Corrupt Sheriff Removes Homeschooled Children... Against the Wishes of CPS
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When it comes to law enforcement corruption in Arkansas, Garland County sits proudly at the top of the pyramid... whether it be at the sheriff's department or the courts. Not long ago one of their judges was arrested for raiding the county coffers for, among other things, season tickets to the UA football games. In the case I'm writing about here, a family was torn apart for 21 months... for virtually nothing more than exercising their rights. This because they dared question the authority of a sheriff who held different ideological views- and a badge to back them up. Writing this surprises me on two levels- One, I live in Arkansas and find it to be one of the last bastions of freedom in the country... and Second, and even more surprising, CPS is actually one of the "good guys" in the story!
In 2015, we covered the story of the Stanley family in Arkansas, reporting how the local sheriff department arrived at the home one night with local social workers and issued a warrant to search their property for a “dangerous” mineral supplement that was supposedly being forced upon the children and endangering their health.
A search of the home revealed nothing and a doctor who had accompanied the sheriff and local social workers examined all seven children and found them all to be in good health... so the deputy sheriff forcibly took all seven children away from their parents.
Even when the children were being removed, the DHS workers reportedly remarked that there was no reason to take the children out of the home. When Mr. Stanley asked who actually made the decision to take their kids, Garland County Deputy Mike Wright allegedly replied, “I did, and I am proud of it.”
Concerned parties present at the time captured a photo of some of the children being taken away by night, and that photo has become a symbol of government abuse of power in unlawfully removing children from loving parents.
Because the mineral supplement they found was legal and no threat to anyone's health the Sheriff's Dept. changed the charge to "educational neglect." This was because the children were being home schooled. The home school laws in Arkansas are fairly flexible... according to the HSLDA, the parents must notify the local public school superintendent every year and there is also no standardized testing required.
Five months later, after living in foster homes and forced to go to public schools, the children were returned home... but the family's ordeal was only just beginning.
But this was not the end of their ordeal, only the beginning. Working with local attorney Joe Churchwell, the Stanleys sued the Garland County Sheriff’s Department for a violation of their civil rights – a case that has reached all the way up to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which last year upheld a U.S. District Court ruling depriving the lead investigator from “qualified immunity.”
The state investigator, Kathy Finnegan, when deposed by the Stanley's lawyer, Joe Churchwell, testified:
Finnegan allegedly revealed that there was no evidence for the Garland County Sheriff to take the children in the first place.
Kathy Finnegan said in the deposition she gave last week that Maj. Ron Stayton, the former commander of the Arkansas State Police’s Crimes Against Children Division, told her to make true findings of abuse and neglect against Hal and Michelle Stanley without supporting evidence. Finnegan is the CACD civilian investigator who ordered the removal of the couple’s seven children from their home in January 2015. (Source.)
The term true findings in this case means that Finnegan was ordered to fabricate evidence that would justify the removal of the children. The abuse of justice in the Stanley story enraged the American public, and with strong local media support as well as national publications like Health Impact News covering their story, people from all over the country came to Arkansas to protest.
“Because I was made to find true on this investigation, because the case was too political,” said Finnegan, responding to Churchwell asking how a competent investigator following the state’s child abuse assessment protocol could have certified unsupported findings. “I told (Stayton) we did not have enough to find true on this case, and he said we have to.
“I thought I had enough to find true on poisonous and noxious substances, but I did not think it would hold up under appeal. I told Maj. Stayton we did not have enough to find true on this case. I did as I was instructed. I was instructed by people that I thought knew what they were doing.”
Finnegan testified that Debbie Roark, CACD’s head of investigations, coached her on how to use DHS’ Division of Children and Family Service’s assessment protocol to support the true findings.
“They wanted this case closed as quickly as possible, because it was a political issue, and because Maj. Stayton was upset because the case was not closed yet,” she said. “Debbie Roark sat down with me and showed me how to find true on this case. … She wrote down what I could say to defend our position when it came to appeal hearings.”
Finnegan said the DHS attorney representing CACD recommended findings of physical abuse, which included exposure to poisonous/noxious substances and inflicting cuts, bruises and welts, not be defended, but that Stayton insisted otherwise.
“Maj. Stayton would not let us do that,” she said. “He said we have to defend.” (Source.)
