Reward For Tip Leading To Adam Herrman

An anonymous donor has offered a $50,000 reward for the tip that leads investigators in Kansas to Adam Herrman, (born Irvin Groeninger III) the eleven year old adopted boy who disappeared from Towanda, Kansas sometime in the fall of 1999, and was not reported missing until the fall of 2009. He was taken from his biological parents during their divorce and auctioned off by Kansas to the highest bidders, who were Doug and Valerie Herrman. The Herrmans did not report Adam missing when he disappeared; and their adult relatives followed suit and ignored the situation. While they told their relatives and friends that young Adam was "returned" to social services, it was rather common knowledge that they still received monthly stipend checks which actually belonged to Adam. We will probably never know exactly how receiving funds that belong to a child correlates with the child no longer living at address of the check cashers, but friends and family apparently did not find anything particularly out of the ordinary about all this. Meanwhile, Adam's biological parents and siblings, who were never offered reintegration, await information.

 

Christians And Human Trafficking In Kansas

Recently, an official for Child Protective Services in the Wichita, Kansas area, by the name of Diane Bidwell, resigned. She resigned the day an investigation was completed concerning her relationship with a Christian organization called Faithbuilders, which buys and sells white children who have had the misfortune of being snatched from their natural parents. It astounds this blogger to no end that a religious organization is even eligible to serve in this function: they recruit, secure foster placements. There does not appear to be any concern for the child whose parents and extended family are not Christian. In fact, the extended family does not appear to matter to Faithbuilders. The biggest reason for the DCF review is summed up here, by KAKE; "The internal DCF review started after complaints alleging that FaithBuilders -- which provides respite and foster care as well as mentoring for parents facing crises -- had encouraged some parents to place their children into temporary foster care and then sign away their parental rights so the children could be adopted."

Well, well, well. This sounds a little like a case that took place in Haiti, involving an Idaho Christian named Laura Silsby. She thought, since an earthquake in February of 2010 displaced a large number of people, that no one would miss a few children, if she snatched them and brought them, illegally, to the United States. Despite the fact that this is human trafficking, other lovely Christians accompanied her, some of whom were, ironically, from Kansas.

Kansas is filled with German Christian families who, historically had as many children as they could to use as farm hands. If a child disappeared, it was no big deal to the German Christian parents.  If a parent's child gets snatched  by Child Protective Services, they seriously do not understand why it is so important  to the parent to get the child back. Kansas honestly feels that it is okay to grab a child every now and then, terminate a parent's rights, refuse to contact any noncustodial parents or other relatives, and just allow another family to adopt the child, after paying certain fees, of course. This helps Kansas during a sluggish economy. Laura McNish, prosecutor of Marshall County, Kansas, even takes children away from parents who will not agree to testify in ways that serve the interests of the prosecution in unrelated cases. She thinks nothing of it; Marshall County can make money that way. That's how she buys untruthful testimony from witnesses; she threatens children. A recent victim of this game actually lost her virginity while in the care of a teacher from Frankfort High School.

So the results of this investigation will now be kept confidential. We, the people, are not supposed to care too much about what the good Christians of Faithbuilders are doing with OTHER PEOPLES' children. And Diana Bidwell decided to resign, at the very minute the review was completed. Coincidence? "DCF spokeswoman Theresa Freed said in an e-mail that DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore decided the results of the review would be "kept confidential because of concerns regarding children in her care and personnel matters." Exactly when did Phyllis Gilmore start to care about the rights of the children in her care? There is no question that she cares about "personel matters", as she covers for people in her employ rather frequently when they err, but concerns regarding the children in her care? Why not just remove all the names of children from the report, and hand it over to the people?
Gilmore has also decided she needs more information.

