Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is marketing, through the Michigan Adoption Resource Exchange, the promotion of hugging and kissing on foster kids in the online free games in exchange for watching the videos for extra play credits to an AI google inspired, targeted population, of older adults who are lonely and in need of a side income.
MARE is private, not public, which means it operates behind the iron curtain because there are not FOIA or civil rights.
NOTICE: AUTHORIZED USER ONLY
Terms and Conditions
WARNING: The Michigan Adoption Resource Exchange (MARE) website is property of the State of Michigan (SOM), it contains government and confidential information that is restricted to authorized users only. By accessing the information and data on this website, authorized users agree to comply and safeguard the information and data, including, but not limited to all personal identifiable information in compliance with confidentiality and privacy requirements established by program policy, state, and federal law. Furthermore, authorized users agree that storing any sensitive information from MARE’s website on any portable device is strictly prohibited and understand that unauthorized or improper use and/or release may be subject to criminal and civil penalties, including disciplinary and licensing action. This website is subject to routine monitoring. By clicking the OK button, you certify that you agree to comply with these terms and conditions.
Getting a new attorney does not absolve one from lying into the public record.
Halimah is from the Juvenile Law Center.
This is getting interesting, but, we shall see what she does, as we are dealing with the industry of trafficking tiny humans.
Halimah DeLaine Prado is a Vice President of Legal at Google LLC. Prior to joining Google, Halimah practiced media law and products liability law at Dechert LLP and Levine Sullivan Koch and Schulz (now Ballard Spahr). She also clerked for the Honorable Mary A. McLaughlin of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Halimah graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Political Science and later obtained her J.D. from Georgetown. Halimah is passionate about education and juvenile rights, having served on various boards that address these issues, including the board of the Juvenile Law Center. When not working, she enjoys traveling with her husband and two daughters.
Just as a point of interest, I thought it prudent to note that my blog is run on google, for I am quite sure Halimah already knows this, as google would never bleachbit the public record....they may just face an situation in the termination of their corporate parental rights to keep and bear the arms of the United States....
Google has promoted Halimah DeLaine Prado, vice president of legal, as its new general counsel. Prado will take on legal duties previously held by Kent Walker, a senior vice president, the company said. The new appointment comes at a time the company faces intense antitrust scrutiny. Halimah DeLaine Prado is the new General Counsel at Google. Google has a new head general counsel, company legal exec Halimah DeLaine Prado. The company announced Tuesday that Prado will be taking over legal duties from Kent Walker, a senior vice president, effective immediately. The company promoted Walker to senior vice president of global affairs in 2018, where he took on extra responsibilities, including overseeing Google's policy, legal, trust and safety, and corporate philanthropy teams. The latest appointment comes as the company faces potential antitrust cases against it this year. Google is reportedly expecting a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice, focused on its dominance in online advertising and search. Last month, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai joined CEOs of Amazon, Apple and Facebook at the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust for a four-hour questioning session about the company's competitive practices. That was followed by the release of trove of internal emails. Prado will oversee legal responsibilities and teams, reporting directly to Walker, the company said. In a statement, Walker said: "Halimah has been a trusted counselor and exceptional leader, having navigated a variety of cross-product and company-wide issues over the course of her nearly 14-year career at Google. She is uniquely qualified to lead the Legal Department at this critical moment, and I look forward to working with her as we enter this next chapter." Before the new appointment, Prado oversaw Google's global team that worked on legal counseling for Google products including advertisements, Search and YouTube, the company said. She's been at Google since 2006. The company said she is not taking on a replacement role for Alphabet's longtime chief legal officer, David Drummond, who in January retired after he was the subject of shareholder lawsuit alleging misconduct.
Children on the registry – including some as young as 8 years old – face residency and
employment restrictions as well as barriers to education; suffer the stigmatization of
being labeled a sex offender; and can face possible incarceration for failing to meet
onerous registration and reporting requirements.4 A 2013 Human Rights Watch report
examined the grave consequences befalling registered youth.5 Over 85% of these
youth reported serious mental health issues or suicidal ideation. A 2017 study revealed
that registered children are nearly twice as likely to have experienced an unwanted
sexual assault that involved contact or penetration in the past year when compared to
nonregistered children who have also engaged in harmful or illegal sexual behaviors.6
They are also five times more likely to report having been approached by an adult for sex
in the past year.7 Children on sex offender registries are four times more likely to report
a recent suicide attempt than non-registered children who have engaged in harmful
or illegal sexual behavior.8 Many registered youth also experience vigilantism in their
communities, with 52% reporting harassment and physical violence directed at them.
Accessing and maintaining housing is also a major barrier for both registered youth
and their families. Over 44% of children experienced homelessness as a result of the
restrictions placed on their housing due to registration.9 Almost all registered individuals
face financial challenges and barriers to employment. In some states, registration fees
are so prohibitive that many fall out of compliance and face incarceration.
The Juvenile Law Center has only enhanced the industry of trafficking tiny humans, through juvenile justice, in the sense that they only address the latest and greatest hot button issues, and have, not once engaged me.
I reached out to them many moons ago.
They never got back, but I do recall a spirited dialectic.
They were "Legal Geniuses" (trademark pending).
I told my Sweetie about them.
They never even had the courtesy of reaching out to him, which means they are Meanies, but I do not know Halimah, so I shall reserve my angst for that moment she starts her magical cloaking of what they do in the realms of antitrust.
I was sitting right there, in shock, when they first spoke in the public record about their search algorithms, because, what they were doing, flew right over the Members' heads, which is why I do what I do.
As of this very moment, the search function is just a hot mess, but, it may be due to the fact that I am on legacy mode, because the new mode is severely lacking on the ability to see individual datum, but data visualization in pretty pictures in the new blogger, but I digress.
This case is currently being weaponized by one of our most favorite "Legal Genius" (trademark pending), Cernovich, because he is the progenitor of #pizzacrap and the promulgator of #MeToo.