A judge had already ruled in 2015 that there was insufficient evidence to support a claim of physical abuse- that left the state with "educational neglect," being that the children were not registered. " But these charges were based on the two older teenagers living in the home, and Attorney Churchwell counseled them to plead the 5th, removing investigator Finnegan’s only witnesses:"
Finnegan said she was deprived of her corroborating witnesses when Churchwell advised the two children whose allegations prompted the investigation not to testify.
“My two witnesses, who made these claims that night, that their lives were so horrible at home, they were told by you to take the Fifth Amendment,” she told Churchwell. “I had lost my two children that said life was horrible. And (the judge) allowed you to represent the two witnesses and their parents. There was no way I was going to win this appeal.”
Churchwell was concerned that the children were at risk of committing perjury, and that they had been subpoenaed to testify without advice of counsel.
“If they were pushed to repeat what was said earlier, it would be a crime and (they) would be prosecuted,” he said. “So I advised them that they had committed criminal acts regarding false reports, and that everyone is entitled not to incriminate themselves any further.”
This case is ongoing... and for once CPS is not the culprit. The deputy sheriff that originally removed the children is now the sheriff and has a vested interest in the case, as it was his corrupt behavior that set off the whole chain of events. I will say that in my opinion it would have served the Stanleys better to have registered with the superintendent to avoid problems down the road... it's simple enough to do. I had to do it to homeschool in Arizona and it's only one form you have to sign. It will be interesting to see how this turns out- many states are making it increasingly difficult to homeschool.
https://hslda.org/content/hs101/AR.aspx
Humanity is endowed with inalienable rights that inure to them by virtue of the fact of their existence. No permission from any outside entity is necessary, justifiable, or applicable to the effective prosecution of those inherent rights.
No more certain example of such rights exists than the right to produce and raise one's children. No subjection to outside authority, submission to examination, or signing of forms underlies this basic human function. Should courts not reject such imposition on the actual reality of our existence as natural and sovereign persons, they will prove themselves corrupt oppressors. Since courts have, and seem certain to continue doing so, I expect such corrupt holding in this matter.
More's the pity, as it seems this family is effecting their human function to continue our species reasonably. It is obvious that the interference of corrupt institutions on such a basic function of humanity is utterly malignant, and so designed to more completely render our posterity further subject to profitably parasitic predation into the future.
Thanks!
We live in malignant times my friend!
The demons that abuse power will eventually fall and burn lest they repent and admit their wrong-doings.
This Sheriff reminds me of the way the Clinton Crime Machine operates, lie, kill, destroy. Oh wait, are this not also the hallmarks of Satan?
Well, it is Arkansas and if I'm not mistaken Garland Cty. is just north of Little Rock
Thing is, the bad people give good folks places a bad name.
In the end, we know, even today, who is on the losing side.
Yep... I cheated and read the end of the Book!
And so, you're blessed. x
Just goes to show how power can intoxicate, no matter who you are
Perhaps it is more accurate to point out it shows how toxic such power can be when wielded by malignant persons, as it is therefore provably ill-advised to allow such power to exist at all. No sane, rational person will deny that evil people will seek to corrupt institutions in order to gain power over victims, and empowering institutions thusly thereby creates vectors for corruption that are inevitably undertaken by criminals.
I believe that good people are proof against corruption, and that when power over people is contrived, it is not good people that seek it, because they derive no benefit from wielding it. Rather, such power is contrived in order that evil gain it to profit from preying on good people.
Thanks!
Power is merely a tool, or means towards some objective. Power, in itself, is neural and amoral. It is, as Frank Herbert commented, that power attracts the corruptible and the listless. The ever-expanding bureaucracy under volatile democtatic political systems, results in ever-expanding legal/regulatory statutes, which in turn require ever-expanding legal enforcement tools. The increase in demand to fill the bureaucratic offices inevitably necessitates lowering of standards and appointment of the unqualified. When the primary concern of the rulers is avoiding responsibility, bureaucratic and legislative expansion becomes inevitable, and corruption becomes endemic.
I find it useful to note that means are not ends, nor symptoms causes. It is the underlying venality and masturbatory purpose of the malignant that effects such means of delegitimizing democratic mechanisms, as well as corrupting agencies. It is not the goodness of good people that causes predation, but the vileness of the evil.
