The real abuse: what are the child-welfare agencies doing to stop child abuse? The reverse.

Mary Jackson is a 40-year-old black woman who has worked for 15 years as a school crossing guard. She has been the primary caretaker of her three grandchildren, aged five, eight, and ten, because her daughter--the children's mother--has spent much of the time on drugs.

When one of the children was taken to the hospital for pneumonia, Mrs. Jackson was charged by the Child Welfare Administration with "medical neglect," and all three children were taken away. Most cases involving allegations of neglect end therewith the children in the custody of the CWA. But Mrs. Jackson fought back. She was not guilty of the charge, and she had evidence to prove it.

Indeed, after her first appearance in court, an extremely unusual thing happened: the court-appointed psychologist recommended that her grandchildren be returned to her. And he publicly disagreed with the child-welfare bureaucracy. He wrote, "In contrast to CWA reports that Ms. Jackson has not provided medical attention to these children, she pulled from her purse detailed copies of medical reports of examinations and vaccinations." These records, dating back to the time of each child's birth, documented every medical visit made and every immunization shot received.

But the child-welfare bureaucracy doesn't give up that easily. They offered Mrs. Jackson a deal: if she pleaded guilty to neglect they would return her grandchildren to her in six months. Her court-appointed lawyer advised her to do so, and she did. (This sort of plea-bargaining is quite common in the child-welfare bureaucracy.)

When the six months were nearly up, the CWA went back on its word and insisted that Mrs. Jackson go for another "psychological evaluation." This time she was examined by a black psychiatrist. Perhaps because he was black, Mrs. Jackson felt that she could confide in him. She failed to realize that he was a child-welfare bureaucrat above all else. She described one of the figures in the Rorschach inkblot test (these tests have no scientific validity) as "a hole trying to trap somebody . .. like they trapped me and I fell right into that hole." She also said, later in the interview, "People lead you on, you do certain things and they use it against you." Far from indicating some abnormal mental state, these were perfectly accurate descriptions of what had happened to Mrs. Jackson. But the psychiatrist inferred from her responses that she was suffering from a "paranoid personality disorder." He also stated in his report that she was guilty of medical neglect, although he had access to the psychologist's report that had already refuted this charge.

The psychiatrist wrote, "She tends to be more obvious or intense in expressing feelings than most adults, and there's a capacity for very maladaptive behavior when aroused. Mrs. Jackson is currently depressed, in a rage, feels 'all alone,' feels "everything has been taken away from her." This is a standard tactic among mental-health bureaucrats: to construe a mother's distress as a "symptom" of a "personality disorder," rather than as a natural response to the abduction of her children.

The psychiatrist had two recommendations: first, that "Mrs. Jackson not be given custody of her grandchildren due to her disturbed thinking and flawed judgment"; second, that she be provided with therapy "to help her cope and adjust to the loss of her grandchildren." (Presumably, this was a slip of the pen. Usually the bureaucrat is not candid enough to admit that what the client is suffering from is the removal of her children.)

When I entered the case, pro bono, I wrote a three-page letter debunking the psychiatrist's evaluation. I was prepared to testify as an expert witness on Mrs. Jackson's behalf. After the CWA read my letter, however, it decided to release the children-not to Mrs. Jackson, but to her daughter, who had just graduated from a drug-rehabilitation program. This was the rare case in which everyone is satisfied: the Jacksons, because their family was reunited; the CWA, because it could resolve the problem without admitting its error.

Amina Mannan is another black woman who was falsely accused of medical neglect. Two of her three children were placed in the care of her former mother-in-law (Mrs. Mannan is divorced); the third child was placed in foster care.

Mrs. Mannan was rebellious and disturbed the bureaucrats by her "uncooperative" behavior. The family-court judge ordered that she be sent, against her will, for a "psychological evaluation" and kept in a mental hospital for two weeks. Although this procedure is obviously a violation of a person's constitutional rights, the state uses the urgency of child-welfare cases as its excuse. The psychologist who examined Mrs. Mannan wrote that although she presented herself in a "relatively well-adjusted manner in highly structured situations, where she has a general idea of what's expected from her," she would do less well in an "unstructured" situation, where she would exert "poor impulse control." She lacks "adequate coping resources" and may respond to stress in ways that are "highly variable and emotionally charged."

