4-year-old Hunter Payton died in foster care from a fractured skull. The foster parent was later charged with murder. Image source from Wave 3 News video.

by Health Impact News/Medicalkidnap.com staff

The corruption in Kentucky Child Protection Services and Foster Care has been reported on extensively here at Health Impact News since 2015. See:

Child Trafficking Reported in Kentucky as “One of the Most Corrupt States in the Country”

A new report aired on Wave 3 News by investigative journalist John Boel reveals that corruption in the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services is apparently ongoing, as one child was allegedly murdered by his foster parent after being taken away from his family, and another foster parent is blowing the whistle on the abuses of Kentucky foster care where children go missing due to lack of oversight.

The current investigation began in 2017, when 4-year-old Hunter Payton died in foster care, and his biological parents questioned the story put forward as to the cause of his death, which was reported to be an accident.

“They told us it was an ‘unlikely’ injury,” Hunter’s mother April Payton said. “It doesn’t happen. Something hit him hard.”

He had only been in foster care for 3 months. During that time, the parents allegedly complained to the state about bruising on their son, and they were apparently told several different stories about how he died in an accidental fall.

As John Boel reports:

Months after our report, Billy Embry-Martin, 33, was charged with murder.

The lawsuit accuses him and his husband, Travis Embry-Martin, of “violent punishment, physical abuse and denial of food.”

Billy Embry-Martin is free on bond awaiting a December trial on the murder charge.

Further Investigation Reveals Kentucky Foster Care System is “Corrupt and Incompetent”

The Payton family before Hunter’s death. Image source courtesy of Wave 3 News.

In another report by John Boel published in September, 2018, attorney Ron Hines spoke out against Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services:

“The Cabinet for families and children, the setup, is corrupt and incompetent,” attorney Ron Hines said. “It’s no longer helping children, and just getting them a better jump start in life, nothing like that anymore. It’s a for-profit scheme.”

Attorney Hines stated that the problem stems from the State of Kentucky paying a private company to place children in foster homes:

When Hines looked into it and filed a wrongful death lawsuit, he found the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services paying a private company to place children in foster homes. Private companies place about half of the children in state care into foster homes.

“Simply for finding people who want to be foster parents, these private firms are making so many dollars per head per kid, so it’s a vicious cycle,” Hines said. “The more kids, the more money. That’s why it’s run rampant. That’s why the courts are swamped.”

Foster Parent Blows Whistle

Foster Parent Kim Campbell. Image courtesy Wave 3.

Next in John Boel’s investigation, he interviewed Kim Campbell, a Kentucky foster parent who is enraged over the practices of the system that is killing and harming children:

“When these things happen, kids get lost, and they get hurt, they get killed, everybody scratches their head and says we don’t know how it happened,” foster parent Kim Campbell said. “It starts like this.”

An outraged Campbell said she now understands how tragedies happen in Kentucky’s foster care system. Her situation has nothing to do with privatization. She’s been dealing with the same state government agency that’s been placing foster children for decades. She brought us a pile of documentation to show what happened after she took emergency placement of a foster child on Feb. 16.

“The problem is, they had never met us,” Campbell said. “They never laid eyes on us. And I know they’re supposed to come meet us to make sure we’re an approved home.”

Two weeks after Campbell and her husband had taken in a foster child, a state worker wrote: “I don’t even have you listed as having a placement.”

Five weeks and multiple emails after taking the teen the Campbells complained, “she has yet to be placed with us from an official standpoint. We have no info on her. We have no medical card.”

“We could have been anybody,” Campbell said. “We could’ve been very bad people. We could’ve done harm to her. We could have claimed she ran away, they wouldn’t have known, they didn’t lay eyes on her.”

At the 6 week mark Campbell complained, “If we were showing as unapproved in the system from the get go, why were we not contacted immediately?”

At the 2 month mark she wrote the state, “I have still never received any information on the child from the worker or her supervisor.”

“We had moved,” Campbell said. “They didn’t know where we were. We told them we were moving and gave our address but they told my husband when they called him that we weren’t even in the system as being an approved home. So if we’re not in an approved home, why do we have your child for two months that you have not even come out to see?” (Source.)

Reporter John Boel has been reporting on the corruption in Kentucky CPS and Foster Care for over 10 years, and yet nothing seems to have changed. Here are some of his past investigations:

Whistleblowers Reveal CPS Child Kidnappings in Kentucky Adoption Business

Is Kentucky The Most Corrupt State in the Country Trafficking Children Through Child “Protection” Services?

More on Kentucky corruption in kidnapping children:

Child Trafficking Reported in Kentucky as “One of the Most Corrupt States in the Country”

Kentucky is Being Investigated for Corruption: Will the State’s Sordid History of Legal Kidnapping Finally be Punished?

Destroying Families in Kentucky via State-sponsored Child Trafficking: United We Stand, Divided We Fall

Medical Kidnapping in Kentucky: Mother Coerced to Give Up Daughter to Adoption in Order to Keep Son

Kentucky Baby Medically Kidnapped Along with Siblings and Forced on to Formula

Pregnant Homeschool Mom Assaulted by Sheriff as CPS Kidnaps Her Kids in Kentucky

Mom Speaks Out on Corrupt Kentucky Child “Protection” System that Destroyed her Family

Kentucky Parents Found Not Guilty of Charges in Criminal Court but Family Court Refuses to Return Children

Kentucky Family Falsely Accused of Child Abuse – Children Medically Kidnapped to Cover Corruption

1-Hour Old Newborn Baby Kidnapped at Kentucky Hospital because Parents Refused to Take Parenting Classes

Lexington KY Social Worker Caught Lying – Charged with “Misconduct”

Connie Reguli spoke out for families at a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on September 10, 2018. Photo by Freedom Public Press.

Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

Connie Reguli is one of the most prominent legal voices in the family rights movement. The Tennessee attorney is recognized for her tenacity in fighting for families whose children have been unjustly taken from them by Child Protective Services. She has represented several Tennessee Medical Kidnap families, including the Turner family, Whitney Manning‘s family, and Matthew Marble.

Besides litigating cases involving family members seized by Child and Adult Protective Services, Connie travels around the country educating parents and activists on how to fight back when overzealous agencies seize their children. Her grassroots Family Forward Project Facebook group has over 11,000 members.

Connie Reguli was recently part of a team of activists and professionals who gathered in Washington DC on September 11, 2018, to participate in an Educational Panel put together by 4 the Children USA. The event was live-streamed to hundreds of thousands of viewers, including District Attorneys’ offices from several states according to event founder Robert Slaven.

Kathleen Arthur, Connie Reguli, Terri LaPoint, and Jennifer Winn on the way to the Educational Panels in Washington D.C. September 11, 2018.

Connie Reguli was inspired to speak from the heart in the event, after passing out copies of her original speech to the audience. Connie has graciously given permission for Health Impact News to publish the written speech in its entirety.

She addresses the financial incentives for states to take children from their families, made possible by federal legislation. The Family First Act was passed as a part of President Trump’s Omnibus Budget Act in February 2018 and is set to go into effect on October 1. Connie explains important issues that still must be addressed legislatively.

In her oral speech, she explains some of the difficulties that parents face when they go to family court, which is very different from criminal court. After equipping parents with vital information, she turns to advocates, discussing how to advocate effectively, pointing out areas that need to brought to the attention of legislators.

Here is the speech she gave at the event, followed by her written speech:

September 2018 – Operational Review Family First Preservation and Services Act in February 2018 (FFPSA) Adoption and Safe Families Act 1997 (ASFA)

by Connie Reguli

Our country is collapsing in on itself, in part because of the loss of family integrity and our inability to provide for child safety. The forty-year social experiment initiated by the Mondale Act [the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA)] in 1974 has failed.

The layers of legislation cast on the American public in the name of the best interest of the child and promoted with the belief that every family needs a government (i.e. It Takes a Village) has backfired.

Family integrity is imploding at the hands of an overzealous government that chose to financially incentivize removing children from their less than perfect homes and placing them into the homes of strangers paid by federal and state tax dollars.

The aggressive legislation surrounding Title IV E and the Adoption and Safe Families Act has evolved into a government sanctioned social engineering project that has broken family ties.

The biological ties that are protected under the Fourteenth Amendment are forever broken with the swipe of a pen by a judge in a courtroom in a merciless act called “termination” of parental rights. It is nothing less than generational genocide.

The Ease with which Government Takes Children From Families

It is hard to imagine in a sophisticated first-world country like the United States that the government officials could walk into your child’s public school, have them removed from their classroom, interviewed by government officials in private (without your knowledge), remove your child from the school, and place them in the home of a stranger all without your knowledge. The reason you ask, maybe you don’t feed your child enough, maybe they missed a few days from school, maybe someone just lied and said you were a drug dealer, and your child could not answer the right questions to exonerate you.

It is hard to imagine in a sophisticated first-world country that a new born baby could be stripped from his mother’s arms in a hospital because the Mother had one positive test for opiates during pregnancy, even though there was no showing of drugs in the Mother or the child at birth and there is no other evidence of child abuse or neglect.

It is hard to imagine in a sophisticated first-world country that a child could be locked in a hospital with a rare and untreated disease and separated from her entire family simply because her parents wanted to take her for a second medical opinion.

Little Grace Beabout was taken for her family when her parents simply wanted a second opinion before the hospital removed their baby’s kidney. Photo provided by Beabout family. See their story here.

This is the state of our nation and the child welfare system in the United States.

It was shameful in the 1980s when state agencies could not keep track of children placed in state-operated foster homes and children lingered for years with no family and no finality. Several states were faced with class action lawsuits that placed the states under long term consent decrees.

Multi-Billion Dollar, For-Profit Industry

The privatization of government functions, i.e. the military and the prison system, soon expanded to foster care and child welfare.

Children removed from their parents are the commodity in this for-profit, $18 billion foster care industry.

In a blink of an eye, the states were swept with foster care private contractors, and the state all but relinquished direct state foster care programs. Now the Title IV E funds, intended to protect children, necessitate that the state maintain a quota of children under government control to satisfy their contractual relationships.

It was the perfect storm for a new provision in law to erupt.

Brilliant legislators in the Clinton era designed and passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997. The goal was to provide permanency for children.

To do so, the federal government decided that a financial incentive program to the states and the foster-to-adopt parents would move children out of the foster care system into permanent placement.

The states were provided a $6,000 bonus check for each child adopted to strangers. The foster parents who adopted were provided bonuses for clothing, tax incentives, and a monthly stipend on the children for the remainder of their minority. This was 1997.

Today, twenty years later, this financial program drives child welfare agencies to aggressively remove children from homes, place them into the homes of strangers, and adopt them out, changing their lives forever.

Robbing children of their heritage. Refusing to reunify the children with parents. Refusing to place the children with relatives.

The entitlement program under ASFA now exceeds the foster care maintenance programs. When you rob a child of their heritage, you have changed them forever.

Crimes Against Humanity

America has a dismal history of crimes against humanity and causing generational destruction.

Slave children were ripped from their families from the beginning of our nation until the civil war; children were picked up off the streets of New York and placed on trains to the Midwest where they were randomly taken in by strangers from 1850 to 1910; indigenous children were removed from their tribal homes and forced into the east coast boarding schools for fifty years; and children were stripped from unwed mothers at birth until 1950.

As many as a quarter of a million children were rounded up by Charles Loring Brace, founder of the NY Children’s Aid Society. Brace “helped” the poor immigrant children by shipping them cross country on “orphan trains” to be given to strangers. Photo source.

See:

The U.S. Foster Care System: Modern Day Slavery and Child Trafficking

Persons considered “imbeciles” were subject to involuntary sterilization.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated in his 1927 opinion that these persons should not be allowed to sap the resources of society and the sterilization of an imbecile person was no greater a sacrifice for society than compelling a vaccine.

As an attorney working in criminal law and family courts for 24 years, I can tell you that parents have fewer rights than criminals.

Parents and children are denied due process, they are subjected to secret courts, non-disclosed reports, massive attack by government social workers, and loss of the constitutionally-protected right to parent.

Children are stripped of their freedom to associate with their family members and family integrity protected under the 14th Amendment.

Government Funding Puts a Price on Children’s Heads

The state agencies operate with conflicting roles and financially incentivized motives. Every state agency was created under the public policy of providing services to families, providing safety for children, and reunifying families.

In addition, they serve to prosecute parents and sever their parental rights.

The funding is directed at foster care and rehoming children. There can be no argument that there is a price tag on the head of every child entering the child welfare system.

See:

Child Kidnapping and Trafficking: A Lucrative U.S. Business Funded by Taxpayers

The system has become so intent on creating cash flow on children through forced adoption that the agencies focus on “adoptable children,” and those in need of rescue from drug ridden homes or long-term abuse are overlooked as children too damaged for adoption.

You see, this system has been in place long enough now that they know that the “damaged” children cause too great a strain on the system. They require too many services; the parents are ill-equipped to deal with children with a history of trauma; and many end up back in state’s care.

New Law: “Families First”

We now have the Families First Prevention and Services Act of 2018 which passed in the budget omnibus bill. Most legislators probably do not even know what is in it.

I have read it. It was intended to redirect funds from the federal government away from foster care and into programs to prevent removal from a family.

Here is the first problem. Number one, it is optional for the States. Legislators in Washington D.C. cannot be so blind to not understand that the private foster care industry will oppose any paradigm shift on how we handle reports of abuse and neglect.

There are after all, 114 registered lobbyists in D.C. for “foster care.”

The corporations are huge. Look up Providence, Omni, Eckerd, Youth Villages, and the multiple “church-based” foster care companies.

Not only do they contract to provide foster care, they are now contracting to provide the “services” for family reunification. This is a serious and intolerable conflict of interest.

Why would you seek to restore a family and return a child to his home, when it means you lose a stable monthly income while the child is in foster care?

The private agencies then contract with mental health contractors who provide substandard care and always report that the family is “not ready” for reunification for any number of reasons.

Not only is FFPSA optional, it provides little incentive to shift the focus to family stability. If you do not think that family stability is important in tackling a variety of other social issues, like substance abuse, poverty, and substandard education, you are wearing blinders.

Family stability has been the backbone of our Christian nation for years. Since the sixties, divorces, unwed mothers, teenage pregnancies, and opioid addiction have skyrocketed. If one were to truly assess the underlying factors in these crises, surely family disintegration would be at the top.

The current Achilles heel of the FFPSA is the continuation of ASFA, the Adoption and Safe Families Act. So long as the states can realize a bonus check for every child adopted through the forced-adoption agenda of the child welfare agencies, prevention services will be met with opposition. The bonus checks must stop NOW.

“Help” from the Predator no Help at All

The conflicts of interest in the agencies and with the state contractor must be prohibited. This will require restructuring the state agencies so that the prosecution of parents remains separate from the agency seeking to rehabilitate families. This is not unlike other government functions.

I served as a District Attorney in my legal career and we always served an antagonistic function to the public defender. We must separate the agencies such that the families can realize a real sense of support.

Now the parents shudder in dealing with the agency because at every stage of the case, they know that the same agency is gathering evidence against them. The same social worker who comes to their home to inspect for safety reasons is likely to be the person who gets on the stand and testifies that the laundry was not done and the home was cluttered, preventing the return of their children.

Connie Reguli speaks to Educational Panel in Washington D.C. Photo by Family Forward Project.

We must prohibit conflicts with the contractors.

Those providing foster care cannot be providing reunification services. There must be antagonism before there can be balance.

We must provide a forum for public comments and feedback on how the agency is doing.

Currently, the public does not participate in any of the reporting functions on the efficiency, competence, and goal achievement of the state workers.

So long as the state agencies are allowed to be their own oversight, the truth will be never be exposed. Although some states provided for the establishment of oversight committees in their formation, none of the states have maintained a true public liaison.

Anonymous reporting must be eliminated.

Sadly, parents are sometimes attacked by spiteful neighbors, ex-spouses, or other ill-intended persons.

Vexatious reports to CPS face no consequences, as opposed to penalties for filing false police reports.

A parent must have the ability to challenge the source of false reports of child abuse.

Finally, FFPSA must be mandatory.

The states must be required to engage in the 12-month program to prevent removal of children where there is no threat of immediate harm and no evidence of abuse. Children are currently removed from their families on mere allegations from anonymous referrals.

We thank you for having a listening ear and look forward to your continued attention on this social welfare crises.

Please follow up with us:

Family Forward Foundation
Familyforwardfoundation.com

Find us on Facebook: Family Forward Project.

Connie Reguli
Family Forward Foundation
1646 Westgate Circle
Brentwood, TN 37027

The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) laid the foundation for families such as Sarah Carter’s to be torn apart. Photo provided by Carter family.

by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

When Child Protective Services (CPS) takes children from a loving, non-abusive family, the parents, and sometimes grandparents, aunts, and uncles, often seek out information about what is happening. Many gravitate toward groups on social media that provide education and support for those fighting CPS for their children.

As the confused parents try to sort out the information and learn how to get their children back, one question dominates their search: How can this happen in America?

It isn’t long before they will hear of ASFA – the Clintons’ Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, which provides billions of federal dollars to states to place children in foster care and adopt them out to strangers. Parents quickly learn that ASFA is one of the most destructive pieces of legislation to ever impact American families. Activists and parents alike are calling for it to be abolished.

However, before there was ASFA, there was CAPTA. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, or “The Mondale Act,” doesn’t receive nearly the attention that ASFA does, yet it is the piece of legislation that established Child Protective Services in all 50 states.

It remains in existence today. It has to be reauthorized periodically. Since its passage, it has been re-approved every 4 to 6 years, with new amendments added each time.

Richard Wexler, the executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, calls CAPTA “the one-stop shop for bad ideas.” In a recent article called, “CAPTA Law Codifies Everything Wrong With How We ‘Fight’ Child Abuse,” Wexler writes:

Since it has to be reauthorized every few years, there are endless opportunities to do further harm by adding new provisions.

Laws and practices regarding child abuse and the protection of children existed long before CAPTA, but there was nothing uniform among all the states before its passage.

For a more detailed look at the history and development of Child Protective Services, see:

From Child Protection to State-sponsored Child Kidnapping: How Did we Get Here?

1960s Pediatrician Brought Child Abuse to Forefront

It was a pediatrician who was one of the first to bring the issue of child abuse into the national spotlight.

Dr. C. Henry Kempe and his colleagues from the University of Colorado School of Medicine published their ground-breaking article, “The Battered-Child Syndrome” in the Journal of the Americana Medical Association (JAMA) in 1962.

The article chronicled some of the same symptoms that Child Abuse Pediatricians today assert are indicators of abuse, symptoms which are sometimes found in real, non-abusive medical conditions that mimic abuse, such as: fractures, subdural hematoma, failure to thrive, and sudden death.

All of these symptoms can occur in medical conditions that are often missed by Child Abuse Pediatricians, such as infantile rickets, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, osteogenesis imperfecta, antacids in pregnancy, pitocin-induced labor, tongue and lip tie, gastrointestinal conditions, and vaccine injury.

Dr. Kempe’s paper led to the establishment of the Kempe Foundation. Photo source.

According to the book, Making an Issue of Child Abuse, by Barbara J. Nelson, JAMA editors made speculations about the frequency of child abuse, saying:

…it is likely that [the battered child syndrome] will be found to be a more frequent cause of death than such well recognized and thoroughly studied diseases as leukemia, cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy.

Nelson says that the editors qualified their comparisons, but:

Politicians and journalists were not always as careful. Official after official and article after article repeated the comparison as though it were fact.

Over the next decade (and since), articles about child abuse became big news. While certainly child abuse existed then and exists now, the numbers may well have been inflated as the cry for legislation grew.

Much as “the opioid epidemic” seems to be continual headline news, child abuse was pounded into the American consciousness in the 60s and 70s in the effort to pass laws and fund agencies to deal with the issue. The non-profit organization Prevent Child Abuse America admitted in a 2003 piece:

It is almost certainly true that the strategies employed so successfully by the child abuse and neglect prevention field to generate media coverage and public awareness in the mid-1970s have resulted in a vicious cycle in which new communications on the issue tends to conform to, and reinforce, the existing frame of reference….

While the establishment of a certain degree of public horror relative to the issue of child abuse and neglect was probably necessary in the early years to create public awareness of the issue, the resulting conceptual model adopted by the public has almost certainly become one of the largest barriers to advancing the issue further in terms of individual behavior change, societal solutions and policy priorities.

Out of this “public horror,” CAPTA was written into law, giving social workers the power to snatch children from their families and ask questions later.

Though CAPTA funding doesn’t reach the levels of ASFA, it still opened the door to federal funding for states to take children and place them into foster care. It was later, with ASFA, that billions of CPS dollars were redirected to the adoption of foster children.

Mandatory Reporting

Wexler points out some of the more harmful provisions of CAPTA:

• CAPTA encourages states to enact mandatory reporting laws requiring certain professionals to report child abuse, despite the fact that there was then — and is now — no evidence that they actually reduce child abuse, and many of those who once championed such laws now have second thoughts. (Source.)

Health Impact News has noted that mandatory reporters often have the idea that they need to report any possible slight sign of abuse “just to be on the safe side” in order to protect their own licences, under the notion that Child Protective Services will investigate the case and that innocent parents will be exonerated.

It is clear from hundreds of cases investigated by Health Impact News that this is not the case.

Any report simply opens the door for CPS social workers to come into a family. If they decide they want to take the child, if they want funding for the children, or if they have an adopter that they want to find a child for, the evidence doesn’t seem to matter.

Though the “Right to Lie” by social workers was struck down last year by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the ruling has had little effect on the day-to-day practice of social workers throughout the country.

See:

Judges Reject Claim That Social Workers Didn’t Know Lying In Court to Remove Children Was Wrong

GALs and CASA Workers – More Harm than Good?

Another provision of CAPTA only “prolongs foster care,” according to Wexler:

CAPTA requires states to appoint either a “guardian ad litem” or a court-appointed special advocate (CASA) in every child welfare case.

CAPTA does not require this person to actually speak up for what the child wants, only for what the guardian or CASA thinks is best.

CAPTA promotes this even though, as Youth Today revealed in 2004, a comprehensive study, commissioned by the National CASA Association itself, found that CASA doesn’t work — indeed, it prolongs foster care.

A comprehensive law review article found that it institutionalizes the racial bias inherent in child welfare. (Source.)

Attorney Lisa Chasteen of Alabama said that the GAL advocates for “the best interest of the child” from the state’s perspective, not the child’s.

Isaiah Rider repeatedly tried to fire his GAL. “She doesn’t represent ME!” He finally was released from Illinois DCFS almost a year after his 18th birthday. Photo provided by family. Story here.

Numerous foster care victims have reported that their GAL or CASA worker did not speak for them at all. Teenagers have told us that some of them failed to report abuse, rape, or molestation that happened to the child in foster homes or group homes.

Though an occasional parent will report a GAL who seems to genuinely care about the truth and the child, most parents tell us that the GALs and CASA workers are adversarial toward them, sometimes accusing them and making up falsehoods about the parents.

CAPTA Secrecy Gives Cover to Corruption

Wexler takes issue with the secrecy of Child Protective Services procedures and dealings:

CAPTA enshrines double standards concerning secrecy.

It requires child welfare agencies to disclose information about child abuse fatalities and near-fatalities as, in fact, they should. But it encourages agencies to keep all their other blunders secret.

That’s because the way to stampede people into supporting tearing apart more families is to publicize the horror stories and hide everything else — so people think the errors go only in one direction. (Source.)

The typical response by CPS and hospitals when we report a story of medical kidnapping is that, “because of confidentiality laws,” CPS or hospitals cannot comment on a particular case.

They frequently imply, and sometimes state outright, that not all of the story is being told. The public is expected to feel sorry for the workers they imply are being unfairly maligned because they aren’t allowed to tell their side of the story.

The truth of the matter is that CPS social workers and attorneys and the Child Abuse Pediatricians do tell their side of the story, in court before the judge, where it truly matters. It is the side of the parents and the evidence of their innocence that is frequently not heard in court.

In order for a journalist to report a story accurately, the allegations by the state must be examined. The medical records and other evidence must also be examined. Because the parents are often not afforded the opportunity for their side to be heard in court, they frequently turn to social media and the media to tell their side of the story and present their evidence.

Because of the twisting of confidentiality laws, any misdeeds by corrupt officials within the Child Protective Services system are shrouded in secrecy and hidden from public view. Whether there are lies, fraud, or mistakes by social workers, attorneys, judges, GALS, doctors, or foster parents, they are kept out of the way of public scrutiny and accountability.

Criminals have more rights than parents. Criminal court is open to the public view, and thus officials are held to a degree of accountability, something that is not found in family or juvenile court. This must change.

CAPTA Provisions that Are Not Being Followed

For all the harm that CAPTA does to families, there are a few notable provisions that parents may not be aware of that stand in favor of families. They are not generally followed, but they are part of the law that is legally supposed to be followed (link to CAPTA):

According to Section 107(a)1 of CAPTA, federal grants are to be made to states to assist in improving “the assessment and investigation of suspected child abuse and neglect cases, including cases of suspected child sexual abuse and exploitation, in a manner that limits additional trauma to the child and the child’s family;” [Emphasis added by HIN].

The way that CPS generally investigates and takes children from their families is undeniably traumatic. According to this law, they are supposed to find a way that limits the trauma. They clearly need to do a better job.

Annalise Rivenburg cries with her mother at Baby Steffen’s funeral. She is still in the hands of Tennessee Child Protective Services. Photo provided by family. Story here.

According to Section 206(5), any state receiving money under CAPTA is supposed to provide reports to the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the state CPS performance measures, including this:

They “shall demonstrate a high level of satisfaction among families who have used the services of the community-based and prevention-focused programs and activities designed to strengthen and support families to prevent child abuse and neglect;”

Based on the reports of many hundreds of families who have fallen victim to the system, we conclude that there is not a high level of satisfaction.

The opposite is, in fact, true. There is a great deal of frustration and anger at the perceived injustice to their families, who do not feel strengthened or supported at all.

They feel attacked, ripped apart, hopeless, and destroyed. Some of them tragically have committed suicide. The trauma goes deep, ripping apart generations.

The Case Plan

Parents who take to social media at the beginning of CPS involvement or interference in their family are frequently admonished, “Don’t sign anything!”

Invariably, they find themselves being pressured to sign a case plan or safety plan of some type when the social worker comes. Some social workers have been known to deceive parents and tell them that they aren’t agreeing to anything at all, that they are just signing that they are “present.”

In reality, they are signing a contract with the state. If they don’t follow the plan to the letter, their parental rights may be terminated, no matter what the original allegations were.

Section 101 of CAPTA makes it clear that the state will not release funds for foster care unless there is a case plan “for each such infant and young child.” It is unclear whether the case plan must be signed by the parent in order for the state to receive funds for the child.

A North Carolina mother’s refusal to sign a case plan became a huge point of contention between her and the social workers.

Sarah Carter’s children were taken from her when she was in a shelter with her kids while seeking permanent housing. A staff person from the shelter reported her to CPS because her homeschooled children were not attending public school. She thought that it would quickly be cleared up.

It wasn’t. Sarah reports that:

The whole case centered around the fact that I wouldn’t sign anything. I realized how powerful contract law is.

Sarah Carter and her children used to love to play at the park. There used to be a lot of laughter before CPS. Photo provided by family.

The children were taken in September of 2016. Guilford County Department of Social Services petitioned for Termination of Parental Rights the following April. The judge reportedly told Sarah:

Your children are not your children; they’re my children.

Without any evidence of wrongdoing, she lost her children. Sarah is still fighting to have her case heard by a higher court.

The Solution? End Federal Funding for Foster Care and Adoption that Provides Incentives to States to Take Children Out of Families

Both CAPTA and ASFA provide federal funding to states for foster care. For too long, these legislative acts have enabled and incentivized states taking children from innocent parents who have committed no crime, who have not abused their children.

By any definition this is human trafficking.

It is time to cut off the flow of tax dollars for the destruction of families, and instead find ways to help and support families.

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

Earlier this year (2018) we reported that a group of Minnesota parents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing Dakota County and the State of Minnesota for kidnapping their children and placing them unnecessarily into foster care. See:

Parents File Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Minnesota Because CPS Kidnapped Their Children

The parents are part of an organization called The Family Preservation Foundation, which also goes by the name Stop CPS from Legally Kidnapping Children.

Amanda Weber with son Zayvion. Photo by Randy Furst – Star Tribune.

