Arizona Parent Caims CPS Moved Child 17 Times

PHOENIX (KSAZ) - A harsh spotlight has been shining on Child Protective Services the last few weeks. Now a parent steps forward to talk about her experience with the agency -- sadly, it's not a good one.   She worries about the thousands of children trapped in the system, though there might be better options out there.
It was an emergency when 5-week-old Aurora came to David and April Snow in their Phoenix home nearly five years ago.

"The biological mother had some substance abuse issues and so we had our work cut out for us at the get go," said April.
CPS placed the baby with the Snows because Aurora is April's cousin.
From the time she was a baby to when she was taken four years later, Aurora was moved by CPS 17 times, according to April.
"She had 17 transitions in and out of our home, in and out of shelters, in and out of emergency placement, in and out of other foster homes," said April.
Aurora was placed with the Snows in February of 2009, but 13 months later, April says CPS deemed that the biological mother was able to care for her daughter again. The mother had since given birth to a baby boy and had moved to Tucson.
The Snows had to let Aurora go, but disagreed with CPS' decision.
"They returned Aurora to her biological mother, who now had a younger child and they were all homeless," said April, who adds that she could tell Aurora was losing her sparkle.
"My husband used to drive down every week to see them and would pick up Aurora and take her to eat, go to the store, buy food, clothes, whatever he could do because you hands are tied."
April says on one visit in July of 2010, they saw Aurora had cigarette burns on her.  They called CPS.
"They would reassure us everything was fine and no, the mother didn't burn the child on purpose.. the wind blew the cigarette, you know, things to us that weren't right."
The very next month, April says something finally happened in Tucson with Aurora's biological mother that could not be explained away or ignored.
"Her biological mother stabbed the boyfriend multiple times in the hotel room and when Tucson Police responded, they found both children in there.. blood everywhere and they removed the children."
Aurora went back to the Snows, but she was not the same child who had left them.
"Aurora who had left our home developmentally on task no longer spoke, she only grunted and screamed.. she had completely shut down," said April.
CPS would remove Aurora one more time from the Snows in September of 2011 when the couple said they couldn't take both Aurora and her baby brother -- just her.
Then a fourth CPS worker got the case, who April says was their guardian angel.
"She wasn't burned out, she was one of the good ones that still had a fight in her."
April says the CPS worker listened to their whole story, connected the dots, severed parental rights of the mother to Aurora and her baby brother.
The brother went to another family member and in March of 2012, the Snows officially adopted Aurora.
A happy ending on the surface, but the Snows will tell you the pictures of their adorable little girl with a pink feather boa doesn't reveal the whole truth.
"She wakes up every night crying.  Two nights ago, we found her in a closet hiding and these are things that are long lasting.  She used to scream every time the doorbell would ring and hide because she would be afraid," said April.
Aurora is in counseling, but the Snows know the damage runs deep.
They worry about the thousands of children in Arizona that are either trapped in a nightmare of abuse or bouncing around the system within a community that can't find a way to save them.
We asked CPS about the Snow's case.  The couple feels the agency can't or won't look at the big picture and do what's best for children in crisis.
CPS responded that it cannot comment on cases like this one.

Read more: http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/24246917/2013/12/17/cps-adoption#ixzz2oCjv79Tm

Arizona CPS Stonewalls Requests In Child’s Near Death

September 14th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

Much like Los Angeles County, it’s now Arizona’s turn to hide the doings of CPS from public scrutiny.  Read about it here (Arizona Republic, 9/14/11).
Not long ago, I reported here on the Los Angeles County child welfare agency, the Department of Children and Family Services, that has given the one-finger salute to the state auditor who’s asking for records on child fatalities.  Never mind that the state legislature has specifically empowered the auditor to look into the activities of child welfare agencies in three separate counties.  Never mind that she unquestionably has the power to do the job the legislature gave her.  Never mind that LA County’s DCFS hasn’t a legal leg to stand on in resisting the auditor’s demand for records.

