“The hospital staff were texting with [the child welfare agency] about the dilation of her cervix”

One state allegedly maintains a secret docket of pregnant women. For those on it, it is alleged, this state will rely on a “network of informers” to plunder confidential records and spy on any mother they deem “high risk.” The state may even seek custody before the children are born.  You may be surprised at which state it is.

A lawsuit was filed last week that alleges the following: 

● A pregnant woman was reported to a state family police agency despite no allegation of abuse or neglect.

● She became part of a secret docket of pregnant women singled out for intensive government monitoring.

● Her confidential medical records were obtained and read by strangers without her knowledge.

● Every aspect of her delivery, down to the centimeter, was reported to the government, again without her knowledge.

● The government attempted to force her to undergo a medical procedure.

● The government confiscated her child at birth – refusing to allow the mother to touch her newborn, or even see her.

● The government placed the child with strangers two hours away, strictly limited visits and tried to deprive the child of her mother forever.

So here’s the first question of a two-question pop quiz: The next few paragraphs are from a news story about the lawsuit – and if anything illustrates why “family police agency” is a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency, it’s these next few paragraphs.  I’ve removed information that would reveal the state in which this allegedly occurred.  As you read, see if you can guess the state. 

The [child welfare agency] went to extraordinary and illegal lengths to remove a child from its mother’s custody, aided by an internal program that monitors the pregnancies of multiple [residents], a new lawsuit … alleges. 

The 30-page complaint… accuses the department of secretly tracking the pregnancies of multiple [state residents] that it deems “high-risk” with an internal calendar, without their knowledge or consent. 

The … suit focuses on the case of one mother, identified only as A.V., in which the [child welfare agency] — citing concerns about A.V.’s mental health — allegedly used confidential medical information to secure custody of her daughter before she had even given birth. The department also allegedly sought a court order for the hospital to perform a caesarean section while the mother was in labor, all without A.V.’s knowledge. 

[The agency] removed the infant from her mother’s custody immediately after she was born, according to the suit, only to have the child returned by court order months later. 

“No court ever found that A.V. lacked parental capacity,” the suit reads, alleging that [the agency] did not cite any formal mental health evaluation of A.V. to support its actions. 

It’s obvious, right? A state that would develop what the lawsuit calls “a network of informers,” plunder a mother’s confidential medical records, based on no more than a guess that a fetus was in danger? A state that would demand custody of what anti-abortion crusaders would call a “pre-born child”?  Must be Texas, or maybe Mississippi, right? 

If that were the answer there’d be no point in the quiz, of course.  No, this lawsuit was filed in a state so deep blue that the far right likes to call it “the People’s Republic of Vermont.”  The lawsuit was brought by the Vermont ACLU, along with Pregnancy Justice and two private firms, against the Vermont family police agency, a Vermont hospital, Copley, and a Vermont agency, Lund, that provided confidential pre-natal counseling to the mother (well she thought it was confidential).  Those paragraphs above are from an excellent story in VT Digger.  Vermont Public also has done an excellent story about the case. 

The case at the heart of the suit is no aberration in a couple of ways.  

First, as Vermont Public reports, the lawsuit alleges that the state Department for Children and Families maintains a secret 

so-called “high-risk pregnancy calendar” to regularly monitor pregnant Vermonters deemed “unsuitable for parenthood,” using confidential information illegally obtained from medical providers and social service organizations. 

The information comes from what the lawsuit calls 

[A] network of informers, including medical and social work professionals like the staff at Copley Hospital and Lund, [who] unlawfully collect sensitive information about pregnant Vermonters, even where there is no allegation or suspicion of neglect or abuse. DCF then uses the collected information to zealously seek termination of parental rights, often without having substantiated the anecdotes, information, or concerns directly. 

According to the lawsuit, one is blacklisted on this “calendar” – a term that comes from tracking due dates -- not based on conventional medical criteria for high risk, but rather 

“based solely on speculative concerns about future parenting ability, a determination that often relies on outdated, anecdotal, unsubstantiated, subjective, and discriminatory criteria. 

Those criteria include 

prior involvement with DCF as a child; housing status; or an expectant mother’s preference for “natural” over medically assisted birth. 

As the lawsuit notes: 

Vermont has long represented itself as a haven for bodily autonomy, and the General Assembly legislates against a backdrop of protection for reproductive rights, not conceptions of fetal personhood. Yet despite its limited statutory mandate to protect existing, born children, DCF regularly seeks out information about pregnant Vermonters who have never previously interacted with the agency. DCF amasses pre-birth evidence to support its subjective belief that these women will later make poor parents. Upon, or shortly after birth, DCF then intervenes to seize their infants.

