The Family Reclamation Movement

THE FAMILY RECLAMATION MOVEMENT PETITION REGARDING LEGISLATION LOBBYING FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES We support The Family Reclamation Movement and would like to see a formal investigation initiated and policies placed in effect as outlined in the brief set forth by The Family Reclamation Movement. We believe it is important for the future of the United States of America to re-empower parents and to regain the strength and stability of the American family unit.
Who: The Family Reclamation Movement

What: A Congressional Lobby for Change and Accountability

Contact: Cheryl BryantBruce, M.D.

832-244-6100

650-451-8112

Cheryl@gregorycenter.org

         Kimberly Gomez 

       (770) 714-5775

gomez5gkg@aol.com 
         Charmaine Smith

(770) 899-2275 

mamacharms@yahoo.com

 

A group of parents calling itself “The Family Reclamation Movement,” led by Dr. Cheryl BryantBruce, M.D. and Atlanta resident Kimberly Gomez is going to Washington, D.C., to lobby the House of Representatives for a bill to protect families from pseudoabuse.

Dr. Cheryl BryantBruce and her child, who became known to the world as “Baby Gregory,” became an international household name on February 9, 1995 when she kidnapped her 19 month old son, from the custody of a state-sanctioned foster-care placement in Tennessee to bring the critically ill child to Egleston Children’s Hospital in Atlanta for a second opinion. The baby had been taken from his family when a Tennessee hospital made allegations of child abuse. The findings that the hospital alleged were evidence of child abuse were later shown by doctors at Egleston to be related to the child’s underlying medical condition.

Atlanta resident Kimberly Gomez is the mother of five children, the youngest of whom was removed from her custody when the child was almost three weeks old. Ms. Gomez took her child to The Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital in Atlanta because her baby had been vomiting and was failing to gain weight appropriately. In spite of the fact that Ms. Gomez had expressed concern to medical personnel previously about her baby’s slight frame, the hospital held her baby and an allegation was made of Munchausen’s, alleging that she had abused her baby by giving it an E.Coli infection. When the hospital was not able to substantiate this, the allegation was changed to neglect, alleging that she had a mental condition called post-partum depression and had failed to feed her child. After multiple attempts through the court system to get her baby returned, the child still remains in the custody of the state, where the child continues to show inappropriately low weight gain and poor feeding ability.

Dr. BryantBruce was contacted by Ms. Gomez and another Atlanta mother Charmaine Smith in December, seeking her assistance in helping them to bring their babies back home. Charmaine, a brand new mom, lost her first baby to the state when the same hospital alleged that the child had multiple fractures.  This allegation came after Ms. Smith questioned the quality of the medical care of her child, because a diagnosis of hydrocephalus had not been made earlier, even though she had taken her child for health care numerous times without measurements having ever been taken of the child’s head circumference.  An initial x-ray obtained from the hospital showed no fractures. The state subsequently presented a set of x-rays showing multiple fractures as evidence that the child had been abused. A recent second opinion at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio confirmed that the child had never had a fracture in his life. Ms. Smith and her baby’s father, who both spent time in jail for child abuse, were innocent victims of pseudoabuse. Their child also remains in state custody.

In one tragic case involving a first generation Asian father, allegations of child abuse were levied and the child was taken into state custody as a result of bruising found on the child caused by an innocuous cultural practice called “coining.” The family unit was destroyed when the father committed suicide due to the shame brought on his family within his own cultural paradigm.

With all of these cases, and many like them, the state social workers, medical personnel and even judges duck behind immunity laws as they wantonly brandish allegations of abuse and then perpetrate the fraud. Parents are made to jump through hoops like animals in a circus in efforts to get their children back, only to find when they get back to court that the rules have been changed and goals have been set which they can never attain. Meanwhile, families are torn apart. Very few parental relationships survive the fiasco. Siblings who are left behind suffer numerous emotional problems and frequently become socially maladjusted. Many develop a disdain for the legal system that they have seen fail them and destroy their family. All suffer from post-traumatic stress to varying degrees.  While The Family Reclamation Movement acknowledges that Child Abuse is real, we are the evidence that pseudoabuse is equally real and equally devastating to families. Not only is it devastating to families, but the fear of it is weakening the United States as a whole, by rendering American families impotent in our parenting abilities. Families are afraid to discipline their children because of fear of allegations of abuse. Families are afraid to take their children to hospitals, because if the family has not been affected directly by pseudoabuse, most now know of at least one other family that it has negatively impacted. American society is in a crisis!