In a nutshell, a group of young men were individually convicted under the Michigan Child Welfare System of governance in the courts for, not to make light of the situation, "dating" girls who were over the four year range of the age of consent, meaning, according the suit, were anywhere from 14 years to 17 years of age, where, the perpetrators were in median of 18 years.
Some of the John Does came out of Foster Care.
Some of the John Does were in the hands of Those Who Like To Do Nasty Things To Tiny Humans.
Many of the Plaintiffs were sentenced under Michigan HYTA Law, for juveniles between the ages of 17 and 24.
For the simple fact these individuals came out child welfare, I take pause as to what Cernovich is rallying in nefarious cyberverse.
Michigan also has a Central Registry of Child Abuse and Neglect, but we have already covered these databases.
There was another issue that triggered me, and that was the fact that I saw gerrymandering.
So, since we have Halimah at the helm, and I am quite sure she has just finished reading this post, let us sit back to see what she is going to do, particularly, when dealing with Cernovich and his pizzacrappers, because they were all mean to my Sweetie, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which are the overlords for these foreign, privatized, Foster Care to Juvenile Justice Pipelines.
This is the Judge who ruled upon the physical bondage of the youth to Children's Villages.
Hon. Mary Ellen Brennan Presiding Judge of the Family Division Presiding Judge, Oakland County Family Court Division Presiding Judge, Oakland County Family-Focused Juvenile Drug Court Elected to the Oakland County Circuit Court on November 4th, 2008 Senior member of the Oakland County Family Court Bench Graduate - James Madison College of Michigan State University Graduate - Wayne State University Law School Judicial Staff Attorney, 44th District Court 2002-2008 Assistant City Attorney, City of Royal Oak 1998-2002 Assistant General Counsel, Meadowbrook Insurance Group 1996-1998 Assistant Prosecutor, Oakland County 1990-1996 https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-ellen-brennan-71709454
Hon. Mary Ellen T. Brennan is the presiding judge of the Oakland County Juvenile Drug Court (Family Division). She was a judicial staff attorney for the 44th District Court from 2002 to 2008 and was elected to the Oakland County Circuit Court in 2008. Prior to that, Judge Brennan was an assistant city attorney for the City of Royal Oak, assistant general counsel of an insurance firm, and an Oakland County assistant prosecutor. She is a former board member of CARE House of Oakland County, an organization that offers prevention programming, forensic interviewing for victims of sexual abuse and assault, therapy as needed for victims, family-support services, and a court-appointed special advocate program for children involved with the court. Judge Brennan is also a former board member of the RESTORE Foundation, a group that raises funds for the adult and juvenile therapeutic drug treatment courts through private, tax-deductible donations. She is a graduate of Wayne State University Law School.
Slavery was never abolished because it was renamed gerrymandering and it was privatized through foreign Public Private Partnerships as tiny human asset forfeiture operations.
A 15-year-old in Michigan was incarcerated during the coronavirus pandemic after a judge ruled that not completing her schoolwork violated her probation. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” said the girl’s mother.
PONTIAC, Mich. — One afternoon in mid-June, Charisse* drove up to the checkpoint at the Children’s Village juvenile detention center in suburban Detroit, desperate to be near her daughter. It had been a month since she had last seen her, when a judge found the girl had violated probation and sent her to the facility during the pandemic.
The girl, Grace, hadn’t broken the law again. The 15-year-old wasn’t in trouble for fighting with her mother or stealing, the issues that had gotten her placed on probation in the first place.
She was incarcerated in May for violating her probation by not completing her online coursework when her school in Beverly Hills switched to remote learning.
Because of the confidentiality of juvenile court cases, it’s impossible to determine how unusual Grace’s situation is. But attorneys and advocates in Michigan and elsewhere say they are unaware of any other case involving the detention of a child for failing to meet academic requirements after schools closed to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
The decision, they say, flies in the face of recommendations from the legal and education communities that have urged leniency and a prioritization of children’s health and safety amid the crisis. The case may also reflect, some experts and Grace’s mother believe, systemic racial bias. Grace is Black in a predominantly white community and in a county where a disproportionate percentage of Black youth are involved with the juvenile justice system.
Across the country, teachers, parents and students have struggled with the upheaval caused by monthslong school closures. School districts have documented tens of thousands of students who failed to log in or complete their schoolwork: 15,000 high school students in Los Angeles, one-third of the students in Minneapolis Public Schools and about a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students.
Students with special needs are especially vulnerable without the face-to-face guidance from teachers, social workers and others. Grace, who has ADHD, said she felt unmotivated and overwhelmed when online learning began April 15, about a month after schools closed. Without much live instruction or structure, she got easily distracted and had difficulty keeping herself on track, she said.
“Who can even be a good student right now?” said Ricky Watson Jr., executive director of the National Juvenile Justice Network. “Unless there is an urgent need, I don’t understand why you would be sending a kid to any facility right now and taking them away from their families with all that we are dealing with right now.”
In many places, juvenile courts have attempted to keep children out of detention except in the most serious cases, and they have worked to release those who were already there, experts say. A survey of juvenile justice agencies in 30 states found that the number of youths in secure detention fell by 24% in March, largely due to a steep decline in placements.
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order in March that temporarily suspended the confinement of juveniles who violate probation unless directed by a court order and encouraged eliminating any form of detention or residential placement unless a young person posed a “substantial and immediate safety risk to others.” Acting on Whitmer’s order, which was extended until late May, the Michigan Supreme Court told juvenile court judges to determine which juveniles could be returned home.
Judge Mary Ellen Brennan, the presiding judge of the Oakland County Family Court Division, declined through a court administrator to comment on Grace’s case. In her ruling, she found Grace “guilty on failure to submit to any schoolwork and getting up for school” and called Grace a “threat to (the) community,” citing the assault and theft charges that led to her probation.
“She hasn’t fulfilled the expectation with regard to school performance,” Brennan said as she sentenced Grace. “I told her she was on thin ice and I told her that I was going to hold her to the letter, to the order, of the probation.”
