All the failures of family policing in a single case - and it's not an unusual case

 

An extraordinary story by Stephannie Stokes of WABE, the public radio station in Atlanta, is built around one of the most cruel, most odious practices of family policing systems: making parents pay ransom to get their children back. (No, of course they don’t call it that, but when you take someone’s children and make them pay money to get the children back, euphemisms like “child support” only obscure what’s really happening.)  

But read the story and you’ll see the story is about so much more – in fact, it’s almost every family police failing in a single case. 

Consider: 

● The mother, Annalinda Martinez, had grown up in foster care herself. 

● There really was child abuse – but not by Ms. Martinez.  As the story explains: 

She discovered her ex-boyfriend was abusing her daughter. He was arrested and she testified to put him in prison. 

On the contrary, when she discovered her ex-boyfriend was abusing her daughter, she did the right thing and turned him in. He was arrested and imprisoned. 

● But then: 

without his income, she couldn’t afford their rent. Soon, her family was evicted. All seven of them spent a night in their van.  

● She had no friends or family to call on (remember where she grew up) all she could think to do was call the agency that provided the family with foodstamps, in the hope it also would help with housing.  

● But that agency was the Georgie Department of Family and Children’s Services – the family police.  “That very same day,” Martinez told WABE, “my six kids got taken away.” 

As the story explained:

 The court documents for Martinez’ case say that her family was “found” living in a van. DFCS and a judge argued it was unsafe for her kids to be homeless. But instead of connecting her family to housing, the state put her kids in foster care.

● With DFCS holding the children and demanding ransom, Martinez saw no way out. So …

After about a year and a half, Martinez said the court pressured her to surrender her rights as a parent. She agreed. She believed it would allow her kids to be adopted together into the same home... 

● But the “forever family” wasn’t.  The adoption fell apart, the children were thrown back into foster care, and Martinez has no idea where they are now, and whether they are OK.

Now, at this point let's pause to consider another bit of cruelty spewed by those most fanatical about tearing apart families like this: Talk about poverty and they’ll immediately say: “Well they wouldn’t be poor if they didn’t choose to do drugs!” 

In fact, contrary to the nonstop fearmongering from the take-the-child-and-run crowd a large majority of foster care cases don’t involve even an accusation of drug abuse. 

But also, often where there is drug abuse, the fearmongers get cause and effect backwards.  This case is one of them. Drugs are in the picture in this case. That’s because after her children were torn from her, after they were taken forever, after her life was torn apart by poverty and by the family police then: 

She was desperate for something that would make her forget that she had permanently lost her kids. She tried marijuana to numb her feelings. Then, she used cocaine. The problem was she was pregnant. So when she gave birth to her youngest daughter a couple of months later, DFCS took her too.  

At that point, Martinez realized that only compliance would get this child back – so when DFCS said jump, she said how high.  Years later she has a stable household; she’s rebuilt her life – almost. 

Because the family police still want their ransom.  And they’re threatening her with jail if they don’t get it. 

Georgia usually doesn’t do this to families in cases that arise today.  It’s one of several states and localities that stopped making parents pay ransom after the practice was exposed by NPR.  But somehow, the desire of the family police and their allies to twist the knife every chance they get never seems to end.

Read -- and hear - the full story from WABE