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| Starletta Banks |
Child Protective Services.
Foster Care.
Adoption.
Her tale goes like this:
Starletta had just had her third child.
She had a request for a crib through the welfare office.
A CPS worker came out about the crib and heard the baby crying.
The CPS worker called Wayne County Sheriff and Detroit Police who did a joint raid, knocked down her door, to save the kids from abuse and neglect.
Starletta was changing a diaper upstairs and did not hear the knock on the door due to the baby crying.
She heard the police raid the house, but did not know they were police, grabbed her two older children leaving the baby on the bed and hid in the closet, covering the mouths of her two screaming kids.
Police and Sherrif snatched her kids.
In court, CPS investigators gave Jennifer Granholm reports of broken bones of the baby, who was only few months under one year of age.
Granholm, the State Assistant Attorney General for Wayne County, the only county in Michigan where the Attorney General prosecutes child abuse while defending the private contractors of child welfare and its placing agencies with no bid contracts, submitted into evidence x-rays, and broken bones and trauma of a child about 5 years of age, if I correctly recall.
That baby was under the age of one.
Starletta's parental rights were terminated.
She was the first person to ever get permits to protest outside the Michigan Eastern District Courthouse.
No one showed up in the snow, but I did, just to take pictures and cheer her on.
I will have to find those pictures.
She began to teach herself law.
She was embraced by Michigan Republican Leadership who did nothing but use her, but she caught on quickly (which is another tale.)
Starletta shared her research methodologies and findings with me, long before Yahoo Groups.
She said since Michigan did not want to show their dirt in court or in FOIA, she said to find the backdoors.
She would spend days in the bowels of Lincoln Hall of Justice Clerk's Office, pulling cases she found on the Court of Appeals, challenging Termination of Parental Rights in Wayne County where Jennifer Granholm submitted the exact same x-rays, in case after case.
I can recall seeing at least eight case files where the same evidence, and arguments were submitted, as templates for Termination of Parental Rights.
CHILD REMOVAL LAWS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL, HURT MICHIGAN FAMILIES, ACLU CHARGES IN FEDERAL LAWSUIT
Consider this a recording of her name in the annals of history, Civil Rights, 2.0.
Starletta Banks v State of ... by on Scribd
I mastered their system, along with all their complex, financial fraud schemes.I heeded her advice, but took it all to the next level.
Michigan Chronicle V.XXV
Granholm steals babies, protesters say Article from:Michigan Quarterly Review Article date:August 10, 2002Author:Bukowski, Diane
Bukowski, Diane Michigan Citizen 08-10-2002 Carrying signs reading, "F.I.A.: Families in Agony," a small but passionate band of protesters has dogged gubernatorial candidate Jennifer Granholm's steps in Detroit.
In torrential rains outside the Channel 7 candidates' debate in Southfield July 21, and again outside the Northwest Activities Center July 23, Starletta Banks, her mother Barbara Banks, friends and organizers of Unity for Parents and Children demanded the return of Starletta's three small children, taken by Granholm's representatives in the attorney general's office in 1999.
"In the year 2000 alone, 27,000 children across Michigan were taken from their families," said Karon Hamilton, state-wide chair of Unity for Parents and Children. "That's way up from the two years of 1997 and 1998, when 30,000 were taken."
She said a national movement of families is underway, who say state social work agencies like Michigan's Family Independence Agency (FIA) are unjustly pursuing child abuse charges in order to obtain federal bonuses for adoption of children in foster care.
In August, that movement will come to Michigan with the traveling "Quilt of Tears," listing the names of children who have been taken.
Starletta's children, Darius Banks, now 8, and Danielle and Darren Austin, now 4 and 2 respectively, were taken into foster care after Starletta took Danielle to Henry Ford Hospital when she fell out of her mother's bed.
Medical personnel at the hospital claimed Danielle's X-rays showed evidence of old healing fractures, but X-rays taken shortly thereafter at Children's Hospital and St. John's Macomb Hospital have shown no such fractures.
Despite the recommendations of all social workers and psychiatrists involved, that the children be returned, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Patricia Campbell terminated Starletta's parental rights in 2000. Her actions were predicated on the recommendation of the attorney general's representative, Richard Karoub.
"I appealed to Jennifer Granholm in writing in 1999," said Starletta, "and I personally spoke with her outside the UPN 50 offices where she was speaking February 7, 2001. I gave her the newspaper articles from the Michigan Citizen and other documentation. She promised to help, but she has not. Many families have lost their precious children to this type of corruption that she has allowed to go on."
Starletta lost a court battle earlier this month after her court-appointed attorney failed to show up for oral arguments in front of the appellate court, but she has since filed a well-researched letter-perfect motion for re-hearing, citing numerous legal precedents.
"I work midnights, and I get no sleep," said Starletta," because every morning at 7 a.m. I am doing my paperwork, because I have to get my babies back."
Family friend Irwin Johnson, picketing with the Banks family, said, "In Detroit and across the nation, it boils down to a racial issue. How can Black kids be over 50 percent of the foster care system, but make up only 20 percent of the population?"
Leaving the Northwest Activities Center, Attorney General Granholm would not get out of her car or talk to Starletta and the protesters. The media spokesperson from Attorney General Granholm's office, Genna Gent, said, "I can tell you that the Attorney General immediately turned those documents over to our Children and Youth Services Division and asked them to look into it right away. However, both the trial court and the appellate court have already ruled on the case, and the Attorney General cannot overturn court rulings. Because there is a request for a re-hearing, she cannot comment further. But she does take such concerns of constituents very seriously."
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