Let’s talk about Child Separation

I want to go back to David. In today’s current political environment, we are hearing A LOT about child separation and what is happening to families at the border. Honestly, hearing all the outrage is what triggered me to go full steam ahead with this blog. I posted the following on my Facebook page on June 18^th, 2018:

I have tried to keep quiet. But I can’t anymore. I have to speak out. All the selective outrage, and hypocrisy by politicians and media pundits are driving me crazy. Let’s get one thing straight—separating children from their parents is wrong. PERIOD.

What if I told you that what is happening to immigrant children happens to American children EVERYDAY but no one is seeing it? CPS is removing our children illegally on a daily basis then producing fraudulent documents to cover up the crimes committed. Citizens are misled into believing CPS has legal grounds to remove children from “abusive” homes. The truth is they don’t!!!! I witnessed that first hand on July 8, 2015, the day both my innocent son’s were illegally removed from my care. I was forced to move out of my home. You may be thinking my case was just an unfortunate “misunderstanding” or an exception to the rule… I will tell you this: my story IS the exception in the sense that I got my children BACK. Most parents have to spend the rest of their lives, money, and time trying to get their children back when there was never any proof to begin with.

Where’s the outrage for OUR children?

According to the Children’s Bureau (a department of US Health & Human Services) over 400,000 children are currently in Foster Care. From those, 45% were in non-relative foster homes. From all these cases of “abuse” 88% were dismissed or never charged, yet the children were never reunified with their biological families (while the foster family receives roughly $700/month per child). Rant over.

“There is no system ever devised by mankind that is guaranteed
to rip husband and wife or father, mother and child apart so bitterly
than our present Family Court System.”

Judge Brian Lindsay
Retired Supreme Court Judge
New York

I still get worked up reading that. Now, I want you to really take a hard core look at that statistic. You want me to believe that nearly half the children have NO family members willing to take them in? Eighty Eight percent had to go through this terrifying experience only to be found “not guilty”? Yet the children are removed anyway? How does that make any sense? How is that “in the best interest of the child” as their famous tagline suggests?

This isn’t a new occurrence, either. According to Professor Paul Chill of the University of Connecticut School of Law, the stakes in a 2004 were as follows:

According to statistics published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 100,000 children who were removed in 2001–more than one in three–were later found not to have been maltreated at all.

Parent’s are essential to a child’s survival, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. Families fulfill a fundamental human need for attachment, companionship, and love. I am traumatized for what they did to David that night, and I wasn’t even there. I know it was a terrifying experience for both my parents, and David. What happened to us is not unique. Removals often occur at night. Parents have little or no time to prepare children for separation. The officials conducting the removal, as well as the adults supervising the placement, are usually complete strangers to the child. Children are thrust into alien environments, separated from parents, siblings and everything they have come to know, with little if any idea of why they have been taken there to begin with. Can you imagine the feelings of grief, terror and abandonment? Not only that but the child’s very “capacity to form secure attachments” is completely compromised on the premise of “erring on the side of the child.” And contrary to what you may be thinking, the trauma may be magnified when the child IS actually suffering abuse or neglect in the home, according to Professor Paul Chill. This anxiety and trauma is further increased when reunification with loved ones doesn’t occur quickly. Sometimes reunification doesn’t occur at all.

David, then 20-months old, spent 2 nights in a shelter with no contact from his dad, his grandparents, or his mom. MONTHS later, we found out through his medical records that social services took him to the hospital (the same hospital I was at with Lucas and Ricardo), and performed massive medical examinations on him without our consent. Even though Ricardo and I were a few floors up, they never bothered to get consent (which is illegal, by the way). To make things more perverse, they didn’t even make an effort to inform us. NOT ONE PERSON—not one social worker, not one nurse, not one doctor—told us that he was forced through a full skeletal survey, given 14 vaccinations, and very likely (still investigating) a full sexual abuse examination.If it were not for our request to obtain his medical records, we never would have known. When David came back home, he was a different boy then the one I had come to know and love. He was aggressive, he kept biting himself. He wouldn’t look strangers in the eye. It took us over one year to re-establish the trust we once had.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. -1 John 4:18-19

I was heartbroken, and scared, thinking my son would never forgive me or love me again. That was the devil talking, whispering lies in my ear. Without even realizing it, I was building a wall against my 2-year old son. I couldn’t handle the constant rejection. I wanted to scream from the rooftops: I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! THIS IS NOT MY FAULT! I AM A VICTIM TOO! While all of that may be true, I had to remind myself who the adult was in this situation. I also had to remind myself who My Father was, and that I was loved by Him. I was being sharpened to better serve Him. I prayed and asked for wisdom, discernment, and as crazy as it sounds I had to forgive my son. Only then would I be able to re-establish the trust, and true connection we were both longing for. Young children are incredibly perceptive, and they can sense what we feel. I can tell you that today, God has indeed restored our family in all senses of the word. By God’s mercy and grace, my boys are very well adjusted–loving, confident, friendly, care free, “normal” boys.

I would not have believe any of these statistics had it not happened to me. I know it’s incredibly hard to read, and believe, that our own government could be doing such harm to our children. I have so much more to say, but I will end with a prayer request:

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. -Proverbs 4:23

Let’s pray for the families currently in “the system”, that God will guard their hearts in this traumatic time in their lives. May the Holy Spirit visit them, and comfort them. Amen.