From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: How to protect your family from the State
Date: 5 Jan 93 23:50:36 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <1993Jan05.012131.48991@watson.ibm.com> strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom) writes:
>In article <1ia98sINNs55@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, pburch@roc.mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu (Paula Burch) writes:
>|> 
>|> In article <dlhanson.26.726174156@nap.amoco.com>, dlhanson@nap.amoco.com 
>|> (David L. Hanson) writes:
>|> > This was posted to the home-ed-politics mailing list a few weeks ago (not
>|> > by me). I believe that it contains valuable information to help all parents
>|> > to protect their family from the State. 
>|> 
>|> [amazing work of paranoia omitted]
>|> 
>|> *WHAT* is this guy trying to hide? What is he *doing* to his kids, that he's 
>|> so uptight about the idea of allowing any outsiders to see what goes on in 
>|> his home? Come on, normal folks don't worry so much about being caught that
>|> they write (or copy) many paragraphs on the subject!
>|> 
>|> It makes you wonder, doesn't it?
>|> 
>
>I don't understand you.  I read the posting you omitted and
>didn't find it particularly paranoid.  
>
>Many people don't admit random outsiders to their home.  Would
>you allow me to just come and "see what goes on at your home"?
>To me, it sounded like a reminder to people who normally
>don't open their homes to strangers not to be intimidated
>into making an exception if the stranger claims to represent
>an authority like the police or a state agency.
>
>Remember this was copied from a mailing list for people
>who homeschool children.  I would imagine that such people
>are doing something non-mainstream, and that as a result
>they receive a disproportionate amount of complaints and
>official harrassment.  I don't homeschool my kids, so
>it's not for me to judge whether it's paranoid for
>someone who does to worry about specific kinds of legal troubles.
>But it's a sad fact of life that if you're one of the
>few people in town who does something that the majority
>finds unusual/abnormal/unnatural, you're more likely
>to be targeted by someone who wants to force you to change.
>
>I'm sure it doesn't make the poster feel safer to hear
>you ask "what's he trying to hide" and "what is he doing to
>his kids?"  
>
>And exactly what's wrong with the advice that if a policeman
>or other official comes to your door with obviously hostile
>intent (he's not just looking for a lost dog or something)
>and demands to search your house. you should ask for a warrant,
>call an attorney, and keep a record of what happened?  Especially
>if they announce in advance that they're investigating a claim of
>child abuse?  
> 
>|> (I hope that posting this doesn't make me a target for somebody who is
>|> dangerously insane.)
>|> 
>
>Now the above sentence sounds to me more paranoid than
>anything I read in the posting Mr. Hanson quoted.
>
>Why would you think someone who made a posting about
>4th Amendment rights was dangerously insane?
>-- 
>Rob Strom, strom@watson.ibm.com, (914) 784-7641
>IBM Research, 30 Saw Mill River Road, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY  10598

There are any number of horror stories about gestapo tactics from social
services workers in the name of protecting against child abuse.  Most
states give social workers nearly unlimited power to take children away
without a hearing if child abuse is suspected.  While there is a lot of
legitimate concern about real child abuse, there is also a lot of abuse
of the system itself.  A social worker may take any kind of behavior he
or she deems not right  - or even some aspect of the home that they find
"unhealthy", such as untidiness - as a sign of child abuse.

I read in a La Leche League newsletter that there is a woman in New York
whose three year old was taken from her because she was still nursing it.
This was deemed to be oral sexual contact detrimental to the child.  Several
months later she still didn't have her child back.  There is an example of
someone with "alternative" ways who was harassed by the authorities.  My 
wife and I don't ourselves go for LLL's approach to nursing, but it certainly
is a valid approach, and in any case, this woman needed a constitutional
lawyer to get her child back.

It is worse in some other countries, Sweden for example.  Some American friends
of mine had a child there and were given all sorts of advice as well as
prescriptions for formula and vitamins from the hospital.  They also 
assigned a social worker to the child (though my friends were not poor or
on welfare - actually, everybody there is on welfare).  Well, she nursed
the child and did not need the formula. But her mistake was notfilling the
prescription for the vitamins.  The social worker sent warning notices and
then came to the home, snooped around and interrogated her. She threatened
to have the chlid taken from them if they "continued to neglect it".  Rather than 
try to explain to her why they preferred not to give vitamin suppliments to
their infant child, they simply agreed and from then on filled the prescriptions
and threw the stuff away.  So caring are the Swedes.

Maybe someone else on the net will know of other such stories.


Gerry Palo (73237.2006@compuserve.com)
Newsgroups: misc.kids