Indeed, in 2022, Vermont voters added a e “reproductive liberty amendment” to the State Constitution. 

Yet Vermont allegedly is implementing upon pregnant woman a Project 2025-style surveillance scheme strikingly similar to one proposed by self-proclaimed liberal Elizabeth Bartholet.

Vermont’s long, ugly history

But that’s not the only way this case is not unusual.  As noted previously on this Blog, for decades, liberal Vermont has torn apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation, more than quadruple the national average.  (But don’t get too smug, conservatives – West Virginia is even worse, and four other deep red states are right behind Vermont.) 

It's all horrifyingly clear in the case of A.V., the mother at the center of the lawsuit. 

The case began when she could not stay in her apartment and had to move to a homeless shelter.  (You don’t think DCF would do this to a rich person, do you?)  The shelter’s director decided that A.V. seemed to have mental health issues.  We don’t know how she reached this decision – except that it was not the result of any evaluation by a mental health professional. But, according to the lawsuit, the shelter director didn’t think A.V. was aware that she was pregnant. This is a bit odd since A.V. had already gone to Lund for prenatal counseling.  (By the way, Lund advertises “nonjudgmental counseling”). 

But there was something else: DCF knew that A.V. had herself allegedly been abused as a child – so she was on the agency’s radar as a victim.  And yes, being a victim of child abuse, or having been in foster care, does indeed make you more likely to face the trauma of investigation and the loss of your own child at the hands of the family police. 

So, as Vermont Public explains: 

The shelter’s report prompted DCF to open “an assessment for lack of parental capacity” and assign a caseworker. The caseworker then reached out to Lund, where A.V. had sought a confidential counseling session, and Copley, where A.V. planned to give birth. She also reached out to A.V.’s mother, according to the ACLU, who said that A.V. had no mental health diagnoses and had made preparations for the baby’s arrival. 

In violation of DCF’s own policies, the caseworker did not even notify A.V. that this assessment was taking place, according to the ACLU. Both Lund and Copley provided to DCF the information the caseworker sought — without A.V.’s knowledge or consent. 

A.V. … went into labor on Feb. 11, 2022. Unbeknownst to A.V., workers at Copley notified DCF, and offered highly granular — and confidential — updates to the state about A.V.’s delivery. 

“The hospital staff were texting with DCF about the dilation of her cervix,” senior ACLU staff attorney Harrison Stark said in an interview.

While A.V. was still in labor, DCF and Deputy State’s Attorney Aliena Gerhard went to court, seeking to transfer temporary custody of A.V.'s as-yet-unborn child to DCF. 

Among other things, DCF wrongly told the court that A.V. already had given birth. The lawsuit alleges DCF knew that wasn’t true.  With A.V. unaware this was happening, let alone being able to defend herself, the judge, who, remember, had been told the child already had been born, approved the request.

But DCF and the hospital weren’t done with A.V.  Her labor continued into the next day, so the hospital allegedly went from agency to agency to agency looking for someone who would go to court to ask a judge to force A.V. to have a Cesarian section. Commendably, the state mental health agency refused. Naturally, DCF obliged.  But while the court process was underway, A.V. agreed to the C-section. 

An infant confiscated at birth 

DCF confiscated the child, known in court papers as S.V., at birth.  As the lawsuit states “A.V. was not allowed to hold - or even touch – the baby.” (Or, to put it another way, the baby was not allowed to hold – or even touch – her mother.)  

Then it got worse.  Again, from the lawsuit Complaint: 

Staff placed A.V. in a room adjacent to the hospital’s nursery. … Although A.V. could hear infants, including presumably S.V., cry in the next room, she was told that she was not allowed to approach the nursery and could not attempt to view her baby under any circumstances. 

The child was placed with foster parents two hours away, visits, including one at a police station, were strictly limited and highly supervised. 

We don’t know why, but we do know that this was a great way for DCF to ensure that the infant would view her own mother as a stranger.  That’s a great way to play the “bonding card” as a means to cut off the child from her mother forever.  As the lawsuit notes: 

A.V. feared her discomfort and S.V.’s unfamiliarity with her would be used as grounds to delay reunification or sever her custody rights. For example, DCF frequently reported that S.V. cried inconsolably during visits with her mother, and it attempted to use these reports as evidence of A.V.’s purported parental unsuitability. …  A.V. was led to believe that if S.V. cried during a visit, then she would be blamed and would not be allowed to see or hold her baby in the future, let alone regain custody. 

