The Shattered Victims of Child Protective Services

“THEY’VE DESTROYED MY WHOLE FAMILY”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 20, 2013) — The following is the conclusion of our interview with Jeffrey Henderson, the California father whose eight children have been in foster care, the elder six for nearly three years, without any charge of abuse or neglect.

Los Angeles DCFS took the children in May 2011, after the parents were jailed.  Both were exonerated of all criminal charges several months later.

Henderson’s oldest child, a daughter, is now living with her maternal grandmother and her husband, who Henderson identified as an abuser himself, including of Henderson’s wife, Erica, the mother of the eight children.  Four younger boys are scheduled or have already been relocated to Montana to live with their maternal grandfather, who they have never met and who reportedly was removed from Erica’s home when she was an infant because of drug abuse which allegedly continues to this day.

Henderson told us that the adoption process has begun for the five children and most likely was proceeding for many months, despite their parents’ continual efforts to regain custody following their release from jail.

In the second segment, The Post & Email and Henderson were discussing the “machine” of child protective service agencies, which depends upon a steady supply of children to be placed into foster homes and with adoptive families, generating payments to both and often keeping children from their natural parents unjustifiably.

Many children have lost their lives while in “protective” custody with the Los Angeles DCFS.  A long list exists of children whose homes have been visited by DCFS and deemed safe or lacking evidence of risk and who have been killed by their abusers.  Various news reports support Henderson’s contention that the child welfare agency is dysfunctional and misguided at times, including one published on Thursday which stated that “Children taken from parents and placed in foster homes generate a generous flow of cash to California counties, according to a recent Los Angeles Times report.”

The Los Angeles Times has reported that known drug abusers, forgers and thieves have been approved as foster parents.

Other states’ child welfare agencies are also plagued with cases of children who die from abuse.

THE POST & EMAIL:  The machine is very well-greased with our money.

MR. HENDERSON:  And the blood of children.  There’s no shortage.  If you’re not fully aware, do a search on mothers who have had their children removed for little or nothing.  Even if a woman has a drug problem, which is not the case with my family, according to CPS, she doesn’t have a right to ever have her children returned to her, and there’s no way she can fight it.

THE POST & EMAIL:  I’ve read some of those stories.

MR. HENDERSON:  And I’m a college graduate; I have a degree from the University of LaVerne, which I’d say is one of the top ten universities in California.  I have a degree in English; I’m very good at reading and writing, and I can’t beat these people.  How in the world is some woman who grew up in a poor neighborhood and might have a problem with drinking but still loves her baby going to fight against these people?  She may have an eighth-grade education…there’s no way she can fight back.

I don’t know anyone in the system who’s as educated as I am, and still I’m losing left and right.  I should have won on the very first day.  There’s not one hearing that I walked into that I ever won, and I should have won every one of them.  The state never had a point.  Even after we lost the kids and they said, “You drink wine and your wife had had wine while she was breastfeeding, and you admitted to giving your children wine on Friday nights – less than a three-ounce glass – but because you got mad in court, we believe that you probably abuse your children.”  So they added another charge, saying that I was an abuser, too, because I was trying to take over the courtroom with “sovereign” methods.

Once I started arguing in the criminal court for the unlawful arrest, and I started using “patriot” material, I won using that information.  The judge hated it; the prosecution hated it; my wife’s attorney hated it, but I won using it.  When I tried to do the same thing in the children’s court, because it’s a closed court and they have heightened authority over the best interests of children in that I’m not the one who looks after the best interests of my children – technically, by default, the court is the one that says what is in the best interests of the children – that’s the reason why they came after us.  Because I won in the criminal, they got me in the civil.  It’s the OJ Simpson of the DCFS world.

I used the common law, going back to 1215 with the Magna Carta – the rights of people to be left alone, to privacy.  I used the right to be left alone, and I won with that in the criminal court.

My argument is not a “sovereign” argument; it’s a common law argument.  It even says in the California constitution and civil statutes that the common law is the rule of law for the state of California.  It’s right there. These people try to twist common law.  When I try to bring in common law, which is the foundation of law and says that a parent can raise his children as he sees fit as long as there’s no injury or harm…they didn’t even bring an allegation that my child was in any kind of danger from drinking that wine; just the fact that she drank the wine was the crime.

THE POST & EMAIL:  There isn’t any law anywhere that says it is a crime.

MR. HENDERSON:  Right.  When I made that argument at the first hearing, it was not even acknowledged.  The state is the only one that can bring an alcohol charge against someone, not the county.  It is not even within the county’s jurisdiction to bring an alcohol-related charge against someone, and they still did it anyway.

THE POST & EMAIL:  Was this Judge Marguerite Downing?

