Waterboarding children

Emotional harm often occurs to children even when foster homes are good. The majority are. But the rate of abuse in foster care, both in family foster homes and in institutions, is far higher than generally realized and far higher than in the general population. Texas institutions are particularly notorious; they were the subject of http://www.window.state.tx.us/forgottenchildren/">two scathing reports issued in 2004 by the former State Comptroller. And if the Eldorado detentions go on long enough, many children who probably never were abused on the Yearning for Zion ranch probably will be abused in foster care.

And, arguably, some have been mistreated already. Texas authorities repeatedly have said one reason they separated the children from their mothers was to make it easier to get the "real stories" out of the children--a tactic that amounts to emotional waterboarding. There also are allegations that authorities pretended to believe some adults they held--including a 27-year-old who produced a driver's license and birth certificate--were minors, in order to question them without their lawyers present.

All this suffering is unnecessary because, from the beginning, there has been an alternative. It may have been necessary to take some of the children from the ranch. But none needed to be taken from their mothers.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, claims made to justify the raid are eroding. Remember the reports that a document had been found on the ranch concerning cyanide? It turned out to be part of a first-aid manual. Remember the claims about young children with broken bones? Looks like the proportion of such children is about the same as in the general population. And every day more "underaged" mothers turn out to be adults.

Through it all, Texas CPS has made one point over and over: aside from the size of the case, there is nothing unusual here. We treat all families this way.

They're right. If anything, the families of the Eldorado 400+ are getting better treatment than the overwhelming majority of families who lose children to state child welfare agencies every year.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080609/wexler

it isn't until these children grow up and get into trouble that they are paid attention to. Then the public wants to throw them in jail. Poverty is the main cause of neglect. And as far as violence goes, I don't suppose our society will be getting any less violent, any time soon.

Even now when it is in the spotlight.

From the same article:

"At the moment, the fate of the Eldorado children rests with the Texas Supreme Court, but every day foster care is prolonged, more damage is done. The fate of the 300,000 of other American children taken from their parents every year rests with all of us. The usual answers from the left, "more money" and "more training," won't fix this. The Eldorado children could have been put up in five-star hotels and the separation from their mothers still would have been devastating. No one says the solution to Guantánamo is better-trained guards."

The author is Richard Wexler, executive director of the http://www.nccpr.org/">National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, whose founder was on the board of the directors of the ACLU until she resigned over the FLDS issue because of the ACLU's weak stance.