We support the Family Reclamation Movement and would like to see a formal investigation initiated and policies placed in effect as outlined in the brief set forth by the Family Reclamation Movement. We believe it is important for the future of the United States of America to re-empower parents and to regain the strength and stability of the American family unit.

Two main points of contention:

  1. We are calling for an action that allows parents once again to be accountable and responsible for the discipline and care of out own children without blanket fear of state authorities usurping our authority as parents by threatening us with child abuse charges for reasonable and acceptable forms of discipline.
  2. We are calling for an investigation into the social services/foster care system, where children are being held in the system when child abuse allegations are made even after families have gone through enormous efforts to prove their innocence and complete tasks the state requires of them. 

Factoids:

    1. 86% of all child abuse allegations are noted to be unfounded (Child Welfare League of America National Data Analysis System Data Reports-2003).
    2. The state gets federal money to keep our kids in foster care.
    3. Foster homes get state money to keep our kids in foster care.
    4. Defendants are presumed guilty until proven innocent.
    5. Medical records are not released to parents in order for them to mount an appropriate defense.
    6. Defendants are required to take psychological evaluations with psychologist who are partial to the state.

-if a parent chooses to do an independent assessment, if they do not allow the state to speak to the examiner before the assessment, the report of the examiner is disallowed by the state.

f. Successful completion of a re-unification plan currently requires that

defendants MUST admit to and take responsibility for abuse before a

child will be returned.

    1. If an innocent defendant admits to child abuse just to expedite getting a child back home, the defendant’s name is permanently placed on the National Child Abuse Registry.
    2. Numerous children are neglected, abused and some even die in foster care placements without governmental accountability.
    3. The State attempts to trick parents into signing a termination of parental rights as one of their first efforts.

f.        Minority and disabled children placed in the foster care system seldom get out and seldom make it into appropriate adoptive homes. According to the latest data of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Research Survey(AFCARS) 515, 500 children were in foster care(not including U.S. territories) with children of color accounting for 58% when children of color account for only 29% of the nations population of 73,000,000 children under the age of 18.

g.       Federal and State monies (our tax money) are received for kids in foster care, but parents are charged with burdensome amounts of child support.