Lucky for Gilmore, this blog has her covered. In 1996, Washington, D.C. had some problems with it's Child Protective Services agency. Not only were the findings of all the investigations turned over to the lawyers of the children in custody, the whole mess was covered by the Washington Post, and several other newpapers. Here's some more information for Gilmore, should this not be enough: LaShawn A. v. Williams mandated that Child Protective Services in Washington D.C. be placed in receivership from 1996 until around 2001 or 2002. As a by-product of the court ruling, the information, minus the names of the children involved, became public information. This should help Gilmore with her need for "more information."

Of course, federal authorities, along with the Freedom Of Information Act, can also prove very helpful to Phyllis Gilmore, in her desperate need for information. It works like this: the congressmen and senators who desire the results of the above named investigation, in order to protect the children of Kansas, file suit for said information via the Freedom Of Information Act, citing the most recent update of the law. The court then orders the investigation made public, minus the names of any minors involved, and....viola! National and local newspapers print a big story about the whole thing, and Phyllis Gilmore has all the information she needs!
 

Cierra Swodeck Is Missing

 

 

Cierra Swodeck, of Lawrence, Kansas, is seventeen years old and was last seen on October 6. She was in foster care in Russell, Kansas, and it was "reported" to her natural mother that a "friend"drove Cierra from Russell to Topeka. It has been almost twenty days since this young lady has been seen by anyone who knows her. That's long time for a seventeen your old to be missing.

 

There are some questions that do not appear to have been addressed by the media in Cierra's case. First; why did law enforcement and the media wait until over two weeks had elapsed to publicize this case? Second; why isn't law enforcement airing this case? Why isn't social services doing more about it? Why is the natural mother, whose parental rights had been suspended by the foster care system, the only person who cares enough about Cierra to pass out flyers, talk to the media, and look for her? Third; Where were the foster parents when Cierra went missing, and what is their timeline on October 6? When a child or an adult is missing, and is being held against his or her will, if the missing person is going to be murdered, it usually happens within the first three hours. Two and a half weeks is way too long of a time to wait to give the case attention. Social Services and the foster parents also have a share of responsibility in this; the taxpayers should not have to think that child protective services will snatch children from parents who love them, place them in living situations hundreds of miles away from home, and not lift a finger, or a phone, when children disappear. There is a Marshall County Kansas foster parent who allows foster children to drink and drive drunk, and even though the police are required by law to arrest any child in DCF custody caught drinking, they never bother.....so it comes as no surprise, here, when law enforcement takes twenty days to start publicizing a foster child's missing persons' case. And, of course,  what were those foster parents doing on October 6, did Cierra have a cell phone, and why did they not have enough control over the goings-on in their state approved foster home to ensure that Cierra did not leave without asking? Finally, did Cierra really go to Topeka with a friend?

 

Anyone with information about Cierra or her whereabouts should call the number to the Russell County Sheriff's office on the poster above.

 

Social Services Grabbed A Newborn For What?

In April of 2013, Elizabeth Mort, of Pennsylvania, ate a bagel that was made with poppy seeds. Then she went to the hospital and gave birth to a baby girl. The staff at Jameson Hospital in Lawrence County is lucky, because when I go into labor, I always stop at Taco Bell en route, and eat as many seven layer burritos as I can before arriving at the hospital; yet when they did their wonderful drug tests on Mort, with their wonderfully inflated prices for the insurance company to cover, they used a standard of 300 nanograms per milliliter as a guideline of THC, and of otherwise being a doper, rather than the federally accepted 2000 nanograms per milliliter. This allowed the residue from the poppyseed bagel to appear in the test results.

Three days later, while Mort was at home with her new daughter, social services stormed her house and took her baby away. The hospital had telephoned social services with news of a positive drug test, with no mention of the comparison of the results of said drug test to federal standards, and had thus made a false report. While it only took five days for Mort to get her daughter back, it took three years to settle the lawsuit, which was finally settled this past week. The ACLU got involved on Mort's behalf.

