Texas child dies in foster care after being seized from pot-smoking parents

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http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/02/state-seizes-two-year-old-child-from-par

Another victim of the war on drugs. From KVUE in Texas:

[O]n Monday night, [Joshua] Hill’s daughter Alexandria, or Alex as they liked to call her, was rushed to a Rockdale hospital with severe head injuries, then flown to Scott and White Children’s Emergency Hospital in Temple and immediately placed on life support.

Alex was living with foster parents after DFPS removed her from her parent's home last November for "neglectful supervision."

Hill admits they were smoking pot when their daughter was asleep.

“We never hurt our daughter. She was never sick, she was never in the hospital, and she never had any issues until she went into state care.”
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Alex spent time at two foster homes. Her parents noticed bruises on her body and mold in her bag when they saw her while she was at the first home. Her father says he told Child Protective Services they’d have to put him in jail because he didn’t want to return her to the foster home, and in January she was placed in a second home. Alex is now dead, and the foster mother was arrested after her description of what happened to Alex didn’t match the injuries Alex sustained. The mother admitted to slamming the two-year-old girl’s head and is charged with murder.

story continues: http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/02/state-seizes-two-year-old-child-from-par
 
alexhill_familyphoto.jpg

family photo

Hill admits they were smoking pot when their daughter was asleep.

“We never hurt our daughter. She was never sick, she was never in the hospital, and she never had any issues until she went into state care.”
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This story both breaks my heart and pisses me off greatly. How on earth is having pot-smoking parents worse than what happens when you are taken away from your parents?

KXAN provides more details, including some of the allegations the state apparently based its decision to seize the child on and the fact that the two-year-old was in the care of her grandparents when she was seized; the state determined her parents had "limited parenting skills."
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CPS should be charged with murder as well.

This WOD is so fucking useless and harmful. When will change come?
 
And for the ones who don't die:

Tragedy Leads to Study of Severe Child Neglect

In Brief
  • Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaus escu banned birth control and abortion in 1966 to increase Romania's population. Overwhelmed, parents left children by the thousands in state institutions.
  • Romanian officials, in trying later to make up for these abuses, agreed to a study by U.S. investigators to determine the inimical effects of early life in an orphanage on the still large numbers of institutionalized children.
  • A first-ever randomized trial comparing the emotional and physical well-being of institutionalized children with those placed in a foster home began in Bucharest in 2000.
  • Life in an orphanage took its toll. The study found that children who passed the first two years in an institution had a lower IQ and attenuated brain activity compared with foster children or those never institutionalized.
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source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tragedy-leads-study-severe-child-neglect

While foster homes may not be as bad as the old Romanian institutions, they are bad enough because the children most likely do not get the sort of attention loving parents can provide.
 
I'm not exactly sure what the above quotes show in comparison to this story. I'm pretty sure that there aren't that many orphanages in the US, just mostly foster homes.

As far as this story goes, I agree it not only breaks my heart but pisses me off. I seriously had tears in my eyes. Funny how children in serious danger tend to get left in the homes of abusive parents but someone smokes a little weed while their child is asleep and they take them? Then they put them in a seriously dangerous place where they are murdered?? I will never understand...

Makes me also think about the states where it is now legal to smoke (colorado and states where you smoke for medicinal purposes). Should parents now have to worry that smoking a little weed is going to cause their children to be taken away? Even if what they are doing is legal??
 
missmeyet? said:
I'm not exactly sure what the above quotes show in comparison to this story. I'm pretty sure that there aren't that many orphanages in the US, just mostly foster homes.
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The point I'm trying to make is this: even if a child who is placed into a foster home doesn't die or is not physically abused, there is a still a toll on that child's mental health. Many foster parents could care less about spending quality time with their charges, and that can result in severe issues down the road.

The first two years of a child's life are the most formative. Separating a child from his/her parents is not a decision that should be made lightly.
 
Yes, I agree completely.

I just didn't understand where you were going with it since it was about institutions rahter than foster care and it actually said the kids were better off in foster care than an institution. Just didn't understand how that particular story related to shitty foster care here in the US.

It has been well known that the care a child receives in the first 2 or 3 years of life can greatly impact development. This is true of wether they are in foster care, the hospital (not able to experience normal development), or even their biological parents' home where they might not get optimal care.

I get what you are saying now..just don't see how story relates since it is specifically talking about children in institutions. But its all good!
 