That June afternoon, a month after the sentencing, Charisse left Children’s Village without seeing Grace, but she did pick up a shopping bag of clothes and toiletries she had delivered days earlier. She said officials had rejected them because they violated facility rules: underwear that wasn’t briefs; face wipes that contained alcohol; a pair of jeans deemed too tight.
Charisse counts each day they’re apart, and that was day No. 33. Another month has since passed, and there could still be months to go before they are at home together again.
Driving home, Charisse had to pull over soon after she turned onto the road leading away from the complex. She sat in a parking lot, sobbing.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said. She shook her head as tears dampened the disposable blue face mask pulled down to her chin.
“Every day I go to bed thinking, and wake up thinking, ‘How is this a better situation for her?’”
It has always been just the two of them, Charisse and Grace.
Told by doctors that she would be unable to have children, Charisse, a consultant to nonprofit organizations, was shocked when she became pregnant at 44. She has raised Grace on her own after the girl’s father did not want to be involved, she said.
They did everything together: winter sports throughout Michigan, rounds of golf, going to the opera, singing to Tony Bennett on road trips. They even appeared in a “Pure Michigan” tourism ad. As a child, Grace wanted so much to be like her mother that she asked to be called Charisse No. 2.
When Grace hit her preteen years, however, their relationship became rocky. They argued about Grace keeping her room clean and doing schoolwork and regularly battled over her use of the phone, social media and other technology.
By the time Grace turned 13, the arguments had escalated to the point that Charisse turned to the police for help several times when Grace yelled at or pushed her. She said she didn’t know about other social services to call instead. In one incident, they argued over Grace taking her mother’s iPhone charger; when police arrived, they discovered she had taken an iPad from her middle school without permission. At her mother’s request, Grace entered a court diversion program in 2018 for “incorrigibility” and agreed to participate in counseling and not use electronic devices. She was released from the program early, her mother said.
While there was periodic family conflict, Grace has always had strong friendships and is active in her school and community, her mother said. She has helped run programs at church, played saxophone in the school band and composed music, and regularly participated in service projects.
The incident that led to her current situation happened Nov. 6, when someone called the police after hearing Charisse crying “Help me!” and honking her car’s horn. Grace, upset she couldn’t go to a friend’s house, had reached inside the car to try to get her mother’s phone and had bitten her mother’s finger and pulled her hair, according to the police report.
Police released Grace to a family friend to let the two cool down and referred the case to Oakland County court, where an assault charge was filed against her.
Weeks later, she picked up another charge, for larceny, after she was caught on surveillance video stealing another student’s cellphone from a school locker room.
“After I was caught, I felt instant remorse and guilt. I wanted to take back everything I had done,” Grace wrote in a statement to police. She said she had questioned herself even as she took the phone but wanted one after her mother took hers away.
The other student’s mother, who declined to comment for this story, told police she wanted to press charges, although the phone had been returned to her son soon after Grace took it. “My sincere hope is that any punitive action taken in this case be grounded in the goal of providing this student with opportunities for growth, change and future success,” she wrote in a statement to police.
In the months following the two incidents, Grace and her mother participated in individual and family therapy and Grace stayed out of trouble.
Charisse told a court caseworker assigned to the case that other than being irritable and getting “cabin fever” from being shut at home during the pandemic, “nothing significant” had taken place between the mother and daughter. There was no police contact after the November incidents, records show.
The April 21 juvenile court hearing on the larceny and assault charges against Grace was conducted via Zoom since the courts had shut down, with everyone calling in from their homes. Grace connected from her bedroom, her mother from their living room.
It had the familiar awkwardness of many online meetings: dropped audio; a dog barking in the background; participants swivelling in their chairs; the prosecutor losing his connection. (This hearing and others in the case were recorded, and a ProPublica reporter watched them at the Oakland County courthouse last month.)
Ashley Bishop, a youth and family caseworker for the court, told the judge she thought Grace would be best served by getting mental health and anger management treatment in a residential facility. The prosecutor, Justin Chmielewski, said he agreed. Grace’s court-appointed attorney, Elliot Parnes, said little but asked that she be given probation because she had committed no new offenses and because of the risk of COVID-19 in congregate facilities.
Parnes and Bishop declined to comment for this story and Chmielewski did not respond to calls.
Throughout the hearing, Grace took her glasses off to brush away tears and wiped her nose with her sleeve. She shook her head, which the judge later criticized as a sign of disagreement but which Grace told ProPublica signaled her disappointment in her past behavior. She raised her hand a couple times and asked, in a small voice, “Can I just say something please?”
“My mom and I do get into a lot of arguments, but with each one I learn something and try to analyze why it happened,” she said. “My mom and I are working each day to better ourselves and our relationship, and I think that the removal from my home would be an intrusion on our progress.”
Brennan admonished Grace for the fights with her mother, her thefts at school and behaving in a way that required police to come to their home. “Police,” she said. “Most people go through their entire youth without having the cops have to come to their house because they can’t get themselves together.”
But, citing the pandemic, Brennan decided not to remove Grace from her home and instead sentenced her to “intensive probation.” The terms of the probation included a GPS tether, regular check-ins with a court caseworker, counseling, no phone and the use of the school laptop for educational purposes only. Grace also was required to do her schoolwork.
“I hope that she upholds her end of the bargain,” Brennan said at the end of the hearing.
Schools across the country weren’t prepared for the abrupt turn to remote learning. Grace’s school, Groves High School, in one of the most well-regarded districts in the state, was no different.
In mid-March, thinking the closures might last for only a month, the district initially offered optional online activities and then recessed for an already-scheduled weeklong spring break. Soon after, Whitmer announced that schools would end face-to-face instruction for the rest of the year. The Birmingham Public Schools superintendent asked families for patience as schools moved to an online curriculum in mid-April and promised flexibility in their support. Officials said student work would be evaluated as credit/no-credit.
The initial days of remote school coincided with the start of Grace’s probation. Charisse was concerned that her daughter, who was a high school sophomore and had nearly perfect attendance, would have trouble without in-person support from teachers. Grace gets distracted easily and abandons her work, symptoms of her ADHD and a mood disorder, records show. Her Individualized Education Plan, which spelled out the school supports she should receive, required teachers to periodically check in to make sure she was on task and clarify the material, and it allowed her extra time to complete assignments and tests. When remote learning began, she did not get those supports, her mother said.