Fortunately, the court didn’t fall for it.  Seven months after DCF confiscated the child, A.V. got her back.  It should have been sooner, but DCF repeatedly stalled the process by filing so-called “emergency motions.”  By then actual mental health professionals had conducted an actual evaluation. According to the lawsuit, they “concluded that A.V. suffered none of the mental health conditions alleged by DCF.” 

This time, according to the lawsuit, A.V. gave consent to DCF to actually read the record – and DCF refused! 

One of those alleged mental health conditions, one that is cited repeatedly, is particularly interesting. 

To see why, let’s review again what allegedly happened here: 

● A pregnant woman was reported to a state family police agency despite no allegation of abuse or neglect.

● She became part of a secret docket of pregnant women singled out for intensive government monitoring.

● Her confidential medical records were obtained and read by strangers without her knowledge.

● Every aspect of her delivery, down to the centimeter, was reported to the government, again without her knowledge.

● The government attempted to force her to undergo a medical procedure.

● The government confiscated her child at birth – refusing to allow the mother to touch her newborn, or even see her.

● The government placed the child with strangers two hours away, strictly limited visits and tried to deprive the child of her mother forever. 

So here’s the second question of the quiz: What mental health condition kept coming up as something from which the mother allegedly suffered?

Paranoia.

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NCCPR News and commentary round-up, week ending Jan 14, 2024

● A story I missed from late last year: The Maine Morning Star reports on how, as the headline says, “Maine’s definition of neglect is ‘easy to conflate with poverty’”  Citing two Maine family defense attorneys, the story concludes: 

Kilgore said she has families on the verge of reunification, but who are delayed because they are trying to find the money for a security deposit. Housing can be “terrifying” for a family, Richter said, given the state’s lack of affordable units and how losing housing can trigger child protective services’ involvement. 

And that’s just one example. If the family with the broken car were given funds to pay the mechanic, that sort of assistance could help circumvent an investigation and perhaps keep a family together. 

● The problem is compounded by the foster-care panic that has engulfed the state. The panic has been fueled in part by local advocates and reporters misreading an annual federal report on child abuse.  I have a commentary in the Morning Star about what that report means, and what it does not.  (It applies to every other state as well). 

● Meanwhile, the Maine Child Welfare Action Network has an op-ed in the Kennebec Journal  that reads in part: 

Maine’s current definition of child abuse and neglect is vague, conflates neglect with poverty and does not provide sufficient guidance for the long list of professionals who are required to report suspected abuse and neglect. This, along with heightened awareness and fear due to highly publicized child deaths, has led to a harmful strain on our child protection agency. Families are overreported, and most reports are not appropriate for investigation. Families that are reported unnecessarily often don’t receive the services they may need and experience further mistrust of a system with the power to take their children away. This makes it less likely parents will seek help when they need it. 

Flooding our child protection agency with unnecessary reports stretches the system’s capacity, making it less able to effectively intervene when children are truly unsafe. 

That’s all very nice (and entirely correct) but it would be more credible if the Maine Child Welfare Action Network apologized for the fact that its own parent agency, the Maine Children’s Alliance, was among those most responsible for spreading the dangerous misinformation I discuss in my op-ed.  Last year, they poured gasoline on the fires of foster-care panic. Applying a little water now doesn’t make up for it. 

● Child abuse pediatrician Barbara Knox left Wisconsin after her behavior was called into question by Wisconsin Watch.  She moved to Alaska, where her behavior was called into question by the Anchorage Daily News.  Now she’s at the University of Florida – where her behavior has been called into question by the university’s independent student newspaper, The Allegator.  Their story has something new: Allegations of racial bias.  From the story: 

Knox has also commented on employees’ skin color. The second CPT employee, who is mixed race, said Knox once asked her, “Why are you getting so dark?” 

According to the first [child protection team] employee, Knox complained that the receptionist for CPT’s Tallahassee office, a Black woman, looked “ghetto” due to having long, decorated fingernails.  In her account, Knox also wanted a case built against the Tallahassee receptionist and described her as “lazy” and someone who “looks like one of our clientele.” … 

Knox would treat families of color differently than white families, according to all three employees.  “We have African American, Hispanic, Muslim families that come in, and… she will go ahead and verify a report against them [over the smallest of issues], say it’s child abuse, and put the family in terrible, terrible situations,” one employee said. 

When the child of a white doctor arrived to the clinic with gonorrhea — which is highly indicative of sexual abuse — Knox decided not to verify the case and claimed the child contracted gonorrhea from unwashed hands, the employee said. 

● In Tennessee, WZTV reports, a former caseworker is speaking out about the contempt some of her colleagues display toward the children they supposedly are rescuing. 

