| Libertarian Party of NY -- Press Release -- MORE LIBERTARIANS SPEAK OUT AGAINST CHILD WELFARE ABUSES |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MORE LIBERTARIANS SPEAK OUT AGAINST CHILD WELFARE ABUSES
Bellport, New York, 2/03/06: As the fallout continues over the NYC Administration for Children's Services' (ACS) mishandling of the recent Nixzmary child abuse case, new outrages have surfaced. Additional incidents since Nixzmary Brown's murder, that include the arrest of an ACS supervisor on multiple rape charges, and the discovery of a 4 year old found dead from beating (after being returned to his negligent parent by ACS) have re-sparked healthy criticism over whether Child Protective Services should simply be abolished.
"Let law enforcement handle severe physical harm cases, and get rid of the rest of the social service bureaucracy that diverts attention from these serious examples," says Libertarian Party Chair and social worker John Clifton. "As it now stands, all cases require the same crushing documentation, contact and follow-up requirements, be they mountains or molehills." Clifton believes that bureaucracy is burdened by an overly broad definition of 'safety,' leading to over 50,000 (relatively unserious) cases overloading the system, which distract from focusing on true criminal abuses.
Former School Board member and 2005 candidate for Brooklyn Borough President Gary Popkin agrees, saying "ACS prefers to deal with the 97% of the cases that are "easy"--a child's shoes are too tight, a bedroom window is too small and not up to code, a child misses an appointment at the eye doctor. A setup in which the accuser is also the investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, where there is no due process and where the parent cannot confront the accuser, is corruption waiting to happen." Libertarians point out that the total number of child homicide cases per year remains steady, despite the presence of NYC's massive as well as intrusive child welfare apparatus, and so suggest scrapping the monster instead of feeding it.
Other Libertarians feel this solution is ignored because the ACS-foster care system is a lucrative cash cow for the social service industry. "Nixzmary is not an instance of the system failing, but rather an example of "Child Protective Services" operating exactly as it was designed," says Autumn Wark, a Queens jewelry entrepreneur who has been embroiled in a family court battle with ACS over her child for years. Wark deplores the administrative court's frequent practice (as in her case) of pressuring families to 'consent' to sign a Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal (ACOD). Under the terms of an ACOD a judge typically obligates them to accept 'services,' before either guilt or ACS's jurisdiction to intervene has been established.
"If someone effectively points a gun to your head and says 'sign this, or else we take your kids,' have you consented of your own free will, or have you been compelled under duress?" asks Wark. She feels the system deliberately emphasizes making money off households by forcing social service intervention in borderline or non-safety cases (disproportionately involving poor families of color), at the expense of concentrating on high-risk criminal abuse cases. "Each case opened is worth $40,000 or more, as in more state money to ACS and its hangers-on," Wark says. She notes that child protective procedures frequently bypass normal civil liberties protections, and proceed from a presumption of guilt. Wark calls for much more due process for accused families, prior to unilateral administrative actions that lead to seizures of kids by the 'child Nazis.'
Wark also compares the foster care industry to the system of chattel slavery, pointing to an analysis by Kurt Mundorff, a former NYC ACS Child Protective Specialist who has reached the same conclusion. Concerning foster care, Mundorff writes: "If coerced labor is defined as actions an individual is forced to take, which enrich another individual, then these children easily qualify as coerced laborers....Upon entering the custody of the state, children are reduced to a state similar to that of chattel. They have few legal rights, and the few rights they have are impractical to exercise.
"The funding stream attached to these children supports a vast industry of child welfare professionals, all of whom take a bit of the subsidy pie. Decisions about children are not made according to their individual interests, but are dictated by an elaborate scheme of incentives calculated to achieve a politically palatable outcome. Even the system's defenders generally admit that it is just as harmful to children as the environments from which they were removed."
The rest of Mr. Mundorff’s well-documented report may be found on the web at: http://familyrights.us/bin/white_papers-articles/children-chattel. Internet columnist Roderick Beaman sums up the problem with CPS micro-management of families: "All of these things were handled in the past by religious bodies and far more efficiently than by government. Government is the religion of man." Libertarians feel the high church of CPS should be replaced by a commitment to PFS---Preserving Family Sovereignty---and by turning to private social institutions to resolve family issues.
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