Why would a child be taken from a parent over a lab result that was not even current information? Why would a child be taken from a parent over a violation of a prohibition law? After all, we do not routinely remove children from the homes of people who get cited for DWI. Why is marijuana so much more important? If there was no indication of fetal distress because of drugs, why did the hospital order a test for drugs? Why did the hospital order the test without the patient's knowledge? When the test came back flagged as a false positive, why didn't the hospital discuss it with the patient immediately? Was the hospital more interested in snagging a newborn and helping the state to sell it, rather then finding out if the patient had a substance abuse problem? These are all questions that anyone of either gender planning on becoming a parent should want answered before choosing an hospital for the birth.

The ACLU insisted that Jameson Hospital and Pennsylvania come into compliance and stop harassing families, but what about your state? It's clearly time to rethink the importance of family, legalize marijuana, (no, I am NOT a cannabis indulger) or do both.

 

 

The Justice Community Wonders Why It's Not Getting Justice

In light of the recent shooting of a district attorney and spouse in Texas, this article was published on ABC News concerning the recent expressions of disrespect and violence toward law enforcement and prosecutors in the last year or so. Before I say any more, let me state that I do not condone violence, murder, or threats, and that I do not think that violence is an appropriate answer to the misunderstandings that have been mounting, for awhile, between the judicial community and the people they should serve. I think awareness and information are much better tools. That said, I also hope that the families of Mike and Cynthia McClelland will find peace.

Since the Declaration of Independance was drafted, the judicial process has been used, not only for seeking actual justice, but for more subtle means of "sending messages" to certain segments of the American population. The American public has seen, tolerated, and wholeheartedly accepted racist laws and policies, laws that have targeted the poor, sexist practices within the justice system, selective uses of prohibition laws to hound otherwise innocent people, and many, many more abuses of authority and justice. The reluctance of many courts to set aside or throw out guilty verdicts that are contradicted by forensic evidence that becomes available after trial dates is also disturbing. When the population at large begins to take note of criminals with more money and better lawyers experiencing favor in the courtroom, while poorer criminals, and sometimes innocent people, do not get proper legal counsel and are often found guilty of felonies, what do judges and cops expect everyone to think? Not that we haven't always had a certain amount of corruption within government agencies, we have; but since the dubious "election" of Bush Jr. in 2000, the judicial "war on the poor" seems to have become more fervent. Along with that, the economy has gotton less stable, and the number of citizens who have found themselves targeted by law enforcement for no reason and shafted by the courts with no recourse to competent legal counsel has increased. Also, has anyone noticed the number of misdemeanors that have turned into felony crimes lately? Not only does this put certain minorities in prison to serve longer sentences, it strips the targeted minorities of voting rights. Hence, the Fair Sentencing Act. When an entire population becomes legally disenfranchised, and everyday exchanges become criminal acts, the judicial and law enforcement communties should not be surprised at a certain amount of hostility.

Recently, I witnessed an exchange between two people, which; unfortunately, resulted in an arrest. While I witnessed most of the incident, I did not see a crime committed by either party. One of the "officers" involved insisted that I had seen a criminal act, and when I continued to tell him what actually happened, he became agitated and told me what my statement should be, informing me that I was about to "find out how powerful police in Marshall County, Kansas are" if I did not "cooperate". Verbatim quote, folks. He also threatened to go inside my house, wake up all my children, and take them away from me if I did not begin to make statements that coincided with the report he so much desired to write. Because I am stubborn and truthful, I stuck to my guns (no pun intended) and stuck to the truth. He got off his high horse when he ran out of threats, went back to the police station in his shiny police car, and wrote a statement that basically and unbasically isn't true. He even referred to yours truly as a "liar' several times. Lots of impartiality he expects from the court, I guess.