Events: 

On Jan. 22, Melody Webb, founder and executive director of the Mothers Outreach Network will discuss MON’s Mother-Up program providing cash assistance to families at risk of having their poverty confused with “neglect.”  The webinar is sponsored by the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law.  You can register here. 

And finally … 

● According to this New York Times Story: 

Hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children are being separated from their families and placed in boarding schools by the Chinese government. They are being educated mostly in Mandarin and indoctrinated with official Chinese values of loyalty and patriotism. For China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the boarding schools are crucial to absorbing Tibetans into a nation united around the Communist Party. Our reporting shows that far from home, the children are at risk of abuse, and of being stripped of their Tibetan identity and bonds with family. 

Gee; I wonder where China got that idea?

NCCPR in the Maine Morning Star: Before writing about the federal "Child Maltreatment" report, read the warning label

 Statistics about Maine child abuse are troubling, but it’s important to look at the details

Long ago, when I was a new City Hall reporter in another state, crime statistics seemed to show a big single-year change. I don’t remember if it was an increase or a decrease. But when I spoke to a leading expert on crime statistics, he told me the change was meaningless.

I don’t remember the details; in part, it was because of how easily a single-year change could be due to random chance. But I vividly remember the response of my editor: “Thanks a lot,” she said. “You just reported us out of a good story.” 

So I understand the temptation, when the federal government releases its annual “Child Maltreatment” report ...

Read the full column in the Maine Morning Star

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, weeks ending January 7, 2025

Before the news summary, a link to a remarkable virtual event taking place this afternoon (Jan 8): The American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law End TPR (termination of parental rights) Initiative is hosting the first in a series of virtual gatherings on the topic “Why we should end TPR.” You can register here.  (And anyone who has been following this field for nearly 50 years, as I have, will understand what a thrill it is just to be able to type the words “American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law End TPR Initiative.”)

● 2024 was the year that child welfare’s war against Native America finally got some of the attention it deserved – including a report from the Interior Department and an apology from President Biden.  But, it turns out, even the federal report underestimated the extent of the horror.  At the end of the year The Washington Post weighed in with a massive investigation. They found more than three times as many deaths as the federal report documented.  A historian thinks the real number may be vastly higher still: 40,000.  Another says these were not schools, they were “prison camps.”

Wherever possible the Post published the names of the children who died in the boarding schools.  Post reporters followed one caravan bringing back the bodies of children from Pennsylvania to Montana. They also offered an overview of the history and motivation for this evil.

● Also as 2024 was ending, The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica published another horrifying story about the behavior of child abuse pediatricians.  But the biggest horror may not  be the individual case -- not even the part where the mother wasn’t considered “protective” of the children because she didn’t believe the allegations against the father.  The biggest horror may not even be that 35 people convicted based on a diagnosis of “shaken baby syndrome” are on the National Registry of Exonerations. 

No, the biggest horror may be in the revelation of how child abuse pediatricians and the American Academy of Pediatrics responded as more and more doubts were raised about the “science” of “shaken baby syndrome” – science that’s been labeled everything from questionable to “junk.”  Did they reconsider? No. Did they re-evaluate? Of course not.  They just rebranded. They simply relabeled shaken baby syndrome as “abusive head trauma.” 

From the story: 

“The rebranding of shaken baby syndrome preserved the diagnosis and allowed it to live on with less scrutiny,” says Randy Papetti, an Arizona trial attorney and author of the 2018 book “The Forensic Unreliability of the Shaken Baby Syndrome.” “Shaken baby syndrome is alive and well but mostly operates under an alias.” 

A lead author of the name change denies this, and condemns this interpretation as “cynical.” 

● Things keep getting worse in Maine, a state that once was on the verge of having a model “child welfare” system. Dreadful decisions by two governors and vile grandstanding from one current and one former public official plunged the state into foster-care panic.  So it should come as no surprise that more and more families are literally defense-less.  The Maine Monitor reports that many parents wait weeks or months for a defense attorney even to be assigned – dramatically prolonging children’s time in foster care. And the Portland Press Herald reports on the most important step the state is taking to finally start to deal with the problem.  I have a blog post about it, with links to both stories. 

● For the USC Center for Health Journalism, Taylor Walker, who has written two excellent series for WitnessLA, reflects on the reporting challenges. Most interesting may be what prompted her to examine family policing. She writes: 

While writing that 2021 series, “Pregnant Behind Bars,” which focused on a local program diverting pregnant people from LA’s jails into permanent supportive housing, many of the mothers I interviewed were more anxious for me to know about their disastrous experiences with [the Department of Children and Family Services] and LA’s family courts than about their time in jail. 

