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| Here are all the stories I could find in West Virginia on the topic of the needless removal of children from their homes. |
A lawsuit alleges that a child who wandered out of his mother’s home was placed – for that reason -- in foster care. He wandered out of the foster home and died.
Here’s what allegedly happened to a three-year-old boy in West Virginia known in court papers as PS, according to a lawsuit filed by his mother, as reported by The Parkersburg News and Sentinel, WTAP-TV and WCHS-TV:
The boy was autistic, nonverbal and had a tendency to wander out of the home on his own.
In August 2023, he got out of his home when his mother, Shyana Townsend, wasn’t looking. Townsend Townsend, “quickly noticed he was gone and went after him.” The boy walked a few houses away when his mother came running after him and found him in a park. But so did a police officer. That was reason enough for the police to arrest Townsend and charge her with child abuse and neglect. Ms. Townsend had no prior arrests and had never been accused of abusing or neglecting her child before
Sadly, that could happen anywhere. Indeed, a strikingly similar case in Colorado made national news.
But in West Virginia, the child removal capital of America, where they tear apart families at a rate more than quadruple the national average, even when rates of family poverty are factored in, they didn’t stop with an arrest. The lawsuit alleges that Ms. Townsend was jailed for seven days and PS was placed in foster care with strangers.
But PS’s internment lasted far longer than seven days. He was kept in foster care, month after month after month, while the state family police agency did what these agencies always do. They forced Ms. Townsend to jump through all sorts of hoops.
The lawsuit says the family police agency knew about PS’s skill at getting out of a home and his tendency to do just that. Nevertheless, they placed him in a foster home with a backdoor 30 yards from a river. PS did, in fact, wander from the foster home several times.
On June 17, 2024, Ms. Townsend saw her son for a supervised visit. The lawsuit alleges that she
pleaded with [child protective services] to return PS to her home or place him somewhere else because it appeared he was in greater danger with his foster parents than being with her, but CPS continued to refuse to return PS to Shyana or place him in another foster home.
That evening, while the foster mother was taking out the garbage, the boy left the home again. He drowned in the nearby river.
So to review: The lawsuit alleges that a child taken because he wandered out of his mother’s home was placed – for that reason -- in foster care. He wandered out of the foster home and died.
It could have happened anywhere. In fact, there was a tragically similar case in Kentucky.
But it’s most likely to happen in West Virginia, the child removal capital of America. And for that some of the responsibility rests with the state’s journalists.
As I have documented in detail previously on this blog, year after year, the West Virginia news organizations that specialize in in-depth reporting have oozed contempt for mothers like Shyana Townsend simply because they lost their children to foster care – not by calling them names, but by simply treating them as too subhuman to be included in their stories.
The basic premise put forth by the family police is never challenged: The parents might not be evil but they sure are sick, sick, sick! Every child needed to be taken, (they didn’t) and the obscene rate of removal is mostly because of drug abuse (it isn’t). One West Virginia news organization repeated that false claim just today – March 11. In fact, if all drug abuse in West Virginia were eradicated and no child ever was taken for that reason, West Virginia’s rate of removal still would be more than double the national average.
So it seems that in the minds of these journalists, every mother who loses a child to foster care exists somewhere on a continuum from unperson to sick person to monster. And while they would never use the tabloid term “druggie mom,” that’s the implication.
West Virginians have to rely on other sources, such as Human Rights Watch, and NBC News and ProPublica, to find out the parts of the story their local reporters ignore. And that makes it easy for the state family police agency to keep taking their children at the highest rate in America.
And to the reporters and editors at The Parkersburg News and Sentinel, WTAP-TV, and WCHS-TV, who at least covered Ms. Townsend’s lawsuit: Please do what no one else has done so far: Take the next step and dig into how many other West Virginia parents like Shyana Townsend are out there, and how many other children are suffering as a result.