As the phase transition of civilization progresses, the susceptibility of good people to the harm purposed by the evil will decrease. The scale of predation is dependent on the centralization of power, and is not linear, but exponential or logarithmic. We are presently at peak centralization. The transition from natural decentralization has been almost universally effected to agrarian centralization, and thence to industrialization, and now the transition back to decentralization is but beginning as technology continues to mature.
As centralization approached it's peak, predation by potentates approached practically unimaginable scale throughout the 20th Century, with world wars, and incessant lesser conflicts continuing to grow in impact to date. Another global war seems inevitable, and the fruit of this final expression of centralized power controlled by rentiers will purge civilization of those incapable of seizing personally the means of production to preclude their susceptibility to parasitic profiteers. Evolution will deliver the means to cause the ends of centralized potentates as they cause their natural impacts on civilization: death and destruction on scales relative to their power, which itself is a consequence of centralization.
The natural state of life is decentralization. It is messy, redundant, and robust. Centralization is neat, efficient, and fragile. As natural evolution of the power differential cycle proceeds, that fragility becomes ever more susceptible to transcendence, and it's various aspects superseded. Centralization was successful intermediating technological advance, and thus necessarily transcended the naturally occurring state. However fragility inherently subjects it to transcendence as technology matures and disperses power back to individuals as the advantage of industrial productive capacity is obviated.
Consider the hydrologic cycle as metaphor. Water is centralized in the oceans, only to evaporate when exposed to warmth. After it is vaporized, it coalesces in atmospheric clouds to rain down as individual droplets to nourish the world with their every impact. Power similarly cycles as technology provides the impetus, just as heat drives weather. We can consider the phase changes of water as symbolic of the phases of civilization: the rivulets and streams flowing to the ocean as agrarian, the lakes and seas as industrial, and the precipitation as pre- and post-industrialization; native decentralization of power. Not to take the metaphor too far, we might further consider glaciers and ice ages as dark ages that represent cessation and lack of technological advance when overly oppressive power utterly drains society of the capacity to progress through either unbearable parasitic drain, or even more destructive war and decimation.
We see this is effected by nascent technological advances, and there is no conceivable development that can impede this effect as long as technology is not impeded in it's advance. As a result, the corruptible and the useless will be relegated to their natural state of inconsequence, and vigorous utility actually restored to relevance as parasitic vermin are increasingly deprived of the power differential vector that enabled their rise in the industrial age.
The simple fact is that rentiers will no longer have impact on people that have no need of their power to control production, because that power to control production will no longer exist. You may lament the endemic evolutionary pressure that is innate to all life, but that will not save those incompetent to succeed. I do not think such a posture might be sincere on your part, due to your description of such parties susceptible to Darwinian forces as 'muck'.
I commend to you the celebratory appreciation of the concomitant advance in civilization that decentralization must inculcate, as your rants regarding the benefits of rationality and competence indicate you should prefer. Whether we prefer and celebrate it or not, it is the ineluctable result of physics, and the effect of evolution is inevitable.
I urge you therefore to seize the means of production personally, as they are the actual metric by which Darwin's speculations will be actualized in the coming evolutionary watershed.
Thanks!
The rot at the core that have infected every sociocultural matrix of this degernate era is the humanist ideals of freedom, human rights, and material nihilism. What are the fruits of the humanist heresy but disintegrating sociocultural matrix, populated by the muck frozen in the adolescent stage of mental development, disconnected from the spiritual and the transcendental, eking out meaningless, soulless, artificial subsistance? What is the great sociopolitical accomplishment of the humanist movement called democracy but a sociocultural matrix of adolescent fools, self-obsessed with advancing their myopic interests, driven solely by the crass demands of flesh and bone?
Europe is a place where ignorant peasants consider their unlettered opinions as being equivalent to those of experts. When every individual muck's idiotic objection to matters of religion, tradition, and doctrine are extrolled as being valid, what wouldn't the muck seek to dismantle within their sociocultural matrix? Modern Europeans are malcontented adolescents in a permanent state of petulent rebellion. Some release this adolescent listlessness in the form of abuse in authority, others coalesce in criminal gangs, others organize communist and fascist cliques. When the Islamists declare that the disease that is Europe will be cured by Islam, they are discussing this very apparent European mental developmental stagnation.