These are standard phrases used by virtually all mental-health bureaucrats who do evaluations. In Mrs. Mannan's case, the assertion was particularly ludicrous. This was not a structured situation: Mrs. Mannan had been abducted and placed in a mental hospital where she was told she must remain for two weeks! As I wrote in my report, "How could anyone have a good idea of 'what was expected of her' by mad psychologists who evidently regard the violation of one's constitutional rights and the unlimited exercise of power by mental-health professionals as part of the normal course of events? The fact that she was able to remain restrained in such a situation indicates to me that she had not 'inadequate,'" as the examining psychologist claims, "but highly developed 'coping skills.'"

The psychologist did not make a recommendation. However, his nebulous but ominous warnings would lead anyone who trusted his expertise to be reluctant to return Mrs. Mannan's children to her. The psychiatrist he worked with did not make a recommendation concerning the children, but she did recommend that "the patient be in individual therapy because of the emotional distress she's experiencing due to her housing conditions and a chronically sick child." The letter concluded, "An appointment has been made for Ms. Mannan to attend the Rockaway Mental Health Clinic. We will give the patient the date and the time of her appointment."

Despite a four-year battle in family court, and numerous letters written by myself, by Dr. Monty Weinstein, director of the Family Therapy Institute of New York City, and by Beryl Murray, co-director of the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation (Mrs. Mannan's 13-year-old daughter has sickle-cell anemia), Mrs. Mannan has still not recovered custody of her children. The daughter in foster care (the one with sickle-cell anemia) has run away four times and returned to her mother. Each time the court sent the police to separate them again.

Will and Norma Lynne Griever are a white middle-class couple in their late thirties with three children. The children were taken away from them in March of 1990 and Mrs. Griever was said to be a dangerous mother. What had she done to warrant this? She had made the mistake of going to a mental-health clinic and asking for family therapy after her 12-year-old son, Jeremy, had been sexually abused by a neighbor. Jeremy had also been sexually abused one time several years previously by a stranger.

Instead of family therapy, Mrs. Griever was given a "psychological evaluation." Her distress was said to be a symptom of a "borderline personality disorder," and the report concluded, "One, Lynne most definitely needs psychological and possible psychiatric intervention. While she's saying that she wants treatment now I believe the prognosis is only fair if she can work in a therapeutic relationship for a long enough period of time to address some of the underlying depression and disordered thoughts. However, her ideas and values are fairly rigid and will not be easy to alter.

"It seems clear that much outside support will be necessary for an extended period of time if Lynne is to continue caring for her 13-year-old son. It appears she has not been able to protect him from being molested on several [sic] occasions in the past and may, indeed, place the child in danger because of her flawed judgment at times."

This report became the justification for the removal of the Grievers' children by the family-court judge. Lynne and her husband had the money to hire a competent attorney, although they depleted most of their savings in the process. She consulted me as a psychologist. After a lengthy court battle and an investment of thousands of dollars the Grievers' children were returned to them.

The Way the System Works

The above are not isolated instances; they are the way the system normally works. Under the guise of helping groups in need-- poor people, children--the welfare-state bureaucracy seeks above all to perpetuate its own existence. It is a monstrous social parasite whose overriding objective--no matter how well intentioned its individual staff members-is to capture vulnerable individuals, transform them into its clients, foist its "services" upon them, undermine their autonomy, and ultimately incorporate them into its own parasitic body. It is a dictatorial state within the state that gives the appearance of benevolently serving its clients' needs, even when it is totally destroying their lives.

Paternalistic ideologies have molded the popular consciousness for so long that citizens do not notice that the bureaucracy's overt ideological operations enable it to covertly subvert the rule of law, and to substitute its own arbitrary fiat for the protections of constitutional democracy.