MR. HENDERSON:  Yes, all the way along.  And when the attorneys said that it was filed to get it out of her court, they never filed that.  And there’s no way that I can oversee these people because I have no access to the record.  When I go down to the court clerk’s office, I am summarily dressed down with the court clerks telling me that I don’t have a right to the file.

THE POST & EMAIL:  I also tried to obtain the court record and was told I had to file a form which I could not find online.

MR. HENDERSON:  I’m always fighting; I’m never going to stop fighting.  I have never lost an argument because I don’t quit.  These people cannot wear me down; I’m never going to stop.  Not only was there nothing from Day One, but they’ve done the worst to my family.  They’ve destroyed my whole family, molested my daughter, beaten up my kids.  Almost every day, they’ve taken away their right to be Jewish; sent them to the four winds, and they don’t care.  Those people on the lowest levels are illiterate.  Back when the law was signed by Jimmy Carter, it said that the social workers had to have a Master’s degree. They’ve taken that out now. Their degree could be in Liberal Arts, not social work…and from what institution?

THE POST & EMAIL:  You mentioned that the four boys are going to Erica’s father.  Is this the man who allegedly abused Erica?

MR. HENDERSON:  No, this is the father who has the drug problem.  My daughter is with the abuser, who is Erica’s stepfather.  Every time they do a CLETS on my children and Erica’s first-born child, it always comes up that Erica’s stepfather, where my daughter is now, is in the system as an abuser.

THE POST & EMAIL:  What is CLETS?

MR. HENDERSON:  They do it on the child to see if he or she had any abuse issues.  And every time, he comes up, and they know it.  And you know, it’s so “perfect” for them to put children with abusers so that they can keep the cycle of abuse going.  It’s as if they want people to be abusers and they want children to be with abusers, because they know that a high percentage of children who are abused turn out to be abusers themselves.  It really creates business and perpetuates their market.

THE POST & EMAIL:  So your daughter has been placed with an abuser, and your sons are going to a drug user?

MR. HENDERSON:  Yes, the stepfather is known to be an abuser, and Erica’s biological father smokes weed…so the boys are going up there to see him do that.

THE POST & EMAIL:  Do the boys know their grandfather at all?

MR. HENDERSON:  No, they have no knowledge of who he is.  We’ve reached out to these people our entire lives as a family, begging them to be a part of our lives, but because we choose Judaism and we don’t want to convert to Jehovah’s Witnesses, which all of these people are, they shun us.  We’re not into the “arc,” they say, and that we don’t want to come into the arc.  So unless we change our religion to Jehovah’s Witness, we’re not allowed to be involved in their lives.  But what’s happened now is they’ve stolen our children.

But let me just say for the record:  it’s so much better than the fate of the younger children, because they are with the homosexual couple.  Now they have three of my babies:  the original baby, the baby who was born last year, and now the infant girl who was born this year.

THE POST & EMAIL:  Is that the two women?

MR. HENDERSON:  Yes.  For the record, I have not seen any evidence of their being sexually abused.  As a matter of fact, out of all my kids, they’re always the best groomed, the best clothed. But the fact that my religion, my belief, my culture, my heritage dictate that for a woman to lie down with another woman is confusing to a child, and I say that that’s abuse;  that’s mental abuse.  To not give a child a strong mother and a strong father gives them confusion.  That’s my argument with them.  I really should say good things, a little bit, about them, because my boys were getting beaten up almost every day and my daughter was molested by these Mexicans who don’t speak any English, and they’re in all different Mexicans’ home every month and had a really rough time…but the babies have always been with these homosexual women who just want children.  In Southern California, the only way for these flitty types in Silver Lake to get children to raise is through the DCFS system.  It’s really sad.

THE POST & EMAIL:  How old is the infant girl now?

MR.HENDERSON:  Three months.

THE POST & EMAIL:  Does Erica still get visitation of any kind?

MR. HENDERSON:  She does.  She gets visitation with all of the kids that she is able to get to.  I don’t know if the boys have left yet for Montana, but I am told that my daughter is already living in San Diego with her grandmother and enrolled in school.  It’s hard for me to stay in contact since I’m not allowed to talk to my wife.  It’s not a court order; it’s what the court says when the record is turned off.  When they turn off the record, they say I can’t go live with my wife and if I do, she’ll never see her kids again.  I already am not going to see my kids again.

I have to say that she still has a chance.  If she is able [specific strategy discussed]. It would be a true miracle, and that’s what I hope for.

I have to go to law school and learn what they know so I can figure out what they’re doing, what black hole they’re slipping into so that I can expose it.

THE POST & EMAIL:  People are beginning to expose judicial corruption around the country.

MR. HENDERSON:  Once people are standing up, they can’t stop it.  Once you open up the faucet of freedom, it can’t be turned off.  It just gets wider.  It’s independent media like you and people who are standing up are what’s going to make it happen.