Days after the court hearing, on April 24, Grace’s new caseworker, Rachel Giroux, made notes in her file that she was doing well: Grace had called to check in at 8:57 a.m.; she reported no issues at home and was getting ready to log in to do her schoolwork.
But by the start of the following week, Grace told Giroux she felt overwhelmed. She had forgotten to plug in her computer and her alarm didn’t go off, so she overslept. She felt anxious about the probation requirements. Charisse, feeling overwhelmed as well, confided in the caseworker that Grace had been staying up late to make food and going on the internet, then sleeping in. She said she was setting up a schedule for Grace and putting a desk in the living room where she could watch her work.
“Worker told mother that child is not going to be perfect and that teenagers aren’t always easy to work with but you have to give them the opportunity to change,” according to the case progress notes. “Child needs time to adjust to this new normal of being on probation and doing work from home.”
Five days later, after calling Charisse and learning that Grace had fallen back to sleep after her morning caseworker check-in, Giroux filed a violation of probation against her for not doing her schoolwork.
Giroux told the prosecutor she planned to ask the judge to detain Grace because she “clearly doesn’t want to abide by the rules in the community,” according to the case notes.
Grace has said in court and in answers to questions from ProPublica that she was trying to do what was asked of her. She had checked in with her caseworker every day and complied with the other requirements of intensive probation, including staying at home and obeying all laws. She had told her special education teacher that she needed one-on-one help and began receiving daily tutoring the day after the probation violation was filed.
Giroux filed the violation of probation before confirming whether Grace was meeting her academic requirements. She emailed Grace’s teacher three days later, asking, “Is there a certain percentage of a class she is supposed to be completing a day/week?”
Grace’s teacher, Katherine Tarpeh, responded in an email to Giroux that the teenager was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.”
“Let me be clear that this is no one’s fault because we did not see this unprecedented global pandemic coming,” she wrote. Grace, she wrote, “has a strong desire to do well.” She “is trying to get to the other side of a steep learning curve mountain and we have a plan for her to get there.”
Giroux declined to comment. Tarpeh told a reporter she was not allowed to discuss Grace’s case.
The May 14 hearing to decide whether Grace had violated her probation, and what would happen if she had, took place at the Oakland County courthouse when the Family Division was hearing only “essential emergency matters.”
Grace’s case was the only one heard in person in the courthouse that day.
Crop of a court document describing Grace's sentence.
On May 14, Judge Mary Ellen Brennan found that Grace was in violation of probation for not submitting schoolwork and ordered that she be detained at Children’s Village in Oakland County, Michigan. (Records provided by Grace’s Family)
Grace’s attorney, concerned about his health, participated by Zoom, though he told the judge it was difficult to represent her without being there. He told the judge he decided not to request a postponement because the family was worried she would detain Grace if they waited for a later court date.
The prosecution called Giroux, the caseworker, as its only witness. In response to questions from Grace’s attorney, she acknowledged she did not know what type of educational disabilities Grace had and did not answer a question about what accommodations those disabilities might require. Her assessment that Grace hadn’t done her schoolwork was based on a comment her mother made to her teacher, which Charisse testified she said in a moment of frustration and was untrue.
Grace’s special education teacher, Tarpeh, could have provided more information and planned to testify but had to leave the hearing to teach a class, according to the prosecutor.
Grace and her mother testified that she was handling her schoolwork more responsibly — and that she had permission to turn in her assignments at her own pace, as long as she finished by the end of the semester. And, Charisse said, Grace was behaving and not causing her any physical harm.
The transition to virtual school had been difficult, Grace testified, but she said she was making progress. “I just needed time to adjust to the schedule that my mom had prepared for me,” she said.
Brennan was unconvinced. Grace’s probation, she told her, was “zero tolerance, for lack of a better term.”
She sent her to detention. Grace was taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
From March 16, when Michigan courts began limiting operations to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, to June 29, at least 24 delinquency cases involving youth in Oakland County court resulted in placements to juvenile facilities. Of those, more than half involved young people who are Black, like Grace.
Those numbers, obtained by ProPublica from the Oakland County Circuit Court, reflect long-standing racial disparities in the state and county’s juvenile justice system. From January 2016 through June 2020, about 4,800 juvenile cases were referred to the Oakland court. Of those, 42% involved Black youth even though only about 15% of the county’s youth are Black.
A report released last month, which found inadequate legal representation for juveniles in Michigan, noted that research has shown a disproportionate number of youth of color are incarcerated in Michigan overall. Black youth in the state are incarcerated more than four times as often as their white peers, according to an analysis of federal government data by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that addresses racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
“It is clear that kids of color are disproportionately involved and impacted by the system across the board,” said Jason Smith of the nonprofit Michigan Center for Youth Justice, which works to reduce the confinement of youth. “They are more likely to be arrested, less likely to be offered any kind of diversion, more likely to be removed out of the home and placed in some sort of confinement situation.”
In Grace’s case, too, she was sent to a facility at a time when the governor had encouraged courts to send children home.
At the county-run Children’s Village, which has space for 216 youth in secure and residential settings, the population was down to 80 last week, according to the facility manager. There have been no COVID-19 cases in the youth population and four workers have tested positive from contacts outside Children’s Village, she said.
During March and April, 97 juveniles were released from Children’s Village by court order, said Pamela Monville, the Oakland County deputy court administrator. “We understood the orders and the concerns to stop the spread,” she said. Judges, caseworkers and attorneys worked together to determine “who could go back to the community,” she added.
Juvenile justice experts and disability advocates decried the decision to remove Grace from her home, particularly when “the state gave clear directives that children, and all people, unless it was a dire emergency, were to be kept out of detention,” said Kristen Staley, co-director of the Midwest Juvenile Defender Center, which works to improve juvenile defense across eight states.