And above all never mind the fact that some 70 Los Angeles children in three years have died at the hands of parents, foster parents and others after their plight was brought to the attention of the DCFS.
No, Los Angeles County DCFS clearly has something - probably a lot - to hide, so it’s stonewalling, refusing to turn over the information to the auditor.  Stated another way, DCFS is refusing to allow the public whose taxes fund it to know what it does - and what it fails to do - to protect the children of the county.  Or, stated yet another way, DCFS’s clear message is “Just give us the money and don’t ask any questions.”
Apparently, great minds think alike.  I say that because The Arizona Republic has tried numerous times to find out what Phoenix CPS was up to in several cases of child injury that came close to, but didn’t, result in death.  And, much like in neighboring California, the bureaucrats are stonewalling.

Now, of course the California case involves stonewalling a public official whose job it is to find out the information DCFS is hiding.  In Arizona, it’s a newspaper trying to inform the public about what goes on behind the closed doors of CPS.  So the newspaper is only entitled to get public information, while the California state auditor has far greater authority.
Still, the bureaucratic instinct to hide from public view is on display for all to see in Arizona.  Consider the fact that a little girl called Baby Josephine was recently brought to an emergency room, battered to a pulp.  The baby had 14 broken bones to go with other injuries that left no one in any doubt that they’d been caused intentionally.
But that’s not all.  When she was hurt, little Josephine had been in the “care” of a “safety monitor” specifically approved by CPS.  Moreover, that “safety monitor,” Angelica Jimenez lived with her boyfriend, Steven Saldana, a convicted felon.  Keep in mind, this was a situation approved by CPS.


Steven Saldana      Angelica Jimenez



The Department of Economic Security has once again thwarted my quest to find out what happened to baby Josephine, the 4-month-old who wound up with 14 broken bones and other injuries while in the care of a CPS-approved “safety monitor.”

The third time requesting the records wasn’t the charm, but it certainly was revealing.

The state has no intention of letting the public know what steps Child Protective Services took to keep this baby safe.

As the bureaucrats see it, we aren’t entitled to know whether the CPS checked the background of Angelica Jimenez or her live-in felon boyfriend, Steven Saldana, before handing over the infant.

Needless to say, it’s not the first time a child has been terribly injured, the paper asked for information and been turned down.

Just as they believe we aren’t entitled to know what the CPS did when called to come to the aid of a 10-year-old Gilbert boy - before his hands and feet were bound and he was forced to eat dog poop. Before he was repeatedly sodomized and his penis burned. The attacks came to light on Friday after his adoptive mother, Jennifer Louise Barnes, was arrested.



Jennifer Louise Barnes

 According to Gilbert police, the CPS received multiple reports about the boy. Just don’t dare ask what the agency did.

The cover behind which CPS is hiding is pretty thin.  It seems that there’s a state law that requires disclosure of CPS records only in the event of a child’s death or near death.

Baby Josephine stopped breathing in the dead of night on Aug. 3. She was having seizures when she arrived at Cardon Children’s Medical Center sporting 14 broken bones, bruises all over her face and a cigarette burn on her arm.

According to Chandler police, “Forensic doctors stated the child had suffered a near-death episode and the injuries were non-accidental trauma.”

So you’d think CPS would cough up their records, given the fact that the four-month-old had stopped breathing and doctors on the scene said she’s “suffered a near-death episode.”  But no.  In the interest of secrecy, they found their own doctors to contradict the ones’ who’d actually treated her at the ER.

“As we previously informed you, information regarding the CPS investigation involving Angelica Jimenez does not meet the qualifications for release because the incident that is the subject to your client’s public records request was not determined to be a near fatality caused by abuse or neglect,” Todd Stone, DES public-records-request coordinator, wrote on Monday to The Republic’s attorney, David Bodney, rejecting this, our third request for the records…

By the way, both state and federal law define “near fatality” as “an act that, as certified by a physician, places a child in serious or critical condition.”

I’d say that pretty much anyone confronted with a four-month-old child who’d been beaten so severely that she had 14 fractures, plus cigarette burns and who’d stopped breathing would say her condition was “serious.”  My guess is that 99% of people would say that, but apparently the other 1% work for CPS.  They of course have a vested interest in hiding their own incompetence, malfeasance, negligence, cronyism, etc.