Recently, the group, which is reported to now represent over 4000 parents in Minnesota, garnered more local media coverage when a judge return a 1-year-old boy to his mother who had been allegedly placed into foster care for 3 months based on “false allegations of medical neglect.”

“I am mad at the system for failing me and my son,” said Amanda Weber at a news conference in St. Paul.

Weber also stated that social service workers knew their claims were inaccurate and still proceeded to remove her son.

According to the Star Tribune:

Morrison County Judge Leonard A. Weiler ruled in August that Morrison County Social Services “had failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the child is in need of protection and/or services” under the state statute.

He also said that there was no evidence that the boy’s mother had medically neglected the child as the county alleged.

Attorney Erick G. Kaardal, who is the Chief Counsel for the Family Preservation Foundation, represented Ms. Weber. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Chicago Law School.

The return of Amanda Weber’s child was seen as a victory for the Family Preservation Foundation:

The legal victory is symbolic for a coalition of parents and advocates seeking to change the state’s child protection system. The group has argued that Minnesota’s laws criminalize parents for what they consider to be routine parental discipline and have a disproportionate effect on black families. (Source.)

Dwight D. Mitchell (center at podium) is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit of parents suing the State of Minnesota for kidnapping their children via Child Protection Services, and the founder of The Family Preservation Foundation. Image courtesy kaaltv.com.

The founder of The Family Preservation Foundation, dba Stop CPS From Legally Kidnapping Children, is Dwight D. Mitchell, PMP, OCP, OCS.

Mr. Mitchell reportedly had his three children removed from his home because a family babysitter reported him to CPS for a “bottom spanking” with one of his children. It took him almost 2 years to get his son back home.

According to the Star Tribune:

“It was every parent’s worst nightmare,” said Mitchell, 57, a management consultant. “My children were legally kidnapped for a bottom spanking that was done out of love, because I want my children to grow up to be hardworking members of society.”

The child, Xander Mitchell, was kept in state custody for 22 months, during which time his father was refused all contact. Mitchell’s other child was removed for five months, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

Mitchell said his involvement with child protection began on the night of Feb. 16, 2014, when he and his wife went to dinner and a movie and left their children in the care of their longtime babysitter. A day earlier, Xander had received a “bottom spanking” from his father for stealing and other acts of disobedience, including failing to do his homework and playing video games when he should have been sleeping.

When the babysitter called to report the alleged maltreatment of the child, police were dispatched to Mitchell’s residence and his three children were taken to the police station for questioning, he said. Days later, Dakota County filed a court petition seeking protection for Mitchell’s children, who were removed from his home and placed in foster care while the county investigated.

Mitchell said his son Xander, now 15, has never been the same since. The once-gregarious and athletic child, who loved soccer and skiing, has become increasingly introverted and now spends most of his time indoors, he said. “The abduction by child protection services ruined my son’s life and changed it forever,” Mitchell said. “Can you imagine if you thought that your father abandoned you?”

Minnesota appears to have one of the most organized family advocacy groups fighting against legal government kidnapping and child trafficking in the United States.

The first MedicalKidnap.com banner. Medical Kidnapping happens far more than we knew.

by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

Medical kidnapping of children may be far more prevalent than anyone has realized. When Health Impact News launched MedicalKidnap.com in October of 2014, we believed that these stories were only a small fraction of the larger group of Child Protective Services cases where children were taken away from their families.

As we got deeper into our investigation, we realized that the problem was much more widespread than we ever could have imagined. We now know that medical issues are involved in at least half to as many as 80% of all the cases involving the removal of children from their homes.

The late Georgia Senator Nancy Schaefer may well have been the first to use the term ‘kidnapping’ in the context of the State taking children from their families.

In 2007, she published a scathing report entitled, “The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services.”

Senator Schaefer was a trail-blazer, speaking out for families who had been brutally ripped apart by the system at a time when there was very little public recognition of this threat to American families.

She championed the rights of parents, exposing deep corruption and problems within the system.

Pulling no punches, she referred to what she saw as “crimes against humanity for financial gain.”

She blasted the Clinton administration’s Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) as well as the earlier Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (CAPTA). She called for the abolition of federal and state financial incentives for taking children:

Those [tax] dollars have turned CPS into a business that takes children and separates families for money.

See this article, and listen to her powerful speech that she gave at the 5th World Congress of Families in Amsterdam in 2009:

How Child “Protection” Services is Legally Abducting Children in the U.S.

Justina – Kidnapped by Boston Children’s Hospital

Medical kidnapping has been defined as the State removing a family member from their home for medical kinds of reasons, such as parents asking for a second opinion or disagreeing with a doctor. It is a subset of the larger issue of “State-sponsored kidnapping,” where Child Protective Services seizes custody of children from their families.

Lou Pelletier used the word “kidnapping” in an interview with Beau Berman of Fox 61 News, telling him that “It was kidnapping” when Boston Children’s Hospital and Massachusetts CPS seized his 14 year old daughter Justina from her parents’ custody over a medical disagreement.

Mr. Pelletier defied an unconstitutional gag order in order to tell the public what was happening to his daughter, and their story made national news as concerned Americans watched in horror to see the tyrannical power of Boston Children’s Hospital and CPS.

It was through Justina’s story that we learned that children who are wards of the state – foster children – can legally be used in medical research projects and pharmaceutical drug studies without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

A doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital was conducting a study on somatoform disorder when Justina came into their emergency room. He disagreed with the diagnosis of mitochondrial disorder by her regular doctors at Tufts Medical Center, saying that Justina actually had the condition for which he needed another subject for his study.

Justina Pelletier and her parents. Photo by John Tlumacki/Globe Staff.

Former U.S. Representative Michelle Bachmann sponsored “Justina’s Law” on Capital Hill in the attempt to thwart such unethical behavior by doctors. She told Fox 61 News:

We know that this is happening all over the country in all 50 states, that children who are designated wards of the state, are having medical research done on them that may not have any direct benefit whatsoever to the child and in Justina’s case she was made paralyzed by this medical research. (See link).

The bill went nowhere, and to this day, the practice of medical experimentation on foster children is still legally allowed to take place.

There Were Others

Before Justina’s story captured the (brief) attention of the mainstream media, medical kidnappings had been taking place all over the country for years, with the public remaining unaware of either the possibility of it happening or of the extent to which children were being medically kidnapped under our noses.

There were a few other stories that made headlines. Health Impact News covered these stories after local media reported them, including:

• the Godboldo family of Detroit, where CPS sent a SWAT team in 2011 after a mother who refused to give her daughter dangerous psychotropic drugs. See story here.
• the Nikolayev family in Sacramento, California, in 2013. The parents wanted a second opinion before allowing surgeons to perform heart surgery on their baby. When they took their baby out of the hospital, CPS sent police to their home to seize the baby. See story here.
• Isaiah Rider, the Missouri teen who had surgery in Chicago. When doctors told them that there was nothing they could do for Isaiah’s pain and seizures, his mother wanted to take him to another hospital. CPS was called and Michelle Rider was kicked out of the hospital. See our extensive coverage of their story here.

See:

Medical Kidnapping: A Threat to Every Family in America Today

Many parents tried to speak up, but their voices were silenced by the courts or ignored by mainstream media.

There were others who were afraid or ashamed to speak out about their stories. The seizure of children and adults by state agencies remained largely a secret, hidden in the shadows.

The Pelletiers opened the door to more news coverage of these stories, and MedicalKidnap.com was established as a division of Health Impact News near the end of 2014.

Medical Kidnapping Is Everywhere!

We started investigating stories that came to us. We didn’t know if there would be an occasional story to report or a steady stream. One thing is certain: none of us were prepared for the sheer volume of stories that continue to come our way every day.

We have reported many hundreds of stories since then. For every story we publish, there are always more that we cannot get to or who choose not to go public with their story.

It has been almost 4 years, and it hasn’t stopped. Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t contact us, including Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the 4th of July.

We quickly learned that some children simply have the misfortune of being diagnosed with the very condition that a doctor at that hospital wants to study for medical research. A child with a rare medical condition can literally be worth millions of dollars to a drug or medical research company. It is irrelevant what the parent has or has not done if the doctor or hospital wants the child badly enough.

I originally believed that “medical kidnapping” stories were a small subset of the much larger group of “State-sponsored kidnapping” cases. However, almost every story that came to us had some kind of medical element involved, whether it was a disagreement over a treatment plan, desire for a second opinion, a medical condition that mimics abuse, or the drugging of the children after they were placed into foster care.

Children in foster care are three times more likely to be prescribed psych drugs, making them a large market for the pharmaceutical industry.

The circle of cases that had some type of medical element kept growing wider, the more we investigated. Even so, the high percentage of children in the system who have been labeled as having medical issues surprised me.

Medical Issues Involved with MOST Children in the System

The percentage of children in foster care with medical issues is stunning. Far more children in the foster care system have medical problems than children who are not in the system.

According to Pediatrics, there are more than twice the number of foster children with significant health needs than children in the general population:

In a 2008 report to a House Subcommittee in Washington D.C., the American Academy of Pediatrics, represented by Dr. Laurel K. Leslie, stated that:

… nearly half of all children in foster care have chronic medical problems, about half of children ages 0-5 years in foster care have developmental delays, and up to 80% of all children in foster care have serious emotional problems. (See link).

The numbers reported in the 2011 Pediatrics Journal are similar: 

The majority of children in the foster care system come from poor families, but poverty alone does not account for the high numbers. Even when children taken from their families are compared to children who are on Medicaid but not in foster care, there is a significant difference. Dr. Leslie writes:

Several decades of research has firmly established that the health care needs of children in out-of-home care far exceed those of other children living in poverty. (Source).

The U.S. Administration for Children and Families combines the number of foster children with physical health needs with the number of foster children with various kinds of developmental and psychological concerns to conclude that most of the children involved with the Child Welfare system have serious medical needs of some kind:

When behavioral, emotional, and developmental concerns are taken into consideration, the estimated proportion of foster children with serious health care needs jumps to over 80%. (Source).

Do Children Enter Foster Care with More Problems than Other Kids?

Most sources theorize that the reason that children in foster care have more medical and psychological needs than other children is because of the horrors that they experienced at the hands of their biological family before entering the system.

If the majority of children in the system had been taken from truly abusive or harmful parents, that would be a logical supposition.

However, as we have reported many times, the data is clear that the majority of children in foster care should not have been removed from their families.

Less than 16% of the children taken from their families were taken from parents accused of abuse. (Source). Only 17% of all the allegations against parents are substantiated. (Source).

There may be a finding of substantiation by a social worker without any actual evidence, the allegation could be based on lies or hearsay, and the finding can happen without any due process at all.

There are suggestions in some of the literature regarding child abuse that children who are disabled are more likely to be abused by their parents.

In fact, a child abuse policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics entitled, “The Evaluation of Suspected Child Physical Abuse,” is one of the main policy documents driving the abduction of children over accusations of “child abuse,” and it identifies pediatric disability as a risk factor for child abuse that all pediatricians should be on alert for.

The document was written by lead author Child Abuse Pediatrician Cindy W. Christian of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in conjunction with the AAP Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect. In it, Dr. Christian writes:

Source – “The Evaluation of Suspected Child Physical Abuse” by Cindy W. Christian

However, a “systematic review of population-based studies published between 1966 and January 2006” found evidence to the contrary. After searching 40 years of available studies for data showing that a child with disabilities is at increased risk of being abused, the authors concluded that:

The evidence base for an association of disability with abuse and neglect is weak. (Source).

See:

Exposing How Child Abuse Pediatricians Medically Kidnap Children: A Guide for Parents

Could there be another explanation for the disproportionately high number of children in foster care needing medical and psychological care?

Follow the Money: More Medicaid Funds Spent on Foster Children

There is a significant disproportion between the amount of tax money spent on Medicaid for the general population and the Medicaid funds spent on children who are in the foster care system:

Children in foster care account for a disproportionately high share of Medicaid expenditures when compared to other children in the Medicaid program. For example, although children in foster care represent only 3.7% of the nondisabled children enrolled in Medicaid, they account for 12.3% of total expenditures and 25 to 41% of Medicaid mental health expenditures.

In California, for example, Medicaid-eligible children in foster care accounted for 53% of all psychological visits, 47% of psychiatry visits, 43% of the public hospital inpatient hospitalizations, and 27% of all psychiatric inpatient hospitalizations among the program’s entire child population.

A Pennsylvania study found that Medicaid mental health-related expenditures for children in foster care are nearly 12 times greater than costs for non-foster children. (Source).

Foster care children can legally be used in medical research and drug testing. It isn’t every day that a parent willingly chooses to allow their child to be used as lab rat, thus foster children whose parental consent may be bypassed can be a prime commodity for researchers and pharmaceutical companies. See:

Medical Kidnapping in the U.S. – Kidnapping Children for Drug Trials

If the children have a “condition” and are on medications, the foster parents as well as the local CPS office are entitled to receive more money for having the children in their care.

It is a win/win for the drug manufacturers and the foster parents, while the children are the big losers in this scheme, suffering the side effects and numbness of drugs they don’t need.

It doesn’t end there for the children who are labeled as having a mental illness by psychiatrists profiting on the backs of the kids while they are working with CPS.

No Evidence Required for Psychiatric Labels and Meds

Dr. Gina Loudon, Ph.D., is a news commentator, radio host, psychological analyst, and mom who takes the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries to task over their practices. In her new book, Mad Politics: Keeping Your Sanity in a World Gone Crazy, she points out that:

Every label creates an interest group that can become a recipient of federal funds. But also, being diagnosed with mental illness can be used as a reason to deny people rights.

Dr. Gina Loudon, Ph.D. Photo from Facebook.

With the diagnosing psychiatrist holding all the power, people, including children, have been forced into psych wards against their will and force-medicated.

Just as social workers and family courts don’t require actual evidence to take children from their families, objective testing and evidence is not required for a psychiatrist to label someone with a mental illness – a label that can follow the child for years, or forever.

According to Dr. Gina:

Unlike other disease models that require evidence to prescribe drugs, mental disorders don’t.

Her conclusion on the matter applies to foster children as much as to anyone else:

What most of us really need aren’t drugs, but faith, family, friends, and a determination to make the most of our unique gifts.

Indiana Appeals Court judges rule that DCS is violating parents’ rights. Photo from NBC 13 Investigates.

Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

Cracks are starting to be exposed in the foundation of the state-sponsored child kidnapping structure of Child “Protective” Services. Parents who have been fighting the system for their children have seen these gaping flaws all along, but for decades anyone with power to change it has turned a blind eye to their plight.

Finally, it appears that the higher courts in one state are beginning to recognize that the system is, indeed, violating parental rights with alarming frequency.

Appellate judges from the Indiana Court of Appeals recently sent a strong rebuke to the Department of Child Services (DCS), citing “significant violations of due process occurring in termination of parental rights cases throughout the state.”

Indianapolis NBC affiliate Channel 13 reports that the judges acknowledged that there is a pattern of “repeated violations” of parental and Constitutional due process rights by DCS.

While the fact that the agency routinely violates parents’ rights certainly comes as no surprise to anyone on the front lines of the battle, the admission by the appeals court and by DCS itself that it is happening comes as a shock, albeit a good one, to attorneys and parents alike.

Could this be the beginning of the dominoes falling? Will other states take notice and follow suit?

Photo source.

13 Investigates: DCS violated parents’ rights, took kids away

Bob Segall of NBC 13 writes:

The Court of Appeals cited a “disturbing trend” with 10 cases it received between September 2017 and March of this year. In each of the cases, one or more parents appealed the termination of their rights, and DCS asked for the case to be sent back to the trial court rather than have the appellate judges issue a ruling.

In a July court order, the Court of Appeals formally admonished DCS. The judges wrote, “DCS essentially concedes that [the parent appealing the termination] has either not been provided with adequate notice or that their due process rights have been violated.” The judges criticized DCS for repeatedly requesting that the cases be returned to a lower court rather than submitting a formal response to the appeals, thereby avoiding DCS having to defend its actions.

The Court of Appeals also took aim at the trial courts, reminding judges that they too have a “duty to ensure that litigants’ due process rights are not violated.”

In its most recent opinion, the judges were so frustrated by “repeated violations” of the parent’s rights and other failures of the trial court, they wrote,

We are at a loss as to any possible, just reason for such conduct.

From the Indiana Court of Appeals decision. Photo source.

Public Defender Stunned at Turn of Events

Stephanie Thomas is an Indiana mother with mental health issues and a drug addiction history. Her daughter was placed into foster care in 2016. She learned in July that her parental rights had been terminated. DCS had held the hearing without notifying her:

I never got papers. I never got any notice. The only thing I got was a text after the hearing …. the case worker wouldn’t talk to me no more and said ‘your rights have been terminated.

She immediately filed for an appeal and was assigned public defender Dorothy Ferguson. According to NBC 13 Investigates, the attorney “immediately recognized problems with the way in which DCS handled the case.”

Nonetheless, as parents from all over America can attest, it was not unusual for DCS/CPS to violate their own policies and the law when taking children from their parents. In fact, dozens of people from many different states have told Health Impact News that they were told that “the Constitution doesn’t apply in family court,” as they watched all semblance of due process and Constitutional principles dissipate before their very eyes.

Ferguson still believed that they had “a good chance of winning the appeal.”

What happened next was nothing short of amazing. NBC 13 Investigates reports:

Thomas’ attorney then received a surprise phone call from the Indiana Attorney General’s office. She discovered the AG, who represents state agencies such as DCS, was also concerned by DCS’s actions and wanted to help her client.

“They told me they agreed with our position and wanted to file a motion to send the case back to the trial court,” recalled Ferguson. “I was like ‘What? This is crazy!’ This has never happened to me in my entire [career]. That’s really unheard of.”

DCS Director Agrees with Appeals Court

Terry J. Stigdon, MSN, RN, was appointed by Indiana governor Eric Holcomb in late 2017 to take over the position of director of the state’s troubled DCS agency. The governor called for a review of the DCS department in partnership with the Child Welfare Policy and Practice Group.

DCS director Terry Stigdon admits that the DCS department is not doing well. Photo source.

According to FOX 59 News, Stigdon began her career working at the local children’s hospital as a pediatric intensive care nurse in 1998. At the time of her appointment, she was the “clinical director of operations at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health in Indianapolis—overseeing strategy, finance, personnel, research and programs for several of the hospital’s key divisions, including emergency, trauma and nursing.”

After the Indiana Court of Appeals rendered their decision on almost a dozen cases, in which they found the department to be violating many parental rights, DCS director Terry Stigdon issued a statement to NBC 13 Investigates:

After a thorough review of the cases in question, I believe our legal work has fallen short of the standards I have set for our agency. We are working to recruit and retain top legal talent and provide additional staff training…. as well as build and maintain strong relationships with judges across Indiana.

Riley Hospital Child Abuse Pediatricians Responsible for Multiple Medical Kidnappings

The director’s previous employer, Riley Children’s Hospital, has been involved with every Medical Kidnap case in the state of Indiana that we have covered previously. The hospital employs Child Abuse Pediatricians Dr. Roberta Hibbard and Dr. Shannon Thompson, both of whom accused parents of abuse instead of figuring out that the children had metabolic bone conditions which led to their broken bones.

• Laura Gellinger and Dylan Day actually spent time in prison for “abuse” of their baby after Dr. Roberta Hibbard from Riley Hospital and Dr. Jamie Brummett of Reid Hospital said that x-rays showed multiple broken bones. The baby showed all the classic signs of metabolic bone disease, but the doctors refused to test for them. Baby Jackson was adopted out. See their story:
  

  Indiana Parents Lose Their Baby and 2 Years of Their Lives in Jail for “Abuse” They Say Never Happened

• Nikki and Rodney Wisler were arrested for accusations of abusing their baby. Dr. Roberta Hibbard said that baby Leigh Ann had a broken tibia, but when medical expert Dr. Ayoub said that there was no fracture on the x-ray, she retracted her diagnosis. See their story:
  

  Indiana Parents’ Trip to E.R. Results in Children Kidnapped – Names Slandered in Local Media – Lives Ruined

Child Abuse Pediatrician Dr. Roberta Hibbard of Riley Children’s Hospital. Photo source.

• Austin and Andrea Timmons had their boys seized by DCS after Dr. Shannon Thompson found fractures in their youngest son and accused the parents of abuse. Other doctors later figured out that the baby had metabolic bone disease and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. The other doctors also could not find the rib fractures that Dr. Thompson had diagnosed. See their story:
  

  Two Indiana Boys Medically Kidnapped Remain in CPS Custody Despite Testimony of Medical Experts

• Ally Allen and John Kremitzki were accused of abuse when Dr. Shannon Thompson diagnosed multiple fractures in their first son. The whites of his eyes had a blue tint, and he had other classic signs of osteogenesis imperfecta and other metabolic bone disease. Dr. Ayoub diagnosed infantile rickets. The couple’s youngest son was taken when he was born, because DCS already had custody of his brother. Dr. Thompson reportedly showed the court an x-ray of their son, only it wasn’t him. The x-ray belonged to another child. See their story:
  

  Indiana Couple Loses over 2 Years of Their Babies’ Lives because of Testimony of “Child Abuse Specialist”

Child Abuse Pediatrician Dr. Shannon Thompson. Photo source.

• Jade and Lehla Jerger had their little girl taken away from them after Riley Children’s Hospital got involved. The toddler was having up to 100 seizures a day with conventional medical treatment with Keppra, a dangerous drug with many side effects. When the Jergers started treating her with CBD oil from hemp, the results were almost miraculous, but doctors at Riley called DCS and insisted that she be taken off of the CBD oil and put back on Keppra. See their story:
  

  Medical Tyranny: Indiana Hospital and CPS Force Parents to Give Toddler Dangerous Drug After Seeking Second Opinion

Only 15% of the allegations against Indiana families are substantiated by the Department of Child Services. See:

85% of Reports to Indiana Child Protective Services Unsubstantiated – Families Destroyed Needlessly

How Many More?

Indiana public defender Dorothy Ferguson asked a question when she was being interviewed by NBC 13 Investigates:

How many other cases are out there without proper due process?

The answer is – too many, not only in Indiana.

Denial of due process is not the exception with Child or Adult Protective Services all across the nation. It is the norm.

After 4 years of our investigating cases of medical kidnappings of children and adult from Massachusetts to California and everywhere in between, it is clear that families are routinely denied basic human and Constitutional rights when it comes to the seizure of family members by the state. The right to be secure in one’s home, to be free from search and seizure without a warrant, and the right to familial attachment, in addition to the right to due process, are being denied to hundreds of thousands of American families every single year.

The Indiana Appeals Court judges cites the Indiana Supreme Court case In re Adoption of O.R. 16 N.E.3d 965, 972 (Ind. 2014), noting that:

the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of parents to establish a home and raise their children, that parents have a fundamental liberty interest in the care custody and control of their children, and that the parent-child relationship is one of the most valued relationships in our culture.

The Troxel vs. Granville case before the Supreme Court of the United States of America clarified that:

the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.

Yet, children, disabled adults, and senior citizens alike are being taken from their homes, sometimes permanently, based on false allegations, lies by social workers, misdiagnoses by (or egos of) doctors, or exaggerations of parental shortcomings that the same system has no problem with in foster parents.

Tennessee attorney and family advocate Connie Reguli calls it “generational genocide.”

When will it stop? When will the public, elected officials, and government leaders demand that state actors stop ripping families apart unjustly and insist upon Constitutional rights not only in criminal courts, but in family, juvenile, and probate courts as well?

Until that happens, every family in America is at risk of the state stepping in and kidnapping loved ones, for profit, under the color of law.

Commentary by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

Attorney Vivek Sankaran, director of the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic at the University Michigan Law School, has written an excellent piece that was published in The Chronicle for Social Change titled: Termination of Parental Rights: What’s The Rush?

Vivek writes that family courts today are too quick to remove parental rights when one parent is deemed “unfit.” An attorney himself who has represented children in foster care, Vivek gives an example of a father who was incarcerated for drug usage, and yet stayed involved in his daughter’s life for the 8 years he spent in prison, and even helped fund her time in law school, where she was able to finish her degree and graduate.

He was able to stay involved in his daughter’s life because his parental rights were not severed, which is what happens in most states, sadly, when a parent is deemed “unfit” to parent.

A few years back, one of my former clients – a child who had aged out of the foster care system – graduated from law school. I proudly watched her walk across the stage to receive her diploma. Sitting right next to me was her father, a man who had been incarcerated while his daughter struggled in foster care for eight years.

During those eight years, my client, separated from many of her siblings, bounced from one home to another. Yet over the years, she maintained a close connection with her father. After serving a lengthy prison sentence, he helped finance her college and law school educations. Now, he and I were sharing tears and hugs as we watched a truly miraculous moment.

In most jurisdictions across the country, this moment would never have occurred. Most courts would have terminated his parental rights years prior to her law school graduation. He was an unfit parent.

Vivek writes that in one state, Utah, the Court of Appeals has questioned the necessity of terminating parental rights so quickly, and that this ruling could serve as a model for other states:

About a month ago, the Utah Court of Appeals wrestled with this question in a thoughtful, 32-page opinion. The court recognized that even where there was evidence that a parent was unfit, state statutes also required proof that termination of parental rights (TPR) was “strictly necessary.”

In interpreting this phrase, the court found that the legislature intended for courts to terminate rights “only in situations when it is absolutely essential to do so.” Thus, it required courts to explore whether “other feasible options exist that could address the specific problems or issues facing the family, short of imposing the ultimate remedy of terminating the parent’s rights.”

For example, the court offered, in cases “in which grandparents or other family members have (or are willing to) come forward to care for the child, courts should consider whether other less-permanent arrangements (for instance, a guardianship with a family member) might serve the child’s needs just as well in the short term, while preserving the possibility for rehabilitation of the parent-child relationship in the longer term.”

The court also recognized that “in many cases, children will benefit from having more people – rather than fewer – in their lives who love them and care about them … [I]f there is a practical way to keep parents involved in the children’s lives that is not contrary to the children’s best interests, a court should seriously consider such an option.”

Vivek goes on to write that the Utah Court ruling could provide guidance for other states:

This last paragraph provides important guidance for how we can radically change our thinking about child welfare. Why not presume that it serves the best interests of children to preserve parental relationships that are meaningful to a child, even when a parent cannot care for the child?

Why not construct a statutory scheme – like the one that now exists in Utah – that forces the state to demonstrate why termination is “strictly necessary” or “absolutely essential” to further the child’s best interests? Why not allow children to be surrounded by all those who love and care for them, rather than permanently cutting off important relationships in the name of finality?

Read the full article at The Chronicle for Social Change.

Jennifer Winn is a passionate family activist, rallying the troops to action to restore children to their own families. Photo by Shara Michelle.

Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

There are things in life that happen that change you. There are things that, once you see, you cannot un-see.

Throughout history, there have been individuals who rise up against the evil that confronts their society, who become a voice for their generation who say, “No more! This wickedness must end, and I will not stop until it does.”

These voices lead by example and inspire those around them to stand strong and never give up, no matter how intimidating the battle may be.

Jennifer Winn is such a voice for families fighting against the evils of medical and state-sponsored kidnapping of children. She has become known for her fiery passion, uncompromising quest for justice, and inspirational speeches that call governmental officials and agencies out on the carpet for the injustice they inflict on the people they are supposed to serve.

It was not until shortly after her run for governor of the state of Kansas in 2014 that she learned that Child Protective Services (CPS) and family courts were taking children away from non-abusive parents, often putting them into horrific foster care situations. Once she recognized what was happening to thousands of families, she refused to be silent.

She immediately began speaking up for families and speaking out against the corruption that she found in the CPS system.

Jennifer Winn joined Connie Reguli and others on September 11, 2018, as part of a team of activists and professionals who gathered in Washington DC to participate in an Educational Panel put together by 4 the Children USA. The event was live-streamed to hundreds of thousands of viewers, including District Attorneys’ offices from several states according to event founder Robert Slaven.

See Connie Reguli’s speech here:

The Ease with which Government Kidnaps Children – A Review of Current Legislation and the Multi-Billion Dollar Child “Protection” Industry

Various speakers educated the audience regarding law, medical practices, and legislation. Some shared personal stories of first-hand encounters with corruption within the system.

Jennifer Winn has no such story of having her own family members taken by CPS. However, she is a mother, a grandmother, an American, and a human being, all of which means to her that she must stand and fight for those who are being torn apart by injustice:

I am an advocate who will fight until it is finished and that is the end of the story. I will not remain silent!

