The truth comes out in Texas

So much for the “good of the children” justification for the Texas mass kidnapping-by-CPS:

Mental health workers sent to emergency shelters in San Angelo last month to help care for the hundreds of women and children removed from a polygamist sect’s West Texas ranch have sharply criticized the Child Protective Services operation, telling their governing board it unnecessarily traumatized the kids.

The CPS investigation of suspected child abuse and its decision to seek state custody of all 464 children punished mothers who appeared to be good parents of healthy, well-behaved and emotionally normal kids, workers said in a set of short and unsigned written reports made at the request of the board after a briefing Tuesday.

All nine reports by employees of the Hill Country Community Mental Health-Mental Retardation Center expressed varying degrees of anger toward the state’s child welfare agency for removing the children from their community, separating them from their mothers or for the way CPS workers conducted themselves at the shelter. A few described ongoing tension between the two groups of social workers, including threats by CPS to have interfering MHMR workers arrested….

Three reported that CPS workers lied to the mothers; one described it as a tactic to make separating them from their children go easier. Several said the mothers were denied access to their lawyers. Some of the MHMR workers said the crowded conditions at the shelter allowed upper respiratory infections and chicken pox to spread rapidly and many noted the shelter’s other discomforts. One described it as deliberate, a form of coercion to aid the investigation: “The more uncomfortable they were the more CPS thought they would talk.”

Threats of arrest? I’m surprised the CPS would bother! After all, an arrest might involve that nasty due process that they are so careful to avoid with the FLDS people, none of whom are even being charged with any of the awful things that the CPS keeps talking about. Why not just threaten to, oh, I don’t know… seize their children?

On a tangential note, mark that government agents seldom tell the truth about anything to anyone. They’re under no obligation to do so and they won’t hesitate to lie shamelessly in order to get what they want in the interest of following their orders and doing their jobs. This isn’t any different than what one expects from the average used car salesman, of course, but for some reason people seem to have different expectations of those on the public payroll. They shouldn’t.

Meanwhile, the kidnapped children may have fallen out of the news cycle, but they still aren’t with their families. If this outrage isn’t brought to an end before long, it may be interesting to see how many of them are eventually given to politically-connected families as was the case with the MassachusettsVirginia infant that was kidnapped-by-CPS.