The foster care system has incentives to seize children, whole counties budgets are set by how many kids are in care.The foster care system in North America meets the official UN definition of human trafficking. I wish I could relate my CPS experience.
Family court is a nightmare you have to prove you deserve your kid back, and that can take years. I know it's Texas and no such thing exists but having a medical pot license means nothing to these people either. Oregon will force a med card holder to do random piss testing to get their kid back. Oh and force them into drug treatment for weed or it's no kid too.
At least if you get busted you have some rights. These people steal your kids and you have to prove you are a good parent. They show up unannounced and you have let them in or they come back with cops. They pry into your personal life. When you tell them you cant go to three meetings that week because you work they try get you to quit your job and be a welfare parent. I guess it increases their power over you.
Biggest nightmare ever.
 
my3rdeye said:
The foster care system has incentives to seize children, whole counties budgets are set by how many kids are in care.The foster care system in North America meets the official UN definition of human trafficking. I wish I could relate my CPS experience.
Family court is a nightmare you have to prove you deserve your kid back, and that can take years. I know it's Texas and no such thing exists but having a medical pot license means nothing to these people either. Oregon will force a med card holder to do random piss testing to get their kid back. Oh and force them into drug treatment for weed or it's no kid too.
At least if you get busted you have some rights. These people steal your kids and you have to prove you are a good parent. They show up unannounced and you have let them in or they come back with cops. They pry into your personal life. When you tell them you cant go to three meetings that week because you work they try get you to quit your job and be a welfare parent. I guess it increases their power over you.
Biggest nightmare ever.
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That doesnt even touch on foster parents that simply use the children as a paycheck. They know how to game the system abuse is rampant neglect is the norm. Its a horribly broken system.
 
It is horrible and it honestlly makes me literally sick to my stomach. I have had one experience with CPS, investigated for a claim that was made out of spite and it was a horrible experience. I guess if someone were to try to take my kids away for something like this it would be the one time I would probably flee the country or go into hiding.
 
Disgusting. Everybody knows how stoners are robbers for the money and are violent people. I hope the people who decide to place her in those fucked up places get their karma in a horrible way. Jail will take care of the cunt who is responsible for killing the girl.
 
missmeyet? said:
I would probably flee the country or go into hiding.
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That is the only way to escape. Get out of the country. If you move to another state or Canada they will call ahead and I will never end. You have to leave. I even had resources to fight and they drained every penny. I knew elected politicians and they wont won't help because of privacy laws they can't get publicity from rescuing your kid. The media wont cover it for same reason, privacy laws.
When I looked into it I found out when illegal Mexicans are deported they keep the kids and deport the parents. No reason for this except money. It's a crime, is against international laws and it destroys families.
 
This is fucking sickening, absolutely sickening. Taking children away from their parents for choosing to smoke a plant makes no sense and I don't think this could honestly even have public support. The idea that a childs parent smoking a joint when they are in bed is more harmful to that child than forcefully taking them away to live with complete strangers is beyond misguided, it is basically ignoring an atrocity for the sake of maintaining the status quo because I don't think even the most militantly anti cannabis people could argue any true logic in this idea.

It is incredibly sad that the war on drugs, which has already caused the deaths of untold hundreds of thousands thousands, maybe more, also had to claim the life of a completely innocent two year old girl purely because of her parents choice to exercise personal freedom. When will the world wake up.
 
drug_mentor said:
This is fucking sickening, absolutely sickening. Taking children away from their parents for choosing to smoke a plant makes no sense and I don't think this could honestly even have public support. The idea that a childs parent smoking a joint when they are in bed is more harmful to that child than forcefully taking them away to live with complete strangers is beyond misguided, it is basically ignoring an atrocity for the sake of maintaining the status quo because I don't think even the most militantly anti cannabis people could argue any true logic in this idea.

It is incredibly sad that the war on drugs, which has already caused the deaths of untold hundreds of thousands thousands, maybe more, also had to claim the life of a completely innocent two year old girl purely because of her parents choice to exercise personal freedom. When will the world wake up.
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Who cares why the kids got taken away? The sickening part is that we allow children to be thrown into a underfunded foster care system that lacks proper oversight and accountability. I had the pleasure of meeting two young teenage foster kids last fall. These girls where sweet but obviously damaged by the chaos in there life. We only spoke for a few minutes but the shit they told me was shocking. Thats when i did some research and found out how fucked up it really is. Alot ofthe kids are involuntarily put on anti-phychotics to keep them calm and compliant some are institutionilized. Its a fucking mess.
 
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