While all too many children, particularly in poverty-stricken and drug-infested sectors of the inner city, do need some sort of protection, the system is by and large not designed to help them. (There are exceptions, such as a very small "family preservation" program in New York City.) Richard Wexler, among others, has documented the destructive impact upon children of child-welfare agencies across the United States. [see box, page 46.] The majority of removals are for allegations of neglect, or "emotional maltreatment." Neglect usually means that the child comes from a poor family and, like his parents, suffers from the hardships of poverty. As Wexler observes, "Children are taken away because the family does not have a place to live. Children are taken away because the food stamps have run out. Children are taken away because the family can't pay for the heat."

Corroboration comes from Dr. Lawrence Aber, professor of psychology at Columbia University, who stated conservatively that "more than half' the cases agencies label as neglect are really poverty cases. Trevor Grant, former Director of Social Service of CWA, who resigned "in disgust" in 1991 after six years, believes the figure is closer to 85 per cent. "For the most trivial reasons families are destroyed. If the furniture is broken down or the house is messy, CWA workers will remove the child. When in doubt, the safest practice for the workers is to remove the children and then to file neglect charges that never have to be proved in court."

As for emotional maltreatment, in practice it means anything a child-welfare worker wants it to mean. In one survey child-welfare workers described some of the "emotional maltreatment" that they believed constituted grounds for removing a child from his parents' custody. The list included singling out one child for more punishment and chores and fewer rewards, forcing the child to wear clothing "inappropriate" for his or her age-or sex, not providing "security or stability" for the child, barring the child from extracurricular activities "without sufficient reason or alternative," and using "excessive" threats or psychological punishment.

In the view of Dr. Monty Weinstein, virtually all families charged with "emotional maltreatment" ought to retain custody of their children. He stated, "In some cases counseling is indicated, but in most cases it's merely an issue of a caseworker imposing their own definition of good parenting on parents who are fully capable of taking care of their children."

There are approximately 400,000 children in the foster-care system nationwide. Only a small minority of these children have been separated from parents who are dangerous to them. The overwhelming majority have been separated from loving and responsible parents. One does not need to be a child psychologist to realize the devastating effect of removing a child from parents with whom he or she is deeply bonded. The main effect of the child-welfare bureaucracy's interventions is to abrogate the right of children to have parents.

Even if the child-welfare agencies were able to offer an earthly paradise to the children it took over, many of us would still have qualms about a government agency arrogating to itself the right to decide who is a fit parent. But life in the foster-care system is scarcely paradise. New York State Assemblyman Cecile Singer, who chairs the Assembly Standing Committee on Children and Families, calls it "a lifetime system of rootless wandering." Dr. Mark Ginsberg, president of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, has said, "The abuse of children by and through the child-welfare system is one of the major scandals of American life today."

Wexler demonstrates in his book that the overwhelming majority of these children are subjected to multiple placements, and most never find a stable home. One young veteran of foster care told Wexler, "The people that I've seen, the kids that have emerged [from foster care] are ... dead. Their hearts are functioning, the old heart's pumping the blood around. But they're basically dead inside. It's been killed. Either they had to kill it to survive physically, or somebody else killed it in them. Whatever it is that makes people human."

Wexler estimates that approximately half of the homeless in New York City came from the foster-care system. Most of them had parents who loved them. An 11-year-old boy, who was fortunate enough to be returned to his mother, told a congressional committee, "They took almost five years away from my life. That's almost one-half of my whole life that I spent just waiting to come back to my real family. It was terrible to be put in lots of different homes with lots of strangers, knowing they wouldn't let me be with my mother. I wanted to be with my mother and my brothers and sister. One time I ran away from a foster home and back to my mom, but the social worker wouldn't let me stay .... The only help I wanted from the social workers was to go back to my mom, but they didn't help us with that. The foster-care people are trying to tell my mother that she's not--that she's not good enough right now? She's good enough for me any time."

