sickle-cell anemia) has run away four times and returned to her
mother. Each time the court sent the police to separate them again.
Will and Norma Lynne Griever are a white middle-class couple in their
late thirties with three children. The children were taken away from
them in March of 1990 and Mrs. Griever was said to be a dangerous
mother. What had she done to warrant this? She had made the mistake of
going to a mental-health clinic and asking for family therapy after
her 12-year-old son, Jeremy, had been sexually abused by a neighbor.
Jeremy had also been sexually abused one time several years previously
by a stranger.
Instead of family therapy, Mrs. Griever was given a ``psychological
evaluation.'' Her distress was said to be a symptom of a ``borderline
personality disorder,'' and the report concluded, ``One, Lynne most
definitely needs psychological and possible psychiatric intervention.
While she's saying that she wants treatment now I believe the
prognosis is only fair if she can work in a therapeutic relationship
for a long enough period of time to address some of the underlying
depression and disordered thoughts. However, her ideas and values are
fairly rigid and will not be easy to alter.
``It seems clear that much outside support will be necessary for an
extended period of time if Lynne is to continue caring for her 13-
year-old son. It appears she has not been able to protect him from
being molested on several [sic] occasions in the past and may, indeed,
place the child in danger because of her flawed judgment at times.''
This report became the justification for the removal of the Grievers'
children by the family-court judge. Lynne and her husband had the
money to hire a competent attorney, although they depleted most of
their savings in the process. She consulted me as a psychologist.
After a lengthy court battle and an investment of thousands of dollars
the Grievers' children were returned to them.
The Way the System Works
THE ABOVE are not isolated instances; they are the way the system
normally works. Under the guise of helping groups in need -- poor
people, children --the welfare-state bureaucracy seeks above all to
perpetuate its own existence. It is a monstrous social parasite whose
overriding objective --no matter how well intentioned its individual
staff members -- is to capture vulnerable individuals, transform them
into its clients, foist its ``services'' upon them, undermine their
autonomy, and ultimately incorporate them into its own parasitic body.
It is a dictatorial state within the state that gives the appearance
of benevolently serving its clients' needs, even when it is totally
destroying their lives.
Paternalistic ideologies have molded the popular consciousness for so
long that citizens do not notice that the bureaucracy's overt
ideological operations enable it to covertly subvert the rule of law,
and to substitute its own arbitrary fiat for the protections of
constitutional democracy.
While all too many children, particularly in poverty-stricken and
drug infested sectors of the inner city, do need some sort of
protection, the system is by and large not designed to help them.
(There are exceptions, such as a very small ``family preservation''
program in New York City.)  Richard Wexler, among others, has
documented the destructive impact upon children of child-welfare
agencies across the United States. [see box, page 46.] The majority of
removals are for allegations of neglect, or ``emotional
maltreatment.''  Neglect usually means that the child comes from a poor
family and, like his parents, suffers from the hardships of poverty.
As Wexler observes, ``children are taken away because the family does
not have a place to live. children are taken away because the food
stamps have run out. children are taken away because the family can't
pay for the heat.''
Corroboration comes from Dr. Lawrence Aber, professor of psychology at
Columbia University, who stated conservatively that ``more than half''
the cases agencies label as neglect are really poverty cases. Trevor
Grant, former Director of Social Service of CWA, who resigned ``in
disgust'' in 1991 after six years, believes the figure is closer to
85 per cent. ``For the most trivial reasons families are destroyed. If
the furniture is broken down or the house is messy, CWA workers will
remove the child. When in doubt, the safest practice for the workers
is to remove the children and then to file neglect charges that never
have to be proved in court.''
As for emotional maltreatment, in practice it means anything a child-
welfare worker wants it to mean. In one survey child-welfare workers
described some of the ``emotional maltreatment'' that they believed
constituted grounds for removing a child from his parents' custody.
The list included singling out one child for more punishment and
chores and fewer rewards, forcing the child to wear clothing
``inappropriate'' for his or her age or sex, not providing ``security
or stability'' for the child, barring the child from extracurricular
activities ``without sufficient reason or alternative,'' and using
``excessive'' threats or psychological punishment.
In the view of Dr. Monty Weinstein, virtually all families charged
with ``emotional maltreatment'' ought to retain custody of their
children. He stated, ``In some cases counseling is indicated, but in
most cases it's merely an issue of a caseworker imposing their own
definition of good parenting on parents who are fully capable of
taking care of their children.''
There are approximately 400,000 children in the foster-care system
nationwide. Only a small minority of these children have been
separated from parents who are dangerous to them. The overwhelming
majority have been separated from loving and responsible parents. One
does not need to be a child psychologist to realize the devastating
effect of removing a child from parents with whom he or she is deeply
bonded. The main effect of the child-welfare bureaucracy's
interventions is to abrogate the right of children to have parents.
Even if the child-welfare agencies were able to offer an earthly
paradise to the children it took over, many of us would still have
qualms about a government agency arrogating to itself the right to
decide who is a fit parent. But life in the foster-care system is
scarcely paradise. New York State Assemblyman Cecile Singer, who
chairs the Assembly Standing Committee on children and Families, calls
it ``a lifetime system of rootless wandering.'' Dr. Mark Ginsberg,
president of the American Association of Marriage and Family
Therapists, has said, ``The abuse of children by and through the
child-welfare system is one of the major scandals of American life
today.''
Wexler demonstrates in his book that the overwhelming majority of
these children are subjected to multiple placements, and most never
find a stable home. One young veteran of foster care told Wexler,
``The people that I've seen, the kids that have emerged [from foster
care] are . . . dead. Their hearts are functioning, the old heart's
[cont]
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