Later on, the district attorney, still lacking a written statement of events from yours truly, contacted me to tell me what I needed to say. I interrupted to her to remind her that the truth is more meaningful than her expectations of a guilty plea and the fines she was hoping to collect from the defendant. She became quite disturbed, and told me that she would contact social services and have them remove my children from my home if I did not "cooperate" with her..........! So; not only would I discover how "powerful" the police are when someone confuses them with the facts, I might also discover the consequences of refusing to read a "script" written by a crooked district attorney, rather than offering true testimony!

As it happens, I have been threatened by smarter, more powerful, and sexier individuals than this district attorney, so I promised her that I would be honest and never back away from what I know to be moral and honest. And social services has apparently been too busy with things that are real to come and visit me. But suppose I had taken the bait and drunk the koolaide? "We're gonna have your children taken away from you if you do not testify according to our script that we write for you in advance." "We're gonna take your children away if you don't say the right things to get your neighbor/friend/family members put in jail." That's a loaded threat. If this kind of crooked game is becoming commonplace across the country, it's no big surprise that prosecutors and law enforcement are having problems maintaining their own safety in their communities. Here's another example of the Marshall County Kansas district attorney's tactics, this time with a defendant. The woman was coerced into a guilty plea via threats to her children by the district attorney. According to the Marysville Advocate: "During court proceedings, Baynton’s motion claims, Kraushaar assured her she could file for a departure from the prescribed sentence for the crime she was pleading to, but after she entered her plea she said the attorney told her no departure would be allowed and that she must agree to consecutive maximum sentences. She also states that the state "repeatedly used the issue of the custody of the defendant's children to coerce her plea of guilty." The motion says her attorney "should have blocked this coercion and did not."


The defendant in the above case has already been granted a new public defender. If the court grants her motion to change her plea, that will indicate a lot of judicial and personal waste and aggravation just because the prosecuter is ungifted enough in courtroom strategy to threaten the children of witnesses and defendants whenever possible so as to avoid any real show of litigation skills, or as in this prosecutor's case, lack thereof. If law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys have actually turned a corner in legal strategies and decided that using the children of defendants, witnesses, and others involved in cases is the new forte in courtroom finesse, we can probably expect more anger turned toward the judicial and law enforcement communities.

Chance Hartner

May 28, 2010

"hey adkins how about i kill you if you get on my computer again"

......Excerpt from Facebook page of the youthful police officer who enjoys telling older women that they are going to "find out how powerful" he and police force are. In a lot of places, law enforcement is expected to be more mature and set a better example than this. It's also the kind of response law enforcement wants the rest of us to believe they don't want in their everyday lives. Why, then, do they exhibit it and force everyone else to live with it?

 

Kansas Allows Foster Family To Let Dogs Maul Toddler

Nicole Crow's toddler, Juliette, was taken away from her in Wichita, Kansas, a few months ago, because someone reported that Nicole's boyfriend was abusive. Nicole states that no abuse happened, but was too trusting of government officials to remember to Just Say No To Social Workers, so she let social services inside her home when they came knock-knock-knocking at the door, instead of insisting that they go back to Socialworkerland and get a warrent. Seriously.....never let anyone from the government inside your home unless that person has a warrent. If they do not have one, make them go get one. They cannot retaliate against you for this. Anyway, when little Juliette presented for a visit with Nicole with contusions on her face, Nicole and her mother, Mary Crow, complained, and Juliette was assigned to a different commercial family; or, in Kansas parlance, foster home. Sadly, Juliette is still presenting with bruises and other symptoms of abuse and assault and battery, yet this time, the kindly social workers in Kansas will do nothing. Youthville, that religiously slanted (christian) organization that deliberately permits sex offenders to offend, reoffend, and offend and offend again, gave Mary and Nicole a story about how Juliette had been mauled by dogs at the foster home! But this was all okay, they reasoned, because Juliette was not living with her natural mother, who loves her. As long as Juliette's natural mother experienced a day when she left the door open long enough for social workers to get inside while not maintaining a bank balence consisting of enough money to hire a high profile attorney to straighten all of this out, it is much better for Juliette to get mauled by a stranger's dogs than to get bruises any other way. Nicole has a court date on February 28, when she will have a chance to prove that her former boyfriend no longer resides in her home. Hopefully, Juliette will be returned to her.

