If you're a parent living in the USA with young children, and if you don't know what the Fourth Amendment is, please pay attention. This information could save your family.
The Fourth Amendment states that government workers can't enter your home without your permission, unless they have a warrant based on 'probable cause'.
Here's the exact text of the Fourth Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
It has been established that this protection applies to Child Protective Services (CPS) caseworkers just as it applies to law enforcement officers. Despite the clear text of this section of the Bill of Rights, many caseworkers still think they can force parents to allow them into their homes.
Recently, near the end of January 2007, a child protection caseworker showed up at the door of a Michigan homeschooling family. She would not read a paper the mother handed her regarding her rights, and yelled at the mother, insisting that she should be allowed to enter immediately to do a “strip search” of one of the children. She was basing her intrusion on an anonymous tip stating that the children listened only to Christian music, that they “ate their cheerios dry”, that their only socialization was through the church, and that the mother pinched and hit her children in church to keep them quiet.
Since when is listening to Christian music or socializing in church a form of child neglect? And eating dry cheerios – is that a crime? If the caseworker had kept her complaint to 'pinching and hitting' she wouldn't have lost her credibility and we wouldn't be laughing at her now. However remember, this was all based on an anonymous tip, and who knows what the motivation of that phone call might have been?
The mother contacted an attorney, Chris Klicka, of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). He sent the caseworker a letter regarding her rude and unprofessional behavior toward the family. He noted that she obviously hadn't received the social worker training in the Fourth Amendment. A year and a half earlier HSLDA helped pass a law in that state which requires all caseworkers to be trained in their “duty to protect both statutory and constitutional rights of those being investigated.” Klicka also informed the caseworker that she would be held liable for violating the family's civil rights.
Meanwhile the mother responded to the investigation by getting a statement from her children's doctor indicating that her children were not abused. She also got letters from people who stated that they were good parents to their children.
The caseworker continued to try to interview the children and strip search them, and threatened to get a court order to do so. Klicka informed her that she had no 'probable cause' for a warrant because anonymous tips don't qualify as credible evidence. The caseworker insisted she would get a court order, but instead, a few days later she contacted the family saying she would drop the case.
I guess she finally figured out what the Fourth Amendment was, and what 'probable cause' meant.
HSLDA, the Home School Legal Defense Association, serves mostly homeschooling Christians, but will provide legal defense for any homeschooler regardless of religion, so long as the dues are paid. This defense extends to homeschooling families facing accusations and investigations from Child Protective Services. HSLDA lawyers have been instrumental in going to court for homeschooling families with CPS problems, and have managed to establish very positive case law protecting anyone facing false accusations of abuse. For that, HSLDA lawyers should be praised by all families, forever.
[Note: I am not a member of HSLDA and never have been. I am not trying to get new memberships for them. However I very much appreciate what they've done for families facing false child abuse allegations.]
References:
Homeschooler Listening Only to Christian Music Turned in for Child Abuse
US Constitution, Fourth Amendment
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If you'd like to read more articles on this topic, you're welcome to join the Family Rights group here on Gather. I also have a website for families facing false accusations of child abuse or neglect: FightCPS.Com
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Comments: 14
I do understand about the mandated reporter law. There's a version of it in every state, though the wording varies.
If a report came from a teacher however, it probably would not be done anonymously, and therefore might meet the standard of probable cause.
I wanted to clarify this so people who are seeking legal help don't get the wrong idea about what the law states.
Tamara, I hear that often (that they fail to act on some cases where children are actually being abused) and I think there's at least 2 reasons for that: (1) caseworkers prefer to work with clients they perceive as 'easy targets' rather than with truly dangerous people; and (2) they are so busy pursuing marginal, trivial cases, they don't have time for the really big ones.
On point 2, many people think that the answer is to hire more caseworkers. I tend to think that they should drop the trivial stuff and just deal with real child abuse.
By the way, child abuse is a crime. It always has been. That's why if I knew without a doubt that a child was really being abused, I'd call a law enforcement agency, not a social services caseworker. If I were a mandated reporter (I'm not one) I'd have the option to do that here in California.
