Government gone wild

The sad thing is, even when one tentacle of the government says another is out of line, it rarely gets the suckers off our backs.

Mental health workers sent to emergency shelters in San Angelo last month to help care for the hundreds of women and children removed from a polygamist sect's West Texas ranch have sharply criticized the Child Protective Services operation, telling their governing board it unnecessarily traumatized the kids.

The CPS investigation of suspected child abuse and its decision to seek state custody of all 464 children punished mothers who appeared to be good parents of healthy, well-behaved and emotionally normal kids, workers said in a set of short and unsigned written reports made at the request of the board after briefing Tuesday.

All nine reports by employees of the Hill Country Community Mental Health-Mental Retardation Center expressed varying degrees of anger toward the state's child welfare agency for removing the children from their community, separating them from their mothers or for the way CPS workers conducted themselves at the shelter. A few described ongoing tension between the two groups of social workers, including threats by CPS to have interfering MHMR workers arrested.... Three reported that CPS workers lied to the mothers; one described it as a tactic to make separating them from their children go easier.

Several said the mothers were denied access to their lawyers. Some of the MHMR workers said the crowded conditions at the shelter allowed upper respiratory infections and chicken pox to spread rapidly and many noted the shelter's other discomforts. One described it as deliberate, a form of coercion to aid the investigation: "The more uncomfortable they were the more CPS thought they would talk."

Important points to note: six weeks after these children were taken from their families, the State of Texas has yet to issue any warrants, make any arrests, or even make credible charges of child abuse against any member of the FLDS sect. The benefit of doubt MUST go to the citizen, if there is to be any limit to government fiat. Until and unless the State can prove, beyond the words of an anonymous prank phone caller, that children have been abused, they should be returned immediately to their parents. The fact they won't just shows, yet again, what time it is in Amerika.

(HT: Vox Day)