Would it simply be okay if Juliette got mauled by a dog while in Nicole's care, or would Nicole have to answer for it? Why is it okay for a foster family's animals to maul a child off of whom they make money?
 

Noble Rick Pendland In Court Today

Noble Rick Pendland, Kansas teacher, counselor, and foster parent, is finally in court today for his preliminary hearing. Hopefully, he will not get out on bond, and force Kansas to look for his unsightly posterior parts again. That might be harder than Pendland initally thought, anyway, since yet another victim has filed in court against Mr. Pendland; this time concerning Pendland's parenting skills. This new victim was a foster child of Noble Rock Pendland.

Where does Kansas find these people? Why does Kansas think children are better off in the homes of unqualified babysitters than with their own parents? Now that some of the foster children who survive are aging out of care, what will Kansas do about the lawsuits they will most likely win because of the abuse they incurred while children in foster care? If the cases against Noble Rick Pendland are any indication of a trend, it looks like time will tell. Maybe the division of Social Rehabilitative Services in Kansas that manages foster care placements for children should be in receivership.

Suppose you were a foster child in Kansas. How would you feel about this monster having a state granted right to sexual relations with you, any time he pleased?

Winner Of The Barney Fife Award This Month

It's time for another Barney Fife award. This time, it goes to the cops who arrested Ms. Raquel Nelson, five weeks after she and her children disembarked a city bus, attempted to cross the street, and watched in horror as her four year old son was hit by a hit and run driver and fatally injured. Yep......five weeks after it happened, social services, and apparently enough cops to make what I consider a false arrest, paid her a visit and turned her life even more upside down than it already was. Unbelievable.

This happened in April of 2010. Raquel Nelson was just in court on Tuesday. Thank the Gods that there was enough outcry about all this to send a message to the judge concerning the fairness of this. Had her sentence not been suspended, and had she gone to jail at all, I would have gone to Georgia myself, to picket the courthouse in Marietta. I don't think this mom committed a crime at all. Gosh; my own kids used to run, and dance around parking lots and up and down streets when I walked places with them and I never got charged with a crime! What's up with Georgia's social services department, anyway? Don't they have REAL abuse/neglect cases? It looks to me as if they zeroed in on this family because they thought the mother wouldn't have enough money to hire a good attorney, and her case could just be fodder for them, without them having to go to the trouble and inconvenience of dealing with a real child abuser. Ever notice how real child abusers almost never get prosecuted? Don't forget Adam Herrman, of Kansas. No one had any problems at all with the abuses meted out to Adam by Doug and Valerie Herrman. Real abusers are nasty people, and hard to deal with. It's easier for police and social workers to go pick on people who really are not abusers and use them to fill their dockets and caseloads and get paid, instead.

So.......in honor of this:

Five weeks after the accident, investigators came to Nelson's home, said her aunt, Loretta Williams. Nelson was charged with three misdemeanors: second-degree vehicular homicide, failing to cross at a crosswalk and reckless conduct, according to court records.

A jury convicted her this month. Although prosecutors did not recommend jail time, each count carried a potential sentence of one year in jail -- for a total of 36 months."........CNN

Law Enforcement in Marietta, Georgia gets the dubious honor of the Barney Fife Award from the blog of Siri's World for July of 2011. Believe it or not, the hit and run, I repeat, HIT AND RUN, driver who hit the little boy got less jail time than Raquel Nelson. Vehicular manslaughter.......and she doesn't even own a vehicle!

Update: Raquel Nelson will get a new trial. I am very sorry for her loss.