Here is the speech she gave at the event:

Awakening to the Truth of Government-Sponsored Child Trafficking

Jennifer Winn at a Washington DC protest in 2017.

Near the end of Jennifer’s gubernatorial campaign, she told the D.C. audience, a mother reached out to her and said that she needed to talk with her. She told Jennifer Winn that the state was taking children from families. Frankly, she sounded crazy to Jennifer, like a “conspiracy theorist.”

When the election was over, the woman didn’t stop trying to talk to her. For three weeks, she persisted, blowing up her phone daily, insisting that Jennifer didn’t understand and that she needed to hear her out.  She begged to meet with her for just 30 minutes.

It became clear that “she’s not going to let up,” so Jennifer agreed to have the woman come to her office.

She was not prepared for what she heard. The mother brought in a detailed timeline of what had happened to her family, complete with transcripts and evidence to back up her side of the story.

Jennifer carried the papers home with her that night and stayed up most of the night reading the woman’s story. Based on a social worker’s allegations, the mother’s children had been taken and placed into foster care. After 15 months, the Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF) placed the children with their “father, who was on criminal probation for beating those children.”

As Jennifer got deeper into the story she says:

I could not believe what I was reading.

I was like Terri [LaPoint, who believed] “Oh, this is just an isolated case.” I am going to expose this, and we’re going to fix it, and we’re going to get your kids. That’s what we were going to do.

I called her at 6 a.m. I was up, because my heart, my brain, everything about my being knew that this was wrong, and I was going to fix it!

She came in. We did a video that day.

I released that video, and in 24 hours, I had over 500 requests. In a week later, I had over 1,500 requests, and I was floored.

I literally, like, for 2 days, I shut down and I cried, because I couldn’t believe the stories I was reading.

Everything about this agency that I believed was true was a lie. Everything.

Everything I had thought and had been dispositioned to believe was wrong, and children are being harmed.

Not only are they being harmed, they’re being drugged. I have 5-year olds that we have uncovered, addicted to Xanex, because they want mommy. Excuse me?

A warrior had awakened. The truth of what Jennifer Winn was seeing caused something to rise up within her, and she has not been the same since.

I cannot un-see what I have just seen.

I’m not made to be that woman that sees any type of behavior that’s completely against humanity and keeps walking.

Jennifer Winn right) with Connie Reguli, firing up an audience audience at the Lincoln Memorial to keep fighting against the CPS devastation of families, September 10, 2018. Photo by Francesca Amato Banfield.

“It Doesn’t Matter What the Law Says”

Jennifer’s speech was the final speech of the second panel for the September 11 event.

David Jose opened the panel with a discussion of the Constitution and laws regarding family courts.

I spoke about Medical Kidnapping, then Kathleen Arthur delved into the Family First Act legislation and its impact.

Two attorneys followed. Ken Rosillini of New Jersey and Connie Reguli of Tennessee discussed family law, family courts, and legislation. The entire segment had a strong emphasis on law.

When Jennifer Winn addressed the crowd, she acknowledged what most of the group had learned the hard way about the law:

We understand that the law says “this,” and we understand that it doesn’t mean anything, because we are still without our children.

We are still facing the unjustness of our courts, of our lawmakers, and of those who are allegedly there to protect the best interests of our children. What do we do?

Doctors and social workers, she explained, often report and take children over allegations that are not even worthy to warrant an investigation, but they sometimes do it out of fear of being blamed for not intervening when they should. Jennifer continued:

You understand that the law says they can’t [take the children]. You understand what it says by definition, and what does that do for us?

Where are are children? Are they with you because you know the law?

No! They’re not!

So now what do we do?

Fight. But we do it correctly.

Fighting Correctly

Record Everything

Jennifer Winn is not a lawyer or an investigator. She owns a landscaping business. But she has tools at her disposal with which to fight the corruption. They are the same tools that most of us have.

The reality is that we hold [government officials, doctors, and social workers] accountable the best way we can – with what we have….

It doesn’t seem to matter what the law says [regarding what CPS/DCF can and cannot do], so what do we do? We start holding them accountable with our cameras. We start recording them.

She cautions to “make sure that you check your state laws for that, but in Kansas, we’re a ‘one-party consent.'” (Link to recording laws here.)

LeagleBeagle.com says that conversations may be recorded if there is not an “expectation of privacy,” i.e. conversations in public places where they can be overheard easily.

Don’t Let Fear Control You

Jennifer Winn boldly confronts fear:

You cannot let fear control you. You can not.

Someone said to me, “Aren’t you scared?”

No. I’m not. I will never be scared to fight for the future of our children! Never.

Jennifer Winn fights for families impacted by Medical Kidnapping. Photo from the Million Parent March September 2017.

Elect People Who Will Fight for Family Rights

Jennifer Winn mentioned several factors common to many CPS jurisdictions which violate parental and constitutional rights, including “the secret social files that are on statute.”

In an earlier interview with WIBW 13 during the April 2, 2018, Fools No More rally in Topeka, Kansas, Jennifer described those secret files. She told the WIBW 13 reporter that:

passing laws such as the secret social file that make accusations against parents that they will never know about, that’s unconstitutional, that’s not acceptable any longer.

Our children are not for sale.

See:

Families Protest at Kansas State Capitol: “Our Children are not for Sale!”

Jennifer Winn explained some of the issues surrounding DCF to Kansas news media. Photo from WIBW 13.

Other factors that are reality for families dealing with CPS, Jennifer told the audience in Washington, D.C., include:

• the anonymous reporting that violates your constitutional right to face your accuser,  and
• the fact that they don’t have to have “clear and convincing” evidence, only a “preponderance” to take your children with SWAT at 3 a.m.

How does that get changed?

How did it get started? That’s the better question.

It got started by the most egregious act a person could ever think about, and it’s a bill. Our legislators are the worst enemy we have.

The solution, she says, is one that is admittedly difficult:

We have to start electing the people that will take the pen away from the criminals that are corporately owned, that don’t care about your kids….

These guys [other speakers] are right. Connie [Reguli] is right – this is not legal. This is not what we as Americans signed up for! But it’s where we are. And regardless of what is says, they’re doing it.

What are you going to do when law enforcement is showing up to steal your children for a “preponderance” – “a thought” – of some social worker who has no children, probably doesn’t have a degree if she works in Kansas, that are absolutely facilitating the kidnapping of your family?

The only way that we can win is to put people like us behind that pen.

The only way we can continue educate and bring it to light is your phone, your videos, your audio. Get up and go to court [with families].

Until we can elect people who understand the law side like the guys [who spoke about the law at the event], Connie, etc., … until then we have to expose it, and we don’t stop! We keep going. We protest. … We’ve got to pay attention to our elections.

Jennifer Winn closed her rousing speech with a call to put aside our differences and come together to fight for all of our children who are our future:

It is important for us to unify, work together, educate one another, and then eventually we’re going to save our kids.

Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

Natural substances with tremendous healing capabilities that cannot be patented are a huge threat to the pharmaceutical industry and their FDA-approved drugs, and certainly vitamin D is at the top of this list.

For example, published scientific literature shows that vitamin D is more effective in preventing annual influenza than the dangerous flu shot. See:

Study: Vitamin D Is More Effective Than Flu Vaccine

Since the best and primary source of vitamin D is from the sun, most people in North America are vitamin D deficient, even during the summer months when we are told to block the sun’s rays due to the fear of skin cancer.

When a natural substance like vitamin D can cure and prevent so many diseases, usually in ways far superior to FDA-approved drugs and vaccines, it should come as no surprise that Big Pharma will pull out all the stops to discredit the science behind these natural substances, as they affect their profits from pharmaceutical products.

This is routinely done by funding their own biased studies, and then attacking medical doctors and scientists who promote natural cures.

One of the areas of vitamin D deficiency that affects many of the families we work with here at Health Impact News, is in the area of Medical Kidnapping and the widely debunked theory of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) that is used to medically kidnap children.

Vitamin D deficiency can lead to brittle bones in infants and children, where multiple hairline fractures occur giving the appearance of “abuse” according to proponents of the Shaken Baby Syndrome medical theory.

One doctor who is a world-renown authority on vitamin D and has testified in court on behalf of parents falsely accused of SBS, is Dr. Michael Holick. He has recently come under fire and was attacked in the corporate-sponsored “mainstream” media that derives much of its advertising revenue from Big Pharma.

William B. Grant, PhD, the director for the Sunlight, Nutrition, and Health Research Center, and former senior research scientist at SRI International, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the NASA Langley Research Center, has recently published a commentary with the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service exposing Big Pharma’s “disinformation playbook” and how they attack natural cures, and vitamin D health benefits specifically.

Dr. Grant has authored or coauthored over 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Vitamin D acceptance delayed by Big Pharma following the Disinformation Playbook

Commentary by William B. Grant, Ph.D.
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service

A “Disinformation Playbook” has been used for decades by corporations to delay government action on matters of public interest that would adversely affect their income and profit.

Some well-known examples include the big tobacco companies, the coal and oil industries, the sugar industry, and the National Football League. The Union of Concerned Scientists has outlined five “pillars” of the Playbook [Disinformation Playbook], [Alvord 2017].

Big Pharma may be using the Playbook to slow the adoption of strong support for vitamin D.

This article is the product of my further analysis.

The Disinformation Playbook

1. The Fake
Conduct counterfeit science and try to pass it off as legitimate research.

2. The Blitz
Harass scientists who speak out with results or views inconvenient for industry.

3. The Diversion
Manufacture uncertainty about science where little or none exists.

4. The Screen
Buy credibility through alliances with academia or professional societies.

5. The Fix
Manipulate government officials or processes to influence policy inappropriately.

Background and evidence that vitamin D improves health outcomes

Big Pharma and its allies in the U.S. and perhaps also in Europe are opposing major recommendations for increases in vitamin D intakes and higher serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels [above 30 or 40 ng/ml (75-100 nmol/l)], apparently because such measures can significantly reduce the burden of human disease and, therefore, would reduce income and profit from treating disease.

Healthcare in the U.S. now consumes almost 20% of the gross domestic product.

Historically, vitamin D was associated with prevention and cure of rickets and osteomalacia, and later with calcium absorption and bone health.

In the past two decades, evidence has accrued showing that higher 25(OH)D serum levels from diet, supplements, and/or solar UVB exposure, are associated and mechanistically linked to better health and longer life expectancy.

In 2009-2010, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reviewed the evidence regarding vitamin D, and was instructed by the study sponsors, the Food and Drug Agency, the National Institutes of Health, and Health Canada, to use only the evidence from published high-quality vitamin D randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

However, by that time, such trials had only found benefits for bone health. From these studies it was known that bone health ‘normalizes’ above 25(OH)D levels of~20 ng/ml (50 nmol/l).

However, they also used evidence from purely observational studies to suggest that there were risks associated with vitamin D supplementation that raised serum 25(OH)D levels above 30 ng/ml [Ross, 2011a].

This was the basis for their hypothesis of a U-shaped serum 25(OH)D level vs. health outcome relationship (higher risk for both low and high levels).

However, this concern was later shown to be largely unfounded since most of the studies reporting U-shaped risk vs. serum level had no data for subject vitamin D supplementation, or for when it had started, thereby confounding subject stratification [Grant, 2016].

Over the last two decades, evidence has accumulated that UVB exposure and vitamin D have many non-skeletal health benefits, mainly from ecological and observational studies and from mechanistic evidence.

Recent evidence has accumulated from vitamin D supplementation studies, especially those showing a correction of deficiency [Martineau, 2016].

Such evidence is now strong for cancer [Moukayed, 2013], [Grant, 2017], [Grant, 2018], [McDonnell, 2018], cardiovascular disease [Zhang, 2017], [Wimalawansa, 2018], respiratory tract infections [Martineau, 2017], all-cause mortality rates [Grant, 2011], [Garland, 2014], [Grant, 2016], [Lindqvist, 2016], and pregnancy and birth outcomes such as preterm birth [McDonnell, 2017], [Wagner, 2018] and as now widely reviewed [e.g. Holick, 2007; Pludowski, 2013; Baggerly, 2015; Grant, 2018; Page, 2018; Sorenson and Grant, 2018].

Recommended vitamin D intakes and optimal ‘target’ serum 25(OH)D levels have increased since the IOM report.

For example, The Endocrine Society subsequently recommended 1000-4000 IU/d (25-100 mcg/d) vitamin D supplement intakes and serum 25(OH)D levels >30 ng/ml (75 nmol/l) for patients with baseline insufficiency [Holick, 2011].

A more recent review of vitamin D supplementation guidelines also recommended >30 ng/ml [Pludowski, 2018].

However, such recommendations may be replaced in the near future by those recommending >40 ng/ml based on studies such as those reported recently for preterm birth [McDonnell, 2017] and breast cancer [McDonnell, 2018].

One reason for the low earlier recommendations was the large underestimate made by the IOM in calculating intakes for the average population, (i.e. in 50% of the population) rather than for 97.5% of the population for whom the recommendations were presumed to be aimed [Veugelers & Ekwaru, 2014].

Of course, Big Pharma and its allies must follow current research findings on vitamin D with trepidation since they also realize that the general public also follows the research and has increased its rates of self-supplementation with > 1000 IU/d vitamin D from 0.2% of the population in 2001-2002 to 18.2% in 2013-2014, and that supplementation with >4000 IU/d has also increased from 0.2% in 2007-2008 to 3.2% in 2013-2014 [Rooney, 2017].

Examples of the use of the five pillars of “The Disinformation Playbook” on Vitamin D

1. The Fake

Below are some papers reporting no benefit from vitamin D supplementation due to methodological flaws. These examples are for health outcomes for which well-designed and conducted studies have shown benefits.

JAMA recently published the results of a vitamin D plus calcium clinical trial using 2000 IU/d vitamin D3 plus 1500 mg/d calcium [Lappe, 2017].

The trial did not find a significant all-cancer risk reduction based on intention to treat (i.e. comparing outcomes on those who received the supplements vs. those who received the placebo) [Grant, 2017].

However, the trial did find a significant reduction in all-cancer incidence for those who achieved a level of >50 ng/ml 25(OH)D, despite the study being somewhat underpowered.

But the journal did not let the authors present or discuss that finding in the printed paper, relegating the latter analysis on subjects who achieved repletion to an online supplement for the paper, which few people read, and issuing a press release stating that vitamin D supplementation did not reduce the risk of cancer [JAMA Media Advisory, 2017].

Cochrane systematic reviews were carried out that omitted some clinical trials with positive results.

Thus, a Cochrane review of vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy published in November, 2017, found “There was no effect on preterm birth” and concluded “The evidence to date seems insufficient to guide clinical or policy recommendations.” [Roth, 2017].

Overlooked in this review was mention of a paper published in July, 2017, that found a 60% reduction in preterm birth rates for those in a supplementation study who achieved >40 ng/ml [McDonnell, 2017].

2. The Blitz

The New York Times published a hit piece on Michael Holick by Liz Szabo of Kaiser Family Foundation on August 18, 2018. “Vitamin D, the Sunshine Supplement, Has Shadowy Money Behind It: The doctor most responsible for creating a billion-dollar juggernaut has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the vitamin D industry.” [Szabo, 2018]

This opinion piece took aim at Dr. Holick because he is considered the person most responsible for raising public awareness of the benefits of UVB exposure and vitamin D.

The opinion piece agreed with the IOM report that vitamin D was good for bone health, but dismissed other benefits through quotes from three IOM committee members [JoAnn Manson, Clifford Rosen, and Catherine Ross].

It also stated “A Miracle Pill Loses Its Luster; Enthusiasm for vitamin D among medical experts has dimmed in recent years, as rigorous clinical trials have failed to confirm the benefits suggested by early, preliminary studies.”

However, it did report that some people in the “wellness-industrial complex,” such as Professor Walter Willett of Harvard, support supplementation with vitamin D.

The main thrust of the opinion piece was to attack Dr. Holick for receiving several hundred thousand dollars from the vitamin D industry, including the indoor tanning industry, pharmaceutical companies and Quest Diagnostics, a major supplier of 25(OH)D assays.

It is not unethical to be paid for one’s work. It is, however, unethical not to disclose in journal publications any competing interests such as funding from the industry that might benefit from the publication.

Dr. Holick has freely acknowledged his support from the vitamin D industry as he did in the Endocrine Society vitamin D guidelines paper [Holick, 2011].

While several vitamin D researchers submitted letters to the editor about the above publication, none were published. The submitted letters supported Dr. Holick and vitamin D supplementation.

Here is the text of one submitted by Cedric F. Garland, Dr. P.H. and Camillo Ricordi, M.D.:

The New York Times is the beacon of truth. But we were shocked by an article (Aug 18) by Liz Szabo.

Masquerading as exposé, it unfairly accused Dr. Michael Holick, who helped discover a form of vitamin D, of mostly monetary motivation.

Dr. Holick’s discovery of an important biomarker has enabled thousands of epidemiological studies.

Using this biomarker, members of our group discovered that vitamin D3 helps prevent colorectal cancer, and, along with British researchers, that it also reduces the risks of breast cancer.

Recently other investigators also have found that vitamin D reduces risk of diabetes and coronary heart disease, and reduces prematurity.

These compelling findings suggest a vitamin D deficiency ‘syndrome’ based on converging data from hundreds of studies.

The cost of correcting underlying vitamin D deficiency would be miniscule compared to the cost of drug treatment for cancer and diabetes.

This article is, therefore, misleading. Dr. Holick is an honest, and widely respected researcher.

If readers stop taking vitamin D based on this article, it would do great harm to the public health.

Letters to the editor are an important avenue for countering bias, misstatements, and omissions in newspapers and professional journals.

To deny publication of such letters is poor journalistic practice, and in this case, considering the importance of vitamin D to the public, it is immoral.

The most likely reason the Times did not publish any letters in response is that the revenue from Big Pharma for advertisements is a large part of its revenue.

Michael Holick is no stranger to controversy.

In 2004, he was fired from Boston University’s department of dermatology by Dr. Barbara Gilchrest, who was head of the department.

“She called me into her office and said that she couldn’t have somebody in her department recommending sun exposure.” [Saul, 2006; Solomon, 2010].

Dermatologists advocate avoidance of indoor tanning devices and use of sunscreen as a way to reduce the risk of skin cancer and melanoma. They rarely consider the role of UVB exposure in producing vitamin D3, or, if they do, state that the little amount of vitamin D required (for bones) can be obtained though a few minutes of solar UVB exposure to the head and arms or diet.

This, of course, is known to be inadequate, especially during the winter months and for those who have dark skin. That is the rationale for the need to take supplements.

3. The Diversion

This approach was explored in great detail by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway in their book Merchants of Doubt [Oreskes & Conway, 2011].

It has also been said that observational studies on vitamin D supplementation are invalid since they are not supported by randomized controlled trials.

For example, the untested hypothesis goes, this must mean that low 25(OH)D is a result of disease, rather than a cause [Autier, 2014, Autier, 2017].

However this hypothesis has been debunked.

“Published RCTs have mostly been performed in populations without low 25OHD levels. The fact that most [meta-analyses) on results from RCTs did not show a beneficial effect does not disprove the hypothesis suggested by observational findings on adverse health outcomes of low 25OHD levels.” [Rejnmark, 2017]

In addition, many vitamin D clinical trials, including major ones currently underway, have not been based on measurements of the 25(OH)D level, but instead on the use of a single-sized dose of vitamin D.

The reason for this is that they are based on the guidelines for clinical trials of pharmaceutical agents, which assume that 1), the trial is the only source of the agent; and 2), that there is a linear dose-response relationship.

Yet neither assumption is satisfied for vitamin D. There are several sources of vitamin D including UVB exposure, diet, and supplements.

Also health effects are not directly related to the dose of vitamin D (which is inert), but instead derive from the serum level of 25(OH)D, with large variations in outcomes with increases in initially low 25(OH)D at low levels, but reduced variation in outcomes with changes in higher 25(OH)D levels.

Thus, clinical trials should be based on measurements of serum levels of 25(OH)D, not on vitamin D dosage [Heaney, 2014], [Grant, Boucher 2018], and open-label trials looking for significant health benefits in which participants know they are taking vitamin D and have sequential serum 25(OH)D measurements [McDonnell, 2017, McDonnell, 2018].

Other authors have implied that “vitamin D” is just another vitamin by designing studies as if it were a true vitamin [Fortmann, 2013], [Misotti, 2013] when, in fact, vitamin D is a hormone precursor provided either in the diet or made in the skin through the action of UVB on 7-dehydrocholesterol, though the definition of vitamin is a substance required for life that is NOT produced in the body.

However, the definition of hormone is a regulatory substance produced in an organism and transported in tissue fluids to stimulate specific cells or tissues into action.

Nearly every cell has a vitamin D receptor coupled to chromosomes. When the hormonal metabolite of vitamin D, 1,25(OH)2D, binds to the vitamin D receptor, gene expression can be up- or down-regulated.

4. The Screen

‘Big Pharma’ contributes to all major disease organizations, and none of these endorse vitamin D supplementation. In support of this statement, Google searches were conducted for corporate sponsors of some of the major disease-centered organizations in the U.S.

None of these organizations have position statements on vitamin D supplementation, based on a recent review of guidelines for vitamin D supplementation [Pludowski, 2018].

Disease organizations and pharma corporations that do not endorse vitamin D supplementation:

American Academy of Dermatology 2018 Corporate Partners:

The corporate partners are ordered by amount given to the Academy from Diamond (high) to Bronze (low).[American Academy of Dermatology, 2018]

Diamond

AbbVie, Lilly USA, LLC, Pfizer Inc., Sanofi Genzyme and Regeneron

Sapphire

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Celgene Corporation, Novartis

Ruby

Allergan, Amgen, Galderma Laboratories, L.P., LEO Pharma Inc., Merz North America, Inc., Ortho Dermatologics, SUN Dermatology, UCB Inc

Emerald

Bayer HealthCare | Coppertone, Janssen Biotech, Inc

Bronze

Aclaris Therapeutics, Inc., CareCredit, Dermira Inc., Endo Pharmaceuticals, Ferndale Pharma Group, ZO Skin Health, Inc. by ZeinObagi, MD

Supporters up to $24,999

Almirall, Amazon, EltaMD, Inc., Genentech, Great Lakes Advisors, JP Morgan, La Roche-Posay, SkinFix, Suneva Medical, UniteRx, Women’s Health Magazine

American Cancer Society

Anthem BlueCross, BlueShield, CVS Health, Abbott Laboratories, Avon, Lilly, Merck, United Health Group, Walgreens, Walmart.[American Cancer Society, 2018]

March of Dimes

The March of Dimes is well-known for playing a role in ending the polio epidemic in the U.S. After that role, it turned its attention to reducing the rates of birth defects and premature births.

GrassrootsHealth.net and vitamin D researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina showed that raising serum 25(OH)D concentrations of pregnant women early in pregnancy lowered the multi-racial preterm birth rate in Charleston County, SC (7.3% compared to 13.4% ) [Wagner, 2016].

Carole Baggerly of GrassrootsHealth.net told me recently that the March of Dimes is unwilling to discuss vitamin D supplementation for pregnant women.

Much of its support comes from Big Pharma: In 2012, the March for Babies national sponsors included their number one corporate supporter Kmart, along with top supporters of Farmers Insurance Group, Cigna, Famous Footwear, Sanofi Pasteur, FedEx, Mission Pharmacal, Watson Pharmaceuticals, First Response, and United Airlines.[March of Dimes, 2012]

A news account in Science August 10, 2018, reported that the March of Dimes curtailed support for 37 of 42 recipients of individual research grants due to reduced income [Servick, 2018].

National Medical Association

Abbott Laboratories, Amag Pharmaceuticals, Arbor Pharmaceuticals, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, Gilead, Lilly, Merck, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, UnitedHealth Group [National Medical Association, 2018]

Medical schools

Big Pharma also gives millions for research to medical schools. As a result, professors and students devote much of their time and effort to researching and promoting pharmaceutical drugs. This means that adequate health maintenance and disease prevention through lifestyle choices, nutrition, and vitamins, is rarely taught.

“Historically, nutrition education has been underrepresented at many medical schools and residency programs. Our surveys over a decade show that most medical schools in the United States are still not ensuring adequate nutrition education, and they are not producing graduates with the nutrition competencies required in medical practice. Physicians, residents, and medical students clearly need more training in nutrition assessment and intervention.” [Adams, 2010].

Medical journals

Big Pharma also places many ads in medical journals and other media, thereby buying acceptance of the pharmaceutical drug model. Some journals manifest an anti-vitamin D bias:

JAMA; the editors of JAMA made the authors of the paper reporting results of vitamin D plus calcium supplementation to reduce risk of cancer [Lappe, 2017], discussed above, bury their most important finding in an online appendix with the excuse that since evaluating results in terms of 25(OH)D levels was not specified in the trial protocol, it could not be included in the printed version. This paper also suggested that the public was being harmed by taking large doses of vitamin D. But no such evidence exists.

The Lancet; the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology published two papers suggesting that since clinical trials largely have not found reductions in disease risk from vitamin D supplementation [Autier, 2014], “that low vitamin D status is a consequence of ill health, rather than its cause.” [Autier, 2017]. However, this hypothesis was untested and unproven.

New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published this paper by authors of the IOM report [Ross, 2011b] questioning whether there is widespread vitamin D deficiency.

A recent paper found no benefit of vitamin D supplementation for pregnant women [Roth, 2018] though supplementation began quite late in gestation (mean of 20 weeks) and it takes many weeks for 25(OH)D increases to plateau.

However, The NEJM then declined to publish a paper reporting the benefits of measuring the serum 25(OH)D level and supplementing with vitamin D3 in Iran [Rostami, 2018], which did find significant benefits from vitamin D supplementation of pregnant women. [B. Hollis, private communication]

The fact that the major journals do not publish what appear to be valid, and useful, papers on the non-skeletal benefits of vitamin D gives the editors of the Vitamin D page at Wikipedia.org grounds for denying that vitamin D has many non-skeletal benefits.

5. The Fix

Big Pharma exerts significant control over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The evidence is as follows.

CDC

“Many top executives and leaders at the CDC also leave the agency to take very lucrative positions with pharmaceutical companies, revealing a revolving door policy between the government and Big Pharma.” [Shilhavy, 2018]

An example is that Dr. Julie Gerberding approved Gardisil vaccine and became head of Merck’s vaccine division. [England, 2018]

The CDC’s review on the effects of vitamin D predates the IOM report [Ross, 2011a] with the most recent references from 2007. It does not make any recommendations regarding vitamin D supplementation or desirable 25(OH)D levels.

However, it does refer readers to other websites that give inadequate recommendations for vitamin D supplementation [CDC, 2018]:

For more information about vitamin D, see the Institute of Medicine’s Dietary Reference Intake reports (Institute of Medicine 1997), fact sheets from the National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements (http://ods.od.nih.gov/Health_Information/DS_WhatYouNeedToKnow.aspx), as well as information from the American Society for Nutrition (http://jn.nutrition.org)

FDA

The FDA is controlled by Big Pharma through the appointment of its leaders by the Federal Government and by the fact that Big Pharma funds many reviews of drugs up for approval.

As noted in news accounts, there is a revolving door between Big Pharma and the FDA. Thus, those entering the FDA at the policy levels often come from Big Pharma and know that if they do Big Pharma’s bidding while in office, they will be rewarded with a high-paying job in Big Pharma after leaving the agency.

(A Look at How the Revolving Door Spins from FDA to Industry – NPR [Lupkin, 2018])

FDA advisors are often rewarded financially after new drug approvals, a practice called “delayed incentives,” yet the FDA has done nothing to restrict this practice. [Piller, 2018a,b]

FDA’s information about vitamin D:

[FDA, 2018]

“The authorization of user fees in 1992 has turned drug companies into the FDA’s prime clients, deepening the regulatory and cultural capture of the agency. Industry has demanded shorter average review times and, with less time to thoroughly review evidence, increased hospitalizations and deaths have resulted. Meeting the needs of the drug companies has taken priority over meeting the needs of patients.” [Light, 2013].

NIH

Big Pharma has arguably been captured by the One Percent [Zaitchik, 2018].

The NIH posted a Fact Sheet for Health Professionals regarding vitamin D. It basically endorses the IOM report [Ross, 2011a]. The most recent references (two) are from 2014, but more recent studies show that high 25(OH)D levels are beneficial in promoting health. [NIH, 2018]

A former worker in Big Pharma from 1984-95, who co-founded the Nordic Cochrane Collaboration in 1993, and is now a professor at the University of Copenhagen, published a book examining how Big Pharma corrupted health Care [Gotzsche, 2013].