  1. WHAT ARE WE ASKING FOR?
    1. We are seeking accountability to us as citizens by the state, the medical profession and the legal system.
    1. We are seeking to be allowed to be accountable and responsible for the care and discipline of our own children.
  1. WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?
    1. CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS ABOUND
      1. We believe that the basic human rights of both the parents and the children in these pseudoabuse cases are being violated.
      1. We believe that the state should have responsibility to treat the accused families with basic respect and dignity until the results of their evaluations have been completed and the custodial responsibilities have been relinquished back to the parents or the parental rights have been terminated. 
      1. We believe that every effort should be made to maintain the strongest possible bond between a retained child and its natural family unit until the time that it is determined that reunification will permanently not be a possibility by the court.  
      1. We believe that it is the basic right of a mother to provide the best nutrition available for an infant, which research has proven is breast milk.  We believe that if an infant is removed from the custody of its mother, every effort should be made to allow that mother to continue to provide appropriate nutrition to her youngster, whether that be by allowing her to breast feed directly or  by allowing her to provide expressed milk for provision to her infant via bottle feedings. 
      1. We believe that parents have a basic right to raise our children with responsibility for both their care and their discipline, to include appropriate corporal punishment such as spanking a child on the buttocks when deemed necessary. 
The situation as it exists now is little different than Hitler’s assault on the Jews, when children were snatched from their parents clutches at will. As in the earlier days when slavery made a mockery of the freedom on which this country was founded, American families are now basically slaves on a social services system’s plantation, locked in a system that disproportionately targets minorities, families of children with disabilities, low-income families and single-parent households. Our children are still being ripped from our families and sold down the river.
    1. IMMUNITY LAWS ARE IMPORTANT
      1. We believe that immunity laws are important in order that real cases of child abuse should be reported. 
      1. We believe that immunity laws are being abused by the states and the county social work systems, the medical system, and even the common citizen at times. People are hiding behind the cloak of immunity while they violate and terrorize families giving the Salem Witch Hunts and the Klan terror a new face.
    1. ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ACTIONS
      1. We believe that those who report have a responsibility to bring any new evidence to light should they discover evidence that contradicts the evidence on which they based their previous reporting, even recanting their original report if need be.
      1. We believe that medical providers who file an allegation of child abuse have an obligation to continue to do an exhaustive investigation into all other appropriate differential diagnoses to prevent appropriate treatment from being withheld from the child.
      1. We believe that the states/counties and all other such responsible parties must be held accountable should they willfully violate a family’s civil rights, e.g., if a doctor goes outside the standard acceptable court procedures and addresses a letter or conversation directly to a judge outside of sanctioned courtroom chambers for the purposes of influencing that judge’s opinion, then that party should be formally and legally reprimanded accordingly.
      1. We believe that the responsible parties receiving temporary custody of our children, i.e., the states, the counties and the foster care workers, as well as the hospitals providing the medical care should be held to at least the same standard of care for the children as is expected of the accused families and they should be held legally accountable, both civilly and criminally for acts of neglect and abuse that usually ensue while the child is in their custody. 
      1. We believe it should be the responsibility of the state/county to provide adequate resources for the emotional support of the remaining family members once a child is removed, to include paying for psychological counseling/support by a provider of the families choosing throughout the duration of the time that the child is detained from its family.  
    1. APPROPRIATE DEFENSE
      1. We believe that accused parents have a right to mount an appropriate defense.
      1. We believe that the parents have a right to have their case investigated by impartial parties.
      1. We believe that the parents should be allowed unrestricted access to all of a child’s medical records if they are appropriate for the defense of the case and that those records should be made available immediately upon request or as expeditiously as possible.
      1. We believe that the parents should have a right to request a change of venue should they believe that the case cannot receive an impartial adjudication in the location where the child was removed from parental custody. For example, in cases involving Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN, all but one of the circuit court judges are Vanderbilt alumni, which could constitute a definite conflict of interest.
      1. We believe that an admission of guilt should not be an immutable part of a re-unification plan. If a family did not commit abuse and an admission of guilt is all that separates the family from the child, a stalemate situation is set up and the state wins by default.
      1. We believe that the state should not be allowed to terrorize parents by demeaning or belittling them, by making menacing physical contact with them, by making personal attacks on them and/or by threatening them constantly with statements like, “You’ll never get your baby back,” or “We have the power to keep your baby forever.” 
      1. We believe the state should not have the right to mentally torture parents with constant actions such as making repeated attempts to coerce parents into signing papers that authorize termination of parental rights.
  1. WHAT ARE WE SEEKING
    1. An intensive investigation into the social services system as it is currently set up looking for:
      1. Evidence of corruption in a system that provides financial incentives for social services system not to re-unify families in an expeditious manner.
      1. Evidence of civil rights violations in a system which is disproportionately targeting minorities, families of children with disabilities, lower income families and single-parent households.
    1. Legislation regulating the federal financial incentives provided to the social services system such that:
      1. If a child is removed from the care of its parents and a termination of parental rights is enacted, the financial gain for the adoption of the child is limited to the coverage of the legal expenses involved in the filing of the adoption paperwork only.
