Posted by
Warner Todd Huston on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 11:02:03 AM
-By Warner Todd Huston
It is a sad truth that from coast to coast our departments
of children and family service (DCFS) agencies are in disarray. All too often
they ill serve the children they are supposed to be helping and they almost
always step on the rights of parents without much bothering to give a good
reading of the situation before action is taken. The
travails of 13-year-old Chloe Faulkner is another such story. Taken
from her parents, isolated in a world of faceless bureaucrats, used as a cash
cow for state aide, abused, repeatedly raped, and eventually impregnated
without her loving parents being given a chance to be heard, this tale is
another DCFS/State intervention horror story.
In 2009 Chloe was a 13-year-old, home schooled, bright-eyed
girl who had been diagnosed with the serious medical condition of Type 1
diabetes. Like many 13-year-olds she was in a rebellious stage, pushing back at
a world of parental rules and the constrictions that her medical condition
unfairly imposed upon her. And, like many rebelling teens, Chloe ran away one
day, refusing to return home.
Her worried, loving parents involved the police because they
feared that young Chloe's medical condition would make her running away far
more dangerous than it might for the average teen. The police found Chloe and
brought her home with no incident.
But soon things began to go terribly awry. Because the
police were involved the DCFS came knocking at Chloe's parent's home. After
some interaction between Chloe and the state, DCFS took Chloe away from her
home and into state custody under the auspices of a law called MRAI, Minor
Requiring Authoritative Intervention (In Illinois it is ILCS705, 405,
3-3-1(a)).
Part of the MRAI laws, give teenagers the right to decide if
they want to go home to their parents. In her rebellion, Chloe decided that she
didn't. This gave the state the right to take Chloe away from her parents,
exclude parents from the decisions about any treatment given their daughter,
and to fully control the girl's life.
Even though there was no history with Chloe, her parents and
DCFS, even though there was no evidence of abuse, no medical emergencies while
in the care of her parents, and no evidence that her schooling was lacking, the
state allowed a rebellious, naive 13-year-old girl to make the sort of decision
that could seriously harm her and send her down a path of abuse. And the worst
happened.
Once Chloe was taken away and her parents shut out from
being able to help their own daughter, the girl's life began to get worse by
the day.
As the year during which Chloe was forced into the state
DCFS system wore on, she was placed in mental health wards --where state money
naturally followed her internment -- even though there was never any
determination that she had mental problems, she was given birth control pills
by planned parenthood against her religious parent's desires, she was sexually
exploited by the 20-year-old male friend of a "foster parent" -- and
was raped three times by this man who lived in the same apartment complex as
the foster family -- and finally, after getting out of the system, left state
custody pregnant.
Chloe's mother, Shelley, fought long and hard to get her
daughter out of this abusive system and is now trying to get people to
understand just how dangerous and ill-advised the MRAI laws are.
The state seriously failed young Chloe and fails all too many
others. Chloe's experiences must serve as a warning to us all that we need to
seriously overhaul the misdirected DCFS regulations and laws regarding troubled
children.
For
more information and for ways to contact the Faulkers, see http://standup4chloe.org/index.htm
or their facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118257284892107.