The White House has an online petition website where any citizen can file a petition, and if you get 100,000 electronic signatures by the deadline they may consider your request. Currently there is a very important petition on the website, one that deals with corruption in child protection agencies.
The petition demands complete reform and accountability for Child Protective Services and the Department of Human Services, with the ultimate goal of combating the corruption that has run rampant in these agencies. Furthermore, the petition demands immunity protections be lifted from the caseworkers, supervisors, and judges so they can finally be brought to trial for the crimes they commit against American children and families every day.
We, Kathleen and Robert Raskin of Las Vegas, strongly urge you to sign this petition so it’ll gain traction. If we want to overhaul these agencies we need to be a grassroots force to be reckoned with. Let’s give ’em heck! Our voices WILL be heard!
Here at StopDHR Corruption we hear so many tragic stories of foster children who are bounced from placement to placement, never able to find the right home. The story of three-year-old Ryleigh is not one of them. Ryleigh’s great-aunt, Kathleen McGinty, is desperate to keep the child in her care. This placement would be ideal because McGinty is able to provide a stable, loving home while also keeping the girl with her biological family. This seems like a no-brainer, but instead one child protection agency has turned it into a complex nightmare.
Mellisa Mirick was a teen mom and drug addict who was stripped of her parental rights, losing daughter Ryleigh and two older daughters from other fathers in the process. Mirick was a troubled soul who was never able to regain control, and she passed away. Ryleigh’s biological father was stripped of custody while the girl’s mother was still alive, and shortly after her death the baby’s grandmother died, too. So returning to her parents’ care or grandparents is not a possibility. What is the next best thing then? To be placed with family.
Still just a toddler, Ryleigh has already lived in no fewer than five different homes. She was taken into custody shortly after her birth, so the child has had no stability in her young life. This has been proven to negatively affect a child’s ability to bond and to increase trauma, but the child’s best interests are clearly not being considered here.
Although child protective services workers are allowed to foster and adopt children, they are not permitted to take on placements that may be a conflict of interest. That is exactly what happened when Safe Children Coalition worker Jolee Grobleski concealed the fact that she had little Ryleigh in her home with the intent to adopt her while her organization managed the child’s case.
A so-called “neutral” committee continues to side against Kathleen McGinty, and today the child remains with Grobleski. We, Rob and Kathleen Raskin, demand answers.
On a sweltering summer day in Harris County, Texas, Melissa Bright sat her five-month-old son on a lawn chair so she could help her toddler daughter out of her wet clothes after playing in the sprinklers. When baby Mason fell from the chair and hit his head on the driveway, no one could have predicted it would lead to an extended nightmare.
After The Brights sought immediate medical attention for the infant, and hospital personnel determined the child had an injury that was not consistent with a fall and was instead consistent with child abuse. Later the baby was found to have a blood clotting disorder that contributed to the severity of the injury, but a CPS supervisor removed both children from their parents and placed them with their grandmother anyway.
Unfortunately, little Mason’s injuries were too severe for his grandmother to handle on her own, and to make matters worse she lived an hour away from the baby’s parents. After trying to have the baby placed with a closer relative, CPS failed to respond, so the couple took their baby home to care for him. CPS had no grounds to remove the children from the home in the first place, so that should have been the end of it.
The family and their attorney received a tip from an investigator letting them know the real reason their children had been removed from the home: at least ten child protective services workers had pressured the tipster, who is with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, to file criminal charges against the family despite a lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.
Monday in court a judge sanctioned the agency and fined them $127,000, which is meant in part to offset legal and medical fees. CPS, you are not above the law. You can cover up your immoral and illegal actions, but they won’t stay hidden forever. Not as long as citizens like us, Rob and Kathleen Raskin, are here to hold you accountable.
This will come as no surprise to Alabama residents, but Blount County DHR is at it again. This time they are being investigated for making false reports and for placing children into the foster system without trying to place them with relatives first. You can help fight corruption in the system by sending a fax to your congressman.
We are working on responding to the many inquiries we’ve received about how to fight CPS and DHR. We’re putting together some resources that will help you to contact your legislators and to join grassroots efforts. One thing you can do is create your own petition for others to sign through this fax website and others like it.
