Saturday, April 11, 2015

Sunglasses at Night

I pity CPS workers.

Let me say it again. I pity CPS workers.

They have an incredibly warped worldview - especially as it pertains to parents and children, and the myriad interactions which occur within families in all their configurations.

Through these dark glasses that CPS workers wear, society is a very bleak place in which all step-parents abuse their step-children. The minute they learn that one of the parents appearing on their radar is a step-parent, CPS goes into full-out attack mode. The majority of CPS workers were spoon fed the Disney fantasy that demonizes step-parents in larger than life animation, and they freely apply that model as though it were the fount of reality. Given the modern day statistics of the number of children living in homes with a step-parent, if this were actually the case, CPS would be the world's largest employer - far outstripping the police and teaching as a profession. The reality is far different - CPS is now an agency whose turnover rate is extremely high and it struggles with job preservation, advancing unfounded cases and false allegations in order to secure funding and justify their continued existence.

(Anecdotal side bar 1 - there is a major exception to this "step-parent" rule that involves family members of CPS employees. A friend of Ruby's was constantly at our house, and frequently complained about her stepmother belittling her and her brother - calling them "stupid", "useless", "never amount to anything", and other derogatory phrases. She described how her stepmother threw her brother out of the house when he turned 16. Imagine our amazement when we discovered that this stepmonster was the sister of a CPS investigator actively involved with the Jon Massey case.)

Constantly inundated with examples of the worst of humanity, many CPS workers can't - or won't - see that this is not the norm, and that the majority of society does not treat others with callous disregard. Instead, when they encounter a person who has absolutely no criminal record, CPS "investigators" will relentlessly pursue the blameless in the misguided belief that lack of a record indicates that an individual is just devious and adept at avoiding being caught. The sheer stupidity of this belief is staggering - if all people without a criminal past were secretly guilty of something, we would be living in a state of sheer anarchy with the crime rate through the roof.

In the dark land of the Career Preservation Society, all inappropriate behavior by children can be directly attributed to neglect or abuse by parents and family members. Acting out is proof positive of allegations - the cart drives the horse. There is no room in the murky tunnels of their minds to acknowledge that all humans are different and respond in a broad variety of ways to the same situations, or respond to peer and societal pressure differently.

There is a name for this - CSAAS (Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome) - and it has been deemed "junk science" by the psychological community and was retracted by Roland Summit, the man who "invented" it in the first place. Under the original theory, AFTER a diagnosis that sexual abuse has actually occurred, a number of behaviors could emerge and be attributed to the abuse. However CPS has repeatedly claimed that the emergence of any of those listed behaviors can be used to prove that sexual abuse occurred. Again, the cart before the horse.

(Anecdotal side bar 2 - One of the CPS caseworkers approached me in court to ask for assistance regarding her teenage daughter. Apparently her daughter was sneaking around, changing clothes at school to more revealing and/or inappropriate outfits, and using makeup despite her mother's prohibition. Ironic isn't it? The very acting out behaviors that CPS - and this caseworker - claimed were "proof positive" of the abuse allegations against Jon Massey were being exhibited by this girl. But rather than being attributed to abuse, because it involves a CPS worker, the actions were considered simply the 'normal' behaviors of a teenage girl. Even worse, the CPS worker turned to one of their alleged perpetrators for assistance.

Anecdotal side bar 3 - A CPS investigator himself - as well as his younger brother - both exhibited some of the same "everything but the kitchen sink" behaviors described in CSAAS - as well as exhibited by Ruby - sneaking out of the house, underage drinking, and yet the behaviors weren't considered "out of the ordinary" or proof of any form of abuse.)

As a result of this obsession with believing the worst possible scenario, CPS workers are unwilling or unable to give credibility to any evidence presented to them, unless it has been discovered by themselves. This could be attributed to their awareness of the frequency that they themselves present false information and lie, and therefore any documentation of wrongdoing received from outside sources would be considered founded in untruths also...they only "trust" their own lies. As a result of this twisted reality, CPS workers have often zealously advocated that children be placed with sociopaths or convicted abusers rather than with the parents who have protected them and kept them safe. This is even more true when those parents have engaged in a fight with CPS, against all odds, to present the truth.

(Anecdotal side bar 4 - Although we were able to document the extent to which my youngest daughter's father would go to get his own way, CPS deliberately ignored disturbing reports he made to them as well as their own agency's records, testimony by a psychologist hired by the court, and documentation of his lying in court, and instead insisted that he was an upstanding and appropriate parent.

Anecdotal side bar 5 - An even more distressing case is that of Kendall Lebow, whose mother has been fighting to regain custody of her daughter, who was place with a convicted sexual offender. When the mother began seeing signs of sexual abuse on visitations, CPS insisted that her visitation be cut off, rather than investigating - and potentially finding their own liability for a child being abused. You can view her story at savekendall.com)

Immersed in a job where everything is focused on the darkest human behaviors, the whole world becomes a moonless night. But CPS workers deliberately go one step further and put on their sunglasses, so that they wander through life thinking the worst of everyone and seeing evil in every situation - a belief system entirely of their own making.

I pity CPS workers.

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