrupt state. In 2018 the FBI investigated and claimed there were seven problem areas that cause wrongful removals. IT DOES NOT MATTER to autistic children who lose their little minds being taken away and placed with total strangers in totally strange places whether they were removed wrongfully or due to corruption. Kentucky continues to be paid over $6,500 for EVERY “special needs” child they can take away from parents and adopt out. I have no idea what the money is used for, and have only been told that governors use it to balance state budgets. I DO NOT KNOW. I have only been told that the exorbitant amount of money it costs to take children away from parents was taken from Social Security. I DO NOT KNOW.
I learned of one child who was immediately taken away from his mother, because a neighbor saw the utility company turn off the electricity due to an $80 unpaid utility bill, and called a social worker. Instead of the social worker taking the mother to a church or outreach program to get the electricity turned back on, she took the child away. Imagine if the Cabinet for “Protection” of Children and Families used their funds to pay the $80 bill BEFORE services were disconnected. But INSTEAD, taxpayers have to pay AT LEAST $100,000 for that one child to be in foster care and all 
the court costs, etc. That is what Steve Beshear used your tax dollars for while he told Kentuckians that CPS was doing a good job. And more recently he told you that his son, Andy, would do just as good of a job as he did.
WAKE UP PEOPLE!! Children are the most oppressed, the most abused, and the most forgotten people in America! GOOD JOB, ANDY! Keep holding up that little paper mask to show us JUST HOW MUCH you care about children and their families – Kentucky’s hard-working taxpayers! God help Kentucky and America, and God bless America. God, please forgive America for the way they have treated your little ones. God have mercy on Andy’s soul for making sure as many babies as possible can be killed in the womb, and as many babies as possible can be taken away from mothers, grandmothers and their families who grieve terribly for them as they are placed into traumatic and abusive situations in the name of the almighty dollar. Lord forgive them, though they know exactly what they do. Amen.