Terri Gilbert, a former supervisor for juvenile justice programming in Michigan and a high-profile advocate, said the system suffers from inconsistencies in treatment and sentencing, aggravated by a lack of public information.
“This is too harsh of a sentence for a kid who didn’t do their homework. … There is so much research that points to the fact that this is not the right response for this crime,” said Gilbert, a member of a governor-appointed committee that focuses on juvenile justice. “Teenage girls act out. They get mouthy. They get into fights with her mothers. They don’t want to get up until noon. This is normal stuff.”
Monville said Brennan, a judge since 2008, “made the decision she made based on what she heard and her experience on the bench.”
But officials at the Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, the state disabilities watchdog organization, said they were especially troubled that a student with special needs — one of the most vulnerable populations — was punished when students and teachers everywhere couldn’t adjust to online learning.
“It is inconceivable that, given the utterly unprecedented situation, a court would enforce expectations about what student participation in school means that was not tied to the reality of education during a pandemic,” said Kris Keranen, who oversees education for the group.
Charisse says the “greatest pain and devastation” of her life was watching Grace handcuffed in the courtroom. She got a letter in the mail a few days later:
Handwritten letter from Grace to her mother while detained.
In the first letter to her mother while in detention, Grace wrote, “I want to be a better person.” (Records provided by Grace’s Family)
“I want to change. I want to be a better person. Here I’ve realized how much you care and love me. I’m sorry I took that for granted. Please continue to send me pictures of me and you or just with anyone. I love you mommy and I miss you.”
On Juneteenth, the day that commemorates the end of slavery, Charisse sat alone at her kitchen table, the wall behind her covered with Grace’s childhood artwork. As the country faced a reckoning over systemic racism, the day had taken on increased recognition and Charisse lamented she and Grace couldn’t mark it together as they usually did, attending programs at church or at the Museum of African American History in Detroit.
Charisse made strawberry lemonade with fresh watermelon, a variation on the traditional red Juneteenth drink, and talked to Grace the only way she could, through a video call monitored by a Children’s Village case coordinator. The longest they had ever been separated before was when Grace attended a leadership sleepaway camp for six weeks over the summer.
“Juneteenth is all about freedom and you can’t even celebrate. What do you have? It has been taken away,” she said to her daughter.
Other than three recent visits, they have seen each other only on screen, including during a court status hearing in early June. On that day, Charisse watched as Grace walked into a room at Children’s Village handcuffed and with her ankles shackled, her mother said.
“For us and our culture, that for me was the knife stuck in my stomach and turning,” Charisse said. “That is our history, being shackled. And she didn’t deserve that.”
“I Can’t Breathe.” It Happens at Schools, Too.
Students in Illinois schools said “I can’t breathe” while being restrained at least 30 times over the time period we investigated, according to our analysis of the records. The practice of face-down restraint is still legal in Illinois.
At the hearing, both Grace and her mother pleaded with the judge to return her home. “I will be respectful and obedient to my mom and all other people with authority,” Grace said. “I beg for your mercy to return me home to my mom and my responsibilities.”
The judge, however, sided with the caseworker and prosecutor. They agreed that Grace should stay at the Children’s Village not as punishment, but to get treatment and services. She ordered her to remain there and set a hearing to review the case for Sept. 8. By then, it will be a week into the new school year.
On Juneteenth, Charisse and Grace spoke for their full allotted 45 minutes. Grace wore a light blue polo shirt her mother had dropped off a few days earlier. Her hair was pushed back with a Lululemon headband.
Their conversation began with the mundane: Charisse reminded Grace to use her deodorant, and Grace said she needed to get her glasses fixed. But it landed, inevitably, at the frustration they both feel.
“I want you to write in your journal,” Charisse told Grace. She urged her “not to get too comfortable” in detention. “I want you to do what you are supposed to do, but I don’t want you to feel like this is your new norm.”
Grace’s initial weeks in detention were “repetitive and depressing,” she recently told ProPublica in response to written questions.
Grace was required to stay in her locked room from 8:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. She couldn’t turn the lights on and off herself and she slept on a mattress on a concrete slab, she said. She passed the time by reading, drawing and watching some TV.
The local school district provided packets of material but no classes. She said that she has not yet worked with a teacher in person or online, and that she meets less regularly with a therapist at Children’s Village than she did at home.
She has since been transferred to a long-term treatment program at Children’s Village, where she has a bit more freedom. Still, she tells her mother, it’s difficult to think about what she’s missing. “Everyone is moving past me now and I’m just here,” she said during the Zoom call.
A Children’s Village case coordinator, listening, tried to be encouraging. “You are doing very well right now,” she said. “Whatever happens, it looks good. You are respectful, you are following the rules.”
Then she told them their time was up.
“Stay strong,” Grace told her mom.
“You stay strong, too,” her mother replied. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
ProPublica is using middle names for the teenager and her mother to protect their identities.
There are unspoken gag orders in child welfare, where, if a parent speaks out, parental rights will be terminated and the child put up for adoption.
She got desensitized by the screams because the screams of children is an industry.
Someone needs to go ask her about her history with the Michigan Catholic Conference and the Archdiocese of Detroit, because Cornelius died by Medicaid Fraud in Child Welfare.
I am quite sure the facilities carry indemnification insurance coverage....and a life insurance policy on Cornelius....
WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) - A civil lawsuit filed Monday following the death of a 16-year-old in a Michigan youth facility says he screamed "I can't breathe" as at least one staff member placed their weight on the Black teen's chest for nearly 10 minutes.
The lawsuit filed in Kalamazoo County Circuit Court names Lakeside Academy in Kalamazoo and Sequel Youth and Family Services as defendants.
Cornelius Fredericks died May 1 after going into cardiac arrest April 29. At the time, authorities said he was being restrained by staff after throwing a sandwich.
His death came nearly a month before George Floyd died May 25 in Minneapolis with a white police officer's knee pressing his neck to the ground.
Floyd's dying words, "I can't breathe," have become a rallying call for people protesting police violence against Black people and racial injustice during demonstrations across the U.S.