In 2009, the Institute of Medicine was given the task of reviewing the guidelines for supplements of vitamin D and calcium.

The study was funded by the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and Health Canada. Among the guidelines was the requirement that the only evidence for beneficial effects had to come from clinical trials published by the time the report was published (end of 2010) [Chung, 2009].

By that time, randomized controlled trials had only shown beneficial effects for bone health. The report recommended 600 IU/d vitamin D for those up to 70 years of age, 800 IU/d for those over 70 years of age.

The minutes of the meetings have never been made public, so we will probably never know what other considerations were used in making these recommendations.

Interestingly, several of the members of this committee have continued to publish papers suggesting that there is little evidence of benefits of vitamin D, for example, disputing the recommendations of the 2011 of the Endocrine Society vitamin D [Holick 2011, 2012] and questioning whether there is a vitamin D pandemic [Rosen, 2012a, b; Manson, 2016].

Newspapers

Pharma Owns LA Times

The newspaper has been bought by a biotech billionaire, further entrenching Big Pharma’s control of the media (ANH-USA, 2018).

From the LA Times:

Biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong on Monday will take control of the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune, two historic newspapers rooted in Southern California civic life for more than 135 years? that now must adapt for the digital age.

Soon-Shiong is spending $500 million to acquire the news organizations, along with Spanish-language Hoy and a handful of community newspapers, from Chicago-based Tronc.

Comment: “Usually Big Pharma influences the media through the billions the industry spends on advertising, but this time the tactic is outright ownership.

Note too that Dr. Soon-Shiong is in the vaccine business, so we can expect the LA Times to be vocal supporters of what the state of California is doing to make it impossible for parents to deviate from the vaccination schedule.

Not only has the state eliminated all non-medical exemptions to vaccination; they are cracking down on doctors offering medical exemptions, too.”

Interested readers can find more information at these websites:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed. Over 27 million publications listed, most with abstracts, some with full text freely available.

https://scholar.google.com. This website can be easily searched and may have papers not listed at pubmed.gov. In addition, it has more links to full papers as well as listings of other papers that cited the papers found.

http://www.grassrootshealth.net. This organization, led by Carole Baggerly with Cedric F. Garland, Dr. P.H. as the scientific advisor, promotes the benefits of UVB exposure and vitamin D to the general public. It enrolls participants in voluntary vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acid prospective studies, which include semiannual blood spot tests.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org, led by John J. Cannell, MD, has pioneered advances in the understanding of the role of vitamin D in reducing risk of influenza, reducing risk and treating those with autism spectrum disorders, and improving athletic performance, as well as fighting against criminal punishment of parents whose infants are found with broken bones and are falsely accused of baby abuse when the real cause is low serum 25(OH)D levels. It has reviews of the evidence for many adverse health outcomes. It sends out frequent emails regarding the benefits of vitamin D.

http://vitamindsociety.org/ is led by Perry Holman. It is a Canada-based vitamin D advocacy organization, with good information about vitamin D.

https://vitamindwiki.com/VitaminDWiki, is led by Henry Lahore. This website has a trove of information and papers on the benefits of vitamin D. Mr. Lahore works tirelessly to keep the site up to date.

http://sunlightinstitute.org is run by Marc Sorenson, Ed.D. It promotes sun and UV exposure and vitamin D.

Disclosure: Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center currently receives funding from Bio-Tech Pharmacal, Inc. (Fayetteville, AR). In the past, it has also received funding from GrassrootsHealth.net, the VitaminDCouncil.org, the VitaminDSociety.org, and the UV Foundation. I have also received reimbursement for travel expenses for making presentations at various conferences related to vitamin D and UV exposure, and for coauthoring books on vitamin D.

Acknowledgements: The author wishes to thank Barbara Boucher and Robert G. Smith for helpful input on this document.

References for the benefits of vitamin D

Disinformation Playbook: http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy/disinformation-playbook#.WiA5wlWnFpg

Alvord A, Dalton G, Fainaru S, Glantz, S. (2017) Climate One, Commonwealth Club. Football, Tobacco and Oil: Narratives of Deceit. https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/football-tobacco-and-oil-narratives-deceit.

ANH-USA (2018) Pharma Owns LA Times. http://www.anh-usa.org/pharma-owns-la-times/

Baggerly CA, Cuomo RE, French CB, Garland CF, et al. (2015). Sunlight and vitamin D: Necessary for public health. J Am CollNutr. ;34:359-365. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26098394

Garland CF, Kim JJ, Mohr SB, Gorham ED, et al. (2014) Meta-analysis of all-cause mortality according to serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D. Am J Pub Health. 104:e43-50. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4103214

Grant WB, Boucher BJ. (2017) Randomized controlled trials of vitamin D and cancer incidence: A modeling study. PLos One. 1;12(5):e0176448. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28459861

Grant WB, Karras SN, Bischoff-Ferrari HA, Annweiler C, et al. (2016) Do studies reporting ‘U’-shaped serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D-health outcome relationships reflect adverse effects? Dermato-Endocrinology, 8(1): e1187349. 10.1080/19381980.2016.1187349. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27489574

Grant WB, Whiting SJ, Schwalfenberg GK, Genuis SJ, Kimball SM. (2016) An estimate of the economic benefit of increasing 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations of Canadians to or above 100 nmol/L. Dermatoendocrin. 8(1):e1248324.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20352622

Grant WB. (2011) An estimate of the global reduction in mortality rates through doubling vitamin D levels. Eur J ClinNutr. 65(9):1016-26. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21731036

Grant WB. (2018) A review of the evidence supporting the vitamin D-cancer prevention hypothesis in 2017. Anticancer Res, 38:1121-36. http://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/38/2/1121.long

Grant WB. (2018) Vitamin D and health in the Mediterranean countries.Hormones.epub doi. 10.1007/s42000-018-0059-8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30209779

Heaney RP. (2014) Guidelines for optimizing design and analysis of clinical studies of nutrient effects.Nutr Rev. 72(1):48-54. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24330136

Holick MF, Binkley NC, Bischoff-Ferrari HA, et al. (2011) Evaluation, treatment, and prevention of vitamin D deficiency: an Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline. J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 96:1911-30.http://www.natap.org/2011/HIV/jc20110385full.pdf

Holick MF. (2007) Vitamin D deficiency. NEngl J Med. 357:266-281. http://www.beauty-review.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Vitamin-D-deficiency.pdf

Lindqvist PG, Epstein E, Nielsen K, et al. (2016) Avoidance of sun exposure as a risk factor for major causes of death: a competing risk analysis of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort. J Intern Med. ;280:375-87. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26992108

Martineau AR, Jolliffe DA, Hooper RL, et al. (2017) Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data. BMJ. 356:i6583. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28202713

McDonnell SL, Baggerly KA, Baggerly CA, Aliano JL, et al. (2017) Maternal 25(OH)D concentrations ≥40 ng/mL associated with 60% lower preterm birth risk among general obstetrical patients at an urban medical center. PLoS One. 12(7):e0180483. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180483

McDonnell SL, Baggerly C, French CB, Baggerly LL, et al. (2016) Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations ≥40 ng/ml Are Associated with >65% Lower Cancer Risk: Pooled Analysis of Randomized Trial and Prospective Cohort Study. PLoS One. 11(4):e0152441. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0152441

Moukayed M, Grant WB. (2013) Molecular link between vitamin D and cancer prevention. Nutrients 2013;5:3993-4023. http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/5/10/3993

Page DC, The Global Pandemic of VDD: King of All Silent Killers. Sept. 1, 2018. ISBN-13: 978-0971736863

Pludowski P, Holick MF, Pilz S, Wagner CL, et al. (2013).Vitamin D effects on musculoskeletal health, immunity, autoimmunity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, fertility, pregnancy, dementia and mortality- a review of recent evidence. Autoimmun Rev. 12:976-989. http://beauty-review.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Vitamin-D-effects-on-musculoskeletal-health-immunity-autoimmunity-cardiovascular-disease-cancer-fertility-pregnancy-dementia-and-mortality-A-review-of-recent-evidence.pdf

Pludowski P, Holick MF, Grant WB, et al. (2018).Vitamin D supplementation guidelines. J Steroid Biochem Molec Biol. 125:125-35. https://dea.lib.unideb.hu/dea/bitstream/handle/2437/235449/FILE_UP_0_JSBMB_Pludowski2017.pdf?sequence=1

Rooney MR, Harnack L, Michos ED, et al. (2017) Trends in Use of High-Dose Vitamin D Supplements Exceeding 1000 or 4000 International Units Daily, 1999-2014. JAMA. 317:2448-2450. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2632494

Ross AC, Manson JE, Abrams SA, Aloia JF, et al. (2011).The 2011 report on dietary reference intakes for calcium and vitamin D from the Institute of Medicine: what clinicians need to know. J ClinEndocrinolMetab. 96:53-8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21118827

Saul AW. Interview with Michael F. Holick, MD. Doctor Yourself Newsletter 6:6, May-June, 2006 http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v6n6.html

Sorenson MB, Grant WB, Tel-Oren (ed). Embrace the Sun. 346 pp, 2018. ISBN 978-0-692-07600-2. https://vitamindwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=Embrace+the+Sun+%E2%80%93+benefits+of+the+sun+throughout+the+day+and+year+%E2%80%93+book+June+2018

Veugelers PJ, Ekwaru JP. (2014) A statistical error in the estimation of the recommended dietary allowance for vitamin D.Nutrients.6:4472-75. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25333201

Wagner CL, Hollis BW. The Implications of Vitamin D Status During Pregnancy on Mother and her Developing Child.Front. Endocrinol., 31 August 2018. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2018.00500/full

Wimalawansa SJ. (2018) Vitamin D and cardiovascular diseases: Causality. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 175:29-43. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28027913

Zhang R, Li B, Gao X, et al. (2017).Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D and the risk of cardiovascular disease: dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies. Am J Clin Nutr. 105:810-19. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28251933

References for the five pillars of the Disinformation Playbook

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American Academy of Dermatology (2018) Current Corporate Partners. https://www.aad.org/support-aad/partners

American Cancer Society (2018) Partners Against Cancer. https://www.cancer.org/our-partners/partners-against-cancer.html

Autier P, Boniol M, Pizot C, Mullie, P. (2014) Vitamin D status and ill health: a systematic review. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. Jan. 2:76-89. http://www.natap.org/2011/HIV/jc20110385full.pdf

Autier P, Mullie P, Macacu A, et al. (2017) Effect of vitamin D supplementation on non-skeletal disorders: a systematic review of meta-analyses and randomised trials. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol.5:986-1004.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29102433

CDC (2018) Fat-Soluble Vitamins and Micronutrients: Vitamin D. https://www.cdc.gov/nutritionreport/99-02/pdf/nr_ch2b.pdf

Chung M, Balk EM, Brendel M et al. (2009) Vitamin D and Calcium: Systematic Review of Health Outcomes; Evidence Report/Technology Assessment No. 183 (Prepared by Tufts Evidence-based Practice Center under Contract No. 290-2007-10055-I); Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: Rockville, MD, USA, 2009. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK32603/

England C (2018) Former CDC Director that Approved Gardasil Vaccine and Became Head of Merck’s Vaccine Division Named “Woman of the Year.” https://healthimpactnews.com/2018/former-cdc-director-that-approved-gardasil-vaccine-and-became-head-of-mercks-vaccine-division-named-woman-of-the-year/

FDA (2018) Vitamins. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/InteractiveNutritionFactsLabel/factsheets/Vitamin_and_Mineral_Chart.pdf

Fortmann SP, Burda BU, Senger CA, Lin JS, Beil TL, O’Connor E, Whitlock EP. (2013) Vitamin, Mineral, and Multivitamin Supplements for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer: A Systematic Evidence Review for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force [Internet]. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2013 Nov. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK173987/

Gotzsche PC. (2013) Deadly Medicine and Organized Crime: How big pharma has corrupted healthcare. Radcliff Publishing, London and NY, 310 pp, 2013. ISBN-13: 978-1846198847

Grant WB, Boucher BJ. (2017) Randomized controlled trials of vitamin D and cancer incidence: A modeling study. PLos One. 2017 May 1;12(5):e0176448. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176448

JAMA Media Advisory. (2017) Vitamin D, Calcium Supplementation Among Older Women Does Not Significantly Reduce Risk of Cancer. March 28, 2017. https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/vitamin-d-calcium-supplementation-among-older-women-does-not-significantly-reduce-risk-of-cancer/

Lappe J, Watson P, Travers-Gustafson D, et al. (2017) Effect of Vitamin D and calcium supplementation on cancer incidence in older women: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 317:1234-43. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28350929

Light DW, Lexchin J, Darrow JJ. (2013) Institutional corruption of pharmaceuticals and the myth of safe and effective drugs. J Law Med Ethics. 41:590-600. http://www.willhall.net/files/PharmaCorruptionInstitutionalDavidLight.pdf

Lupkin S (2018) A Look At How The Revolving Door Spins From FDA To Industry. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/28/495694559/a-look-at-how-the-revolving-door-spins-from-fda-to-industry

Manson JE, Brannon PM, Rosen CJ, Taylor CL. (2016) Vitamin D Deficiency – Is There Really a Pandemic? N Engl J Med. 2016 Nov 10;375(19):1817-20. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27959647, https://www.scribd.com/document/335313246/2016-Vitamina-D-NEJM

March of Dimes (2012) Ten Major Corporations Support Babies and the Power of Cause Marketing. https://www.marchofdimes.org/news/ten-major-corporations-support-babies-and-the-power-of-cause-marketing.aspx (Feb. 7, 2012)

McDonnell SL, Baggerly KA, Baggerly CA et al. (2017) Maternal 25(OH)D concentrations ≥40 ng/mL associated with 60% lower preterm birth risk among general obstetrical patients at an urban medical center. PLoS One. 24;12(7):e0180483. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180483

McDonnell SL, Baggerly C, French CB, Baggerly LL et al. (2016) Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations ≥40 ng/ml Are Associated with >65% Lower Cancer Risk: Pooled Analysis of Randomized Trial and Prospective Cohort Study. PLoS One. 11(4):e0152441. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0152441

Misotti AM, Gnagnarella P. (2013) Vitamin supplement consumption and breast cancer risk: a review. E cancer medical science. 7:365. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24171049

National Medical Association. (2018) Official Convention Program Book http://convention.nmanet.org/images/nma_2018_con_program_online.pdf

NIH (2018) Vitamin D. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional

Ornstein C, Thomas K. (2018) Top Cancer Researcher Fails to Disclose Corporate Financial Ties in Major Research Journals. New York Times, 2018 Sept. 8, p. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/health/jose-baselga-cancer-memorial-sloan-kettering.html

Oreskes N, Conway EM. (2011) Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming Bloomsbury Press, NY. ISBN-13: 978-1608193943

Piller C. (2018a) Hidden conflicts? Science, 361(6397):16-20. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6397/16.long

Piller C. (2018b) Pharma payments to FDA advisers after drug approvals spark ethical concerns. Science, 361(6391):21. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6397/21

Pludowski P, Holick MF, Grant WB, et al. (2018) Vitamin D supplementation guidelines. J Steroid Biochem Molec Biol. 125:125-35. https://dea.lib.unideb.hu/dea/bitstream/handle/2437/235449/FILE_UP_0_JSBMB_Pludowski2017.pdf?sequence=1

Rejnmark L, Bislev LS, Cashman KD, et al. (2017)..Non-skeletal health effects of vitamin D supplementation: A systematic review on findings from meta-analyses summarizing trial data. PLoS One. 12(7):e0180512. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180512

Rooney MR, Harnack L, Michos ED, Ogilvie RP, Sempos CT, Lutsey PL. (2017) Trends in Use of High-Dose Vitamin D Supplements Exceeding 1000 or 4000 International Units Daily, 1999-2014. JAMA. 317:2448-50. http://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2017.4392

Rosen CJ, Abrams SA, Aloia JF, et al. (2012a).IOM committee members respond to Endocrine Society vitamin D guideline.J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 97:1146-52. http://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2011-2218.

Rosen CJ, Adams JS, Bikle DD, et al, (2012b) The nonskeletal effects of vitamin D: an Endocrine Society scientific statement. Endocr Rev. 33:456-92. http://doi.org/10.1210/er.2012-1000.

Rosen CJ, Taylor CL. (2013) Common misconceptions about vitamin D–implications for clinicians. Nat Rev Endocrinol. 9:434-38. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23609334

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Comment on this article at HealthImpactNews.com.

A Texas judge orders that these 2 children be protected from Child “Protective” Services, who snatched them from their family based on half truths and lies. Photo source.

Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

Though much of the public may still believe that Child Protective Services must have a good reason whenever they take children away from their parents, the curtain is increasingly being pulled back to expose the ugly truth behind the facade.

Children are seized from their families many times over false allegations and lies. Deception within social services is the norm, not the exception.

One judge has had enough.

FOX 26 Houston reports that Texas judge Mike Schneider did something on Monday that has never happened in all of the state’s history – he ordered that CPS have no contact with 2 children they took from their parents.

According to family law attorney Dennis Slate:

The affidavit they used to remove was full of mis-truths, and half truths, and outright lies.

For parents dealing with CPS all over the country, the lies and twisting of the truth by social workers is something that they are accustomed to seeing. What too few parents see is a judge willing to call CPS out on the deception.

Investigative Reporter Randy Wallace reports that Judge Schneider asked the social worker in court why he filed the emergency motion to take the 5-month-old baby boy and 2-year-old daughter of Michael and Melissa Bright.

Despite the fact that the social worker had sworn an affidavit in order to take the children from their parents at Texas Children’s Hospital, he pleaded the fifth amendment in court.

The hospital had called CPS after the parents brought the baby in when he fell from a chair and hit his head in mid-summer. It was an accident, but that didn’t stop the hospital from reporting it to CPS, and it didn’t stop CPS from taking the children from their family.

Same Players Involved in Other Medical Kidnap Cases

Texas Children’s Hospital is the same facility that reported the mother of 4-month-old Aniya Blu Vasquez to CPS after a pediatrician mistakenly injected the baby with the Gardasil-9 vaccine, a shot that is not intended for use in children under 10  years of age.

The hospital blamed the mother, Anita Vasquez, instead of the vaccine, and their doctors have since persuaded a judge to terminate the mother’s parental rights.

See their story:

Was Texas Mom’s Baby who was Accidentally Vaccinated with Gardasil Medically Kidnapped for Medical Research?

Randy Wallace is a rare mainstream journalist in that he has reported numerous stories about corruption within Child Protective Services. He was the first to report the story of the medical kidnapping of the three children belonging to Ahmed and Olubunmi Giwa, Ph.D.

Twitter photo of Randy Wallace of FOX 26 Houston.

Houston County CPS was responsible for seizing the Giwa children over false allegations of neglect by a doctor who never saw their son or talked to the parents. Thankfully, the children were eventually returned to their parents, but not until the entire family was traumatized by the separation.

See:

Texas CPS Kidnaps 19-month Old Child for “Failure to Thrive”

Last year, Randy Wallace covered another story involving Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston County CPS, and Judge Mike Schneider.

In that case, the hospital called CPS and a 16-month-old baby was taken from her parents who traveled to Houston from Thailand to get medical care for their daughter. The allegations in that case were suspicions of human trafficking, which later changed to medical neglect.

Wallace reported scathing words to both CPS and Texas Children’s Hospital by Judge Schneider in February of 2017:

It’s actually illegal to put things in reports that are not true or that even have no foundation. And the human trafficking allegation just based on what we know seems completely unfounded.

I have no idea whether it was done because of people’s assumptions regarding people’s race or age difference. It really stinks, it really does. (Source).

Apparently, his words fell on deaf ears, because both entities were involved in making up things for their reports when they seized the children of Michael and Melissa Bright. The judge’s words were even sterner this time around.

Judge Mike Schneider. Photo source.

Randy Wallace says that CPS could be fined a great deal of money for their violations of the Bright family’s rights. Will that be enough to motivate the department and the hospital to cease making false allegations against parents in order to kidnap their children?

Angry family law judge takes CPS to task for removing children from parents

by Randy Wallace
MyFoxHouston.com

Excerpts:

Last July, the couple’s infant son fell out of a collapsible chair and hurt his head. Texas Children’s Hospital contacted Child Protective Services. Michael Bright says he did something every parent should do when CPS comes calling — tape record everything.

“We got some good advice from a family friend who’s been through this same kind of hell,” Bright said.

In a text, the CPS case worker tells the parents his agency has no legal right to take the kids.

Source – FOX 26 News.

“[Yet] he’s down in court swearing that these children are in imminent danger and he hasn’t actually seen them in 35 days,” said attorney Stephanie Proffitt.

Taking someone’s children is a big deal, and the case worker testified he didn’t know that that was impeding on their Constitutional rights….

He’s the government, and he doesn’t know what the government says.

When asked in a “show cause” hearing why he took the kids, the case worker took the Fifth.

“For their main witness to get up and admit he potentially lied to have this child removed or had these children removed was shocking to me,” said attorney Dennis Slate.

During the three days the children were in CPS custody, the 2-year-old ended up with a black eye and a bad rash.

Children are more likely to be abused in foster care than in their own homes. This 2-year-old only spent 3 days in state care, but she ended up with a black eye. Photo source.

In an unprecedented move, Judge Mike Schneider told CPS to have no contact with the Bright children even though they were in CPS custody.

Randy Wallace concluded:

Later this month, it will be a sanctions hearing, and CPS could be fined tens of thousands of dollars.

In the meantime, the children have been returned to their parents.

Read the full article at FOX 26 Houston.

Attorney Talks Recording CPS/Dangers of Signing Case Plan

The website for attorney Dennis Slate warns parents of some of the bullying tactics often used by CPS and gives suggestions on how parents can protect themselves. Obviously, they want clients to call them. Beyond that, they explain:

ABOUT THE CHILD SAFETY AND EVALUATION PLAN

The Child Protective Services investigator at your door may request that you sign a “safety plan.”

The Child Safety Evaluation Plan is often presented by TDFPS [Texas Department of Family and Protective Services] with the threat of having your child placed in foster care if you refuse to sign.

The goal of CPS is to investigate the case while the child is in a safe environment, but signing the document can place CPS in your life indefinitely.

FIGHTING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES

If you have been presented with the Parental Child Safety Placement or Child Safety and Evaluation plan, take the following steps:

1. Remain calm and do not answer incriminating questions;
2. Document everything that takes place;
3. Exercise your right to privacy if the investigator asks to come inside your home; and
4. Get legal representation immediately

Keep in mind that, without exigent circumstances, CPS is not legally allowed to remove your children just because you refuse to sign the plan.

CPS must be able to show that an immediate danger exists and that without removal of the child, serious danger will occur to him or her. Just because CPS suspects that a danger may exist, that is not enough to warrant his or her removal from your family. (Source).

Texas Family Law Attorney Dennis Slate. Photo source.

Definitions of “Imminent” and “Exigent”

These words are often thrown around by social workers as though every scratch or dirty dish in the sink represents an emergency circumstance allowing them to bypass the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states that a person or thing cannot be seized without a court order or warrant unless there are exigent circumstances which make it too dangerous to the child to wait to talk to a judge before taking the child.

Contrary to the usual practice by social workers, the words “imminent” and “exigent” actually have meaning. They are not fluff words to fill up space in the Bill of Rights.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has defined the terms in their “Child Protective Services Handbook“:

1221.2 Definition of Imminent and Exigent

CPS February 2013

CPS Investigators and staff may not remove a child from his or her home without a court order unless the child is in imminent danger of harm or there are exigent circumstances to justify acting without a court order.

The terms “imminent” and “exigent” have the following definitions:

  •  Imminent means immediate.

  •  Exigent circumstance means that there is a situation requiring immediate action.

For example, a CPS investigator talks to an alleged victim of sexual abuse. The victim states that her father has been physically and sexually abusing her every Friday night during her weekly visitations in his home and that this has been happening for an extended period of time. The date of the interview falls on a Friday, the father is scheduled to pick the child up from school for her weekly visitation, and the investigator finds the child’s outcry to be credible.

In this instance, the investigator can find both that the child is in immediate danger of physical and sexual abuse and that there is an exigent circumstance justifying removal without a court order.

Emergency Removal without a Court Order

Unless CPS staff believe that a child is in immediate jeopardy or sexual abuse is about to occur, emergency removal without a court order is not warranted.

For additional guidance on ensuring compliance with the Fourth Amendment during investigative interviews, see 2390 Investigative Interviews and its subitems.

In far too many instances, children are taken from their families all across the United States under what social workers term “emergency circumstances” in the paperwork later presented to a judge, even though the allegations and situations are neither emergencies, nor imminent or exigent.

It is to be hoped that more judges and law enforcement officers will follow the example of Houston Judge Mike Schneider and hold social workers accountable to the legal definitions of words such as “imminent” and “exigent.”

Children should certainly be protected from actual abuse, which is a crime.

However, all too often, children are abused by the very people who say that they are protecting children. Children are then subjected to much undue trauma and abuse by the child “protective” system.

Social Workers Wall of Shame. Social workers accused of wrongdoing in some of our stories. Top left: Mississippi Social Worker Travys Velez (Story), Top Center: Kentucky Social Worker Eddie Nevitt (Story), Top Right: Oklahoma Social Worker Tamara Powell (Story), Bottom Left: Los Angeles Social Worker Stefanie Rodriguez (Story), Bottom Middle Left: Alabama Social Worker Ahzshaka Evans (Story), Bottom Middle Right: Kentucky Social Worker Carol Sanders (Story), Bottom Right: Texas Social Worker Jennifer Matthews (Story).

“What does not, or at least should not happen, is that an agent of the government, charged with the task of safeguarding the welfare of children, would completely fabricate contact with a family in order to mask non-compliance with the agency’s policy. Providing false testimony of any kind is an unfathomable violation of the trust that the people in the State of Iowa place in their public servants and cast a dark and permanent shadow upon all of us.” – Judge Adam Sauer

Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

An Iowa judge recently reprimanded the Department of Human Services (DHS) after a social worker was found to have repeatedly lied to the court about parents in order to have their parental rights to their children terminated.

According to the Associated Press (AP), District Associate Judge Adam Sauer criticized the testimony of social worker Chelsie Gray for being filled with “lies and misrepresentations.”

Judge Sauer dismissed the state’s petitions to terminate parental rights on an Iowa couple’s 4 children, finding that they had been “unfairly stripped of their parental rights.”

He also ruled that “referrals for new foster case placements shall stop immediately,” because the original ruling was based upon false information.

Many parents all over the country fighting the medical or state-sanctioned kidnapping of their children report that their cases are built upon false allegations and reports, and they have the documentation to back up their claims. What is rare, however, is for this fact to be recognized by a judge.

Caught – Social Worker Gave “False Information” in Several Cases

The beginning of justice for the Iowa family began when Cerro Gordo County assistant attorney Nichole Benes noticed some “discrepancies” in the social worker’s testimony last spring in the TPR case, according to AP, and she let the court know what she found. She also reported her findings to the Iowa Attorney General’s office and to DHS.

It is policy in many states for the case worker to visit the children in their cases monthly.

Iowa social worker Chelsie Gray is not alone in reporting that she fulfilled that requirement without actually seeing the children.

ABC 15 Arizona spoke with an Arizona CPS whistleblower in 2014, who told them that many of her co-workers simply did “drive-bys,” driving by the house but never actually laying eyes on the children. If they were being abused in foster care, the social worker would never have known about it.

See:

CPS Caseworker in Arizona Turns Whistleblower – Reports on Abuse of Power

Gray’s false information didn’t end there, however. She told the court that she had spoken with the school teachers of the children about some concerning behaviors they demonstrated at school, but the teachers denied ever having been contacted by the social worker.

She accused the mother of testing positive for drugs and of not complying with terms of her plan.

Her testimony led to a lower court judge ruling to take away all parental rights last year. Judge Gregg Rosenbladt found her to be a “very credible” witness who was unbiased. The children were in foster care based on persuasive lies.

Judge Sauer stated that this was “unacceptable” and:

that false testimony is of grave concern.

There was a subsequent review of Chelsie Gray’s other DHS cases, and it turned up “10 known instances in which she gave false information.”

This was obviously a pattern for her.

Judge Adam Sauer did not take this lightly. According to the AP article:

He said that terminating a parent’s rights was the most important decision a court can make, and that it must be a fair proceeding based on facts and evidence.

