Radio Show Discusses Attacks on Parenting, Families by Child Protective Services

ERICA HENDERSON TO APPEAR AS GUEST

by Sharon Rondeau

(Mar. 8, 2015) — A new radio show on the IPM Radio Network will host Erica Michelle Henderson, mother of eight children taken away by the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), on which The Post & Email has reported extensively.

Initially, six children were taken after Erica and her husband Jeffrey were falsely jailed in May 2011.  Two children born subsequently were also removed from their home, each when only several weeks old and nursing.

The show, titled “Parents Under Fire,” is hosted by Katie McCall every Monday evening beginning at 9:00 p.m. ET.

McCall is a midwife and was close to the Hendersons while residing in Los Angeles until approximately 18 months ago, when she relocated to New Hampshire.  The Post & Email interviewed McCall on one occasion after we began reporting on the Henderson case in September 2012.

A chronology of our coverage of the Hendersons can be found here in reverse order.

Supporters of the Henderson family have accused DCFS of conducting “human trafficking” by removing children from what they say are fit homes and placing them with strangers, a claim the father of the Henderson children, Jeffrey, has echoed.

Jeffrey left California more than a year ago to attend law school, following which The Post & Email interviewed him and published an update to both his and Erica’s efforts to regain custody of the children.  Both parents have claimed that they have complied with every request made of them by DCFS, including taking parenting classes and counseling, attending all court hearings of which they were made aware, and interviewing with social workers when scheduled.

The Hendersons are a non-vaccinating and homeschooling family.  Since the children were taken, they have received vaccinations, and at least two are receiving psychotropic drugs without the parents’ consent.  At least four have been placed with same-sex couples.

In an article dated March 7, 2015 from an unfamiliar news source, the Los Angeles DCFS is stated to be under investigation by the State of California following an internal investigation resulting from Fernandez’s death.  On Sunday morning, The Post & Email contacted DCFS spokesman Armand Montiel with a request for confirmation or denial of the March 7 story.

On one occasion, Erica and Jeffrey were ejected from the courtroom by Judge Marguerite Downing for representing themselves rather than using a court-provided attorney.  After eventually accepting government attorneys, the children were placed in adoptive homes rather than reunified with their parents allegedly based on the time frame they had been in foster care.

In an interview in late November, Jeffrey Henderson told The Post & Email that DCFS workers were “telling the kids that I’m dead.”  Within the last several weeks, however, Jeffrey reported that he was able to speak by phone to some of the children, wherein he learned that two of them are being drugged.  Last July, Erica told us that the children were noted to be exhibiting emotional problems which social workers feared would interfere with the adoption process.

Erica has described injuries to her children while in the early stages of foster care about which she was not notified when she still possessed parental rights.

A 2008 report obtained by The Los Angeles Times showed that 14 of 32 children who died of abuse and neglect had open cases with DCFS.  A subsequent 2011 report noted four areas in which Los Angeles DCFS actions or inactions led to “a tragic ending.”

Other parents in the U.S. have reported similar experiences to that related by the Hendersons.

Last month, Sean Stone, son of filmmaker Oliver Stone, interviewed National Safe Child Coalition (NSCC) founder Tammi Stefano, who said that child trafficking is occurring under the guise of agency-sanctioned child protection, citing an example from southern California.