Who does 'child-protective services' protect?
Who does 'child-protective services' protect?
March 23, 1999
Judith A. Reisman, Ph.D.
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com
Throughout the country stories seep through the liberal media blockade, describing social workers and judges granting child custody to abusive caretakers while both the executive and legislative branches ignore or condone this burgeoning appearance of widespread social service corruption.
Listen to this harrowing tale of an Indiana couple, Lawrence and Beverly Newman, whose adoption of a brutally abused child was aborted due to what some would call a classic case of social service child abuse.
Laura Gail Rachael Clem has been a Worcester County, Maryland, Department of Social Services (DSS) child-ward since 1991. Laura's mother was a murder victim and her criminal father had lost parental rights. While Laura was in the pre-adoptive custody of the Newmans in 1992, this skilled professional couple repeatedly reported classic signs of neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse when Laura had been in DSS foster care. The Worcester County DSS retaliated by halting the Newman's adoption and returning Laura to the abusive, dilapidated, and filthy foster home licensed by the DSS.
On February 24, 1999, and one week later, on March 3, the Newmans addressed the Maryland General Assembly about their aborted adoption of Laura.
Their testimony before the Maryland State legislature reinforced the image of a child-protection service serving predators. Following the notoriety of the Laura Clem case in 1994, the Worcester County DSS has been scrutinized for the brutal murder of Sharmir Hudson by his adoptive mother. After the judiciary committees in both houses of the General Assembly sat incredulously listening to the details of Laura's ongoing struggle for survival, Shamir's school teachers described the Worcester County DSS maltreatment of this young boy.
From 1995 until 1998, at least 26 child abuse and neglect reports were filed by various professionals, including Buckingham Elementary teachers, concerning Shamir Hudson and his two younger siblings who came to school after having been beaten, battered and even burned. When officers investigated Shamir's murder, March 24, 1998, they found signs of unnatural wounds and injuries 3 years old. Worcester County DSS had hand-picked Shamir's murderous adoptive mother. They similarly returned Laura to a living hell in another hand-picked foster "home."
Since 1992, when Laura was two years old, the Newmans have worked to adopt this Jewish child into their Jewish home. All legal remedies have been exhausted. In another effort to abolish Laura's "life sentence" of foster "care," the battling couple brought "Laura's Law" to the Maryland General Assembly. It simply states: "The State of Maryland hereby grants the adoption of Laura Gail Rachael Clem, minor ward of the State of Maryland, to Lawrence Newman and Beverly Newman, residents of Indianapolis, Indiana. The provisions of the Annotated Code of Maryland, Family Law, shall not apply to this adoption."
The Newmans see Laura's Law as a kind of political asylum, humanitarian rescue of a young child from an agency of "Social Service" which defends its notorious record of abuse, neglect and maltreatment. Of eight Worcester County DSS child wards, say the Newmans, within the past two years at least three were institutionalized and one is dead. Since Worcester County DSS controls these records, how many more DSS child-wards are institutionalized due to agency maltreatment is unknown.
Laura's Law has been proposed as an amendment to HB 958 and SB 464 in the Maryland House and Senate judiciary committees. This has precedent at the federal level. In both 1989 and 1996, Congress passed special legislation specifically tailored to aid a Washington D.C. mother, a plastic surgeon, whose prominent child custody case turned into a national scandal. Congress believed that it was its humanitarian duty to intervene in this case of egregious injustice and immense human misery. The Newmans argue that legislative intervention via Laura's Law is fully justified to save a totally innocent child.
The Maryland General Assembly closes at the end of March. The Newmans implore you to help save an innocent child by phoning, faxing, or e-mail:
Senator Walter Baker, Chr., 410-841-3639; 410-841-3850 fax
Senator Leo Green, V Chr., 410-841-3631; 410-841-3174 fax; leo-green@senate.state.md-us
Delegate Joseph Vallario, Chr., 410-841-3488; 410-841-3850 fax
Delegate Ann Marie Doory, V Chr., 410-841-3476; 410-841-3850 fax
For additional information to Contact the Maryland General Assembly, go to its website.
And, say the Newmans, please pray for Laura.
Dr. Judith Reisman is president of the Institute for Media Education and is the author of "Kinsey, Crimes & Consequences." More is available at Reisman's website.