"The excessive use of restraints and the lack of concern for Cornelius's life draw an eerily similar comparison to that of George Floyd's death," according to the lawsuit, which alleges negligence and says Lakeside staff improperly and wrongfully used restraints on Fredericks.
Authorities have not provided details of the race of the staff member or members involved.
"Video from Lakeside Academy even shows a staff member placing his/her weight directly on Cornelius's chest for nearly ten minutes as Cornelius lost consciousness," the lawsuit states. "Cornelius's scream of `I can't breathe' was not enough to get the staff members to stop the excessive restraint."
Detroit attorney Jon Marko, who filed the civil rights lawsuit, said he has yet to view the video, but that he spoke with the mother of another child in the facility.
That child "claims to have heard Cornelius scream `I can't breathe,"' Marko said, adding that a state Health and Human Services Department report confirmed that account.
The lawsuit seeks damages allowed under the Michigan Wrongful Death Act. No financial amount was specified.
The Associated Press left a message Monday seeking comment from Lakeside Academy.
Sequel Youth and Family Services told The AP in an email that it cannot comment on pending legal matters, but that it has terminated all staff involved and removed the former executive director of Lakeside.
"We have been in regular contact with law enforcement and state officials to help ensure justice is served and have accelerated the work that was already underway across our organization to move to a restraint-free model of care," the company said. "We take our obligation to meet the significant behavioral health needs of all our students incredibly seriously and remain focused on our mission of providing the absolute best care and treatment possible."
The foster care system or parents placed youths in Lakeside Academy, a residential treatment facility about 140 miles west of Detroit, to receive behavioral health services after being abused or neglected.
Fredericks was a ward of the state, Marko told reporters Monday.
His aunt, Tenia Goshay, is named in the lawsuit as the representative of Fredericks' estate. The teen's mother is dead. His father and rest of the family were not in a position to care for him, Marko said.
Fredericks had been at Lakeside Academy about two years, Goshay told reporters.
"I want to know what happened to my nephew," she said.
The state last week terminated its contracts with Lakeside for youth in Michigan's foster care and juvenile justice systems and said all 125 youth at Lakeside were placed in other "settings based on their individual needs."
The facility also had its license to operate suspended.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has told the department to cut ties with Sequel Youth and Family Services, which provided staffing to Lakeside Academy.
After Fredericks' death, Lakeside Academy officials said what happened didn't reflect the institution's mission to "serve and care for our clients with excellence."
But Michigan's Health and Human Services department has conducted more than 30 investigations since 2016 on maintenance, staff qualifications, discipline, behavior management, resident restraint and staff sufficiency at Lakeside Academy, the lawsuit said.
Six months prior to Fredericks' death there were six separate violations pertaining to improper use by staff of deescalation techniques, including improper restraints, according to the lawsuit, and at least eight employees had been fired since 2016 due to improper use of restraints, failure to use proper deescalation techniques or improperly supervising youth.
Michigan Health and Human Services officials have said an investigation of the for-profit academy found 10 licensing violations, including a failure to follow rules related to resident restraint and discipline.
LANSING, Mich. — Prompted by the death of a teen who was wrongly restrained by staff, a Michigan facility for teenagers with behavioral problems on Thursday lost its contract with the state to care for youth in the state’s foster care and juvenile justice systems and its license to operate.
The termination of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ contract with Lakeside Academy in Kalamazoo came in the wake of the death last month of Cornelius Frederick. The 16-year-old went into cardiac arrest while being restrained on April 29 by Lakeside Academy staff. He died May 1. At the time, authorities said the teen was being restrained by staff after he threw a sandwich.
In announcing the termination of its contract and suspension of the operating license, Health and Human Services said an investigation of the for-profit Lakeside Academy found 10 licensing violations, including a failure to follow rules related to resident restraint and discipline. The agency contends the revocation of the license of a child caring institution is rare and occurs when there are serious licensing violations that make closure necessary to protect children.
Lakeside Academy officials did not immediately return calls for comment.
“MDHHS continues to mourn the loss of this young man’s life, which came needlessly to an end at the hands of those meant to care for him” said JooYeun Chang, executive director of the MDHHS Children’s Services Agency, in a prepared statement. “We are committed to protecting children and will not accept the completely unnecessary death of a youth who is deprived of the opportunity to grow up, complete his education, begin a career, and start a family.”
Kalamazoo County Prosecuting Attorney Jeff Getting said Thursday his office is reviewing completed investigations to determine if criminal charges are authorized in Frederick’s death.
"If charges are brought, my office will be prosecuting the cases,’’ Getting said.
At the time of Frederick’s death, Lakeside Academy officials said in a statement the incident didn’t reflect the institution’s mission to ``serve and care for our clients with excellence.”
However, Assistant Chief David Boysen of the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety has said in the weeks leading up to Frederick’s death there were numerous calls for false fire alarms, runaway students and assaults. In addition, three chaotic days followed the boy’s death, as students fought and fled the facility.
Just before Health and Human Services announced its moves, the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis called for Hennepin County, Minnesota, to stop placing children in Lakeside Academy for juvenile delinquency matters.
The county removed all Minnesota children from the facility after Frederick's death. However, center officials said that was is enough. They contend it is time to end the practice of removing children from local communities and confining them in correction facilities "under the pretense of providing therapeutic treatment."
In the weeks leading up to the incident, Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety received an increase of calls for false fire alarms, runaway students and assaults, Assistant Chief David Boysen said.
By Order of the Highest Authority, in preparation for the rollout, I have been instructed to close out the "Cocktails & Popcorn" Phase and proceed to the final battle ground to find out who are the ones to define the maximization of revenues by re-animating the residuals of the peculiar institution in claiming mastery of the legal arguments for parental rights, but in this instance, these are corporate parental rights.
Yes, the "Legal Geniuses" (trademark pending) are launching Foster Care 2.0, where you will soon need a license to give birth, for the goods of the birth belong to the foreign corporations.
Marcia Lowry seems to no longer be with Children's Rights, which I still take severe issue with the groundbreaking attorney fees awarded by Nancy Edmunds almost 10 years ago inn Michigan, where the case continues to linger in a perpetual state of attorney fee billing and SACWIS improvements, on top of more improvements, because she has started up a new gig.
