DCYF Rightfully Deserves Our Suspicions

DCYF Rightfully Deserves Our Suspicions

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2010 AT 05:26PM


Thursday, October 7, 2010, The New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth and Families went to Concord Hospital and took custody of a newborn baby girl not even 24 hours after its birth. The parents were not afforded the opportunity to be heard by a judge, consult a with a lawyer or confront any evidence against them. As with many other cases, the DCYF makes a bunch of assertions in an affidavit, and a judge signs an order ex parte.

Shawn Wickham reports in the Union Leader's Saturday Edition, details of an abuse and neglect petition filed by division officials. the affidavit supporting the petition alleges "significant mental health and safety concerns" involving "all parents" that remain unaddressed;" a pending parental rights termination action pending a decision; (Stephanie)Taylor's "failure to recognize the impact of domestic violence in her life and the potential danger it poses to a newborn baby; "That, (Johnathon) Irish "has not acknowledged any responsibility and is a significant safety risk to an infant in his care;" and that, "the infant's health and safety is in imminent danger if left in the care of" either Taylor or Irish..."

It all sounds very bad. And without fail, the usual cadre of ignorant social apologists weighed in, in the reader comment section following the Union Leader story attacking and passing judgment on both Taylor and Irish as bad parents. Fortunately, there were far more people who expressed mistrust and suspicion of DCYF and rightfully so. The Child Protection Act has emerged as little more than a Star Chamber and the fact is there are many cases like this in New Hampshire that are not in the public eye.

Statutorily Sanctioned Oppression

The Division for Children, Youth and Families does not want the public to know about what they do. The laws of the Child Protection Act favor the arbitrary DCYF and stack the deck against families who come into the division cross hairs. The Division is shielded by "confidentiality" laws that keeps their actions and activities out of the public eye. N.H. RSA 169-C:25 I (a) states in part,

"The court records of proceedings under this chapter shall be kept in books and files separate from all other court records. Such records shall be withheld from public inspection but shall be open to inspection by the parties, child, parent, grandparent pursuant to subparagraph (b), guardian, custodian, attorney, or other authorized representative of the child..."(emphasis added).

The law goes on to state in section II,

"It shall be unlawful for any person present during a child abuse or neglect hearing to disclose any information concerning the hearing that may identify a child or parent who is involved in the hearing without the prior permission of the court. Any person who knowingly violates this provision shall be guilty of a misdemeanor..."(emphasis added).

A parent facing a petition for abuse and neglect now faces a misdemeanor conviction if he or she speaks to a news reporter without asking for permission from the court. Pursuant to N.H. RSA 651:2, a person can face up to a year in jail under this provision. Threats of Jail and fines are effective measures to keep people quiet all under the pretext of "confidentiality."

Substantive Due Process Removed

Unlike a criminal case, families being subjected to this process have the deck stacked against them when nearly any and every adverse byte of information about them can be used to bolster the petition. N.H. RSA 169-C:12 plainly states,

" In any hearing under this chapter, the court shall not be bound by the technical rules of evidence and may admit evidence which it considers relevant and material..."

Consequently, a disagreement with a neighbor, relative or ex-spouse having perhaps nothing to do with the allegation at hand, now enters record to speak to the parent's character. In the immediate case, DCYF noted in their affidavit, "Irish's affiliation with Oath Keepers, which it describes as "a militia," and his purchase of "several different types of weapons including a rifle, handgun and Taser..." None of the above-indicated activities are unlawful. Despite their lawfulness, they are contained in a legal affidavit in an effort to support a petition asserting that Mr. Irish is an unfit parent. This statute leaves everything wide open.

The general public will never really know how the court deliberates in these cases because of the confidentiality provisions. That benefits DCYF because the only people who shed the light of day on such cases are those people affected by them and for them, credibility and truthfulness is a mixed bag. Moreover, many of the people entangled in such cases are so emotionally wrought that their assertions tend to be out of perspective.

Occasionally, the public gets a look at an egregious case when the parent being subjected to the injustices saves every scrap of paper, every court ruling, every document generated and provides a narrative, letting the documents speak to the facts.

Child/Family Brokering

When children are removed from homes and placed in foster care, it is inevitable that a bond will likely form between foster parents and children. Where these cases stretch for long periods of time, the bond only increases. Add in the fact that some parents are not permitted any contact with children in foster care, the likelihood of reunification of the family become less.

Subsequently, some foster parents then seek to adopt placed children and inject themselves into cases to have a stake in the outcome. While foster parents do not have parental rights, per se that a parent might have, they certainly have a relationship with the CPS worker who is often all too willing to advocate for adoption. Pressure is then created from the foster care parents to terminate parental rights in order that the foster care parents may adopt the children in their care. Ultimately, the CPS worker, who likely placed to child in foster care now becomes an advocate for parental rights termination and adoption for the foster parents. As a result, DCYF child protection workers have become the arbiters of who is a family is who is not.

We do not know the merits of this case we have read about in the Union Leader. But one thing we do know is that DCYF has not only a poor track record of protecting children, but an equally poor track record of destroying families. Those who blindly defend the DCYF are only part and parcel to the problem. No governmental unit is a good governmental unit when it has arbitrary and corrupt power.

The people who suffer the most under this system are those people who have the least in resources, skills and personal abilities. The late great Senator Barry M. Goldwater once warned us, "Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have."

We as a society demand that the weakest among us (children) be afforded protection from all forms of abuse and neglect. We also demand that families not unnecessarily be torn apart. DCYF screws it up.