Even if European nationalists organize some form of resistence, what exactly will they be attempting to preserve? Do they have any connection to their religious traditions? Do they possess any obligation to the transcedental messages their ancestors learned and fought to preserve? Do they perceive any duty towards their blood heritage and group consciousness? Or do these muck merely lash out at others who threaten their license to wallow in their vices, accumulating ever-increasing possessions, leading purposeless and worthless lives, chanting empty slogans and chasing meaningless freedom? Compares with these, the ISIS terror corp is a more sympathetic organization. At least the terrorists fight and die for something.
While reclaiming the means of production will no doubt assist with gaining true liberty, without deeper purpose other than survival, such tools are of marginal utility against those who seek to see this world burnt to ashes around them. Without a sociocultural process to push adolescents into adulthood, technology only delays the inevitable extinction.
You could not be more right when you lament the failure of sound values to persist across the West, nor when you point out that those values were the result of epiphanies transcending prior cultural ethos and ways of life. It is indeed tragic that such hard won grasp of fundamental truths and concepts have been dislodged from the minds of succeeding generations to ever greater degree.
But, this is not the fault of those succeeding generations, rather their forebears who were lured away from their substantial freedom and independence by the lure of empire and commerce; who suppressed their values in exchange for goods and services. This bargain was not merely availed them by chance, but has been superbly crafted by memetic mastery of rentiers who themselves have gained valuable lessons in their skills over generations of conflict and confrontation.
It is those overlords, whose superlative skills at deception and propaganda have seduced once proud people step by step down the yellow brick road to eventual abnegation of the spirits of their ancestors, and the common penury of chattel. Not everyone is capable of sophisticated analysis of political theory, yet all end up subject to the wrangling and propaganda thereby effected.
Yet even people less gifted intellectually remain responsible for their own prosecution of their lives, and needs must depend on their grasp of matters no less than masters of deception. When they are susceptible to trusting those they consider smarter and wiser than they, it is not out of venality they are deceived, but of faith in their peoples, and those values of yore. It is their deceivers that are venal, predatory, and malign. It is those you consider rightful rulers that deceive and corrupt and are despicable, like the muck on the floor of a barn, not the good and earnest people they so mislead.
That ethos you mourn, it was not discarded as valueless by succeeding generations. It was stolen from them by deception. They have been victims of a fraud, that was able to harm them so formatively because of their trust and confidence in that rentier class you reckon their betters.
Yet today, we see that freedom hasn't gasped it's last in the West. Every day brings increasing numbers to the ranks of those disaffected with the extant parasitic class, availed of knowledge of how they and their ancestors have been defrauded. More resist deception, and fewer succumb to it, and governments and institutions erect ever more lofty barriers; sink to ever deeper lows of conscience, to forcibly prevent them from escaping the corral of slavery that is the bane of free people and the buffet of predators.
As the transition to greater decentralization proceeds, less and less potent powers are left rentiers with which to lure their prey, and more and ever stronger freedoms and abilities inure to free peoples. As their grasp of these trends is enforced by their adaptation to them, those true and honest values come at such cost to their forebears is again learned by people, both the wise and the simple alike, and when the days bring that tipping point when the predations of the rentiers must finally be shrugged off, those ancestral values and good nature will once again rule good peoples.
Perhaps with freedom will finally come peace, at last.
The only thing corrupt institutions fear is the truth!
"Perhaps it is more accurate to point out it shows how toxic such power can be when wielded by malignant persons"
....and that is exactly what happened here and it's a travesty for the two children that wanted out from under the abuse. What you are failing to see is the fact that these children were returned to their parents after they agreed in arbitration to register their children and the two older children were coerced by the parents attorney...who shouldn't have been allowed to represent the children and the parents both, to drop their testimony of abuse against the parents. What this attorney did was abuse of power against the children, he intimidated them into dropping the allegations, which left the worker without an abuse substantiation...which I may also add I found it just appalling the statement that victims statement of abuse can't stand on it's own.
I was surprised to see CPS come out on the right side for once!
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This is what guns are suppose to properly be used for, this exact kind of scene. This family should of defended themselves from this corrupt Sheriff with guns. They had every right to do so in this case. I know I sure would have. I live in Arkansas too and I want to start a movement to Unincorporate Arkansas as a result of this kind of sick shit! That is the only "non-violent" solution.
This is absolutely disgusting. The two children who claimed abuse by the parents are intimidated by the parents attorney to drop the claims of abuse after he is allowed to represent them and the children? That's the real abuse of power here and I commend the sheriff for seeing what was going on here and tried to help them.