E-mail for February 2, 2004
CHILDREN ARE NOT MERE CREATURES OF THE STATE Part 3
To whom do the children belong?
Believe it or not a colossal war is being waged right here in the United States over that very issue.
While many of us may be ignorant or apathetic about it, the fact is the war is being waged.
The U.S. Supreme Court has emphatically declared the fundamental right of parents to marry, establish a home and bring up children.
But there is a growing cultural shift toward a different balance of power in child raising.
In a landmark parental rights case in the 1920s, Meyer v. State of Nebraska, the court reviewed historical perspectives on child rearing. Citing ancient Greece it quoted Plato who recommended for his Ideal Commonwealth:
"That the wives of our guardians are to be common, and their children are to be common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent. The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter, but the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be."
Or about Sparta the court wrote, "In order to submerge the individual and develop ideal citizens, Sparta assembled the males at seven into barracks and intrusted their subsequent education and training to official guardians."
While that same 1920s case asserted the fundamental right of parents to bring up their children, a massive shift in power began in the 1970s with federal legislation sponsored by Walter Mondale and Patricia Shroeder regarding child abuse. While motives were probably to act in the best interests of children, today an entire bureaucracy has evolved in all fifty states monitoring homes through professional and anonymous reporters.
On the other end of the report stands a child welfare system poised to remove a child based on mere allegation, a system that receives more financial rewards for removing the child from the family than for maintaining the child with the family, and a system with workers admitting that it acts based on an assumption of guilt rather than innocence.
The public often assumes that the state is acting in the best interests of the child. But what are the options of the state? The most frequently used option is to place a child from a family under investigation in foster care.
Admittedly, many foster care parents are well-meaning. Many make sacrifices to raise these children. Nonetheless the facts reveal another side of foster care also. There is a misconception about the increased safety of children in foster care.
What do the facts tell us about foster care?
Child abuse fatalities in foster care are more than twice as likely to occur than among the general population in the United States
In a Baltimore study, "substantiated" sexual abuse occurred four times more in foster homes
than in the population as a whole.
In Indiana, physical abuse occurred three times more in foster homes and sexual abuse twice as much in foster homes as in the general public.
In group homes, physical abuse in foster homes is ten times more likely than in the general public.
In group homes, sexual abuse in foster homes is twenty-eight times more likely than in the general public.
It is not uncommon for foster children to be abused by other foster children in the same home.
One of the charges of the Select House Interim Committee includes review of "the performance of all types of foster care facilities." We trust that this Committee vigorously pursue the truth in Texas and work for solutions. In Part 4 we will look at an alternative to foster care, one which will help children to maintain the common threads of their lives as before the investigation instead of ripping them apart from everything that provides security. It is an option before the Select House Interim Committee which begins its hearings on Wednesday.
I apologize by the way for a misunderstanding published in a previous e-mail. I stated that the Comptroller's Office would be issuing a report at this first meeting based on its investigation into Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services (TDPRS). In fact their investigation is not complete and they will not be reporting. Rather, the State Auditor's office will be reporting along with TDPRS.
Again, I apologize for making that mistake. Please stay tuned for further insights on to whom the children belong.
Respectfully,
Peter Johston
President