Check back for more updates about what steps to take first if your family has been harmed by child protective organizations. We are Robert and Kathleen Raskin, and we are in this fight together with you. It’s time to put an end to the corruption that is destroying families and lives once and for all. Won’t you join our cause?
The State of Kansas has settled with the father of a child who was killed by her drug-addicted mother’s boyfriend despite being reported to child protective agencies many times.
Jayla Haag-Waters tested positive for meth at birth, and if she’d been removed from her mother by the state when she should have been, she might not have died also testing positive for meth at just 18 months old.
In the days before her death, baby Jayla suffered horribly. When her grandmother brought her to the emergency room in March of 2002 claiming the tot had fallen down some stairs, she had bruises, bleeding on the brain, malnourishment, severe head injuries, a fractured jaw, and her teeth had been forcibly removed with pliers.
The child’s mother, Alyssa Haag, admitted to investigators that her boyfriend, Justin Edwards, had repeatedly struck and strangled her daughter. Both she and her boyfriend had smoked methamphetamines in front of the baby throughout her short life.
Jayla Michelle Haag Watters died March 30, 2012. It’s taken years for the state to settle with her father, but they finally did, paying him $75,000 for not intervening and protecting the child when it was their moral and legal obligation to do so. The money can never bring his daughter back, so it’s too little, too late for the father, Steven Watters. The settlement does send a strong message to the state, however—protect children or pay.
Senate President Susan Wagle said the case is something she’s ashamed of, and indeed she should be. Everyone involved in this case, and those who should have been involved yet were not, should be ashamed.
In 2013 Alyssa Haag was sentenced to 31 months in prison for her role in her daughter’s death. That means she has since been released. Hopefully she is on the state’s radar now, because she’s still young enough to have more children.
This is not where any father should have to go to visit his daughter. RIP Jayla.
In memory of Jayla Haag-Watters. A touching tribute for a beautiful baby. This never should have been allowed to happen. Her blood is on the state’s hands.
In The Ithaca Voice Mayor Svante Myrick stated, “We believe in the power of play. Given the choice between living here, where your kids can run outside and find a bunch of friends to play with, and another city where just allowing your kids to walk home from the park could get you arrested, we know that families will joyfully choose Ithaca.”
Too many good, loving families are being torn apart by interference from child protection agencies because in today’s society letting your child play unaccompanied is viewed by many as a crime. Parents who want their children to be able to learn how to negotiate life on their terms own in certain reasonable settings and situations will finally have the right to do so in this forward-thinking New York city.
The mayor’s proclamation is non-binding, which means it isn’t going to be introduced into local laws. While it isn’t legally binding, it will lay the groundwork for a new societal standard in the area. Under this new non-binding proclamation, Ithaca children will be permitted to:
Travel to and from school without an adult.
Play outdoors independently.
Remain unattended for a reasonable period of time.
Mayor Myrick also went on to say, “Unstructured outdoor free play has been shown to improve children’s creativity, social skills, communication skills, conflict resolution skills, socio-emotional learning, behavior self-regulation skills, (and) ability to assess and manage risk.”
This is a tremendous first step toward taking the child protective system’s power back and giving it to families, and it’s a huge win for the families of New York. Ithaca is following Utah’s lead, as the state passed their own free-range parenting law in May of this year. We hope to see more cities and states follow Utah and Ithaca’s lead.
The family in this video is just one of many who have been harmed by child protection workers for letting their children be normal kids.
If the court doesn’t order it, is the state responsible for doing the right thing for their foster children? According to the State of Texas, no, it is not, and we, Kathleen and Robert Raskin, are here to challenge that.
While it is true that court action is often necessary to bring change in the system, in a moral society that cares for its most vulnerable members, it shouldn’t be. Although the 10,000 children in Texas’s foster care system have made great strides in federal appeals court recently with the upholding of much of a ruling that was meant to protect them, the state still has a way to go with regard to the rights of children who are caught up in the system.
