social services?
Not every story gets told. Some people hold back, thinking their situation is the exception. Sometimes it takes a coming together of other events to make everyone realize that, wow, this is real, and its happening to other people too. From there people take a stand. Or they should. So the exposure of collective, accurate events is crucial to provide fuel for change.
Take this one. A child is thrown down stairs by sixteen-year-old birth mother in argument with infants father. Age of child: two weeks. Thankfully, someone calls Child Protective Services (CPS). Child is removed from mother’s care at hospital, where infant is found to have a cracked skull. Child is placed in foster care by CPS. The foster parents had to drive an hour, every other day, to the hospital to provide the child with after care to help her survive. She did. In fact, eventually she thrived.
But CPS did a sloppy job. They had the foster mother take the child from the birth mother at the hospital, because they were lazy. As a result the birth mother targeted all her anger against the foster mother. Choice and threatening words sliced against her continually, so much so that at six months the birth mother finally “won” her case. The baby who was now thriving, happy, and bonded to a strong bi-racial family was taken away from the blankity-blank white trash mom and put in a chain smoking, over crowded foster home with other serious issues. The family was not bi-racial, but shared the race of the birth mother. The baby’s relationship with her loving foster home was permanently terminated. Meanwhile, the mother hadn’t done the simple assignment CPS had asked of her to get her child back. She was too busy sassing.
I know the foster mother, I met the birth mother. It could have all been very different if CPS had done their job right. But they didn’t. And as a result CPS listened to the demands of a teen child abuser who hadn’t even tried to help her child. Not only did the child experience the trauma of a cracked skull and separation, she went on to live with problems perpetuated by this system.
IF hers was the only one, grace might be extended. Restitution could be done. By there are thousands.
I first became concerned about this when we did the training to become foster children. Near the end of the course were handed a printed out list of available children and told to choose one that we might want to invite home for Thanksgiving weekend, to see if they fit well with our family. We were excited and took the list home eagerly. There was a kid who looked like my husband’s teen photos and we took a liking to him immediately. We did all the right paperwork and applications. Then we waited.
And waited. Even after inquiry it took weeks for them to come back with a nonchalant, “Oh, we lost that kid in the foster care system. No one knows where he is. Just choose another.”
Excuse me?!
This child was taken AWAY from his family, presumably for good reason, and placed in a foster home, and LOST?!?! Where were the social worker visits we were told happened regularly? Where was the accountability of foster parents? How could a child simply not only get lost, but have it take them more than a month to figure out that this was the case?! From that time on, we began following stories that were happening to children in America. Children missing from CPS care became such an issue that federal law now requires that the agency report missing children within 24 hours.
Children go missing from foster care for a number of reasons. Some run away because they are trying to get home. Or trying to get back to a foster home which really loved them, at least according to the judgement of the child. Stats show that the more times a foster child is moved, the more likely they are to run. And at least 16% of children who go missing are believed to be trafficked.
There is no denying that the increase of the demand for children as sex objects has increased. This report shows cyber reporting for 2019: https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/gethelp/2019-reports-by-esp.pdf . In fact, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported child pornography files which were submitted between 2005 to 2009, for the purposes of identifying missing children, increased by 432%.
For clarity, human trafficking is, “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” This is the definition applied by 150 countries globally. Although billions of dollars slither about in this murky world, the reality is that most trafficking is still done nationally. It’s simply easier than moving people over borders.
When CPS takes a child away from a clearly abusive parent, as in the case of the couple who threw the newborn down the stairs, they are following the law. But over the last decade there has been some questionable action.
60% of children rescued by the FBI are children who were in foster care. (see: “Finding and Stopping Child Sex Trafficking.” NPR, August 1, 2013. Available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=207901614
In one state, the case study shows that all but two children rescued in one year were kids who had been in foster care.
Parents have had CPS show up when they don’t choose to vaccinate their children.
Parents have had CPS take away their children because they are Christians.
Parents are having their children taken away by CPS if the child asserts he or she wants a gender change, or they are gender confused, and the parent disagrees with the child’s judgement.
With these and the reality of missing children and the market for children in sex trafficking, it is not surprising that voices are beginning to wonder if even some of those within the CPS system might be part of the pipeline.
Some of the math is simple. If these are your reality, you could easily become a child trafficking statistic:
being female, especially between 12 and 14 years of age.
being inspected or watched by CPS or placed in foster care by CPS
being homeless or a runaway
being raised by poorer parents
not thriving in the public school system
growing up in an environment that keeps changing
experiencing sexual abuse
Obviously, in some of these cases - like sexual abuse - CPS should be stepping in. But if CPS is corrupt, then the child is not safe in EITHER situation. Also, for those who are Foster Parents, the work becomes a mine field. Children come into care but you as the parent are under the fine tooth comb of a CPS which is working in tandem with agendas which are not visible, or wholesome. This story is clearly unfolding, and indubitably time will show us what that agenda is. But for now, ask questions. Turn over rocks. Listen carefully. There is more going on than meets the eye.
Because the very concept of a nuclear family with male and female children being raised by parents who are male and female is under attack, the foundation and defense of that basic human right is so eroded that - inevitably - it will make the children the most vulnerable of all.
Which may be the agenda.