Child Services Splits American Families Daily but Media, Congress Totally Silent
Any political issue in which children are involved is, by its very nature, a volatile one. Children, after all, are defenseless — they can’t vote, they need some sort of guardianship to protect and guide them, and it’s usually in the interests of the state that (if at all possible) that the guardianship belong to their parents.
Aside from the current, incessant media focus on illegal immigrants at the southern border being separated from their children (or, at least, children professing to be theirs), the mere fact that children are involved is enough to make the issue contentious — contentious enough to dominate news coverage for nearly a month.
Yet, what about the children who are split from their family by child protective services agencies? There aren’t any marches for them, no representatives holding Father’s Day news conferences in detention centers. What about them?
That’s the question PJ Media’s Megan Fox posed in a piece published on Saturday. It’s something that goes underreported — and often involves individuals who haven’t even committed a crime.
“Most anyone who has been visited by Child Protective Services can testify to the absolute terror that the state can inflict on a family for very little or no reason at all,” Fox wrote.
If you don’t believe her, take the case of Michael Chambers.
“Right now in the state of Mississippi, Michael Chambers is missing his little girl, Belle. When Belle was around two years old, her mother abandoned her in the care of her grandmother. Chambers took custody of her after that,” Fox wrote.
“Lacking resources and the ability to track down his ex to serve her with custody papers, Chambers just took care of his daughter like a father should. Like many single parents, personal disputes often result in one parent harassing the other through any means possible. Belle’s mother would occasionally call Chambers and shortly after the calls CPS would show up knocking on his door. The social workers where he lived understood the nature of the calls but when he moved to Warren County, things changed.”
That’s when a social worker named Kyra Reed (who also goes by Kyra Carson) got involved with his case. She showed up at his house, knocked on his door, and demanded to be admitted without any warrant.
“She didn’t tell me what I was accused of and demanded to interview my 6-year-old daughter without my presence,” Chambers said, according to Fox.
“I told her that was unacceptable, but she was more than welcome to talk to her with me there without me interfering. She seemed perturbed, but accepted that. She then told me she wanted to search my house.
“I told her I had no problem with that, but wanted her to get a court order or a warrant as I am a bit of a constitutionalist and would just feel better having that respected. She was immediately angry. She hopped in her car without another word and drove off.”
Things got worse from there, including several other visits from CPS.
“The next day, I got my daughter early from school and went to the CPS office with her to speak to a supervisor to make sure they understood that I wasn’t hiding or attempting elusiveness of any sort,” Chambers said. “I allowed the supervisor to look her over and explained my concerns about my insistence on a warrant before the search. I was told that the warrant wasn’t a problem to get and that they would do that so we could close the case and finish out the interaction.”
Reed made several more visits to the Chambers’ home, including one with police officers, demanding entry. Each time, Chambers denied her. It got to the point that Reed threatened to take away his daughter if he didn’t give up his Fourth Amendment rights and concede to a search of his premises.
Then he went to court and things got worse.
“Michael Chambers works four jobs to keep his child clothed and fed. He is exactly the type of person this law terrorizes,” Fox wrote. “He can’t afford decent legal representation. His first lawyer never even gave the judge evidence that CPS appeared to have lied in court about Chambers’ behavior.
“On his first court date, CPS claimed that he had gone to Belle’s school and caused a scene, screaming, ‘I love Hitler!’ The judge did not ask for evidence of this disturbance, but removed the child from his care until further court appearances. Chambers denies ever doing anything like this. In fact, he investigated this alleged incident himself and the school could produce no records of it.”
A FOIA request by PJ Media couldn’t turn up any information that proved the incident happened, either. And, even though the sheriff of Warren County, Mississippi, wrote a letter that confirmed no such incident was ever reported, it was never given to the judge.
“Even more mind-blowing, the judge, John Price, dismissed all charges of abuse and neglect against Michael Chambers in a subsequent hearing but placed Bell with her mother, whom she has not seen in four years, with no explanation or investigation into her suitability as a parent,” Fox wrote. “Lawyers involved in the case said they had never seen any action like it and that the judge’s order might even be illegal.”
And, after that, “Chambers’ daughter was taken on false premises without cause, put into a foster home that caused her great distress, and then placed in the care of a stranger with a history of abandoning her. She has been taken out of state by her mother and neither the judge nor CPS arranged for any visitation or even a way for Chambers to contact her. Chambers has spent his last dime on the legal battles so far and is struggling to come up with more so he can continue to try to recover his child.”
This is the child separation that the nanny state does every day. Mind you, this is an American citizen who has done nothing wrong — and yet, this is how he’s treated by our courts. Before we go into conniptions over parents who have brought their children on an arduous trek to reach the United States being separated from the kids they subjected to horrors, perhaps it would be well to remind ourselves of this and how much attention it’s getting.
Apparently, when big government takes away your kid, it’s simply not on the media’s radar.
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