“What does not, or at least should not happen, is that an agent of the government, charged with the task of safeguarding the welfare of children, would completely fabricate contact with a family in order to mask non-compliance with the agency’s policy,” Sauer wrote.

“Providing false testimony of any kind is an unfathomable violation of the trust that the people in the State of Iowa place in their public servants and cast a dark and permanent shadow upon all of us.”

Judge Adam Sauer recently acknowledged the importance of justice in family cases. Photo Source.

Unfortunately, as hundreds of thousands of parents have found, false testimony by social workers, and even doctors, is often standard fare when it comes to taking children from their families.

We have found this in our own investigations of hundreds of cases, where allegations written by social workers or Child Abuse Pediatricians are filled with discrepancies and statements that are readily demonstrated to be incorrect.

On the basis of false allegations, lies, and hearsay, without evidence, families are being ripped apart. They are victims of generational genocide, and the children are more likely to end up as victims of sexual assault, child sex trafficking, or death. Yet, the lack of due process and the corruption within the system is the rule, not the exception.

Adoptive Parents Abuse/Starve Iowa Teens, State Responds by Taking More Children from Parents

The decision by the Iowa judge follows 2 horrific, high-profile cases of teenage girls who died in the last year in Iowa. Both girls suffered from terrible abuse and neglect, as well as starvation, at the hands of their ADOPTIVE parents.

The Department of Human Services came under fire for doing an inadequate job of following up on the children entrusted to their care, children whose adoptions they were responsible for.

Sabrina Ray, 16, weighed only 56 pounds when she was found starved to death by her adopters. (Link to her story here). Natalie Fin, also 16, suffered a fatal heart attack due to being starved. (Link to her story here).

The tendency, as we have reported previously, is for social workers to have a knee-jerk reaction and start removing more children, not less, whenever there is a death of a child in their area.

Public and media outcry is often strong at those times for the state to “do something” to protect innocent children.

Social workers tend to try to avoid leaving a child in harm’s way and becoming the next day’s headline news for not doing enough.

Unfortunately, these tragedies are followed by periods of more children being traumatized by being taken from their families, “just in case.”

See:

Confessions of a CPS Caseworker: We Remove Kids to Protect Ourselves

The philosophy becomes the direct opposite of the cherished American value of liberty and justice whereby a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Where we once held the societal attitude that we would rather see a guilty man go free than condemn an innocent person, when children are involved, the presumption of innocence and due process seems to go out the window. “The best interest of the children” becomes an excuse for a witch hunt which sacrifices hundreds of thousands of families in its path.

Other CPS Whistleblowers Report Similar Horrors

These stories of corruption and lies within the system tend to be hidden from the public eye, but they are anything but rare.

One social worker from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services got to the point where he couldn’t sleep at night.

It wasn’t because of seeing too much abuse of children by their parents. His conscience could not handle the things that the department was pushing him and other social workers to do.

See:

Whistleblower in LA County DCFS Reveals Corruption in Child Kidnapping

He told Tammi Stefano of The National Safe Child Show that he needed to be able to look himself in the mirror and could not be a part of what DCFS was asking him to participate in:

Illegal activities such as taking a child away from a safe parent and having them adopted out or kept in foster care.

The gentleman and Tammi Stefano described situations in which a parent who was not on drugs would come up with a “dirty” drug screen. There are times that the test would be switched with someone else’s, or they would be labeled as having a dirty test because they were given too short of notice to get to the screening place in time.

Taking Orders for Children to be Adopted then Kidnapping them Through CPS

The whistleblower spoke of seeing foster parents literally putting in orders for a child that they want the department to secure for them. Tammi Stefano states that other whistleblowers have described the same scenario.

Isn’t taking orders for a child the same as human trafficking?

Several parents have sent screenshots to me of their social workers posting requests in social media for their CPS friends to “be on the lookout” for a child matching a particular description (e.g. blond hair, green eyes, female 2 year old) because they have someone who wants to adopt. These were never published due to the parents’ fear of retaliation.

Another whistleblower from the Midwest described being told by supervisors to drive through neighborhoods looking for children outside playing that would fit certain descriptions. If they found what they were looking for, the social worker would make up allegations in order to seize the child.

Investigative reporter John Boel of WLKY Target 32 News in Kentucky did a series of reports a decade ago in which he interviewed several former CPS whistleblowers. He discovered elements of corruption that we still see today. In 2007, he reported that he received:

…“confidential” family court tapes showing just how the system works, and how the actions of some caseworkers even disturb some of their fellow caseworkers. Records supporting parents seem to “disappear.” They also reveal conflicts of interest between case workers and foster parents who may be related to the case worker placing the child into the foster home.

John Boel explains that CPS whistleblowers reveal how Kentucky families are harassed, and CPS workers are pressured to boost State adoption numbers.

[One] former CPS worker explains how CPS is all about statistics, about how many children can be placed into adoption, since State and Federal reimbursement funds are all tied into statistics. She explains that CPS workers are encouraged to put more children into adoption.

These CPS whistleblowers also confirmed that CPS can and does take away children simply to retaliate against people who try to fight or expose the system.

See:

Whistleblowers Reveal CPS Child Kidnappings in Kentucky Adoption Business

California Attorney Shawn McMillan is known as a warrior who fights for families on the Appeals level. He spoke with Tammi Stefano of The National Safe Child Show about the way that the CPS system destroys social workers who go into the work because they truly care about children and want to help them:

 According to McMillan, the good social workers don’t last. The good ones only last a year or two, and McMillan said that when he deposes social workers in a lawsuit, he can usually tell within the first 20 minutes which ones are new and will be gone in a year or two, and which ones are “lifers” who will stay in the system long term, and he states that this later group is “rotten to the core.”

“You can’t stay there and not be tainted.”

See:

California Attorney Shawn McMillan on Why He Fights CPS: “They’re Stealing Kids”

Consequences for Deceptive Iowa Social Worker?

Chelsie Gray may or may not face consequences for her “lies and misrepresentations” concerning the Iowa family who lost their 4 children based on her testimony. The Globe Gazette reported Thursday that a prosecutor is looking into the case to decide whether or not she will be charged with perjury. (Source.)

There was no mention of the possibility for her being held responsible on the rest of the 10 cases in which she was discovered to have given false information.

The social worker is no longer working for the department as of September 23, but the agency cites confidentiality and privacy reasons for refusing to disclose any information as to why she has left.

The editor of the Ottumwa Courier calls upon the Iowa legislature to close the loophole that allows the state to be mum on such information, and he calls out agencies who hide their misdeeds behind the policy:

If the employees weren’t fired or forced to resign over such serious misconduct, it’s entirely fair to ask why they weren’t.

Why did the ostensible guardians of the public’s interest decide such behavior by their employees warranted zero action? Such a lackadaisical approach to wrongdoing is hardly befitting organizations funded by taxpayer dollars.

It seems much more likely to us that the claims are a legal fig leaf, a fiction developed for the sole purpose of protecting institutions whose employees were out of control. They are a sacrifice of truth on the altar of image. (Source).

Are Judges Waking Up?

Fortunately, Judge Adam Sauer appears to be continuing a trend we are seeing lately of good judicial decisions attempting to reign in out-of-control Child Protective Services agencies.

Earlier this week, we reported that a Texas judge ordered CPS to have no contact with children the agency took over allegations that an emergency situation existed. The social worker not only lied to the court in order to remove the children, but he also pled the 5th Amendment in a later hearing when the judge asked why the children were taken.

See:

In Unprecedented Move Texas Judge Orders CPS to Have No Contact with 2 Children Removed without Warrant – Social Worker Pleads 5th in Court

Before that, an Indiana Court of Appeals overturned a number of termination of parental rights cases after judges recognized a disturbing trend of CPS repeatedly violating due process rights of parents.

See:

Indiana High Court Accuses CPS of “Significant Violations of Due Process in Termination of Parental Rights”

Perhaps this trend will continue, and families will once again find their due process and Constitutional rights restored.

See Also:

Why are so Many Inexperienced and Poorly Trained Social Workers Given Authority to Remove Children from their Homes?

Samantha Osteraas stands trial for scalding a child she adopted, causing severe burns over most of her body. Photo source.

Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

A woman who was approved by the State of Arizona to adopt a child out of the foster care system is on trial for child abuse. Samantha Osteraas faces 2 counts of child abuse for scalding a little girl entrusted to her care, causing 3rd degree burns to almost 80% of her body, causing all 10 of her toes to be amputated, and nearly costing the child’s life.

During the trial, which is expected to end this week, 7-year-old Devani took the stand and told a jury that Osteraas held her down in the bathtub with a pink towel, according to the Arizona Daily Star.

She is only 7 years old, but the beautiful child known to family advocates as “the little girl in the blue dress” has been through more abuse than most of us can imagine.

This photo of Devani was taken before her horrific abuse in state custody. Photo from the AZ Childrens Lives Matter Facebook page.

Devani was taken at the age of 2 from her parents by Arizona’s Child “Protective” Services – the Department of Child Services (DCS), but she was never abused in her parents’ home.

Her horrors began after she was in the custody of the State of Arizona. Before she was adopted by Samantha and Justin Osteraas, she was placed by DCS into a foster home with a man who is now serving prison time for running a pornographic and pedophile ring out of his home.

See:

Arizona Child Removed from Loving Family and Placed into Foster Care Where She was Repeatedly Raped – then 80% of Body Burned

Trial begins for Tucson woman accused of scalding 5-year-old daughter in tub

Caitlin Schmidt of the Arizona Daily Star writes of the first day of the trial:

Deputy Pima County Attorney Alan Goodwin told the jury of 11 women and three men — 12 jurors and two alternates — that the evidence likely won’t explain why Osteraas intentionally burned her daughter, but that it will prove she committed the act and failed to call 911 for several hours afterward.

The girl, who was 5 at the time of the incident, spent four months in a hospital after the scalding, undergoing “surgery after surgery after surgery” for skin removal and grafts. She also had to have all 10 toes amputated as a result of her injuries, Goodwin told the jury.

Detective Jeremy Butcher, the first responder to the scene, took the stand, testifying that he arrived at the house within minutes of getting the call because he lived in the neighborhood.

During opening statements, Goodwin called what Butcher saw when he entered the home “an image … an experience that’s absolutely seared in his mind and seared in his memory forever.”

Deputy Pima County Attorney Dawn Aspacher had Butcher tell the jury what he saw and heard at the home, starting with a bloody smear on the front door.

Butcher said Osteraas was distraught as he walked to the master bedroom, where he found the child on the floor, her body a “dark-reddish and almost purplish hue.”

The child’s lower half was covered with a towel and a red stain was visible on the floor underneath her. The child wasn’t speaking or crying, but was “basically just staring straight up,” Butcher told the jury.

One juror wiped his eyes while Butcher recounted how he stayed with the girl until paramedics arrived. While her breathing was labored, he said, at one point she reached up towards the star-shaped badge pinned to his uniform shirt.

After the girl was taken to the hospital, Butcher and other deputies searched the home, finding what later turned out to be chunks of skin in several locations throughout the house, including the bathroom in which the child was bathed.

Photo of the floor of the bathroom where Devani was burned. Photo source.

During Butcher’s testimony, Aspacher projected photos of the girl before she was taken to the hospital on one of the courtroom walls, the girl’s beet-red skin eliciting gasps from the gallery.

Butcher’s testimony ended with a photo of a large chunk of skin next to the bathtub’s drain. Several jurors stared up at the screen even after the courtroom lights had been turned on and the image was no longer visible.

KOLD News 13 reports:

According to court records, Osteraas said she didn’t realize the bath water was that hot.

Investigators said the water was almost 130 degrees and determined the burns were not the result of an accident.

In anticipation of the possibility of Devani being able to testify in court, News 4 Tuscon reported last week that:

The Pima County Attorney’s Office has asked the court to allow a so-called facility dog, a specially trained K-9, to help ease the girl’s stress while she testifies against the woman that she had once called her mom.

On Friday, October 12, Devani took the stand to tell the jury what happened to her.

Child burn victim tells Tucson jurors her mother held her down in a tub of hot water

Caitlin Schmidt of the Arizona Daily Star writes:

A 7-year-old girl who Pima County prosecutors say was intentionally scalded by her mother told jurors Friday that her mother held her down in a tub of hot water and prevented her from getting out.

Prior to the child’s testimony, her attorneys filed a motion with Pima County Superior Court Judge James Marner to clear the courtroom of the more than 30 spectators packed into the gallery.

While Marner denied the motion, citing concerns for Osteraas’ right to a fair trial and potential for a mistrial if the public’s access was limited, he ordered that the girl’s biological parents and grandmother — whose rights had previously been severed — would not be allowed in the courtroom during her testimony, after the child’s therapist and a clinical psychiatrist submitted letters detailing the potential damage to the girl.

Wearing a pink-and-beige striped dress and a pink bow in her hair, the child took the witness stand, clutching a stuffed animal throughout the 20-minute questioning.

The girl told Goodwin she’d been burned “in a hot bath” and that her mom “put her in there” and said she had to stay, before holding her in the tub with a pink towel.

Goodwin asked the child about the brown shirt she wore under her dress, a medical garment designed to help the scars go away. The girl said she had scars on her back, tummy and legs.

When Goodwin asked the girl her mommy’s name, she quickly answered, “Samantha Osteraas,” ending the state’s questioning.

According to several news sources, the defense has taken the position that the scalding was unintentional and that Samantha Osteraas did not knowingly hurt the child.

Note: the defense that parents did not intentionally cause harm, even when demonstrably true, is generally not accepted in cases involving biological parents.

Child Protective Services routinely takes children and condemns biological parents even when they had no way of knowing about or preventing harm that came to their children.

See the stories of Matthew Marble in Tennessee and Kaya Thomas in South Carolina, who lost their children over something someone else did. Other parents are often held responsible for broken bones when the child has a medical condition they had no idea existed. See stories.

The trial for Samantha Osteraas is expected to end sometime this week.

Abuse Began in Foster Care, Not at Home

Devani was originally taken from her home after an argument between her parents which was falsely reported by a vindictive neighbor to involve domestic violence. The 2-year-old wasn’t even home at the time, but at her grandmother’s house.

Nonetheless, Arizona social worker Norel Alviti seized the toddler from her family.

After Michelle Tremor-Calderon provided proof that the charges were dropped, the social worker insisted that she take a drug test based on rumors from the neighbor.

Michelle passed easily. She had a history of drugs from 13 years prior, but that had long since been in the past.

Health Impact News investigated Devani’s story and learned that the original allegations against the parents were quickly proven to be baseless. Though they were dismissed, DCS kept the child in their custody. As we reported last year:

Without a shred of evidence, social workers allegedly were “concerned” about the possibility that the parents might, in the future, do something that would cause harm to their child, so DCS kept Devani in their custody, placing her in very real, and unimaginably horrific, foster care situations.

See:

Arizona Child Removed from Loving Family and Placed into Foster Care Where She was Repeatedly Raped – then 80% of Body Burned

It often seems that social workers are willing to dig deeper into biological family history than the history of the people that they place children entrusted to their care with.

In Devani’s first foster home, there were scratches and bruises almost immediately. After Michelle complained, the foster person dropped the child off at DCS and washed her hands of the situation.

The second situation was far worse. Devani was placed in a house with foster parents, one of whom is currently serving a 17-year prison sentence for his prominent role in running a pornographic pedophile ring out of his house with the foster children that DCS placed with him. Law enforcement discovered a graphic video in David Frodsham’s house with a little girl crying out for her mother as she was being sexually assaulted.

See:

Arizona Places 2 Year Old Child in Foster Pornographic Pedophile Ring – Foster Mom Burns 80% of Her Body

Devani’s mother had long been reporting signs that her daughter was being molested in foster care, but social workers and the attorney appointed by the court to represent Devani, Thea Gilbert, told the court that the mother was simply “interfering with placement.”

Instead of recognizing that the woman who gave birth to the child had that “mama’s gut feeling” that something was horribly wrong, state employees accused Michelle of sabotaging the department’s efforts.

DCS looked the other way when Devani and other foster children in the Frodsham house of horrors showed clear signs of being victims of sexual abuse. It took the federal ICE agency to bring a stop to David Frodsham pimping out foster children in his house as part of his pedophile ring.

See:

Arizona Foster Care System Revealed as Pedophile Ring: Former Foster Child Tortured for Years Sues for $15 Million

The department refused to return Devani to her parents. DCS terminated parental rights, refusing all along to allow the child to live with any family members.

Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire

Guardian ad Litem, Thea Gilbert, was Devani’s attorney through the years all the terrible abuse happened to her. Source.

DCS then placed Devani with the Osteraas family. Attorney Thea Gilbert had previously argued that David Frodsham should adopt Devani. Gilbert has remained Devani’s Guardian ad Litem throughout the child’s DCS history, and she approved the new placement. Samantha and Justin adopted Devani out of foster care and changed her name.

It was after this that Devani’s life almost ended after being allegedly held down in a scalding hot bathtub. Mercifully, Devani is still alive and was able to testify in the Osteraas trial on Friday about what happened.

We will follow the story and update readers after the jury renders a decision.

Many times at Health Impact News, we have cited data that shows that children are at least 6 times more likely to be raped, molested, abused, or killed in foster care than if they had been left in their own homes, even if that home is less than perfect.

Devani’s story is a chilling indication of this reality.

Another reporter with the Arizona Daily Star, Tim Steller, also challenges the knee-jerk reaction to remove children from their home “just in case.” He wrote this while Devani was still in the hospital after being abused in her adoptive home:

We’re used to seeing how risky it can be for a child to stay with no-good parents.

That’s because time and again over the last decade, we’ve learned of local kids whose families were under the scrutiny of the state child-welfare agencies but ended up dead at the hands of their parents anyway.

They conditioned the public, legislators and child-protective workers to react conservatively to avoid death and scandal. Taking kids out of questionable homes seems the safe alternative.

But the story of a 5-year-old girl, still clinging to life at Banner-University Medical Center and reported in the Star last Sunday by Patty Machelor, shows there’s another side to those decisions: The risk that life outside a child’s borderline home may be worse than it is inside. [Emphasis added by HIN.] (Source.)

Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

In the years we have covered the topic of “medical kidnapping” and child abductions through child social services, we have exposed the corruption behind these “legal” kidnappings, and the reasons why they happen.

Most of these foundational articles are found on our About Us page.

One of the reasons, tragically, that children are kidnapped and taken from their families is for child sex trafficking, which some have reported brings in more money than the illegal drugs and illegal gun trade, combined.

Sadly, religious institutions, many of which have their own child social services, can be among the worst offenders when it comes to trafficking and kidnapping children.

Health Impact News investigative reporter John Thomas takes an in-depth look into the child sex scandals of the Roman Catholic Church in this article, the first one of a three-part series on this topic.

The Truth About Pedophile Priests and Child Molestation in the Roman Catholic Church

by John P. Thomas
Health Impact News

The Roman Catholic Church is on the verge of an internal civil war.

The battleground is between those who would liberalize the traditional definition of immoral sexual behavior for its clergy, and those who want to restore the conservative values of the Catholic faith as it has been known for more than a thousand years.

The scandal involving pedophile priests and the cover-up of their crimes against children and young men is bringing the liberal/conservative clash into sharp focus. [17]

It is still a crime in the United States for an adult to have sexual encounters with boys and girls. Such crimes are called sexual assault or child molestation. [1] Those who commit such crimes are called pedophiles. [2] There are no exceptions granted by these laws for members of the clergy.

By focusing on the pedophile crimes committed by clergy of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) in this article, I am not overlooking the crimes other pedophile groups commit against children — Those acts are equally immoral and illegal!

The focus of this article is on the types of criminal charges levied by the Pennsylvania grand jury investigation against predator priests and the cover-up of those crimes by the Roman Catholic hierarchy of bishops and cardinals. 

Clearly, Protestant churches also have clergy and staff that who have committed sex crimes [7], but the focus today is on the Roman Catholic Church (RCC).

This is the first of three articles on pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). This article goes much deeper than one on one sex crimes against children. It also looks at the systematic cover-up of those crimes by the Catholic hierarchy. 

A future article will look at the trafficking of children for use as sex slaves and the use of children for ritualistic sacrifices. Another article will highlight the heroic Catholic priests and bishops who are risking their lives to tell the truth about what is happening in their church.

Some of these whistleblowers are now in hiding in fear for their lives, while others have been killed or blackballed from parish work.

The Consequences of Having been Sexually Molested as a Child are Devastating

The lives of thousands of children have been destroyed by the network of pedophile priests. It often breaks the capacity to trust other people and cripples the ability to have healthy adult relationships with spouses and their own children.

Some victims of child molestation find it impossible to hold down meaningful employment, because of their inability to interact with authority figures in the workplace.

Perhaps worst of all, for many, the victims of child sexual assault have lost their ability to have a positive relationship with God.

Sadly, many will never face the difficulty of marriage and employment, because the resulting shame, anxiety, and depression drove them to suicide.

Underneath the sexual abuse of children, whether homosexual or heterosexual, there is a fundamental devaluing of human life. Perpetrators arrogantly see children as expendable beings to be used for their pleasure regardless of the consequences to the child.

As a society, we have been learning to value our children and move beyond the notion that children are our expendable possessions. [8, 9]

Sadly, as we see in the scandal that is rocking the Catholic Church today, there are apparently many who do not agree with the principle that children should be protected and defended from harm as a first priority.

The long history of Catholic orders of priests and nuns taking care of widows and orphans — those who are sick, poor, disabled, or prisoners, and feeding the hungry — which goes back beyond the 14th century [23], is being marred by evil acts of child abuse.

The disclosure of rampant sexual molestation, torture, and neglect of children by priests and nuns has become commonplace in the Catholic institutions that were intended to serve children. [22, 24]

The widespread molestation of children by priests in local parishes throughout the United States [5, 11] has further broken the trust people once had in Catholic institutions.

Child Sexual Molestation Must be Reported to Police as a Crime

Most states require that incidences of child sexual abuse or molestation are to be reported to the police as a crime regardless of who commits the crime. [1]

The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect defines child sexual assault as:

“Contacts or interactions between a child and an adult when the child is being used for sexual stimulation of the perpetrator or another person when the perpetrator or another person is in a position of power or control over the victim.”

Sexual abuse has been defined to include:

“…inappropriate physical contact, making a child view sexual acts or pornography, using a child in making pornography, or exposing an adult’s genitals to a child.” [1]

Adults who commit repeated acts of child molestation are called pedophiles.

Pedophiles are sexually attracted to children and want to use their sexual power to dominate and control someone who is smaller and weaker. [25]

It’s about using children for sexual gratification and about the building up of self-esteem. All pedophile acts are illegal. [2]

Is Pedophilia a Crime or a Mental Illness?

From a mental health perspective, pedophilia is considered to be a mental illness.

An opinion article published in The New York Times reports there is a movement in the Unites States asking for a softer response to pedophiles and to treat them as unfortunate victims of an illness.

Some would even suggest that we consider pedophiles to have a disability that should provide them with protection by disability laws – since they can’t help being who they are. [3]

It may be true that some pedophiles experience sexual attraction to children and don’t act on their attraction (attraction is not a crime). However, for those who do act upon their impulses, pedophile acts still remain a heinous crime against innocent victims. 

The Hierarchy of the RCC Treats Child Molestation as a Personnel Matter

Apparently, the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) has not considered child molestation of boys and girls by priests to be criminal activity.

Rather, officials of the RCC consider child molestation and child rape by priests to be confidential personnel matters. The hierarchy treats perpetrators more like victims of an illness rather than as perpetrators of crimes. [4, 5]

As we learned from the Pennsylvania grand jury report on sex crimes committed by priests in that state, priests were rarely disciplined for what is euphemistically called “inappropriate behavior” and were systematically moved from one church to another after being counseled and told to pray more when their sex crimes began to become public. [4, 5]

Statistics show that 82% of pedophile sex crimes identified in the Pennsylvania grand jury report were against boys and 18% were against girls. [6]

$4 Billion Payment of Damages for Sex Crimes didn’t Make the Problem Go Away 

Sex crimes against children by RCC priests were sometimes resolved privately throughout the United States with large payouts of money in exchange for silence.

Over 4 billion dollars was paid out to victims between 1950 and 2015 for crimes committed by priests. [10]

Reports from records kept by bishops of the RCC indicate that priests committed crimes against an estimated 15,000 children in these cities: Boston, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Bernardino CA, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, Lafayette LA, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Camden NJ, Bridgeport CT, Oklahoma City, Louisville KY, Chicago, Tucson, Seattle, Spokane, Fort Worth , Dallas, Omaha , Jackson MS, Milwaukee, Toledo, Davenport IA, Denver, Portland OR, Charleston SC, St. Petersburg FL, Miami, Orlando, St. Augustine, St. Louis, Fairbanks AK, Wilmington DE, Hartford CT, Burlington VT, Altoona-Johnstown PA , Manchester NH, Washington D.C., and in many other cities.

It is estimated that only one third of these victims have come forward to file for damages. [11]

The Problem is Actually Much Larger than the RCC Bishops Report

Priests actually accused of sex crimes against children total 5,700 to 10,000. Because of the statute of limitations, only a few hundred of these pedophile priests have been tried, convicted, and sentenced for their crimes. [11]

Criminal indictments in Pennsylvania for sex crimes against children have rocked the Catholic World including the Vatican. [12]

“More than 300 predator priests in Pennsylvania are accused of abusing over 1,000 children across seven decades,” a Pennsylvania Grand Jury reported in August of 2018.

Their report decried a systematic cover-up of these crimes by the hierarchy of the RCC.

“More than 1,000 child victims were identifiable, but the real number was ‘in the thousands,’ the grand jury estimated, given those children whose records were lost or who were afraid to ever come forward.” [13]

State Attorneys General in 10 states, including Missouri and Illinois, are investigating sex crimes committed by Catholic clergy in their states. In Nebraska, the state Attorney General is inviting people to come forward to tell him their stories of sex abuse in preparation for a possible investigation. [12, 14]

In Michigan, Attorney General Bill Schuette ordered simultaneous surprise raids on the offices for each of the seven Catholic Church dioceses. [14]

Archbishop Claims that he didn’t know that Sex with Children was a Crime

During a deposition about sex crimes against children, Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis, Missouri, claimed that he couldn’t remember when he realized that a priest having sex with a child was a crime.

He now knows, but can’t remember when he had this realization. [12]

The following clip from his testimony speaks volumes about how high-level Catholic clergy are trying to protect themselves and criminal priests who have sex with children.

See: Testimony of Archbishop Robert Carlson from 2014. Most pertinent information begins at 3:45:

It’s more than Individual Crimes – It is Interstate Conspiracy 

Evidence is mounting that high-level church officials, including many US bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and even Pope Francis, were aware of pedophile acts against young boys by priests, and they condoned these crimes by covering them up.

They protected offending priests and shifted them between church parishes in different states when their criminal child molestation began to be exposed. [12]

The transfer of known pedophile priests between parishes in different states has triggered the possible application of federal racketeering laws known as RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations). [15]

Knowingly covering up criminal activity of pedophile priests and promoting the continuation of their crimes by sending them to other states could be seen as racketeering. Conviction under federal RICO laws could lead to the confiscating of Catholic Church assets throughout the United States. [12] 

Fake News from Catholic News Organizations is Hiding the Full Story

Many longtime Roman Catholics may be finding the preceding information hard to believe and may find the information in the remainder of this article beyond belief.

Many have been getting their news about the RCC from tightly controlled and officially sanctioned media outlets of the RCC. They have been fed a steady diet of fake news from these news outlets saying that all is well with the church.

However, a group of conservative Roman Catholics, historically faithful to the traditional values of the RCC, has established an alternative news organization to present the truth about the criminal and moral failings of priests and leaders in their church.

They are revealing the truth that not all is well. Their goal is to cleanse the church of moral and criminal corruption, which they see as closely related to the existence of a self-protecting network of priests and bishops who have a history of molesting children and sexually assaulting young male seminarians.

This news service is called “Church Militant.” They recently published a commentary about fake news that is being distributed by many RCC news services, which are controlled by Catholic Bishops or Catholic institutions.

One of their investigative journalists is Michael Voris. Mr. Voris is the author of Militant: Resurrecting Authentic Catholicism published in 2016. [16]

Mr. Voris is one of the key spokespersons for the alternative RCC news service – Church Militant. [17]

He explains that most mainstream Catholic news organizations report the “news” that the establishment of the church wants reported. They function more like press release readers than journalists. [18]

Mr. Voris stated:

There is something sort of floating around in the Catholic ether that needs to be addressed head-on. It is the credibility of Catholic “news” outfits that have close association with the church establishment – and those associations can be either direct or indirect financial relationships.