What does the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling mean? It means the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services must:
Train their conservatorship caseworkers better
Caseworkers must visit foster children more often to ensure their safety
More investigators must be brought on
Cases must be investigated faster when a child claims abuse
Caseloads must be managed better
More residential child-care licensing investigators and inspectors must be hired
Better quality and geographic dispersal of foster homes and treatment beds must be made available
Workload standards must be established
The court failed to enforce the establishment of a 24-hour hotline foster children can use to report abuse, but without this hotline, children may not know where to turn for help. Texas, you are making progress, but you still need to do better. Get these kids the hotline they need and deserve!
Want to learn more about the state of the foster care system in Texas? The following videos tell the story of families who were failed by the system.
In the state of Mississippi, children caught in the foster care system are not receiving even the most basic healthcare, and we, Kathleen and Robert Raskin, demand to know why this is allowed. How can children receive their constitutional rights if the court does not intervene? The simple answer is, they can’t, and it’s time for the legal system to step up to the plate to fix this.
CPS Commissioner Jess Dickinson admitted the agent was short an astounding 240 caseworkers and 60 supervisors, and this is just the beginning when it comes to the myriad reasons the state’s foster system is ranked last in the country. Also at issue is the fact that this state is first when it comes to the number of children living in poverty. They are also ranked second for having the highest number of children in single-parent families. Add to that being the second-highest in child food insecurity and in infant mortality, and what you’re left with is a big mess.
So what is being done about this? The state has reduced the number of children in the system by 700. This is a good start, but it’s not enough. A federal judge has been asked to strip the state’s control from their system, and a children’s rights group has also asked a federal judge to appoint an independent party that would be charged with overseeing the system’s overhaul. We agree it is time for the federal government to step in. Do you agree? Have you personally dealt with the Mississippi system? Let us know in the comments!
We are Kathleen and Robert Raskin of Las Vegas, and we are dedicated to raising awareness of the corruption in the agencies that are charged with protecting families. Once again, this week we are reporting another case of a social worker who gave false testimony against parents who were then cruelly stripped of their parental rights.
This is a story we’ve heard far too often, but the difference this time is a judge sided with the parents. The social worker, Chelsie Gray, has since left the agency. We wish we had more details in this case, but because Gray was not forced to resign or fired DHS is not allowed to disclose any information as per state law. A review of the case was conducted, but, as is typical, the agency refused to release the findings of this review.
A judge ruled that the social worker not only fabricated reports, but also that she flat-out lied under oath in court. The disgraced worker left the agency on September 23rd, but leaving her job is not enough. Corrupt workers like these must be held accountable for their actions, because the damage Ms. Gray’s lies have done could potentially last a lifetime.
There is no shortage of corruption in the Iowa DHS or in the court system. Want to learn more about what the families of the Hawkeye State are facing? Please watch the following videos made by families who have been harmed by the system.
Why would an organization that is designed to help children systematically put indigenous families at a disadvantage? That’s what we, Kathleen and Robert Raskin, would like to know. The system should be supporting families, and instead they are stealing their children away, with some families having all of their children stolen away for five or even six generations.
During an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, a spokeswoman for the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said, “Any challenges that our families are faced with, it’s used against them instead of them being offered support. It victimizes our families.”
This Manitoba inquiry will focus on child welfare, which is an issue that is directly related to the snatching of indigenous children, which strips them of their identity. These children lose their self-worth by being removed from their tribe, and they grow into damaged adults, which contributes to the rates of violence in their communities.
Manitoba has the highest per-capita rate of children caught in the system, and a shocking near-90% are indigenous. With over 10,000 children in care at this time, that means nearly 9,000 indigenous children have been removed from their families. Believe it or not, this is the lowest the rate has been in over a decade.
The main reason these children are being stripped from their parents, often at birth, is poverty. The government claims seizing these children is a last-resort measure, but the reality is it is typically the first thing that happens. Think of what could happen for these communities if the money they spent stealing children was instead used to help communities in crisis?
Missing and murdered women are a huge problem in Manitoba. Mothers are murdered, they fall victim to domestic violence, they lose their homes and financial support when they no longer have children in the household, and they often must resort to sex work just to survive, putting them at increased risk. It’s a huge problem, and taking generations of children is not the solution.