Marcia Robinson Lowry is the Founder and Executive Director of A Better Childhood. Ms. Lowry is the pioneering architect of the body of law that protects the country’s most vulnerable children. Her work sheds light on the deficiencies of our country’s long-unaccountable child welfare systems. Using the power of the courts, her work is focused on developing and implementing realistic, long-term solutions to ensure that abused and neglected children have a chance for a better childhood.
Ms. Lowry created ABC in 2014 to develop new and innovative approaches to helping children who have been left to languish and suffer. In so doing, she continues her career-long advocacy for children. Before creating ABC, Ms. Lowry served as Founder and Executive Director of Children’s Rights for almost twenty years. She previously was the director of the Children’s Rights Projects of the New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Collaborating with policy analysts, experts, local organizations and government officials, Ms. Lowry leverages the justice system to reform child welfare programs. As the lead lawyer in class-action cases in eighteen jurisdictions across the country, Ms. Lowry’s work has improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. Currently, she is active in reform efforts in New York City, Texas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, the District of Columbia and New Jersey. Her lawsuits lead to increased oversight of child welfare agencies and influence multiple jurisdictions’ allocations of billions of dollars. Most importantly, her advocacy results in better outcomes for children and families. Obviously, this is a blatant lie considering the fact that the Michigan case is still lingering and all of her other initiatives at Children's Rights never, ever gave any resolution to the children who were drugged, beaten, raped, attempted suicide and successfully attempted suicide, and victims of child trafficking.
FUN FACT! NOT ONE FOSTER CHILD HAS EVER BEEN AWARDED A PENNY FOR BEING A VICTIM OF DRUGGING AS LAB RATS, BEATINGS, RAPE, TORTURE FROM CHILDREN'S RIGHTS LAWSUITS
So, now comes the licensing for parental rights as parents being relatives of the child who is under the legal aegis of the state, where guardianship is transferred to the corporate parent through human asset management NGOs for the forfeiting of the children's legacies to be loaded up on their foreign corporate UCC cargo ship, filled lots and lots of children's trust funds from stealin' from Medicaid.
The battle for control of the residuals of the peculiar institution is in full force in the courts, but in this instance, since A Better Childhood, a foreign corporation registered as a domestic nonprofit under a fictitious name, is out Chappaqua, New York, registered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that started out Florida.
Selected Entity Name: A BETTER CHILDHOOD, INC.
Selected Entity Status Information
Current Entity Name:A BETTER CHILDHOOD, INC.
DOS ID #:4637882
Initial DOS Filing Date:SEPTEMBER 17, 2014
County:WESTCHESTER
Jurisdiction:NEW YORK
Entity Type:DOMESTIC NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION
Current Entity Status:ACTIVE
Selected Entity Address Information
DOS Process (Address to which DOS will mail process if accepted on behalf of the entity)
A BETTER CHILDHOOD, INC.
C/O FREDERIC DORWART, LAWYERS
124 EAST FOURTH STREET
This office does not record information regarding the names and addresses of officers, shareholders or directors of nonprofessional corporations except the chief executive officer, if provided, which would be listed above. Professional corporations must include the name(s) and address(es) of the initial officers, directors, and shareholders in the initial certificate of incorporation, however this information is not recorded and only available by viewing the certificate.
*Stock Information
# of SharesType of Stock$ Value per Share No Information Available
*Stock information is applicable to domestic business corporations.
Name History
Filing DateName TypeEntity Name
SEP 17, 2014ActualA BETTER CHILDHOOD, INC.
A Fictitious name must be used when the Actual name of a foreign entity is unavailable for use in New York State. The entity must use the fictitious name when conducting its activities or business in New York State.
NOTE: New York State does not issue organizational identification numbers.
It seems Marcia Lowry is the only paid employee at $200,000 a year to sue the states for the purposes of injecting another layer of predatory administrative services, in what looks like legal move to force the creation of their latest and greatest solution to procure contracts, probably for ABC, for the child welfare system.
In this instance, I see the next trend in privatization of parental rights in the form of parental licensing for the acquisition of goods, or rather human assets.
I also see Hillary Clinton because she renewed her law license.
Charleston — Advocates filed a class action lawsuit against West Virginia officials Tuesday, alleging that while the state is quick to terminate parental rights, it doesn't have adequate foster families and adoptive homes in which to place those children. Often, children sleep in hotel rooms or in DHHR offices.
In turn, the state's child welfare system is putting about 7,000 foster children at heightened risk of someday experiencing homelessness, mental health problems, incarceration and addiction, according to the lawsuit, which advocates said they planned to file at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday in the Huntington Division of the Southern District of West Virginia.
A Better Childhood, a national nonprofit advocacy group that wages court battles on behalf of children; Disability Rights of West Virginia, a federally funded nonprofit; and the West Virginia law firm Shaffer and Shaffer allege that West Virginia's Department of Health and Human Resources has "repeatedly failed the children they are charged with protecting."
Plaintiffs alleged that without adequate suitable homes, DHHR segregates children in institutions, lodges them in temporary shelter care, places them in overcrowded foster care homes, or places them in poorly screened kinship foster homes.
"We're not seeking money damages," said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of A Better Childhood. "We're seeking for things to change going forward – that the government must take care of these kids."
The lawsuit names Gov. Jim Justice, DHHR Cabinet Secretary Bill Crouch, DHHR Deputy Secretary Jeremiah Samples, and DHHR Commissioner of the Bureau for Children and Families Linda Watts as defendants. Plaintiffs filed the lawsuit "on behalf of all children who are now, or will be, in the custody of DHHR."
DHHR officials were not aware of the lawsuit Monday.
DHHR officials have said that West Virginia has about 7,000 kids in state custody, and that the number has increased by 67 percent since 2013. During that time, the number increased nationally by 11 percent, according to DHHR.
DHHR officials have publicly said the state's child welfare system was overwhelmed by the addiction epidemic. But according to the lawsuit, the state's child welfare system was "already strained and mismanaged."