Some of them are directly dependent on the bishops such as CNS (Catholic News Service), which is the bishop’s news outfit.

And then there are others, many others in fact, that are closely related financially and are dependent on keeping good relations with bishops like CNA (Catholic News Agency), EWTN, Relevant Radio, even Bill Donohue at the Catholic League to a degree because he needs the approval of the establishment to keep appearing that everything he says is trustworthy – like all of them – so he can keep getting paid.

These outfits cannot afford to fall out of favor with the bishops because they will suffer tremendously in the area of advertising or exposure or having the seal of approval taken away or getting access to various church events and personalities for interviews and all of that.

In short, they are beholden to the establishment and therefore cannot take too great of a chance of running afoul of them.

This is also true of multiple Catholic radio outfits that are essentially EWTN affiliates. They are allowed to air EWTN programming for free, but they must tow the party line because if they don’t then the programming will be taken away and now they are high and dry without very much to broadcast. …

At the end of the day there is this sort of monolithic structure of Catholic news outfits that in the end aren’t really news.

Here is the rule of thumb, if they are on good terms with the establishment – WATCH OUT. They report to you only so much.

There is a line that they will not cross because since they are to varying degrees dependent on bishops that would be professional suicide and well everyone likes a paycheck. … 

They cannot be relied upon to bring you the entire truth in complete context. I’m sorry, having spent my entire professional career over three decades in secular media as a professional – truth and context are everything.

Right now, many of these outfits are more PR outfits for the bishops rather than news outlets. 

Where were these Catholic journalists for all these years, those who had the inside track on such knowledge when children and seminarians were being raped by homosexual clergy?

Again, this has gone on for decades.

Where were they when the faith life of the church was being completely gutted by malevolent men in bishop’s robes?

They were nowhere to be found.

They were off collecting their paychecks, reading and printing diocesan press releases telling you everything is good in the church. [18]

Watch the full commentary from Michael Voris: 

The Problem of Sex Crime Cover-up has Risen to the Vatican

It is now believed that Pope Benedict’s resignation in 2013 may have been triggered by a 300-page Dossier that he received reporting the immoral behavior and sex crimes of priests in the RCC. [19]

Allegations are now being raised against Pope Francis which suggest that he is part of the cover-up of criminal activity by priests.

He continues to be silent on recent allegations being made against him and pedophile clergy by faithful Catholics who are demanding that he take the lead in addressing the sexual scandals in the RCC. [20]

Watch the Vortex commentary for the full details about the silence of Pope Frances:

Pope Francis Blocks Investigation into Sex Crime Cover-up by a Cardinal

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Vatican’s former doctrine chief, revealed that just months into the papacy of Pope Francis, the Pope blocked an investigation into sex abuse allegations against Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.

A member of the “St. Gallen Mafia,” Murphy-O’Connor played a key role in electing Francis to the papacy. [14]

The St. Gallen Mafia was a group of cardinals and bishops that worked for years to elect Jorge Bergoglio (now known as Francis) as Pope.

The group wanted a drastic reform of the Church to make it much more modern and current. [21]

Did Pope Francis Know about the Rape of Deaf Students by Priests? 

CBS News reported on the sex abuse scandal at the Antonio Provolo Institute with locations in Italy and Argentina.

Hundreds of deaf children at both institutes were serially raped by Catholic priests over several decades.

When the abuse was exposed in Italy, the priests were transferred to a location in Argentina where under Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, they continued their crimes against children at the Argentinian school. [22]

Conclusion: Time to Speak Out Against Sexual Molestation by Catholic Priests

This is clearly a time for Roman Catholics to voice their opinions about the crimes going on in their church. The practice of being silent about sexual molestation and letting the hierarchy take care of the matter is coming to an end, because the criminal justice system is starting to do what the church hierarchy failed to do during the last 70 years.

When I read excerpts from the 1,400 page Pennsylvania Grand Jury report on sex crimes committed by priests, I was deeply saddened to read reports such as the following:

By a man testifying before the Grand Jury on October 18, 2016:

The man came forward in 1994 and reported he had been sexually molested by Father Guy Marsico while at St. Leo the Great (in Rohrerstown).

Marsico asked the boy’s parents for permission for the boy to spend the night at the rectory. The boy’s parents knew he wanted to be a priest and granted permission for the boy to stay overnight.

The boy went to the rectory to stay overnight. Marsico had boxes on a spare bed. Marsico told the victim he could not remove the boxes and that he had to sleep in the same bed with Marsico. Marsico made the boy undress. Marsico gave the boy full body massages and touched the boy’s penis. Marsico put his mouth on the boy’s penis. The boy stated that Marsico and he slept together in the same bed overnight. The boy also blacked out for a period of time due to fear. The boy was 13 years old at the time.

The boy disclosed that he told his mother about the abuse when he was 14 years old. His mother did not tell anyone. The boy told his father about the abuse when he was 16 years old. His father did not tell anyone.

The boy felt strong enough to report the abuse to the Diocese of Harrisburg. Diocesan officials confronted Marsico. Marsico admitted to sleeping in the same bed with the boy and giving him massages. Marsico stated that he “brushed his penis aside” when massaging the boy’s stomach and pelvic area. Marsico sent the boy a letter of apology.

The Diocese of Harrisburg agreed to pay for prescription medications and counseling for the boy. The boy later found out that his counselor reported what occurred during his counseling to the Diocese. The boy disclosed that he attempted suicide in 1986. [4]

Apparently, it is common for Catholic parents to learn about sexual molestation of their children and to do nothing about it.

I was raised Roman Catholic in the 1960s and was somehow indoctrinated to believe that priests and nuns were special people who shouldn’t be questioned. It appears that kind of training was common, and these parents and many other Catholic parents just weren’t willing to stand up for their children when confrontation of a priest and his crimes was needed. See:

Excerpts from the grand jury report on child sex abuse in 6 Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses

If there was ever a time to speak out about cases of sexual molestation, now is the time.

Regardless of the state where you live, if you have been molested by a priest or nun, or you are the parent of a child who has been molested, then you may wish to file a report with your local law enforcement agency.

You also may wish to contact the attorney general’s office in your state and provide the office with your testimony about what happened.

About the Author

John P. Thomas is a health writer for Health Impact News. He holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan, and a Master of Science in Public Health (M.S.P.H.) from the School of Public Health, Department of Health Administration, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

References

[1] “Child Sexual Molestation Law and Legal Definition,” USLegal, Inc.

[2] “Legal definition of Pedophile,” Legal-Dictionary, TheFreeDictionary.com.

[3] “Pedophilia: A Disorder, Not a Crime,” Opinion, Margo Kaplan, The New York Times, 10/5/2014.

[4] “Excerpts from the grand jury report on child sex abuse in 6 Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses,” Local News, lancasteronline.com, 8/19/2018.

[5] “Catholic Church clergy sex abuse: Read the full grand jury report.”

[6] “The Pennsylvania Report By the Numbers,” ACTS Apologist Blog, 8/27/2018.

[7] “Jury Convicts Saddleback Youth Mentor of Molesting Boys at Church,” Bob Ditmer, 8/23/2018.

[8] “From Child Protection to State-sponsored Child Kidnapping: How Did we Get Here?” Monica Mears, Health Impact News, 10/30/2015.

[9] “The Ease with which Government Kidnaps Children – A Review of Current Legislation and the Multi-Billion Dollar Child “Protection” Industry,” Connie Reguli with commentary by Terri LaPoint, Health Impact News, 9/17/2018.

[10] “NCR research: Costs of sex abuse crisis to US church underestimated,” Jack Ruhl, Diane Ruhl    Accountability, National Catholic Reporter, 11/2/2015.

[11] “Major Sexual Abuse Settlements in the Catholic Church,” BishopAccountability.org.  

[12] “Exposing Clerical Rot,” The Download, YouTube, 8/24/2018.

[13] “Pennsylvania report lists more than 300 ‘predator’ priests,” Jennie Matthew, New York – AFP, 8/14/2018.

[14] “Headlines—October 4, 2018,” Christine Niles, M.St. (Oxon.), J.D., Church Militant.com, YouTube, 10/4/2018.

[15] “Criminal Law Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Law,” Justia, Retrieved 10/3/2018.

[16] Militant: Resurrecting Authentic Catholicism, Michael Voris, 1/18/2016. PDF Download Militant Resurrecting Authentic Catholicism Free

[17] Church Militant – Serving Catholics.

[18] “Truth and Context?” Michael Voris, The Vortex, Church Militant, YouTube, 9/28/2018.

[19] “Vatican Rocked by Leak of 300-Page Dossier,” Christine Niles, M.St. (Oxon.), J.D., ChurchMilitant.com, 9/13/2018.

[20] “Business as Usual,” Michael Voris, The Vortex, ChurchMilitant.com, YouTube, 9/17/2018.

[21] “The Anti-Benedict Conspiracy,” Rod Dreher, The American Conservative, 9/25/2015.

[22] “Argentina investigates alleged sex abuse at school,” CBS News, 10/4/2018.

[23] “Congregational Social Work,” Encyclopedia of Social Work, NASW Press and Oxford University Press, January 2014, e-ISBN: 9780199975839.

 [24] “Thousands Raped and Abused in Catholic Schools in Ireland,” Henry McDonald, Ireland Correspondent, The Guardian, World News, 2009.

[25] “WHEN BOYS HAVE BEEN SEXUALLY ABUSED – A Guide for Young Boys,” National Clearinghouse on Family Violence, Public Health Agency of Canada, 2008.

Jordan Meissinger holds his newborn son. His joy was short-lived. When Baby Paxton was only 48 hours old, Arizona social workers took him away from his family. Photo provided by family.

by Health Impact News/MedicalKidnap.com Staff

Paxton Meissinger came into the world on Tuesday, October 16, 2018, weighing all of 7 pounds and 2 ounces. Like every newborn baby, he wanted and expected only one thing – the presence of his mommy.

To an infant, the most important thing in the world is be surrounded by the love and warmth of the person whose heartbeat he has heard for as long as he had the ability to hear.

In her arms, every need he has is met, from her milk and the nutrition and antibodies it provides to the reassurance of her warmth and love.

Brain growth, his immune system, and his respiration rate develop ideally as he rests against her skin-to-skin, releasing the perfect hormones needed for his system, and hers.

The foundation for basic trust is laid as he hears the voices of both father and mother, and they respond to his communication. The first few weeks and months of life have been likened to a “fourth trimester,” where baby humans are designed to remain still a unit with their mothers.

There is nothing in the world as important to a baby as his mother.

However, for Baby Paxton, these basic human needs are no longer being met, thanks to the Arizona Department of Children’s Services (DCS).

When he was only 48 hours old, social workers took him away from his parents, Briana and Jordan Meissinger, claiming that this is “necessary to protect the child from suffering abuse or neglect.”

In the name of protecting him from potential possible harm, Child Protective Services is depriving him of the very things he needs the most.

Briana Meissinger told Health Impact News:

They took him! I was hoping they would leave us alone.

Newborn Baby Paxton Meissinger only had 48 hours with his parents before the state seized him away. Photo supplied by family

Social Worker – “We Are at Your House. Where Are You?”

The devastated parents got a call from DCS just 24 hours after Briana’s c-section.

While she was recovering from surgery in her hospital room and bonding with her new baby, social workers were sitting in the driveway of the Meissingers’ home demanding a meeting.

The workers refused to say what it was about other than that there were new allegations of “general neglect” that they needed to discuss. Obviously, Briana was not able to go home to meet with them since her baby had been born the day before and they were still at the hospital.

The social workers refused to divulge what the allegations were, but Briana and Jordan later learned that the social workers had reportedly received an anonymous call that the baby had been born 8 days prior and that they were home already neglecting the baby. The DCS workers had already obtained a warrant based on this and other incorrect information, but they didn’t mention that to the Meissingers.

They showed up at the hospital the next day, Thursday, October 18, and seized Baby Paxton from his parents.

The incorrect birth date was another in a long line of wrong, false, or outright deceptive statements made by the department over the last year. In conjunction with Phoenix Children’s Hospital and their Child Abuse Pediatrician, DCS had taken the Meissingers’ son Keaton last September over allegations of Shaken Baby Syndrome.

From the very beginning of that case, some doctors suspected that he had an infection which was treated with several antibiotics. Other medical experts have stated the same, but DCS and the Child Abuse Pediatrician have stubbornly clung to their interpretation of Keaton’s symptoms.

The long, drawn-out case to decide which diagnosis to believe is still in the Maricopa Juvenile Court. Dependency has yet to be determined by the courts.

After she learned that DCS intended to step in and take their newest baby, Briana said:

This warrant was one-sided. They didn’t give our side, which is the fact that this is a highly contested case. We have experts and medical professionals that are saying that their allegations are bullshit.

THEIR experts are saying that they can’t even for sure say that this is abuse, so they haven’t proven anything. Nothing. And they’re trying to take our newborn from us.

There’s nothing we can do!

She explained that, until they can go before a judge, they cannot even fight this to keep their baby.

The Maricopa County social workers went to a different judge than the one in Keaton’s case in order to get the warrant to seize Baby Paxton. The Meissingers believe that, had they gone to the judge who is currently presiding over their case, they would not have been able to get a warrant. The judge who signed it was “misled,” says Briana.

Their judge has heard some of the Meissingers’ side of the story as well as a little bit from medical experts who adamantly disagree with the diagnosis of abuse by the Child Abuse doctor at Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

There are still at least a couple more days left of the trial. The next one is at the end of October, followed by another day or two possibly to be held in December before the dependency case wraps up.

According to several doctors and medical experts whose presuppositions have not blinded them to see other medical conditions that can cause similar symptoms, Keaton’s medical history and records do not show any signs of trauma or abuse. Rather, they are, in the words of one of their experts, “100% consistent with [a] brain infection.”

Baby Keaton’s Story – Force Vaccinated in Spite of Medical Problems

Baby Paxton’s big brother was born on June 6, 2017. Briana’s labor was induced, and she was given high doses of pitocin (labor-inducing drug).

After 2 days of hard labor, the baby was not handling the contractions well. His chart showed “decels” in his heart rate, and Briana began having convulsions. They were rushed into surgery for an emergency c-section.

Keaton required resuscitation to help him to breathe when he was born, and he was given oxygen. His APGAR score was just 5 at both one minute and 5 minutes, which indicates that he was in trouble.

He spent his first few hours in the NICU, but he recovered. He was given a Vitamin K shot and Hepatitis B vaccine.

Briana says that “he was extremely fussy for a newborn baby.” After a few weeks, he improved, until his 2 month shots:

At his 2 month doctor appointment he was diagnosed with Acid Reflux and was prescribed renititidine. I had done quite a bit of research on vaccines, but not nearly enough I know now. At his 2 month appointment on 8/10/2017, I asked his Pediatrician at the time, Dr. Mary Lavalley, to do a delayed and spaced out schedule for his vaccinations.

He was very croupy frequently as he breathed, which was another concern we brought up at the appointment. Because of this, Dr. Lavalley got upset and snappy with me stating that we HAD to get ALL of his vaccines THAT day, BECAUSE he was sick- that not doing this would mean we were knowingly neglecting his safety.
She bullied us into it, so I sat there and cried while he received all of his shots aside from the pneumococcal vaccine. [It was a total of 6 vaccines.] That’s when things began, and steadily went downhill.

For the first almost 4 days he screamed a shrill painful scream as he tensed up his whole body, pulling his legs to his chest. He would scream so hard that he would have a ” silent scream ” where he would hold his breath, which really worried us and broke our hearts.  knew he was in pain, but at the time I had no idea that this was due to encephalitis.

He ran a fever on and off for the next week. His typical hour or two naps became 20 minutes, and he “would wake up from his sleep tensed up screaming before he’d even open his eyes.”

The second week is when the vomiting started. Keaton began seeming dazed, and the happy baby we knew started to fade away. He wasn’t focusing or tracking as much. He was rarely smiling. All of this, the pediatrician informed us was “normal,”  and that some babies’ symptoms last a little longer than others.

As a Mother, I knew, I FELT that these things weren’t normal. I felt it with every inch of my being that something was wrong with my baby.

It was apparent to Briana and Jordan Meissinger that Keaton was not the same after his 2 month shots. Photo provided by family.

On August 24, 2017, Keaton woke up from a nap, crying. Briana was out running an errand, and Jordan changed his son’s diaper. When he went into the kitchen to prepare a bottle, the baby suddenly stopped crying.

Alarmed, his father went to check on him. He looked like he was sleeping, but when Jordan picked him up, he was “completely limp” and wouldn’t wake up.

He called Briana who was just 5 minutes away from home by that time. When she got home, Keaton was “awake, but not alert.”

While she stripped him down to check for any sign of insect or spider bites or a rash or some other explanation, he seemed dazed. She says his eyes were as wide as saucers and his pupils were “huge.”

The terrified couple knew immediately that they needed to rush him to the hospital.

At nearby Banner Del Webb Hospital, a nurse recommended that they try to feed him. Keaton promptly projectile vomited “everywhere.”

Doctors began running tests. One doctor came in and said that the x-ray showed that he had “junked up lungs,” and told them that this could be septic pneumonia or meningitis.

His white blood cell count was high, at 22,000. The normal range is 5,000 to 10,000. (Source). Elevated levels usually indicate infection.

With babies that young, the doctor explained, infections can be very serious. They cannot afford to wait for the results of a culture to determine what organism is causing the infection. They begin treatment immediately. Doctors started Keaton on 3 strong antibiotics.

The baby began improving dramatically in less than an hour. He stopped crying, and began cooing and making eye contact. Briana and Jordan were greatly relieved.

The Doctor then said that he needed a Lumbar Puncture, and that he also needed to be transferred to a Childrens Specialty Hospital – that we could either choose Banner Thunderbird, or Phoenix Children’s, and that we could either have him get the LP there, or once he’s transferred.

This is where we made our biggest mistake, we chose Phoenix Children’s Hospital, and opted to have them do the LP, because they specialize in Children, and we felt we could trust them more with doing an LP.

They were wrong.

Phoenix Children’s Hospital has a long history of medically kidnapping children, as we have reported many times.

The Meissingers didn’t know that information. Nor were they aware that, like many Children’s Hospitals, Phoenix has Child Abuse Pediatricians on staff.

The pattern of these doctors is to “find” abuse where none exists, often ignoring signs of real medical conditions or neglecting to do needed testing in order to do differential diagnoses.

At Phoenix Children’s Hospital, the lumbar puncture showed that Keaton’s cerebral spinal fluid was positive for enterovirus, a virus that can cause various illnesses including encephalitis (brain inflammation) and meningitis.

Other tests were run, including repeat x-rays, an MRI, a CT scan of Keaton’s head, and an ophthalmology test.

Not surprisingly, given Keaton’s traumatic birth history, he was found to have subdural hematomas and retinal hemorrhaging. These symptoms can even occur in the most normal of childbirths, and they are extremely common with difficult births, pitocin induction, and rescuscitation with oxygen, all of which factors were present when Keaton was born.

See:

Common Childbirth Practice Could Lead to Later False Diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome

Combined with the brain swelling likely caused by the enterovirus, that meant that “the triad” was present.

When this trio of symptoms are present, some doctors, including most Child Abuse Pediatricians, view that as diagnostic of Shaken Baby Syndrome, even if there are genuine medical conditions, such as a viral illness, that could cause the same symptoms.

Neuropathologist Doctor: I Believed in Shaken Baby Syndrome until Science Showed I was Wrong

By the time labs were run for Keaton at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, his white blood cell was much closer to normal, at 11,000. He tested negative for any bacterial infection at that time, but he had been on 3 strong antibiotics for several hours. According to several medical expert reports, this was normal.

However, the Child Abuse Pediatrician at Phoenix Children’s, Dr. Cynthia Nelson, didn’t see it that way. From her medical reports, it appears that once she saw the “triad” of symptoms associated with Shaken Baby Syndrome, she threw out the possibility of infection or anything else besides abuse being the the cause of Baby Keaton’s symptoms.

DCS was called, and the Meissingers were accused of abusing Keaton by shaking him, and he was seized from them.

The family has been fighting to get him back ever since.

A juvenile court trial to determine dependency was set for early April, but in typical fashion, DCS has requested delay after delay. There were a couple of court dates in September, but the hearings are not complete. Most of the defense testimony has not yet been heard. The next court date is set for October 31.

A case worker argued that Keaton was developmentally delayed. The Guardian ad Litem promptly went to see him at his day care, and found that nothing the social worker said about his development was true. Photo provided by family.

Meanwhile, Briana Meissinger gave birth to a new baby this week. The parents had hoped that everything would be resolved by the time Baby Paxton would be born, and that DCS and the court would see that they didn’t hurt Keaton, that instead he was sick.

The first hospital that saw Keaton saw no reason to suspect abuse. They believed that there was evidence of an infectious process, and they began treatment in line with that evidence. Other medical experts have looked at their case and come to a very difference conclusion than the doctors at Phoenix Children’s and DCS.

In fact, in contrast with the Child Abuse Pediatricians, these experts take into account the entire symptom picture, not throwing out symptoms such as 3 days of fever, shrill, high-pitched crying, frequent leg tremors, and other symptoms such as the high white blood cell count.

The Child Abuse Pediatrician wrote in the records that the baby tested positive for enterovirus but that it was not the cause of Keaton’s problems. Because he had the triad, it was “suspicious for abuse,” and other symptoms were thrown out the window as irrelevant. Because she suspected abuse, she rejected the possibility of infection, though meningitis was never truly ruled out.

Everything was seen from that point through the lens of abuse.

This is circular reasoning at its most insidious. The parents are deemed guilty because the doctor has interpreted the data as evidence of guilt. DCS and the family court system often makes no room for another interpretation of the facts.

During the course of the DCS case against the Meissingers, they and their attorneys thought at one point that they had all of the medical records. They were supposed to have them, and DCS told them that they had all the records. A representative of Phoenix Children’s Hospital signed an affidavit that all of the records had been released to the family’s attorneys.

However, some evidence, specifically some of the scans that DCS and Phoenix Children’s Hospital said were evidence of abuse, were not included in the records they released. DCS said they do not consider medical imaging and scans to be part of the medical record, thus their practice is never to disclose them. This deprives the defense of being able to have them independently evaluated.

Circular Reasoning and Arrogance by Child Abuse Pediatricians

Attorneys for the couple filed an objection with sobering words about the arrogance that the decision represents:

DCS’s position also presumes that the scans are subject to only one interpretation and PCH’s report on the scan is conclusive to 100% accuracy.

That decision is not theirs to make.

If that is DCS’s position, it is disingenuous at best and a misrepresentation to the Court at worst.

It is indicative of a factor common to almost every medical kidnapping case that we have covered involving Child Abuse Specialists: These doctors apparently expect that their verdict is the only possible conclusion.

As they work hand in hand with Child Protective Services, their testimony is elevated above any other evidence and is not to be challenged.

Dissenters are ridiculed and discredited. All other interpretations, even if they are more solidly aligned with scientific evidence, are rejected.

Social workers, attorneys, and judges are all expected to fall into line in giving one particular class of people – Child Abuse Pediatricians – the omnipotent ability to be judge and jury, boding no challenge or alternate interpretation of the evidence.

They are accountable to no one for their decisions, even if it leads to the destruction of an innocent family or the incarceration of an innocent parent.

A doctor with an agenda and a conflict of interest is allowed to unilaterally make decisions that rob children and parents of each other. Photo provided by family.

In countless cases across America, medical professionals who challenge the decisions of Child Abuse Pediatricians are ridiculed and discredited.

Judges have been known to ignore a dozen reports by various experts in favor of one report by a Child Abuse Pediatrician.

Yet these doctors are not qualified or trained as experts in the fields who are better suited to identify medical conditions that are not the result of abuse. They are not experts in radiology, infectious diseases, genetics, or neurology.

See:

Pediatric Child Abuse “Experts” are NOT Experts in Anything

Child Abuse Pediatricians Have Financial Motive to Kidnap Children

Attorneys for the Meissingers have discovered that taxpayers, through the Arizona Department of Children and Families, are paying financial incentives to Child Abuse Pediatricians to turn in parents for abuse. The hospitals get kickbacks of more than $800 per child.

Here is a price sheet for the Kids for Cash agreement between DCS and Phoenix Children’s Hospital – the hospital that has been involved in more Medical Kidnap stories than any other hospital in the entire country:

Source: Phoenix Children’s Hospital

There is ample evidence that the Meissinger’s son Keaton suffered from a viral infection following vaccines. While the trial is not yet finished and all the testimony has not yet been heard, DCS social workers have proceeded as though Briana and Jordan Meissinger are guilty. There is no presumption of innocence until proven guilty with the agency.

Social workers presented a petition to a judge asserting their guilt as established fact though it is far from such.

The warrant says:

Due to the parents’ continued denials about the cause of the injuries to Keaton, their home is an unsuitable environment for Baby Boy Meissinger.

Because they refuse to admit guilt, the social workers reasoned, the parents are guilty.

The warrant also states:

The parents have claimed the injuries to Keaton were the result of vaccines and/or viral infections but medical professionals have indicated Keaton’s injuries could not have been sustained from vaccines or viral infections as suggested by the parents.

The social workers represent that the opinion of the Child Abuse Pediatrician at Phoenix Children’s Hospital is the only valid one, while ignoring the fact that numerous doctors and medical experts assert that Keaton’s injuries were, indeed, the result of a viral infection.

Thus, based on wrong information, Baby Paxton has been ordered by a judge to be taken from his parents.

In the course of “protecting” him, DCS is subjecting him to risks that began from the moment they tried to put him in a social worker’s car at the hospital.

Paxton’s father noticed that the car seat in her vehicle did not have the insert to protect a newborn’s head. In order to protect his baby, he had to inform the worker that it was needed, and then he was the one who provided the insert for the social worker’s car.

How You Can Help

A Facebook page was established by supporters when the family first began trying to get Keaton back called Bring Keaton Home. Now, as Briana and Jordan Meissinger work to get Paxton home as well, supporters want to continue to utilize Keaton’s page for people to learn how they can help with getting both babies restored to their parents.

Governor Doug Ducey can be reached at 602-542-4331 or contacted here.

Greg McKay is the Director of DCS/CPS in Arizona. His office may be reached at 602-255-2500.

The Senator for the Meissingers’ district is Senator Rick Gray. He is on the Health and Human Services Committee and may be reached at 602-926-5413 or contacted here.

The House Representative for their district is Representative David L. Cook. He may be reached at 602-926-5162 or contacted here.

Many Arizona parents are fed up with Phoenix Children’s Hospital and DCS medically kidnapping children, and some of them are gathering together to rally in front of the hospital next Saturday, October 27, 2018. See the event page, Peace Rally – Against Medical Kidnapping on Facebook for more details.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò with President Barack Obama. Archbishop Viganò is currently on the run and hiding from the Vatican intelligence service. Image source.

Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

In the years we have covered the topic of “medical kidnapping” and child abductions through child social services, we have exposed the corruption behind these “legal” kidnappings, and the reasons why they happen.

Most of these foundational articles are found on our About Us page.

One of the reasons, tragically, that children are kidnapped and taken from their families is for child sex trafficking, which some have reported brings in more money than the illegal drugs and illegal gun trade, combined.

Sadly, religious institutions, many of which have their own child social services, can be among the worst offenders when it comes to trafficking and kidnapping children.

Health Impact News investigative reporter John Thomas takes an in-depth look into the child sex scandals of the Roman Catholic Church in this article, the second one of a multi-part series on this topic.

Whistle Blowing Clergy in the Roman Catholic Church Risk Their Careers and Their Lives to Reveal the Truth About Child Sexual Abuse

by John P. Thomas
Health Impact News

The code of silence in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) that has protected pedophile priests for decades is being breeched by a few courageous whistleblowing Catholic clergy. These brave men have become willing to speak the truth at great risk to their careers and even to their very lives.

In the previous article about sexual molestation of children by Roman Catholic priests, we saw patterns of abuse that span more than 70 years. More than 4 billion dollars in damages was paid to victims in the United States, yet the problem remained. During those years, few priests were criminally charged and convicted for their crimes. 

Most offending priests were just counseled by members of the RCC hierarchy and told to pray more about their “inappropriate” behavior. Sometimes they were sent for mental health treatment before reassignment to another parish.