And hide it they do, for as long as they can under whatever pretext is available.  Meanwhile, the children it’s their duty to protect suffer terribly, and we the people pay the bills.

http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=19244

Court Rules Social Workers Must Follow Law



Lawsuit defendant Sheriff Joe

 A federal court has ruled that social workers have to respect the U.S. Constitution regarding privacy and parental rights, and if they don't they may be held liable.

The ruling comes in an Arizona case in which social workers, accompanied by Maricopa County deputy sheriffs, made unsupported threats to place a family's children in custody and arrest the parents if they were not allowed to make what ended up being an allegedly illegal search of the family's home.
U.S. District Judge Earl H. Carroll ordered that a lawsuit by the family against the social workers and sheriff will be allowed to continue, because the social workers' concerns were based on "an anonymous tip that the … Loudermilk children were being neglected and that plaintiffs' home was uninhabitable."
However, the judge said that under federal law, an anonymous tip,   "without more, does not constitute probable cause."

The case is being publicized by the Home School Legal Defense Association because of the involvement of the organization's members, the family of John and Tiffany Loudermilk.
"Social workers and sheriff's deputies had come to the home … demanding entry based on a six-week-old anonymous tip that the newly constructed home was unsafe for children," the organization said.

"The Loudermilks declined consent, as was their right under the Fourth Amendment. After an escalating confrontation at the front door that lasted 40 minutes, the social workers, backed by no fewer than four deputies, threatened to take the Loudermilks' children into custody and place them in foster care if the Loudermilks continued to deny them entry… An assistant attorney general repeated this threat to HSLDA attorney Thomas Schmidt, who was assisting the Loudermilks during the confrontation," the HSLDA report said.

Under duress, the family allowed the social workers and deputies inside, who found nothing wrong, the report said.

 

But as a result of the search, the family sued the social workers and others citing the violation of their Fourth Amendment rights in the search, and violations of their 14th Amendment rights to privacy and family integrity because of the threats.

The judge, acting on motions submitted by the defendants to escape liability, agreed with the family.
"Defendants persisted in their threats to remove the children if Plaintiff Parents did not consent to the search, stating that [they] could arrest or handcuff the Parents in front of the children," the judge said.
"Based on the allegations set forth in the Amended Complaint, viewed in Plaintiff's favor, no reasonable official would have believed that his or her conduct was authorized by state or constitutional law."
Even the assistant attorney general was cited for exerting "coercive pressure" through threats.
"The ruling in this case makes it clear that threatening to remove children to gain a parent's cooperation is unconstitutional," said James Mason, senior counsel for the HSLDA. "We hope that this ruling will change this common tactic used by investigative caseworkers all over the country."
"There you have it, [social agencies and workers] cannot threaten parents with court orders or the removal of children because parents assert their Fourth and 14th Amendment rights and refuse to cooperate," added Thomas Dutkiewicz, of the Connecticut DCF Watch organization.
"Parents do not have to cooperate with DCF whatsoever and DCF employees have to go away when parents deny them access to their home and children," he said. "DCF workers here in Connecticut are trained and instructed in this unconstitutional practice in order to conduct an unreasonable search and seizure of the home and child. They are to lie and threaten any way they can. All parents who were threatened should file a federal lawsuit against DCF, their workers, their supervisors and the police."
Now proceeding will be the lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, deputies Joshua Ray, Joseph Sousa, Richard Gagnon and Michael Danner, social workers Rhonda Cash and Jenna Cramer, and Assistant Attorney General Julie Rhodes.
 

The judge noted that the social workers misrepresented that they had a court order for an inspection of the home, but refused to provide it. He also noted the deputies were uncooperative, refusing to provide the family their cell telephone number so the HSLDA attorney could talk to them.
The claim against Rhodes stemmed from her advice to the family that the social workers were not bound by the Fourth Amendment in their intent to search the home.
The judge said verbal threats generally are not actionable in a federal civil rights proceeding, but in this case, "courts have held that a threat constitutes an actionable constitutional violation in certain circumstances, including 'when the threat is so brutal or wantonly cruel as to shock the conscience…'"

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NdbNuMcEnx8J:www.wnd.com/%3FpageId%3D44203+lawsuits+against+dcf&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us