      1. Federal aide is received for maintaining children in foster care for six months only, during which time an aggressive re-unification plan must be actively worked.
        1. If a child is maintained in the foster care system for more than six-months, the social services system will incur a significant financial penalty for each month that the child is held over that six month anniversary.
      1. Parents will not be liable for the payment of child support to the state if the child has been temporarily removed from the custody of the parents against the wishes of the parents and the parents have not been legally convicted of child abuse.
    1. A task force to be established for the re-writing of the immunity laws such that:
      1. Parties who make allegations of child abuse have a responsibility to continue to perform an exhaustive search for other possible explanations for the evidence on which they have based their reports, even after they have formally filed the allegation. This attention to an appropriate differential diagnosis will mean that underlying causes do not go unattended to while an overzealous medical provider witch hunts, leading to unwarranted suffering of both a child and its family.
        1. When evidence arises that is contrary to the facts and presumptions on which they based their original allegation, such parties who willfully neglect to present that evidence will be held legally accountable for that failure to do so, potentially incurring both civil and criminal charges.
        1. Any party who becomes aware that such evidence exists and that it has been withheld and does not come forth to divulge it or who is actively involved in the aiding and abetting of the withholding of such evidence shall also be held liable for such actions, also incurring legal charges.
      1. Caseworkers, legal personnel and medical personnel or any other parties involved in the removal of a child from parental custody for allegations of child abuse who violate the civil rights of parents and children and who terrorize them will have legal accountability for their actions for which they cannot claim immunity, potentially incurring both civil and criminal charges.
      1. Penalties will be enforced against case workers or any other parties who make any attempts to influence the judge outside of court-sanctioned chambers, e.g., letters solicited by caseworkers from doctors for the purpose of influencing the judge outside of chambers will incur liability for the case worker and the physician authoring the letter.
        1. Any judge who accepts such a document will be subject to disciplinary action by the State Bar Association.
      1. Any party who impedes the actions of a parent to provide an adequate defense by withholding medical records from the defendant will have penalties brought against them.
        1. Medical records must be made available to the parents and/or any party representing the interests of the parents with the consent of the parents within 24 hours of the child being removed from the custody of the parents.
    1. Legislation mandating that families accused of child abuse have a right to defend themselves against such allegations. We are seeking that once a child has been removed to protective custody, the families will be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
      1. Counsel for the parents is allowed to request a change of venue for any and all court proceedings related to such a case as which involves an allegation of child abuse.
      1. Medical records of the child are immediately made available to the parents against whom allegations have been made.
      1. Parents are allowed to pick appropriately licensed and board certified evaluators of their own choosing for all psychological and psychiatric evaluations.
        1. Written criteria will be provided to the parents as to what specific information the evaluation must contain and what testing must be performed in order that they may provide that information to the evaluator.
        1. Social services officials will not be allowed to contact the provider selected by the parents to do their evaluations.
        1. A copy of the evaluation will be provided directly from the provider to the court in a sealed envelope to be opened at the time of hearing, as well as the copy that is provided to both the social services system and the parents, in order to insure that no alterations have been made to the document.
        1. Social services officials will not have access to the name of the provider chosen by the parents for completion of the psychological evaluations until after the evaluations have been completed and an official written report has been generated and registered with the court in a sealed envelope.
      1. Parents are allowed to choose an outside, impartial hospital for a second opinion evaluation when an allegation of abuse has been lodged against them.
        1. An impartial consultation for evaluation must be submitted, which includes only the symptoms that the child presented with and a non-biased statement of the clinical findings.
          1. Any attempt by the sending facility to impart bias, whether by written or telephonic communication will be cause for a substantial financial penalty.
          1. Any attempt by DFACS/DHS to contact the second evaluating facility will incur substantial financial penalty.
      1. An admission of abuse must not be allowed to be a necessary final requirement for the re-unification of a child with its family to occur
      1. All mention of termination of parental rights will be stricken from any documents that parents are required to sign as a part of case plan management.
        1. Parents will not be penalized for refusal to sign any document in which there is a mention of termination of parental rights or a suggestion thereof.
      1. In the event that a family is unable to afford the cost of legal defense, the families will be allowed to choose attorneys for their defense who will then be appointed by the court for such defense. 
        1. In the event that such defense should be required for more than six months, the agency bringing the allegation of abuse will become liable for all costs associated with the parents’ defense. All such monies will be transferred through the court system, such that the agencies may have no influence on the outcomes of the cases.
    1. Legislation mandating that criminal and civil proceedings will be brought against any and all authorities involved in maintaining a child in “protective custody” in the event that the child experiences abuse or neglect while under such “protective custody.”
      1. Criminal and civil proceedings will be brought against any parties having knowledge that such abuse or neglect has occurred and who have failed to make a report on the same.

CONCLUSION

American families are being stripped of one of the most basic human rights, that is, the right to raise our children. We the Family Reclamation Movement are seeking relief empowering us to take back the control of our children, returning strength, respect and discipline back to the moral fiber of our country.

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