● Among the many barriers to placing children with relatives instead of strangers: hyper-strict licensing requirements geared to middle-class creature comforts.  Federal regulations now allow separate, more reasonable requirements for kin.  Capitol News Illinois looks at legislation that would implement that change in Illinois. The bill has passed the legislature and the governor is expected to sign in.

Two of those committtees states periodically name to study their family policing systems issued their reports.  Both are useful, but both suffer from the same flaw.

● In Colorado, the state’s Mandatory Reporting Task Force did something no other such panel has done in the entire history of mandatory reporting: It recommended curbing the use of mandatory reporting.  The report does an excellent job of zeroing in on the enormous harm done to children by mandatory reporting. But it fails to recommend the one change that would make a real difference: replacing mandatory reporting with permissive reporting, so professionals would be free to exercise their own judgment.  Though the Denver Gazette calls the actual recommendations “sweeping,” they’re actually minimal, focused on tweaking state law (albeit in a good way) and, of course, more training.

● Something similar happened in Hawaii. There the Malama Ohana Working Group issued a report on overall family policing failure that’s good about identifying the problems.  As KHON-TV reports:

“One of the things that wasn’t surprising, but we heard it loud and clear was that many of the families whose children were removed actually stemmed from poverty. And when you really look at that, poverty does not equate to neglect and abuse,” explained Venus Kauiokawekiu Rosete-Medeiros, Malama Ohana Working Group co-chair.

But the recommendations are largely bland boilerplate, and the state family police agency’s response consists of ways to make itself even bigger.

● There’s some good news from California where, The Imprint reports, the first family defense clinic on the West Coast will open at the University of California – Berkeley.

In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories go in All Directions: 

From the Cincinnati Enquirer: 

A Batavia Township mother and father, who prosecutors said punished their adopted boys by forcing them to sleep naked overnight on the bare floor of a "dungeon-like" basement room, both admitted in court to abusing the children. Charles Edmonson, 64, pleaded guilty Friday in Clermont County Common Pleas Court to kidnapping, felonious assault and three counts of child endangering. His wife, 50-year-old Matthew Edmonson, pleaded guilty to five counts of child endangering. … 

From the Santa Fe New Mexican: 

A new lawsuit accuses the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department of failing to protect a 10-year-old boy with a history of abuse from an alleged sexual assault in 2022 by a teenager in an agency bathroom. 

The suit alleges the agency knew the older child had a history of sexual assault but still failed to prevent the incident.

In Maine, more and more families are, literally, defense-less

The Maine State Capitol

Things keep getting worse in Maine, a state that once was on the verge of having a model “child welfare” system. Dreadful decisions by two governors and vile grandstanding from one current and one former public official plunged the state into foster-care panic.  So it should come as no surprise that more and more families are literally defense-less. 

The Maine Monitor has an excellent story about this.  The monitor reports that many parents wait weeks or months for a defense attorney even to be assigned – dramatically prolonging children’s time in foster care.  In one case, no lawyer was assigned for 281 days.  From the story: 

Parents who wish to maintain custody of their children are fighting against a system that a recent federal audit found failed to follow its own rules when investigating allegations of child abuse or neglect. 

A capable attorney can help identify those missteps, put pressure on the department and use those errors to argue on behalf of parents in court. Attorneys can also connect clients to services that can help move them toward reunification with their children. 

But a lack of attorneys makes that kind of zealous representation less likely, which in turn results in more families separated and more cost to the state. 

And if there’s no family defender keeping the pressure on, judges sure aren’t going to do it.  Again, from the story: 

One recent decision from the Maine Supreme Court shows how even repeated failures by the department can have little impact on the outcomes of cases. 

On October 3, the high court published a memorandum decision in an appeal of a termination of parental rights out of Portland. The memo notes that the lower court was right to terminate the parental rights of the mother despite the fact that the judge in the case ordered the department to file a rehabilitation and reunification plan “seven times during the pendency of the case and never did so.” 

The story tells us how many families get no representation at all for weeks or months.  Given the shortage of lawyers, one can bet that few families get the kind of high-quality representation that can truly ease the suffering of their children by reducing their time trapped in foster care.  

The state is taking the first steps toward building such a system – but it will take three years for it to reach even half the families who need it. [UPDATE, JAN, 6: This afternoon the Portland Press Herald published its own very good story about this effort and why it's so important.]

The story notes that even the state’s child welfare “ombudsman” mentions in her latest report that she is concerned about the shortage of defense attorneys. Of course, she does not mention her own role in creating the shortage by fomenting foster-care panic.