Also, the question of credible evidence can be called in. What's credible. Everyone of my children's docs would have written me a note saying my children were not abused. My daughter had a busted lip 3 times by the time she was 2. But, I would never have taken her to the doctor back then when they had an injury like that. And, if they really needed to go, I'd give a plausible explanation, such as "She fell off a swing." If my husband had pinched her (which didn't happen to be one of the punishments he used), I would have told the doc a neighborhood kid pinched my daughter. The docs always commented on how well behaved my kids were. I always thought, "Yah, they better be or they won't live to see adulthood. Their dad would kill them. But, you don't care as long as they are well behaved, that's all you see.
I was raised in the same kind of family and believed that's what dads did. The first time my husband beat me up, fairly badly, I went to the doctor and my sister called the police. The doctor told me to get a gun and shoot him. He said, "Yes, you will have to go to prison, but the only way you will stop him is to shoot him." The police man was very nice and understanding, but he also told me, "I can arrest him, but he'll be out in 3 hours and he'll come after you." Well, needless to say, I was too scared to file the report. It wasn't until I left for the 4th time and decided to go on welfare that someone said, "Call the shelter." I had no idea there were such places. All that was to say, some reports don't get filed, some doc's don't want to get involved, and sometimes, nobody really knows. So, what's credible evidence?
Triviality is a subjective thing. And that's the problem. There's no list of things you can't do as a parent. I mean, if there was a list of specific things that would be called child abuse or neglect in a court of law, a parent could avoid doing those things. But since there's no list of specific parenting crimes, the decision of who gets their kids detained by CPS is in many cases totally subjective, based on the opinions of caseworkers and their supervisors. You never know what to expect. For one family a messy house might mean never living with their kids again and termination of parental rights. For another family it might mean they have three days to clean it up and the caseworker then dismisses the case.
So to explain what's trivial in my opinion, let me give you an example. A couple in the midwest attracted the attention of CPS when their son who was about 11 at the time broke his collarbone in a playground incident. The doctors at the hospital they took him to called social services, and subsequently a case was opened and the caseworkers visited the family at home and inspected the entire house. The collarbone incident was deemed not to be the parents' fault and the house passed inspection except for two things: the caseworker wanted a safety gate to be installed on the interior staircase, and she wanted the fan in the parents' bedroom to be replaced because it had no cover and was judged to be a safety hazard for the four young children.
The caseworker returned a few weeks later and neither of these things had been done because the parents were very poor and couldn't afford the items yet. Because of the lack of a safety gate and a new fan, all four children were put into foster homes and kept there for at least a year, costing the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. I dont' know the eventual outcome of this case but I remember it from years back because I was so outraged that the caseworkers could have purchased a gate and a fan for less than 100 dollars, and instead the taxpayers were robbed of thousands while the parents and children were traumatized for life.
So trivial is a subjective thing. Each case is so different, and I believe that most cases should be handled without breaking up the families involved unless there's evidence of actual physical abuse.
It really saddens me that this happens.
I agree with much that has been said already. I am a home schooling mom that is trying to get custody of a neglected step-child from another state. Thank God her preschool got involved and kept a paper trail, anything we brought to court was dismissed as "parental tit-for-tat" because there was so much anger from the mom. My only complaint about the process is that it is taking MONTHS. You only hear about the fast, problematic cases. I think the state of CT DCS (Dept of Childrens Services) is being more than fair, have appointed the child a guardian ad litem, and have finally dealt with the verbal abuse we have taken from this increasingly unbalanced woman. I pray for the parents in cases like this. In CT, the homeschooling laws are very few, giving "the parent the right to education their child or have education provided for them by public or private means." But I keep my ear to the news because we can't take our freedom for granted. Keep up the good work!
You take a good tough stance on your views here. I as a parent had to deal with CPS one time in raising my 5 kids, and I told them straight up to back off. Some azzwipe of a neighbor heard me scream at my wifes brother and twisted everything. this was a BS call and like I told the last CPS person that was sitting in my dhair, unless you have proof of this crap...leave.
Good show, David. Caseworkers ususally have no proof and rely on tricking the parents to get it. Parents are so concerned with proving they are innocent they give the caseworkers all kinds of leads... and they are so good at twisting the information to make parents look bad!