"The drug epidemic was not the root of the problem but rather toppled an already fractured system," the lawsuit states. "The public statements display a lack of accountability but nonetheless, clearly acknowledge that the system is in fact in crisis."
The lawsuit says that recruiting foster families is difficult in the state because "DHHR caseworkers routinely exclude foster parents from MDT meetings, verbally threaten to remove children from foster parents’ care when they engage in any sort of advocacy that challenges the caseworkers’ orders, are difficult to contact in crisis situations (such as when consent is needed for medical or behavioral health care), and often speak disrespectfully towards foster parents." MDT meetings are multi-disciplinary team meetings, where case workers, prosecuting attorneys, parents, lawyers and others meet to address familial problems that led to abuse and neglect.
Some foster parents are also selective about the children they will accept.
The lawsuit states that DHHR has "an insufficient placement array, an insufficient number of placement resources, and an insufficient number of homes that are willing to accept older children, children with severe behavioral issues, and large sibling groups."
Meanwhile, West Virginia is quick to terminate parental rights, frequently within months after the child is placed with a foster family, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states that in 2013, there were 1,040 terminations, and 1,988 in 2017.
Meanwhile, the number of adoptions in the state has not kept up, according to the lawsuit, "leading to more children becoming legal orphans, frequently left in institutional settings."
In turn, children are routinely shuffled "from temporary placement to temporary placement, disregarding their unique needs," according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states that frequent moves while in foster care are associated with maltreatment, poorer educational outcomes and increased mental health issues.
Adolescent children are at higher risk of substance abuse, juvenile arrests and failing out of school, according to the lawsuit.
One 11-year-old girl, with Down syndrome, was removed from her parents after they were arrested for habitually failing to send her to school. She was placed with an aunt, then in two foster homes. Now, state officials plan to send her to The Potomac Center in Romney, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says that in 2017, "formal allegations were filed against the facility claiming that, among other abuses, the disabled residents did not receive the services the facility claimed to offer and they failed to hire, train and supervise their employees adequately.
"Separately, as a result of an ongoing criminal investigation, state police have claimed that Potomac Center staff abused 12 children, ages seven to 17, subjecting them to physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, including inhumane and degrading treatment by some employees of the Potomac Center, Inc. facility," the lawsuit states.
Four senior administrators were charged with failing to report the abuse.
In another case, a boy was sent from living with his abusive mother to his abusive aunt's, according to the lawsuit. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Plaintiffs say that due to the increase in foster children, state officials are placing more children in kinship care, meaning in the care of a relative. About half are in kinship care.
But according to the lawsuit, those families don't receive the $600 monthly payment that certified families do, and DHHR officials dissuade them from becoming certified. Because they aren't certified, their homes are not subject to the same safety regulations, the lawsuit says.
"Upon information and belief, DHHR regularly discourages kinship caregivers from seeking foster home certification by either failing to inform them of their option to become certified, or by 'warning' them that they will likely not meet the certification requirements and may instead risk losing the foster children if they seek certification," the lawsuit states.
Nearly 20 percent aren't licensed, according to the lawsuit.
"Those are bad numbers," said Robinson Lowry. "They're very bad numbers and we really do think something needs to be done and probably nothing's going to be done unless this lawsuit does it."
Plaintiffs are also suing about over-reliance on out-of-state facilities. The lawsuit states that DHHR is spending approximately $41,181,775 per year to place children in out-of-state congregate care facilities "that are too frequently the subject of investigations that confirm rampant sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at the hands of employees who are undertrained and not properly screened."
In 2015, the Department of Justice sent then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin a letter, stating that West Virginia was keeping too many kids with serious mental health problems far from their homes, in residential facilities and psychiatric hospitals, often out of state. That violated a U.S. Supreme Court decision that found segregation of people with disabilities is discrimination.
In May of this year, state and federal officials announced they had reached a memorandum of understanding, and that West Virginia officials had agreed to expand services meant to keep those children at home and in care in their own communities.
According to the agreement, West Virginia has agreed to begin screening children on Medicaid, those who are in the care of the state, including foster children, and those who reside in juvenile justice facilities, to determine whether the new services could be of help. State officials would then offer new services covered by Medicaid, including a mobile crisis team, and in-home visits by mental health care providers.
Plaintiffs argue that a goal, of a 25 percent reduction of the June 2015 number of children in residential placement by 2022, is too low, and that the MOU is "self-enforcing" with "little to no oversight."
They want DHHR to contract with an outside entity to conduct a needs assessment of the state's foster care system. They also want DHHR to develop a plan for ensuring CPS workers don't handle more than 15 cases, that DHHR keeps written plans for each child with the goal of finding that child a permanent home or be reunited with his or her family, that kinship families are safe and properly trained, and to increase the availability of community-based mental health care for children.
The lawsuit also states that DHHR doesn't employ enough child welfare workers, that it fails to "adequately" screen their applicants for criminal backgrounds or drug use, and experiences high turn-over. Plaintiffs say that a 2013 audit recommended exit interviews to reduce turn-over, but DHHR ignored that recommendation.
In January 2019, 213 positions were vacant, amounting to a 45 percent vacancy rate among caseworkers, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states that while The Child Welfare League of America, a coalition of private and public agencies that develops child welfare policies, recommends CPS workers shouldn't handle more than 12 to 15 clients at a time, it "is not uncommon" for West Virginia CPS workers to handle 50 cases.
Inadequate staffing results in "less time to interact with children, families, and service providers or to provide meaningful and appropriate case plans, necessary services, and timely casework and decision-making around issues such as permanency planning," the lawsuit states.
Case workers also fail to prepare foster children for adult life, according to the lawsuit, putting them at higher risk of premature pregnancy and incarceration.
"Rather, caseworkers attempt to plan for the transition out of foster care when youth are on the verge of aging out, sometimes as late as weeks before a teen’s 18th birthday," the lawsuit states. "Without any plan in place, young people are being dropped off at homeless shelters."
- Virginia - Boydton - Microsoft Corporation