Big Brother Says Our Kids Can't Be Too Fat

Seriously? If my son or daughter is overweight, I can get a visit from a social worker and the sheriff, and have my family split up and disrupted? But.........let me get this straight.......if a kid complains that his parents won't let him eat, or won't let him have a winter coat, or presents with obvious signs of abuse resulting from violence, that's okay, and social services will just "keep and eye" on the parents (whatever that means) and let the kid stay with them. But; with all the budget cuts, we have enough money to separate the families of overweight children and exacerbate the stress those children already experience! No joke; I read it here. Dr. David Ludwig, with Childrens Hospital Boston, thinks we should start reporting fat kids the same way we report battered kids.

A battered child goes through so much when social services takes him away from his parents. Not that it isn't ever called for; at times, it is. Often, siblings are split up, with no effort to keep any contact at all between the siblings. Sure, a cursery effort is made, but not much is really done to keep brothers and sisters together. There are times when it's impossible. A lot of parents don't want a child back when the child has been removed from parental custody. The child represents failure to the parent, and the parent would rather blame the child. Is it really the parent's fault if the child is obese, anyway?

Those are just a couple of problems with the whole idea of removing overweight children from parental custody. I can't help but wonder where the good Dr. Ludwig thinks he should draw the line between morbid obesity, obesity, and "chubby". Would a parent who isn't popular become the victim of community harassment if his kid was a little bit fat? This could create legal nightmares!

Ultimitely, the most obvious problem with Dr. Ludwig's wonderful brainstorm is this:

Jerri Gray, a Greenville, S.C., single mother who lost custody of her 555-pound 14-year-old son two years ago, said authorities don't understand the challenges families may face in trying to control their kids' weight.

"I was always working two jobs so we wouldn't end up living in ghettos," Gray said. She said she often didn't have time to cook, so she would buy her son fast food. She said she asked doctors for help for her son's big appetite but was accused of neglect.

Her sister has custody of the boy, now 16. The sister has the money to help him with a special diet and exercise, and the boy has lost more than 200 pounds, Gray said.

"Even though good has come out of this as far as him losing weight, he told me just last week, 'Mommy, I want to be back with you so bad.' They've done damage by pulling us apart," Gray said.

We have a cultural problem on our hands, and no family is perfect. Children are not encouraged to exercise anymore, and lot of schools will not even allow children to ride their bikes to school. We pump our kids full of drugs for ADHD, and discourage the very lifestyle that will help the most with obesity in children. There are so many conflicting messages! Each family with this issue, if it's really an issue, is going to have to find it's own way to cope, the same way each person with a medical problem has to find his own way to accomodate the medical problem. Forcing children to say goodbye to brothers, sisters, pets, and home, and telling them that they can no longer live with parents who love them somehow does not seem like the answer, when there are children in this country who really are in grave danger because of actual abuse. That may be the biggest conflicting message of all about Dr. Ludwig's recommendations. I hope no one listens to him.

Update, Eaven Is Found

Thank the Gods! Eaven Reisen was found safe! Apparently, she rode her bike to a friend's house, played all day there, ate dinner with the family, and spent the night! Only no one phoned home to let Mom and Dad know...........................I wish every missing kid case could end this happily.

While it wasn't the most attentive thing a parent could do, no parent is perfect, and Kansas parents all over the state are just as permissive with their children as Eaven's parents were yesterday. You can argue with me all you want........I have gone to the trouble of collecting data. Now; social services has taken the  unusual and perhaps overly punitive step of removing Eaven from her parents' home over this! I cannot help but wonder if this is overkill. Is this what foster care is truly for? Do Eaven's parents need an attorney now? How often do children go missing from foster care? (ahem......remember Adam Herrman?)
When almost all parents and foster parents in Kansas parent this way, just what is the state hoping to accomplish by removing this child from her home? Can the government parent better than parents can can parent?

I sincerely hope that Kansas has done a better job of vetting Eaven's new foster parents than they did with Adam Herrman's foster/adoptive parents.