Priests were systematically shifted from parish to parish and state to state to cover-up their crimes. This practice did not stop the acts of pedophilia – it only led to the sexual assault of more children. 

Evidence is very strong that the highest levels in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church were fully aware of the molestation problem of children and even the rape of male seminary students, but did little if anything to stop it, thus condoning the crimes.

Read the previous article for details:

The Catholic Church and Pedophilia: Trafficking Children as Sex Slaves

Whistleblowing Clergy – Dead, in Hiding, or Blackballed

As we will see, some whistleblowing Catholic clergy have died under extremely suspicious circumstances after promising to reveal what they knew.

Some are in hiding after bringing forth evidence of massive criminal activity in the RCC. Even priests who simply raise allegations to their superiors regarding child molestation by other priests are blacklisted and no longer assigned to parish duties.

Here are a few of the stories of whistleblowers.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò Remains in Hiding in Fear for His Life 

Archbishop Viganò, Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana, Apostolic Nuncio (Vatican Ambassador to the United States) from 2011 to 2016 [1], reiterated in a letter to Pope Francis his demand that the Pope act to investigate and correct situations involving sexual misconduct among Catholic clergy. 

High on the list of complaints was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s alleged sexual abuse of Catholic seminarians who he was said to have “forced himself upon” (sexually assaulted). [1] Archbishop Viganò also raised charges that Cardinal McCarrick molested a 16-year-old boy. The charge of molestation of the boy has been substantiated by investigators. [2]

Under public pressure, Cardinal McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals in August of 2018, at age 88, after alleged misconduct that has damaged lives for at least five decades. He now faces a canonical trial. [1, 2]

Even though Cardinal McCarrick has now resigned, the bigger problem remains.

Archbishop Viganò Challenges the Pope to Clean Up the Rest of the Problem

In a letter to Pope Francis, dated September 29, 2018, Archbishop Viganò stated in part:

…since at least June 23, 2013, the Pope knew from me how perverse and evil McCarrick was in his intentions and actions, and instead of taking the measures that every good pastor would have taken, the pope made McCarrick one of his principal agents in governing the Church, in regard to the United States, the Curia, and even China, as we are seeing these days with great concern and anxiety for that martyr Church. [3]

Archbishop Viganò also raised serious concern about the possibility of Pope Francis playing a role in covering up for or blocking investigations into other priests and prelates, including Fr. Julio Grassi, Fr. Mauro Inzoli, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor [3] and others. [4]

Archbishop Viganò further described his concern to Pope Francis:

It has been a month since I offered my testimony, solely for the good of the Church, regarding what occurred at the audience with Pope Francis on June 23, 2013 and regarding certain matters I was given to know in the assignments entrusted to me at the secretariat of State and in Washington, in relation to those who bear responsibility for covering up the crimes committed by the former archbishop of that capital.

My decision to reveal those grave facts was for me the most painful and serious decision that I have ever made in my life. I made it after long reflection and prayer, during months of profound suffering and anguish, during a crescendo of continual news of terrible events, with thousands of innocent victims destroyed and the vocations and lives of young priests and religious disturbed. The silence of the pastors who could have provided a remedy and prevented new victims became increasingly indefensible, a devastating crime for the Church. Well aware of the enormous consequences that my testimony could have, because what I was about to reveal involved the successor of Peter himself, I nonetheless chose to speak in order to protect the Church, and I declare with a clear conscience before God that my testimony is true. Christ died for the Church, and Peter, Servus servorum Dei, is the first one called to serve the spouse of Christ.

Certainly, some of the facts that I was to reveal were covered by the pontifical secret that I had promised to observe and that I had faithfully observed from the beginning of my service to the Holy See. But the purpose of any secret, including the pontifical secret, is to protect the Church from her enemies, not to cover up and become complicit in crimes committed by some of her members. I was a witness, not by my choice, of shocking facts and, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states (par. 2491), the seal of secrecy is not binding when very grave harm can be avoided only by divulging the truth. Only the seal of confession could have justified my silence. [3]

Pope Francis Reverses Sanctions Levied by Pope Benedict

Archbishop Viganò explained that Pope Benedict issued sanctions against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick based on his criminal sexual conduct and Pope Francis removed those sanctions and reinstated him to a significant position of power within the RCC.

Read the full letter from Archbishop Viganò to Pope Francis:

Viganò releases new ‘testimony’ responding to Pope’s silence on McCarrick cover-up

or

Listen to the letter read by a Catholic apologist. He prefaced the reading of the letter with a commentary about papal infallibility and impeccability, and the obligation of Catholics to confront error in their Church when they see it: 

Whistleblowing Priests can be Killed for Their Truth Telling

Archbishop Viganò has good reason to fear for his life. 

Image source.

Fr. Joseph Moreno was silenced with a gunshot, in 2012, after collecting evidence for 20 years about sexual assaults committed by clergy in the Buffalo, New York Diocese. [5]

His saga began when he assisted a seminary student in raising a complaint to the RCC hierarchy regarding a pedophile sex crime that the student witnessed.

The young seminary student saw the immediate results of a priest having sexually assaulted a 6-year-old boy when the boy came out of the priest’s office.

The boy had been forced to perform oral sex on the priest. The child came out of the priest’s office with semen on his face, in his hair, and on his clothing. [5]

The seminary student was eventually driven out of the seminary for reporting the crime to the RCC hierarchy. [5]

This event triggered Fr. Moreno to begin gathering evidence about Catholic clergy sex crimes when he realized that the 1992 child molestation complaint was being ignored by the RCC hierarchy. [5]

In addition to the molestation that Fr. Moreno recorded, he compiled information about the local seminary’s program to recruit homosexual priests from Columbia, South America. The evidence he gathered would have brought the Catholic Church under severe scrutiny for covering up homosexual and pedophile activity in the priesthood. [5]

Apparently, he also had evidence on how local police, judges, and politicians cooperated with the culture of sexual abuse in the Buffalo diocese. [10] 

Fr. Moreno prepared a dossier and had scheduled a meeting in Washington, D.C., where he was going to deliver his evidence to Archbishop Viganò, mentioned above. [5]

Fr. Moreno was Found Dead

Fr. Moreno never made it to Washington D.C. He was found dead in his easy chair with gunshot wounds to his head a few days before his scheduled trip.

The autopsy performed immediately after his death found one gunshot wound.

A private autopsy performed three years later found two shots to the head, one of which had been carefully sutured shut, probably in an attempt to make it look like a single shot suicide. [5]

He was shot on the back-left side of his head. His left hand had neurological damage, and it is was unlikely that he could have used his left hand to hold the gun or pull the trigger.

No blood splatters were visible in the room, and no gun powder residue was found on his hands.

Also, his desk drawer had been broken open, and his file cabinet was missing. He was sitting in his chair with both arms resting on the arms of the chair as if he just sat down for a rest.

The Buffalo diocese announced it was a suicide, even though no note was found. [5]

Events like this stand as solemn warnings to anyone who will blow the whistle on pedophilia or other sex crimes in the Catholic Church.

The following video describes the crime scene and contains the testimony of the man who was sexually molested in 1992 when he was 6 years old. 

The Powerful Vatican Intelligence Service is Hunting Archbishop Viganò

Archbishop Viganò has been on the run since August 22, 2018. [6]

Agents from the Vatican intelligence service have been dispatched to locate the Archbishop and serve him with canonical sanctions for his actions. [6, 7] 

“The true name of the Vatican’s clandestine intelligence service is Santa Alleanza (“Holy Alliance”) or L’Entità (“The Entity”) according to Allen Dulles, the first director of the CIA.” [7]

These are a few excerpts from the report prepared by ChurchMilitant.com about the Vatican security service and its paramilitary forces, which would make any Catholic whistleblower fear for his life.

The Church Militant report stated:

While the intelligence resources of the Vatican City State cannot be said to be comparable in funding or cutting-edge technology of the CIA, GRU or MSS, one would make a fatal mistake in underestimating the far reach, experience and capabilities of what many experts and historians consider to be the world’s most discreet but greatest intelligence service.

The fabled Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal is quoted as having said in an interview that “the best and most effective espionage service in the world belongs to the Vatican.”

It is for no small reason that Abp. Viganò, the Vatican’s most wanted man, is on the run and has gone into hiding.

Towering above the Piazza della Minerva in Rome, in what may appear to be just another ancient Roman palace, lies the Pontificia Accademia Ecclesiastica, or Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, the Vatican’s diplomatic and much softer equivalent to the CIA’s Camp Peary — “The Farm.”

There, the cream of the crop of the Roman Catholic Church’s priests are sent by their bishops to be trained to be members of what is still considered to be one of the world’s elite corps of diplomats, the apostolic nuncios of the Holy See. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò was graduate no. 1447 of the Accademia’s class of 1971…

Most Catholics don’t realize that the principal gatherers of intelligence on the part of the Holy See are the apostolic nuncios and their diplomatic staff, just like the ambassadors and staff of embassies that are deployed around the world by every nation-state. …

If Viganò is afraid for his life to the point where he has to destroy his cell phone and go into hiding overseas, it is not only out of fear of being tracked down by a staffer of the apostolic enunciators and missions of the Holy See spread throughout the world — the “long arm” of the Secretariat of State that has ordered discovery of Viganò’s whereabouts — but also if not principally out of dread for the intelligence capabilities of the Vatican City State’s paramilitary Corps of Gendarmes of the Vatican City State currently led by Domenico Giani.

An ex-officer of Italy’s much-feared financial police force called the Guardia di Finanza, the current Commandant of the Corps and Inspector General of the combined police and security forces of the Vatican City State is also the lead bodyguard of Pope Francis, just as he was for Pope Benedict.

Every member of the Police and Security Forces of the Corps of Gendarmes, just like every member of the fabled Swiss Guards, is a former member respectively of Italy or Switzerland’s military or police forces.

When Abp. Viganò served as secretary general of the Vatican City State, General Giani reported to him.

Now, in a dramatic turn of events, it is Giani who has been ordered by his superiors … [to] the hunt for Viganò.

In 2008, the Vatican City State joined INTERPOL, the world’s largest international association of police forces with offices based in 192 countries. As a result, the Vatican now has access to tremendous resources and databases through its official police contacts and INTERPOL office locations throughout the globe. [7]

Read the full description of the report that explains the threat to Archbishop Viganò’s life:

Santa Alleanza: The Vatican Intelligence Service

Archbishop Viganò — A likely Target to be Suicided or Assassinated 

The possibility of this worldwide man hunt ending in his assassination or faked suicide is a real concern, given the depth of Archbishop Viganò’s knowledge concerning sexual immorality and criminal activity among priests and the church hierarchy. [6, 7]

It has been reported that Archbishop Viganò has activated a dead-man switch, so that should he die, a series of documents would be released that would incriminate Pope Francis and the Vatican hierarchy in the cover-up of a wide variety of sex crimes and the agenda to liberalize the RCC’s position on homosexual activity by priests. [6]

Some Minor Whistleblowers Just Get Blackballed

Denver priest Fr. David Nix. Image Source.

Denver priest David Nix became aware of two cases of potential sexual misconduct involving priests in March of 2018.

One case involved “a high-power priest” who, in the 1980s, “used to share a bed with a boy.” He reported this crime along with information that he had about the abuse of the eucharist (consecrated communion wafer) to Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila. [8]

Fr. Nix needed to take a leave of absence for a time to take care of his sick mother. After she recovered, he sought reassignment from Archbishop Aquila to continue his work as a Parish priest.

He now has been seeking assignment for four months. Also, his request for proper paperwork that he would need to transfer to another diocese or religious order has been blocked. [8]

As a result, he has been rendered homeless without a parish assignment or a residence.

“He has spent the past four months living in motels, friends’ homes — and at times, even his car. Currently, he is in New England, staying temporarily in the home of a priest friend.” [8]

Nix tweeted,

“If a bishop doesn’t like you, he’ll simply blackball you and ignore you and not hand over paperwork even though there are no demerits against you. And that’s what’s been happening for four months.” [8]

Read the full story about David Nix:

Whistleblower Priest Penalized by Denver Archbishop

Does RCC Pedophilia Problem Extend all the way to the Vatican and Pope?

This is just the beginning of the unraveling of a very complex political fight in the RCC.

Archbishop Viganò apparently has evidence that could blow the papacy apart and could cause a major realignment in the RCC.

Pope Francis remains silent, while the man-hunt for Archbishop Viganò continues.

Federal and State Criminal Investigations into Pedophile Priests in the U.S. Underway

State level criminal investigations are now underway in 15 or more US states could lead to massive prosecution of pedophile priests. 

The federal government announced last week that it has launched an investigation into criminal wrongdoing in 6 Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania plus an investigation in Buffalo, New York.

Two Eastern Orthodox dioceses in Pennsylvania are also under investigation. [10]

A federal grand jury will be formed, and it will have the power to bring indictments against these church organizations under federal racketeering laws for interstate conspiracy to cover up and to commit crimes.

A guilty verdict under RICO laws could lead to the forfeiture of all assets of the RCC in the United States including church properties. [9]

The saddest part of all this is the impact on the lives of the children and young adults who have been traumatized by the sexual assaults and the cover-up.

A verse of scripture from the King James Bible is appropriate as a closing thought:

Galatians 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Ultimately, predator priests and those in the RCC hierarchy who covered up crimes of sexual assault will stand before God and He will judge them, even if they manage to escape criminal conviction by the government.

God will not be mocked by those who would misuse the church sacrament of confession as a tool to support the intentionally sinful lifestyle of child molesters and the seeking of guilt-free pleasure acquired at the expense of children and young men.

Proverbs 14:9 Fools make a mock at sin: but among the righteous there is favor. (KJV)

Let us be thankful for the righteous and pray for their safety.

See Also:

The Catholic Church and Pedophilia: Trafficking Children as Sex Slaves

About the Author

John P. Thomas is a health writer for Health Impact News. He holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan, and a Master of Science in Public Health (M.S.P.H.) from the School of Public Health, Department of Health Administration, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

References

[1] “Vatican Bombshell: McCarrick Conspiracy Uncovered!” By Rod Dreher, PM The American Conservative, 8/25/2018.

[2] “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick Resigns Amid Sexual Abuse Allegations,” NPR, 7/28/2018.

[3] “Viganò releases new ‘testimony’ responding to Pope’s silence on McCarrick cover-up,” Lifesitenews.com, Rome, 9/27/2018.

[4] “Former Vatican ambassador says Popes Francis, Benedict knew of sexual misconduct allegations against McCarrick for years,” Chico Harlan , Stefano Pitrelli and Michelle Boorstein, The Washington Post, 8/26/2018.

[5] “Special Report—Murder in the Diocese of Buffalo?” ChurchMilitant.com, YouTube, 9/19/2018.

[6] “Vigano Is Right To Fear For His Life,” YouTube, 9/21/2018.

[7] “Santa Alleanza: The Vatican Intelligence Service,” ChurchMilitant.com, 9/14/2018.

[8] “Whistleblower Priest Penalized by Denver Abp. Samuel Aquila,” Stephen Wynne, ChurchMilitant.com, 9/2/2018.

[9] “Criminal Law Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Law,” Justia, Retrieved 10/3/2018.

[10] “Federal Probe into Catholic Church,” The Download, ChurchMilitant.com, YouTube, 10/19/2018.

Samantha Osteraas was found guilty by a jury in Tucson Arizona for child abuse. Image source.

by Health Impact News/MedicalKidnap.com Staff

The Arizona woman accused of scalding her adoptive child causing third degree burns to 80% of her body resulting in the amputation of all 10 toes has been found guilty of 2 of the 3 charges brought against her.

Samantha Osteraas of Tucson, Arizona, faces between 10 and 24 years in prison for hurting Devani, the little girl that the Arizona Department of Child Services placed into her care after removing her from a foster home where she was being abused in a pedophilia pornography ring.

A Pima County jury of 9 women and 3 men deliberated for 8 hours before reaching their verdict on Friday afternoon, October 19, 2018. According to News 4 Tucson, Osteraas:

…was found not guilty for the first count of child abuse. However, the jury did find her guilty for the lesser charge of reckless child abuse.

For the second child abuse count, she was found guilty.

One of the court watchers who was present for the emotional trial said that the jury decided that she was not guilty of “negligent child abuse,” which was the first count of abuse. They stopped short of saying that she burned Devani intentionally.

They did, however, find that Samantha Osteraas was guilty of delaying treatment after the burns occurred.

Samantha Osteraas during her trial for scalding the child she adopted. Source – KOLD 13 News.

See Devani’s heartbreaking story of being taken from innocent parents who had never harmed her, then placed into one abusive situation after another:

Arizona Child Removed from Loving Family and Placed into Foster Care Where She was Repeatedly Raped – then 80% of Body Burned

Arizona Places 2 Year Old Child in Foster Pornographic Pedophile Ring – Foster Mom Burns 80% of Her Body

Advocates – Devani Is Beautiful!

Seven-year-old Devani appeared in court on Friday, October 12, to tell the judge and jury what happened to her. Court watchers told Health Impact News that they didn’t know what to expect when they saw her. None of them had seen her since before the incident.

They knew that she had suffered severe burns to most of her body and had undergone numerous surgeries and skin grafts. She had been placed into a medically-induced coma at one point, and her organs had been shutting down.

Devani has undergone 29 surgeries since being burned just after Christmas of 2016.  All 10 of her toes had to be amputated. Advocates had no idea if the little girl would be able to walk again.

They were happy to see her walk into court on her own:

She looked so beautiful! She is so strong.

Two different advocates told us that it was clear from Devani’s demeanor that she refused to wear the label of “victim,” even though she has suffered more abuse than most people can imagine.

Devani has a different legal name after being adopted by Samantha and Justin Osteraas, but her advocates say that they will always call her by her real name, Devani Rose.

Devani, before the abuse that left her with a lifetime of physical scars and pain. Source – Justice for Devani Rose Facebook page.

See our coverage of Devani’s testimony here:

Trial Begins for Little Arizona Girl Placed with Pedophiles in Foster Care and Burned by Adoptive Mom

Real Parents Not Allowed to See Devani in Court

Devani’s parents and grandmother, who are still fighting and praying that, somehow, their little girl will be returned to her family, were not allowed to see her testify.

They simply wanted to see her with their own eyes, something they have not been allowed to do since she was so brutally injured under state supervision. A simple request to be permitted to see her through a crack in the door or from behind a 1-way glass window was denied.

According to one witness, Guardian ad Litem Thea Gilbert brought in a psychologist to court to argue that seeing her birth parents would be “traumatizing” to the child. However, no mention was made of the potential trauma of seeing the woman who has scarred her for life.

Devani testified that Samantha Osteraas held her down in the bathtub with a pink towel. She named Osteraas and pointed her out to the jury.

Court watchers told us that they saw the trauma on the child’s face when she looked at Osteraas and their eyes met. They reported that their hearts broke as Devani “froze up” for about a half a minute.

Abuser – She Did This to Herself

Tucson.com reports that Osteraas denied holding her down. Her version of the story was that the 5-year-old child did this to herself:

Osteraas testified the child got into the hot water on her own and then stayed there until Osteraas found her in a dazed state.

There were “so many inconsistencies in Samantha’s story,” according to one of the court watchers we talked to.

The prosecuting attorney did not buy her story, either. Tucson.com reports:

Deputy Pima County Attorney Alan Goodwin had urged jurors to use common sense in deciding whether a child would sit in scalding water as the burns deepened, and whether a mother who claimed to care would wait hours to get help. The girl was “on death’s door” before Osteraas sought help, he said.

Devani – before she was burned over 80% of her body by Samantha Osteraas, the woman permitted to adopt her by DCS. Source – Justice for Devani Rose Facebook page.

17 Calls Made Over 5-Hour Period Before 911 Called

He pointed out that the burns were so severe that she lost her toes. Yet, the accused waited for possibly 5 hours before making the phone call that should have been her first response. Phone records cited in court showed that Osteraas made 17 phone calls to various people before calling 911.

Defense attorney Jeff Rogers suggested to jurors in closing arguments Thursday that the child may have been in such a confused state that she mistook her mother helping her out of the bath for holding her down. (Source).

He argued that the delay in calling for help was not intentional. Rogers was reportedly disappointed that the jury did not agree, and he says they plan to file an appeal. This is standard in criminal cases.

Sentencing – Aggravating Circumstances or Leniency Due to Abuser’s Own History in Foster Care?

Tucson.com reports that Samantha Osteraas will be sentenced on December 3. There are several factors involved in determining the length of her prison sentence, which could range from a minimum mandatory sentence of 10 years up to a maximum of 24 years.

The jury believes that there were factors present that increase the severity of the crimes committed against Devani:

After the verdicts were read, the jurors returned to the deliberation room to decide whether prosecutors had proven three so-called aggravating factors in the case:

• that the child had suffered emotionally,
• that she was 5 years old when the crime occurred, and
• that she was harmed by someone in a position of trust.

The jury found all of these factors were proven, which will allow the judge to consider them when determining Osteraas’ sentence.

Samantha Osteraas during her trial for abusing Devani. Photo source: Tucson 4 News.

Samantha Osteraas herself was adopted as a child. Her defense attorney pointed to her “very rough childhood,” which included abuse and foster care. Based on those factors, Jeff Rogers intends to request leniency in her sentencing.

The irony is that these same factors – being a victim of childhood abuse (or domestic violence as an adult), and growing up in foster care or being adopted – are frequently used by Child Protective Services agencies and social workers all across the United States to argue against leniency on birth parents.

Many loving parents who are falsely accused in the system hear in court that, because they have a history of being in foster care themselves, they cannot possibly know how to adequately parent.

These criteria do not actually determine the ability or suitability of anyone to parent, but social workers and attorneys pick and choose how to use facts such as these to twist to fit whatever agenda suits them in the moment.

The reality is that some children who grow up in the system, or who face any other challenge, are able to work through their pain and overcome the difficulties, while some grow up to repeat the patterns of abuse they experienced.

There was no leniency on Devani’s mother Michelle Tremor-Calderon when the state of Arizona terminated her parental rights and placed her child into horrific situations that she never would have faced in her mother’s care.

Now that the trial is over, Devani is still not with any of her family. Her legal name remains one assigned to her by her adopters, Samantha and Justin Osteraas. As far as we can determine, Devani is in yet another foster home.

Why Is GAL Thea Gilbert Still Allowed on the Case?

Shockingly, her Guardian ad Litem, Thea Gilbert, remains on her case. The attorney who is supposed to represent the child’s best interest has been with Devani’s case since the beginning.

Thea Gilbert – court-appointed attorney for Devani. Photo source.

Gilbert approved her placement with the now-imprisoned David Frodsham. Even after Devani’s mother Michelle Tremor-Calderon and transporter Beth Breen told Thea Gilbert that the child was terrified and showed clear signs of being sexually molested, Gilbert ignored them.

She and other Pima County social workers ignored the stories of other foster and adopted children in the home telling that they were being repeatedly raped and trafficked. One of the children has now aged out and is suing the state for millions of dollars for placing him and his brothers in such harm.

See:

Arizona Foster Care System Revealed as Pedophile Ring: Former Foster Child Tortured for Years Sues for $15 Million

Source: Tonya Brown, whose son was also medically kidnapped by Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Story here.

Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

A hallmark of a free people is the ability to think for ourselves, which includes the right to question, to seek out truth, and to hold opinions that are different from those of someone else.

If, however, the person that parents question is a doctor, the cherished American value of this basic liberty may be squashed by a simple phone call to Child Protective Services, after which custody of the child is seized by the state.

Medical kidnapping has become the go-to punishment for those parents who dare to question their children’s doctors. With ancient religious fervor, medical “heretics” are seeing their families ripped apart.

At a recent rally for families in front of Phoenix Children’s Hospital, a former nurse spoke out about the abuses that she has seen at the hospital. She told the group:

I am in this field. I didn’t go into healthcare to steal children!

Yet, that is the scenario that is being played out in Children’s Hospitals every single day, all across America.

Kasandra Ellen, RN, has been a nurse for 14 years. She worked at Phoenix Children’s Hospital from 2005 to 2009, and she says that she has seen things there that she never dreamed that she would see.

She is still a nurse, but her beliefs have changed dramatically since she first began practicing. Kasandra Ellen calls herself a “woke nurse,” and she now works in a naturopathic clinic.

She told the audience that when she started out as an RN, she was “indoctrinated” just like “many of those who are up in that [Phoenix Children’s Hospital] building right now.”

She spoke of her time in the hospital:

I can tell you that many children that would come into the ER, if the parents refused a treatment or questioned a treatment, or asked for even a second opinion, CPS was called immediately.

The parents were threatened, intimidated. Basically, they weren’t given a choice.

She described the situation that prompted the day long rally on Saturday, October 27, 2017, attracting a total of about 200 activists and parents throughout the course of the day: the medical kidnapping situation of a 15-year-old autistic boy, Jonathon Zeek.

Watch the video from his mother Arlena Willis:

Some of the doctors, she says, know what is happening:

I think a lot of these people who are in the healthcare field don’t see it. And some of them do. Some of the doctors definitely do.

Part of it is ego – it’s like we’re in this society where you don’t question the doctor. You do what the doctor says, and we’re kind of brainwashed with that from the time we’re young.

So when you don’t question what the doctor says, and then someone actually does, they don’t like that. They don’t like to be questioned.

It’s almost like a punishment. It’s like, “How dare you question me, because ‘I’m the doctor,’ right? I am like the god-doctor. How dare you question me!”

Dr. Robert Mendelsohn called it “medical heresy” in his 1979 book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic.

Almost 4 decades ago, Dr. Mendelsohn described the very things that nurse Kasandra Ellen spoke of in Phoenix last Saturday.

Watch Dr. Mendelsohn here:

Kasandra Ellen continued:

We have been taught, we’ve been indoctrinated, we’ve been brainwashed from the time we’re little that we listen to what the doctor says. We don’t question what the doctor says.

I can tell you after working with them for 14 years we absolutely NEED to question what they say. I’ve had to stop doctors from making orders that would kill patients, ordering things that they are allergic to or that would interact with other drugs they were taking.

They’re not God. They’re human. They make mistakes, and they’re also very indoctrinated.

The nurse told her audience that she didn’t believe at first that doctors and hospitals could actually be taking children from innocent parents:

I didn’t used to think it was actually real. I was, like, “No way. That doesn’t happen. There’s got to be a reason they call CPS, right?

No. It could just be that the doctor didn’t like the fact that they were questioned or that they feel they have a parent that they feel they can intimidate, or that doesn’t have the means or support to fight back.

And those things are not ok. That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’m here.

Watch Part 2 of her speech:

See Also:

Arizona Parents Falsely Accused of Child Abuse Lose Infant Son – Have 2-Day-Old Newborn Also Medically Kidnapped

Story here.

More on Arizona Medical Kidnapping

Child Protective Services and the State Attorney General’s Office do not want the public to know about the medical kidnapping of the Meissinger family’s two infant sons, and have demanded that Health Impact News‘ coverage of the story be taken down. Read the story we will NOT take down here.

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

In October (2018) we brought you the story of a young couple’s situation in Arizona, where both of their infant sons were removed from their family by the Department of Child Safety, Arizona’s version of CPS (Child Protection Services).

They lost their first son, Keaton, at 2 months of age after taking him to the doctor shortly after receiving multiple vaccines and becoming sick. A Child Abuse Pediatrician at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Dr. Cynthia Nelson, reported that Keaton had been abused based on medical evidence.

And while the parents have not yet been found guilty of any crime in an ongoing investigation, an investigation in which other doctors have allegedly weighed in and disagreed with Dr. Cynthia Nelson, the State of Arizona also removed the Meissinger’s second son 48 hours after he was born, simply because there was an open investigation regarding their first baby.

Read the full story here:

Arizona Parents Falsely Accused of Child Abuse Lose Infant Son – Have 2-Day-Old Newborn Also Medically Kidnapped

Arizona Assistant Attorney General Colleen O’Donnell-Smith (second from left) is demanding that Health Impact News take down their story about the Medical Kidnapping of the Meissinger babies. Image from Facebook.

This story has drawn national attention, and Health Impact News recently received an email from the mother, Briana, explaining that the Arizona Attorney General office was demanding that we take down their story:

I have been instructed by the Assistant Attorney General (Colleen O’Donnell-Smith) to write you a formal letter to request the removal of the article that was published about our family and children; the AAG stated that I am to request this because the article contains information that violates confidential information of the case.

So, this email is being sent to suffice the request of a formal request to remove the article from the website Medicalkidnap.com.

