Elan is not the only horrible fate for kids taken into state custody. It's getting more and more common to hear of kids taken from their families, with or without some halfway understandable reason, and placed in homes where they are sexually and otherwise abused.
Florida has been making headlines just lately. Guess it's time for another new name for HRS and a reshuffling and redoubling of child snatchers and assistant child snatchers and child snatching case organizers and such, huh? But really, it happens all the time. When a kid is allegedly hurt at home, CPS investigates. In school, first the school then, maybe, CPS. When a child is killed or hurt in CPS custody, CPS investigates itself. It has always been thus.
Have you noticed that, more often than not, when you look at those junk mail flyers of a missing kid last seen with an adult, it's almost always a relative of the right age to be a parent? Maybe they have a better reason for taking off with the kid than the state has for trying to stop them. So, next time you see one of those publis service announcemnts admonishing you to call a child abuse hotline if you merely suspect abuse, think twice. What could you do directly to actually help give a kid in trouble a break?
As far as I know, Florida still places wards of the state at Stop Camp and/or Eckard Camp for boys.
When an innocent Californian millionaire gets killed by a drug squad
trying to seize his house with a bogus search warrant, people better ask themselves if they really want to turn their cops into money-makers.
--Vancouver Police Const. Gil Puder
