NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending July 9, 2024

This week we begin with two new resources: 

● The National Center for Youth Law has published a superb guide for families so they’ll know their rights when they have to face the state family police agency.  It’s a great model for advocates in other states as well. 

● While others try to exploit child abuse deaths, NCCPR works to help people understand them – and find real solutions.  Check out our new Issue Paper on this topic. 

● Among those most adept at exploiting such tragedies is right-wing extremist Naomi Schaefer Riley.  At the online news site WitnessLA, I respond to her latest attempt. 

● I also have a commentary in The Imprint on the biggest failing in that U.S. Senate committee report on the horrors of “residential treatment.”  What’s the failing? Here’s a hint: the commentary is called “Don’t Forget: Nonprofit Residential Treatment Also Stinks” 

● The report was followed by a hearing that included testimony from Paris Hilton.  That was more than one self-proclaimed “child welfare scholar” could handle.  I have a blog post about it. 

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

● Some of the strongest backers of tearing apart even more families point to West Virginia as a model – because that state has what they see as an exemplary record of rushing to terminate children’s rights to their parents and dump them into adoptive homes.  NBC News has a story about how that worked out in one recent case. 

● KRQE-TV in Albuquerque reports: 

A civil lawsuit against the New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department involving a developmentally and intellectually delayed teen girl getting raped by her foster parents has been settled. The lawsuit claimed they put the girl with a known sexual predator. 

Clarence Garcia pled guilty to seven sexual abuse charges as part of a plea deal in January 2023. One of his victims included a vulnerable teen girl. “Beginning when she was 14 J.H., an intellectually and mentally delayed young woman, was continuously raped by Clarence Garcia for 16 months while in his supposed care,” said the victim’s attorney Kate Ferlic.