Case Study of Liberty Loss Through Government Overreach
Part One
Commentary: CPS Heavy-Handed Overreach
When the overreaching heavy hand of the government leads to even one instance of injustice, a little bit of liberty is lost for all citizens.
In Kaufman County, Texas, June 2019, another piece of liberty was chipped from our society. Once again, in a very sad courtroom scene, the “legal” abduction of a 4-year-old child by the Texas Child Protective Service (CPS) was upheld by what can only be described as an egregious miscarriage of justice.
During a hearing, that lasted more than six hours, little to no evidence was presented that indicated either parent, of the 4-year-old boy, had actually done anything remotely close to child abuse. In fact, no one involved in the whole prosecution process had ever met or talked with either parent, or met or talked with the child before CPS with law enforcement back-up forcibly took the child from the parents.
The doctor from Children’s Hospital, who apparently initiated the forceful removal, had no history of treating the child, had never seen the child, and did not make a complete review of all of the child’s medical records.
Then, the courtroom judge insisted that the process to permanently terminate parental rights be continued, that no further interaction between the child and the parents be allowed except with CPS approval and supervision, and that CPS be granted total control over all needs of the child. Yes, that is the same Texas CPS that is notorious for the extensive abuse and high rate of suicides of children, in their care and in their foster child care system.
How Could This Have Happened?
Each of the four parties (Hospital/Doctor, CPS, Court System and Child’s Ad Litem Attorney) involved failed in its primary responsibility to act in accordance with its role of “protecting the child first”.
While all four parties failed their responsibility, CPS is the root of the failure. This government agency is the real genesis of this problem and others like it. There has been multiple confirmed cases that CPS does not know when or under what circumstances it is in the best interest of the child to be removed from parental custody. All too often it seems CPS errs on the side of the parent is guilty of child neglect instead of ensuring the protection of the child from the true evil in the world.
Unfortunately, from the testimony given last week, there appears to be little or no supervisory oversight to ensure that overzealous caseworkers are actually working in the best interest of the child.
In this instance, the CPS caseworker who had:
- never seen or talked to the child;
- not seen or talked to the parents;
- not seen or talked to family members;
- not seen or talked to neighbors;
- not conducted a background investigation;
- not attempted to resolve the issue without removal;
- refused to disclose the allegations to the parents or to their lawyer;
- misquoted and misrepresented a hospital doctor’s affidavit to obtain the court order and;
- no firsthand knowledge of any wrong doing by the parents;
was allowed to initiate an “emergency” action to remove a child from his parents and to begin the process to permanently terminate parental rights.
By declaring it an “emergency”, the caseworker was able to forcefully remove the child by requiring his father to put him in a waiting police vehicle without having to first complete any of the procedural steps which were supposedly put in place to ensure that removal from the home was done as a last resort action.
In the court hearing, the caseworker could not describe any effort made by CPS to resolve the concerns without removing the child from the home. In fact, her testimony confirmed that the only action CPS pursued was that of an “emergency”. However, the “emergency” was allowed to go on for two weeks between the time the CPS worker put a business card on the family’s door and the time the child was removed – more than ample time for parents to be allowed to address the allegations without further traumatizing the child. Even though there was an exhaustive series of questions asked, during the hearing, the caseworker was allowed to dodge answering the question as to why the first and only official action by CPS had to be an “emergency” order for removal.
Furthermore, the sworn affidavit and testimony of the caseworker has several issues. Remember, she testified that she had never seen or talked to the child, or anyone with first-hand knowledge of the statements that she swears to be true.
Some of the questionable statements in the affidavit in support of removal, dated June 20, 2019, are as follows:
3. ALLEGATIONS (page 2)
Essentially every statement is either untrue, a twisting of a similar statement, or just plain hearsay. Examples of some of the misstatements:
- “… referral alleging the physical abuse of Kaleb by Ashley Pardo.” – No such statement is in the hospital doctor’s affidavit.
- “Ashley is displaying behavior associated with Munchausen syndrome by proxy.” – On what basis? Caseworker is not a doctor and has never seen Ashley.
- “Ashley convinced a doctor to put in an NG tube ….” – There is no evidence or testimony to support this. How does anyone ‘convince’ a doctor to do a medical procedure against his will?
- “Ashley constantly wheels Kaleb around in the wheelchair” – This statement is not in the hospital doctor’s affidavit and the case worker could not possibly have any firsthand knowledge.
- “Ashley began telling everyone that Kaleb had epilepsy” – There is no evidence or testimony to support this statement. Again, the case worker is swearing this to be true even though she has never heard Ashley speak.
4. CPS HISTORY (page 4)
This is a particularly outrageous section in that the caseworker uses “allegations” against Ashley’s previous husband, who, it appears has some real problems, to make it appear to the casual reader that the problems were with the current family. Nothing could be further from the truth. The caseworker began this section with the statement: “The family appears to have previous CPS history” – She then uses four pages to list several law enforcement allegations against Ashley’s first husband; none of which had any finding of neglect or child abuse.
In the second to last sentence of the 05/23/2014 allegation statement, the caseworker makes an outright lie when she states:
- “Ashly Pardo said Daniel Pardo struck Ashly Pardo while Ashly Pardo was pregnant with Linzey Pardo.” This could not possibly be true. Ashly and Daniel did not meet until long after Linzey was born.
6. CONCLUSION (page 7)
The caseworker misquotes the hospital doctor’s affidavit and makes a statement that is contrary to courtroom testimony. One of the two statements has to be not true.
- “The Reach clinic has provided its findings as highly concerning for medical child abuse.”
The word “highly” is not in the hospital doctor’s affidavit. In fact, in testimony, the hospital doctor made it quite clear that she simply had “some” concerns after a partial review of the child’s medical files and those concerns were resolved after discussion with the parents. (This discussion took place after the affidavit but before the court hearing.)
- “The Department has attempted to identify safe family members or fictive kin with whom the child could be placed as opposed to placement in foster care, however, no such individuals could be found.”
- “Reasonable efforts had been made to prevent or eliminate the need for removal of these children from the Prado’s home..”
The court hearing testimony and behavior of the caseworker can only be described as strange or bizarre. On almost every question that could be answered with a “yes” or “no”, the caseworker would first look down and appeared to be shuffling through papers looking for the answer. Then she would look up and at the CPS attorney who would be nodding her head in either a “yes” or a “no” movement. The caseworker would then answer accordingly. After a while, I began watching the judge and it appeared to me that he, too, was watching the CPS attorney appearing to be coaching the witness, but he never called them out. Unfortunately, neither did the defense attorney.
This article is just part of this story. The role of the Doctor/Hospital, Court System and Ad Litem attorney played in this continuing tragic case will be covered in future Capitol Hall Reports.