The system doesn't even have a strong record of saving children from serious physical abuse. Its poor performance is due to two factors. First, the rate of abuse in the foster-care system is much greater than the national average; foster parents do not have to go through a screening process, and many are in it purely for financial gain. Second, many children who have been physically abused are returned by the child-welfare bureaucracy to the abuser, if he or she "cooperates" and says the right things in therapy. (It is estimated that 35 to 55 per cent of all child-abuse deaths involve children previously known to child-protective services.)

In addition to the bureaucratic imperative underlying the present system, there are economic factors. The Federal Government provides massive reimbursement for foster-care programs nationwide, but little money is available for preventive services. In New York City, Wexler noted, the city contracts for preventive services with some of the same agencies that live off foster care. The result is that virtually nothing is done to provide families with the kinds of services that they want, such as rent subsidies, day care, etc., though money is always available for the one service that does not necessarily help to keep the family together, i.e., "therapy." Wexler notes, "These agencies prefer placing children in foster care--and keeping them there--because they are paid for foster care on a per diem basis. As soon as they do what they're supposed to de--reunite families--their money stops" (New York Daily News, July 17, 1991).

Reverse, March.

What, then, can be done to protect the welfare of children? In the case of the inner cities, which account for the overwhelming majority of children placed in foster care, I think the answer is to be found in Alan Keyes's proposal--made in these pages last year, after the Los Angeles riot--to devolve the functions currently usurped by federal, state, and local bureaucracies onto decision-making councils elected by the residents of each neighborhood.

Keyes wrote, "The federal and state governments should work with the councils to transfer the administration of social-welfare programs into the hands of persons chosen by and answering to the councils." The child-welfare system and the family-court system should be abolished. Instead, the neighborhood committees should investigate charges of neglect, and if the "neglect" is merely due to poverty the councils should allocate financial resources derived from the federal and state governments to help alleviate the problems. If the parents are truly negligent, the council should work with foster-care agencies to find temporary placements for the children and/or with family therapists to provide counseling for the family, with the goal of eventual reunification.

In the case of physical and sexual abuse, there should be criminal prosecution of the accused. Under the guise of providing "therapy," social workers and mental-health personnel have prevented criminals from receiving just punishment for their crimes, at the same time as they remove children from good and loving parents. Child-welfare workers have repeatedly returned children to parents who have seriously abused them, leading to many needless deaths. This would not happen if abusers were regarded as criminals rather than as "mentally ill" individuals who can be cured by several months of talking (i.e., "therapy"). The neighborhood councils should help find appropriate placements for the children of abusers.

The objective of the judicial process should not be to determine whether an individual suffers from a "mental disorder," but whether he or she has actually been guilty of an act of physical or sexual abuse. This would allow for the restoration of the constitutional right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Therapists who have worked with families should be allowed to testify as character witnesses, but not as expert witnesses. Professional "expertise" is a poor substitute for common sense and common decency.

The above measures would save the taxpayers millions of dollars and significantly improve the lives of children and poor people--as well as the equally aggrieved, but less numerous, middle-class victims of the child-welfare system. There is one major problem: these measures would put thousands, if not millions, of social workers, mental-health professionals, child caseworkers, administrators, and family-court personnel out of work. As Robert Woodson astutely observed ("Saving the Poor from Their Saviors," National Center for Neighborhood Enterprises, Washington, D.C.): "What we have built is a Poverty Pentagon, the principal beneficiaries of which are not the poor but those who make their livings from the poor." The dismantling of the dependency-producing welfare state is a problem comparable in nature and in magnitude to the task of demilitarization presented by the end of the Cold War.

I can think of no easy way of making this transition. It would require a massive economic and social reorganization, as well as a political battle against an entrenched bureaucracy.

But it is evident that we will suffer enormous costs as a nation if the magnitude of the problem prevents us from confronting it. A society that destroys its children is not a morally or spiritually viable entity.

Dr. Farber is a psychologist and the author of Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels, due out later this spring from Open Court Press.