I would like to clarify and have in writing that all communication that was provided to you, was given to you by myself, and that you never had contact nor were you ever supplied any information by my husband, Jordan Meissinger, so that if there are any consequences incurred for our involvement, they fall on me, and me alone- as I am ready to accept responsibility for my actions.

However, I also would like to note that I was not aware that I was violating any laws, rather, practicing and utilizing my 1st ammendment right, and I was not aware speaking about what my family is going through contradicts or disqualifies me of practicing my 1st amendment right.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your response on how we can resolve this matter.

Kind regards,
Briana

1st Amendment Routinely Violated in State-Sponsored Child Kidnappings When Children go into Foster Care

We have been publishing stories about state-sponsored child kidnappings on our MedicalKidnap.com website for over 4 years now, and this is not the first time we have been told we must remove one of our articles.

We have never complied with these demands and threats, and we are NOT going to start now.

These demands are directed towards traumatized parents while keeping their children captive, and are usually accompanied by an unconstitutional gag order to try and silence the parents.

We have had judges from Arizona in the past make similar demands of Health Impact News (see: Arizona Judges Continue to Threaten Parents and Restrict Free Speech, and 10 and 12 Year Old Sisters Seized from Family by Hospital in Phoenix), and the Arizona DCF has made similar demands (see: Arizona DCF Tries to Stifle Free Speech in Medical Kidnapping Case – Demands Our Stories of Coumpy Family be Taken Down).

However, I believe this is the first time that a State Attorney General has made such a demand.

Here is a description of the office of Attorney General as defined by the Arizona State Attorney General Website:

The Attorney General serves as the chief legal officer of the State. The Attorney General is mandated by our constitution and elected to a four-year term by the people of Arizona.

The Attorney General’s Office is the largest law office in the State. The Office is divided into:

• Criminal Division
• State Government Division
• Child and Family Protection Division
• Civil Litigation Division
• Solicitor General’s Office
• Communications Division
• Operations

Mark Brnovich is the current Arizona Attorney General, elected into office by the people of Arizona.

Arizona Assistant Attorney General Colleen O’Donnell-Smith apparently works in the Child and Family Protection Division, Durango Unit #2. She is a public servant, and can apparently be contacted here.

The Attorney General Office contact page is here.

Attorneys working within the office of the State Attorney General office should be well-versed in the U.S. Constitution, and specifically the First Amendment which protects Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press.

By intimidating parents whose children are held in captivity by the State, and demanding that they not speak out against any alleged abuse happening with the abduction of their children, is a clear violation of the intent and purpose of the First Amendment contained in the Bill or Rights.

Here is part of the text of the Preamble of the Bill of Rights, stating the purpose of these “rights:”

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

Clearly, the Bill of Rights, and other amendments to the U.S. Constitution that followed, were intended to protect citizens of the United States from abuses in government.

Here is the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

So on what basis do government officials intimidate parents and members of the press like us, trying to silence us, which appears to be such a blatant violation of the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment?

Most states have passed some kind of “confidentiality law” which is used as justification to keep proceedings in family or juvenile courts secret, away from public scrutiny.

However, just because a State Law is on the books allowing officials to intimidate and silence parents and/or members of the Press, does not mean that the law is Constitutional. Many, if not most, of these laws could probably be challenged in Federal courts as to their Constitutionality with very favorable outcomes.

The law we have seen usually referred to in Arizona is the Arizona Revised Statutes Title 8 on “Child Safety.”

The section on “Confidentiality” is 8-542:

A. It is unlawful, except for purposes for which files and records or social records or parts of or information from files and records or social records have been released pursuant to section 8-541, or except for purposes permitted by order of the court, for any person to knowingly disclose, receive or make use of, or authorize, knowingly permit, participate in or acquiesce in the use of, any information involved in any proceeding under this article directly or indirectly derived from the files, records, reports or other papers compiled pursuant to this article or acquired in the course of the performance of official duties.

B. A person who knowingly discloses information in violation of this section is guilty of a class 2 misdemeanor.

C. This section does not prohibit persons employed by the court, the division or a licensed child welfare agency from conducting the investigations or performing other duties pursuant to this article and done within the normal course of their employment.

We have had multiple reports over the years from parents who claim that they have been threatened with jail time if they do not comply with a gag order, or refuse to take down a website or Facebook Page that contains pictures of their children who are now in Foster Care.

And while to our knowledge no judge has of yet followed through with implementing that threat (maybe because they know it is not Constitutional?), how many parents in Arizona know that the law states this particular “offense” is only a “class 2 misdemeanor?”

What about section C of 8-542 where the law states:

“This section does not prohibit persons employed by the court, the division or a licensed child welfare agency from conducting the investigations or performing other duties pursuant to this article and done within the normal course of their employment.”

What is the purpose of this section, and how is it used?

Double Standards: Parents May not Post Pictures or Information About Their Own Children, but State Agencies Can for the Purpose of Adoption

Whether justified by 8-542 section C or not, it is easy to see the double standards of imposing gag orders against parents and demanding that news organizations like Health Impact News remove any photos or information about children in Foster Care, when State agencies do that very exact same thing.

Here is a screenshot from a tax-payer funded Arizona government website, where anyone can basically put in an order for a child to adopt, based on search criteria:

After entering search parameters, results will be shown with pictures (sometimes even videos as well), and a full profile of the child currently in Foster Care:

And this is just one example. There are many other such sites as well.

So while the State intimidates and threatens parents who post photos and information about their children who have been placed into Foster Care, the State has no qualms about marketing those same children for adoption, which brings in massive amounts of federal funding.

CPS and Foster Care = Child Trafficking

Billions of taxpayer funds are spent each year on the Child Welfare system, which employs hundreds of thousands of people, from Child Abuse Pediatricians to Social Workers to Judges and apparently to Attorney Generals as well, among many, many others.

We have documented much over the years about the abuses of this system, which MUST take children away from their families in order to survive and receive government funds, and has basically become a Child Trafficking System.

And as long as the 1st Amendment still stands, we will continue to expose this evil system that is destroying lives and families.

To learn more see:

The U.S. Foster Care System: Modern Day Slavery and Child Trafficking

Child Kidnapping and Trafficking: A Lucrative U.S. Business Funded by Taxpayers

Medical Kidnapping in the U.S. – Kidnapping Children for Drug Trials

Are New Pediatric “Child Abuse Specialists” Causing an Increase in Medical Kidnappings?

Child Sex Trafficking through Child “Protection” Services Exposed – Kidnapping Children for Sex

Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

In the course of our research at Health Impact News, we often discover medical or governmental policies which may sound good on the surface, but when examined, they expose a blatant double standard.

These policies often hold biological parents to a standard that is not expected of the state actors, whether they be foster parents entrusted with caring for children that don’t belong to them, social workers, Guardian ad Litems, or others.

Sometimes such policies are worded so as to appear that they are established in order to ensure the safety and well-being of children, but upon examination, they do the opposite.

One such policy has come to our attention that was established by the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) director Greg McKay.

According to a document on the department’s website, DCS must perform background checks on every adult “living in or having access to the home” within 10 days of returning children to their homes when they are to be reunified with their parents. (See document).

The stated purpose of the policy is one that most would probably agree sounds noble:

This directive is to ensure all possible safety threats have been identified prior to returning a child to their parent/guardian home.

Everyone wants children to be safe, of course.

But there are several issues that arise with this policy.

Hinders Reunification

As parents all over the United States will attest, it is much easier for a child to be snatched from everyone and everything they know and love than it is for them to be returned to their rightful parents.

Even if children were taken for false allegations (as statistics show most are), Child Protective Services social workers are notorious for creating ever increasing hoops for the parents to jump through in order to get their children back.

In some cases, it is merely an illusion of hope with the carrot of their children’s return dangled in front of them, never getting closer, while an increasingly widening circle of “providers” take their bite of the financial pie attached to every child who falls victim to remaining in the system.

Even in cases where children do come home eventually, the reunification process drags out as long as the state can still squeeze another dime out of them for services.

All Adults with Access?

In what other circumstance is every person who “has access to” a home required to undergo a background check?

The same requirement is not placed upon foster or adoptive homes.

What is the standard to be applied?

In any given family or household, there may be a relative or friend with a questionable background that comes into the home, but who does not present a danger to the children as long as they are supervised.

Almost every family, including those of legislators, social workers, attorneys, and judges, has a “crazy uncle” or a black sheep. There are people who did stupid or even bad things in the past who have changed their ways and no longer present a threat.

No Agency or Entity Can Ever Remove All Possible Dangers

Another issue is that it is not truly possible to remove “all possible safety threats” from any home, whether it is a familial home, a foster home, a group home, or a hospital.

It is called “life.”

J.R.R. Tolkien acknowledged this reality in his epic novel trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings.” In the first book of the series, Frodo the hobbit recounts the words of his wise Uncle Bilbo:

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”

No doctor, social worker, President, or parent can remove every possible safety threat, no matter how hard we may all try.

But we do the best we can with what we have.

Instead of trying to insulate children from every possible threat, we can equip children and families to deal with the dangers that inevitably arise despite our best efforts.

Foster Parents Do Not Undergo the Same Scrutiny

The most obvious is that the same standard is apparently not applied to the foster and adoptive parents with whom the department places children.

It would seem logical that the stricter standard would be placed upon those that taxpayers pay to care for children taken from their families, while some grace would be extended to biological families.

After all, simply being removed from their homes, no matter the family condition, is in itself traumatic to children. Children have the innate biological, psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual need for their own families that doesn’t go away when they are placed with other people.

Even the kindness of a stranger is not as welcome to a child as the love of their own mother, father, and grandparents.

Yet the opposite is true. The looser standard lies with those homes the children are placed into.

Perhaps no story we have covered in the last 4 years illustrates this more clearly than the case of Devani, a child taken from her family at the age of 2.

When we investigated her story, we found that the allegations under which she was taken were not legitimate. But the damage was already done – she was in the system, where she remains to this day.

Samantha Osteraas was approved by Arizona DCS to adopt her. She was recently found guilty after Devani testified that she had held her down in a scalding tub of water, which resulted in the child losing all ten of her toes and undergoing almost 30 surgeries thus far.

Samantha Osteraas stands trial for scalding a child she adopted, causing severe burns over most of her body. Photo source.

There were warnings given to the adoption agency and to the state that she had a history of violence.

Did the DCS background check miss those, or did they even do a background check?

See:

Arizona Foster Mother Found Guilty of Child Abuse after Scalding Young Devani

Before Samantha and Justin Osteraas adopted her, Devani had been placed by the department into the home of David Frodsham.

He is serving a 17-year prison sentence for running a pornography and pedophilia ring out of his house, using foster children who were placed in his care by the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

According to a lawsuit against the state of Arizona by a former foster child in the house of horrors whom the department allowed to be adopted by Frodsham:

David Frodsham utilized the State of Arizona and the foster care system to funnel innocent, vulnerable children into his home, so he could run a pedophile ring.

John Doe was sexually and physically abused by David Frodsham countless times both inside and outside the home while Frodsham’s wife, Barbara witnessed this abuse, and physically abused John Doe herself.

Mr. Frodsham also acted as John Doe’s pimp, prostituting John Doe to other men, for their sexual enjoyment, and for money for himself.

Frodsham often participated in these sexual meetups. Frodsham helped enable a network of pedophiles in the Sierra Vista area and these men participated in further sexual abuse against John Doe.

See:

Arizona Foster Care System Revealed as Pedophile Ring: Former Foster Child Tortured for Years Sues for $15 Million

David Frodsham, an Arizona foster parent for over 12 years, was arrested and convicted for operating a pornographic pedophile ring based out of his state-approved foster home.

Sadly, this is not unique.

Justice Clearinghouse reports:

According to studies from the State Policy Advocacy Center and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, up to 80% of children/youth who are currently or formerly under foster care become victims of sex trafficking.

The number deviates from city to city, state to state, but it is never acceptable that at some point, eight in ten children in foster care suffer this horrendous experience.

Most of the children who are rescued from child sex trafficking were involved in foster care.

Though there are caring people who foster and adopt, many wicked people go into the industry for less-than-noble purposes.

This past summer we reported a man running for office in the state of Virginia who was quite transparent about the fact that he is a pedophile who advocates adopting children from the system in order to use them as objects for disgusting purposes.

See:

Publicly Open Pedophile Running for Office in Virginia Reveals How Foster Care is a Pipeline to Adopt Children as “Sex Toys”

Tammi Stefano of the National Safe Child Alliance has spoken out about the fact that Child Protective Services not only ignores red flags about foster parents, but sometimes outright participates with the child sex trafficking industry.

Stone asked her who CPS was turning these children over to with such “gruesome” statistics.

She told Filmaker Sean Stone that:

…what she discovered, and what the Los Angeles Times was kind enough to publish, was that 1000 “convicted sex offenders” had been given a “green light” by CPS to become “approved foster parents” just in Los Angeles County.

Child Sex Trafficking through Child “Protection” Services Exposed – Kidnapping Children for Sex

The end result of children being taken by an agency that does not adequately screen providers, but scrutinizes biological families to the point of absurdity, is that children are at least 6 times more likely to be abused, raped, molested, or killed in foster care than they would be in their own homes, often while their social workers turn a blind eye.

Parents who had their children taken from them because they had a medical disagreement or wanted a second opinion have reported seeing obvious signs of abuse in their children when they have visitation, but their concerns are brushed aside or ignored.

Our own interviews with children who have come out of the system reveals that most of them were put into dangerous situations and suffered abuse in foster care, sometimes horrific abuse, yet they had never been exposed to abuse in their own homes.

Double Standards Abound in CPS System

There is a vast double standard that exists within the Child Welfare system.

Potential foster parents are told that “you don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent,” yet biological parents have had their children taken from them, placed in foster care, or adopted out to strangers for being less than perfect.

The reasons can literally be as simple as dirty dishes in the sink or paying a power bill late and getting the electricity turned off.

In our latest Medical Kidnap article, Arizona Attorney General Demands Health Impact News Take Down Story on Medical Kidnapping in Violation of 1st Amendment, we discussed the double standard within Arizona’s DCS department which chastises parents involved in the system for posting photos of their children or information about their case.

Briana and Jordan Meissinger’s baby Keaton was vaccinated while he had a cough. When his health declined and he contracted a viral infection, a Child Abuse doctor accused them of Shaken Baby Syndrome. See story (which we will not take down).

The justification for the rebuke centers on the “privacy” and “confidentiality” rights of the children. Yet, the same department has no qualms about posting photos, videos, and information about the children they have taken when they attempt to sell adopt them out, advertised like puppies on Craigslist.

Note that the policy document that is the subject of this article lists Colleen O’Donnell-Smith as working in the Child and Family Protection Division, Durango Unit #2.

She is the Assistant Attorney General who has demanded that the Meissinger family be silent about how DCS and Phoenix Children’s Hospital medically kidnapped their children.

It is not just Arizona; behaviors that are standard practice for the department are vilified as unacceptable and bad when parents do it. The rights of both parent and child vanish when CPS becomes involved.

Children pay the price when they are ripped away from loving parents who didn’t harm them and placed with strangers who sometimes do not truly have their best interests at heart.

They don’t need politicians or government agencies to do what they THINK is best, because that standard has evolved into little more than what is in the best financial interests of the state that makes a great deal of money by using them as commodities.

What children need is their families who love them.

The Crady Family. Image Source.

Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News

The phrase “with liberty and justice for all” is the cornerstone of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. This principle is the very foundation upon which our nation was founded, for which men and women have fought and died.

This noble and lofty theme is written in our anthems, on our statues, and in our hearts.

It is the very essence of who we are supposed to be as a nation that stands as a shining light among the nations, inspiring sacrifice and dedication throughout the generations to ensure that “liberty and justice for all” remains the bedrock of society for future generations to enjoy.

Where there is injustice, or when some “are more equal than others” (George Orwell, Animal Farm), ordinary people rise up and push back.

Our history is full of examples of heroes that we look up to for their courage and leadership in standing up for liberty and justice for all, against those who seek to relegate those beloved principles to a select few. Our favorite movies and books are inspired by this theme.

“Better that a guilty man go free than an innocent man be convicted” is a cherished American doctrine espoused by the Founding Fathers and passed down into the foundation of the justice system.

Yet there is an element of United States society that routinely refuses to embrace this concept, and their devastating reach has the potential to impact every family within our borders: that is, the child welfare and family court system.

Many of their policies which lead to families being torn apart trace directly to a group of doctors known as Child Abuse Pediatricians.

They author policies and position statements for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which are enforced by Children’s Hospitals, pediatricians, and child protective agencies.

We have covered the topic of Child Abuse Pediatricians often, which is a specialty that must find child abuse to justify its existence as a medical specialty.

To learn more about this specialty see:

Are New Pediatric “Child Abuse Specialists” Causing an Increase in Medical Kidnappings?

Child Abuse Pediatricians: An “Ethically Bankrupt” Profession that Destroys Families

Pediatric Child Abuse “Experts” are NOT Experts in Anything

The AAP does not represent all pediatricians and doctors, despite public perception, and there are very qualified, excellent doctors who disagree with some of these policies.

A recent 2-part Special Report by 25 News in Peoria, Illinois, (Link to Part 1 and Part 2) examines this issue of innocent parents, who are falsely accused by doctors, whose children are medically kidnapped.

Reporter Caitlin Knute says that one local hospital, OSF St. Francis, sees about 20 cases a month of child abuse, which also includes “neglect” cases as well.

Reporter Tyler Lopez asks the question that Health Impact News has been asking even before our Medical Kidnap division was established in 2014:

But what if some of those abuse cases were misdiagnosed or the result of a medical condition?

When that happens, there is often no liberty or justice for these families.

Innocent Families Are “Collateral Damage”

Child Abuse Pediatrician Dr. Channing Petrak. Image source from video at Week.com.

Michelle Weidner, executive director of the Family Justice Resource Center, was one of numerous victims of a false allegation by a Child Abuse Pediatrician. She cuts to the heart of the matter in Part 2:

Wrongful allegations are often considered collateral damage in the fight against child abuse. And it’s often not taking into consideration the impact that wrongful allegations have on families.

Her baby was taken because Child Abuse Pediatrician Dr. Channing Petrak at OSC St. Francis misread a CT scan and accused the parents of abuse:

“When they did the CT scan he moved in the machine, which resulted in a blurred line, and that blurred line was misdiagnosed as a skull fracture,” Weidner explains.

Unfortunately, the Weidners wouldn’t learn there was a problem with the scan till much later. Instead, in that moment, they found themselves accused.

“And the child abuse pediatrician told investigators that there was no other explanation than blunt force trauma,” Weidner adds.

In one of our earliest Medical Kidnap stories, a Child Abuse Pediatrician compared parents Bethany and Andrew Debski to dolphins caught in a net. Like hundreds of families whose stories we have covered since then, they too were collateral damage:

A child abuse doctor at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital (HDVCH) in Grand Rapids, Michigan, actually thanked them for “taking a hard hit for the greater good” of catching abused and neglected children. They were innocent.

See:

Parents Falsely Accused by CPS Fight to Get Reputation Back – Pay Forced Hospital Bills

Baby Chandler’s Story

The 25 News report starts with the story of Baby Chandler, a story that follows the template of dozens of other stories that we have covered involving a child with broken bones who actually had a medical condition causing his bone fragility.

Dr. Channing Petrak, Child Abuse Pediatrician, accused the parents of abuse, and he was taken from his mother by Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

According to Part 1:

Chandler was born premature with a host of health problems, including a hole in his lung. He spent the first week of his life at the hospital. After he was released, his parents, Tara and Michael Crady, said they noticed one of his ankles felt strange, and brought it up to their pediatrician.

“The next morning we got a phone call saying, ‘You know, were you in a car accident? Was there some sort of trauma during pregnancy?’ And I said, ‘No. I said why?’ They said, ‘Well, it’s a healed fracture and it would date back to in utero,” Tara explained.

From there it was back to OSF St. Francis Medical Center for more testing. But, what was supposed to be a routine follow up X-ray quickly escalated as the Cradys were told Chandler had 14 healed fractures, including 12 along his ribs.

The hospital called DCFS.

The Cradys say they were forced to stay at OSF under constant supervision for the next week while DCFS called in a Child Abuse Pediatrician, Dr. Channing Petrak, the Medical Director of the Pediatric Resource Center.

In her report provided by the family, Dr. Petrak ruled the fractures and other injuries were “suspicious of abuse.”

Specialist in Radiology, Dr. Ayoub, Disagreed with Child Abuse Doctor

Radiologist Dr. David Ayoub. Image source.

Fortunately, Tara Crady remembered reading about a similar story a few years ago in the news, and she was able to find the mother on Facebook. Dr. Petrack was also behind Michelle Weidner’s false allegation of abuse. Part 1 continues:

“While we were in the hospital I contacted Michelle Weidner and she got me in contact with this radiologist out of Springfield and by the grace of God he met us at like 6:30 that night at the hospital.”

That doctor was David Ayoub, M.D., a radiologist who specializes in these types of cases.

“There’s no question in my mind that they were abnormal bones, bones that showed fragility,” Ayoub declared.

From Chandler’s X-rays and interviews with the family, Dr. Ayoub determined Chandler had metabolic bone disease, possibly infantile rickets, and said the healed fractures that appeared on the x-rays dated back to in utero and/or the birthing process.

Healing Rib Fractures Happened in the Womb

Many Medical Kidnap stories that we have covered involve babies who are discovered to have “multiple rib fractures in various stages of healing.” (See link to such stories.)

That particular phrase is in the medical reports of just about every story that we have investigated involving children with broken bones whose parents were accused of child abuse but were found by experts (other than Child Abuse doctors who really are not experts in anything) to have legitimate medical conditions, such as infantile rickets, osteogenesis imperfecta, collagen disorders such as Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, or other brittle bones condition.

25 News continues in Part 1:

“In utero fractures I’ve seen reported. They’re not unheard of, but they are exceptionally rare.” Ayoub began. “Now, Chandler had x-rays at birth which is a little bit unusual. Why? Because he had a long injury at birth, which is one of the first clues that his ribs might’ve been injured at birth. If the ribs are weak at birth and the child passes through the birth canal what happens is those ribs don’t hold up so they are pushed into the one tissue with much greater force than they would otherwise,” Ayoub further explained, demonstrating the squeezing motion with both hands.

Dr. Ayoub said that would account for the punctured lung Chandler was born with. He also said that while Dr. Petrak’s report might have stated they ruled out rickets or metabolic bone disease, that was because the tests they conducted in the hospital, measuring the boy’s Vitamin D levels (an indicator in those cases,) were done at the time the injuries were discovered, not when the injuries would have occurred, adding that Vitamin D levels could change drastically for a developing child in that time.

“In infancy, it’s not like any other time in life. The vitamin D levels change and change dramatically within the first three months of life. The baby will be born with typically 60% to 70% of the mother’s levels and will double very quickly, in fact by 2 to 3 months those levels double,” Ayoub shared.

With that theory in mind, Ayoub said Tara’s levels of Vitamin D were measured and found to be 21.8, emaning Chandler’s on average would have been around 14, which was considered low. Ayoub noted this and other findings that he felt explained the injuries discovered in a report the family sent to a judge before their first Shelter Care Hearing.

Including Ayoub, the Cradys ending up seeking out a total of 8 medical expert from all over the country, all specializing in unique cases like there. Among the group of Ivy League, board Certified specialists, was a Boston University Endocrinologist, Dr. Michael Holick. Holick not only agreed with Ayoub’s findings, he also testified in a report submitted to the court that Chandler likely had a collagen disorder called Ehlers-danlos syndrome. Holick said that would be enough to “markedly increase the risk for fragility fractures with normal handling.”

The Cradys eventually got their son back, but not before their family was unnecessarily traumatized by the actions of the Child Abuse Pediatrician Dr. Petrak and DCFS.

Innocent Father Went to Prison over False Diagnosis of Abuse by Petrak

Richard Britts. Image source.

Part 2 of the 25 News Special Report includes the story of an innocent dad who not only lost time with his children, but also spent 2 years in prison for a crime that didn’t happen, based on the testimony of a Child Abuse Pediatrician.

His 3-month-old daughter “start[ed] gasping for breath in her crib” while the 19-year-old father was watching TV.

“I just didn’t know what to do, she was lifeless, she was still gasping, breathing very weird. I called her mother and I called 911 and they walked me through CPR which is probably the scariest thing ever did in my life,” Britts recalls.

The little girl was taken to a nearby hospital before being transported to OSF in Peoria, where doctors determined she had bleeding on the brain, and Britts says that prompted Dr. Petrak to conclude Saniya had been either shaken or hit.

Britts says he protested and told staff seizures ran in his family. Ultimately, though, he was arrested and taken to the Sangamon County Jail after he claims he was coerced into a confession without an attorney present.

“I didn’t know what was happening. I was 19 and they’re just telling me everything that I did was inaccurate. I couldn’t answer their questions,” Britts began, adding that in the end he felt worn down by the interrogations. He claims in an attempt to bring things to an end, he finally admitted if they thought he did something he must have, even though he didn’t know what that “something” was, not fully realizing that would be interpreted as a confession.

Britts spent more than 2 years in jail awaiting trial, where he was eventually found not guilty after a medical expert from out-of-state testified Saniya did, in fact, suffer from a seizure disorder. Since then he says he’s rebuilt his life, and enjoys time with Saniya, who made a full recovery, and her three sisters.

Still, he says nothing can replace the time that was taken from him.

“That’s 2 1/2 years I’ll never get back I had to reestablish the relationships with my children. Man, I lost a lot. I lost my home, I lost two jobs, I lost my marriage, my father passed when I was there,” he laments.

Organization Helps Families Fight Against False Allegations of Abuse

The Family Justice Resource Center (FJRC) was founded in Illinois to help families such as these. Chicago area attorney Diane Redleaf is on the organization’s board, and she has written extensively on the subject of ethical concerns with Child Protective Services and Child Abuse Pediatricians.

See:

Family Defense Center in Illinois Documents Medical Ethics Violations in Medical Kidnappings

According to 25 News:

She’s written a just-published book on the subject, profiling six families, “They Took the Kids Last Night: How the Child Protection System Puts Families At Risk.” [Source].

“The stories are all cases of families where the child welfare system came in and literally took the kids one night,” Redleaf explains.

Redleaf estimates she’s worked on anywhere from 70 to 100 cases involving families whose children allegedly had medical conditions that were mistaken for abuse.

“I believe any family could be subject to something like this and people need to basically have a wake-up call that this is occurring,” she emphatically states.

Dr. Ayoub is a medical specialist in radiology who is well-qualified as an expert in bone conditions.

Many families whose stories we have covered have looked to him for answers when the Child Abuse Pediatricians with the focus of finding abuse have accused them when they knew there had to be another answer. (See link).

Dr. Ayoub is one of the experts that FJRC consults. He told 25 News:

“I think when you look at the specialty of child abuse pediatrics you are geared up to protect children in harm’s way. So one of the first things you see, in other words, if you’re a nail everything is a hammer or vice versa. And there’s a specialty bias that we all have,” explained Dr. David Ayoub, MD.

Dr. Ayoub says he’s studied metabolic bone disease, rickets, and vitamin D deficiencies extensively and believes those conditions can often mimic abuse. As a result, he testifies in cases all over the country.

True Justice and One-Sided Child Abuse Doctor Opinions Incompatible Concepts

If we are to hope to secure true justice for families, including the basic liberty of parents and children to be in relationship with one another, courts and agencies must stop looking to Child Abuse Pediatricians as the ultimate authority on what constitutes abuse.

They have a financial stake in ruling abuse, even if their is none.

They simply get it wrong in too many cases, devastating innocent families, even sending innocent parents to prison and their children into foster care situations where there they often encounter true abuse that they never experienced in their own home.

There is no consensus among true experts that the conclusions reached by Child Abuse Pediatricians are accurate, while there are many cases where truly qualified medical experts find legitimate medical conditions that mimic abuse in these children.

Justice demands that the other side of the story is heard and taken seriously, not ignored, as so often happens in juvenile and family courts today.

See Also:

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Opens the Legal Door to Retry All Shaken Baby Syndrome Convictions

University of Michigan Law School Awarded $250K to Learn How to Defend Shaken Baby Syndrome Cases

Attorneys Being Trained to Fight Bogus Child Abuse Charges used in Medical Kidnappings

Swedish Health Agency Rejects “Science” of Shaken Baby Syndrome

World Renowned Neuropathologist has Career Destroyed for Disproving Shaken Baby Syndrome