"They Kidnapped Our Child": Why CPS Needs Transparency Now

In April 2013, police officers and a social worker from Sacramento County's Child Protective Services entered the home of Anna and Alex Nikolayev and took their baby, Sammy, away from them. They had no warrant.

"What they'd done was, basically, kidnapped our child with the help of police," says Alex Nikolayev. The young, first-time parents were not notified of where Sammy was being taken and wouldn't find out for a full 24 hours. According to the Nikolayevs, the dispute stemmed from the parents' desire to obtain a second medical opinion before subjecting Sammy to major heart surgery.

The Nikolayev's story made national headlines thanks to footage from a camcorder Anna Nikolayev set up on the kitchen table. It also caught the attention of California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, who spearheaded an audit of the agency.

"The secrecy by which CPS operates is a massive problem. Because when you have secrecy and unchecked power, you have a recipe for corruption and abuse," says Donnelly.

The secrecy surrounding CPS stems from the nature of California's juvenile dependency courts, which only allow limited press access and seal all court records. While media and other interested parties can petition the court to open the records, this can be a lengthy process and by no means guarantees results. ReasonTV petitioned the court to open the records in the Nikolayev's case and, almost two months later, we have still not received a ruling from the judge.

The issue of funding is one that many critics of CPS are quick to raise, most prominently and frequently by the late Georgia state senator Nancy Schaefer. While the funding incentives for any government agency are complicated and seemingly impossible to divine, Orange County Social Services Agency Director Michael Riley, who oversees Orange County CPS, testified in a deposition related to Hardwick's case that putting more children into the foster system can boost the agency's budget.

"Let's say you spend ten dollars a year. So, then, for the following year, your base then would be ten dollars," says Riley. The lawyer questioning Riley then points out that failure to use the entire base would result in a lowering of the base for the next year. He then asks Riley if the funding stream is tied to how many children they bring into Orange County's children's home, Orangewood.

"It's tied to the number of children we have in the foster system," says Riley.

We reached out to both Sacramento County and Orange County Social Services Agencies in the production of this story, and representatives with both were happy to talk with us. However, because of the closed dependency courts, neither representative could comment on details of specific cases. The absurdity of this charade reached such heights that Sherri Heller, who runs Sacramento County's Health and Human Services, told us that she could not even confirm nor deny that Sacramento County CPS was even involved in the Nikolayev case, despite widespread reporting and video evidence that it was. It's not just parents and children who suffer from the secrecy. CPS workers and their managers say they are not happy about this situation either and feel that more openness and transparency would help them to communicate their side of the story clearly.

"Most of us in this field are eager for the public to understand what happened and why," says Heller. "It is a source of great dismay to us when we are accused of hiding behind the confidentiality law."

In the immediate wake of the Nikolayev case, parents gathered in Sacramento to support the audit and testify in front of the audit committee. The audit is set to proceed in the next few months, and the auditor will choose three county agencies to examine. But for parents like Deanna Hardwick, who's experienced the power of this agency first-hand, a state-level audit is just the beginning of a broader movement towards transparency and accountability.

"Once the American people are able to be made aware that this is going on, I think that will be a real step forward towards making sure that there's accountability and making sure that the agency is working towards keeping families together rather than separating them," says Hardwick.

About 10 minutes.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Paul Detrick, Tracy Oppenheimer, and Weissmueller.

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CPS get extra money for babies with blue eyes. CPS and other so called protecting children agencies like dyfs need to be abolished. Just about everything the government provides thats serves and protects people are failures. This is what happens when you turn away from God and look to the devil which is our big government bureaucracy. if you fail to give your life in the fight against satan,
then you lose both your life and your soul.

i pray for this family,
the rest of the country needs to wake up, fight satan, and be willing to give their life doing so.

cops? read the Bible passages of roman soldiers during the time of Christ's crucifixion. that's you. still wanna remain on that "winning" team? it is your choice, and you will reap the result, i guarantee it. repent before it's too late for your soul - it's up to you, this may be your last warning, who knows what'll happen on your next shift.

Anonymous 12169, I agree. But only as a last resort, I believe God wanted us to live life on this EArth to its fullest, and that means staying alive by whatever means possible. However, if any government agency were to come to my door at this moment, and beat it down just to get to me and lock me up for life, only then would I have to take one or two out before killing myself.

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Stockholm and the Kidnapped Citizenry

by Richard Schwartzman, The Future of Freedom Foundation

Individual men and women don?t need enemies. Many want a challenge with an opponent, someone with whom to compete cooperatively, but not an enemy. Governments, however, do need enemies to get their citizenry to submit to coercion.

Some of us accept that as almost axiomatic, a self-evident fact that?s so blatant we can?t understand why the rest of society doesn?t recognize the obvious. So the question arises: Why are people so willing to put on blinders and wear a yoke?

In her August 29 Washington Times commentary regarding the Transportation Security Administration 10 years after 9/11, Gail A. Jaquish made several interesting references.

One was to F.A. Hayek?s Road to Serfdom. Summarizing one of Hayek?s points, Jaquish wrote, ?Once a population internalizes that authorities have the power to coerce, few will experience actual coercion because passive submission avoids it. Excessive government control ultimately leads to a psychological change in the people of a nation.?

That sounds much like the change that takes place in persons who exhibit what?s called the Stockholm syndrome. The simplest definition of this syndrome is that it?s a ?paradoxical psychological phenomenon? in which hostages begin to identify with and even defend and work for their captors.

Its name comes from behavior exhibited by four employees of a bank in Stockholm, Sweden, who were held captive for six days in 1973. The victims began to so identify with their captors that they saw them as protectors. They became so attached that they actually defended those who held them hostage.

Patty Hearst exhibited similar behavior in 1974. After being kidnapped by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army she helped the SLA rob a bank.

Psychologists say the syndrome explains certain cult membership allegiances, why women remain in abusive relationships, and a host of other coercive and intimidating situations. There is no reason not to think it happens on a national scale. Indeed, the model fits almost too well.

While we are not forced to stay in a given country (relationship), emigrating (leaving) is the exception rather than the rule. Most people are psychologically ?stuck? with the government (abusive spouse) in charge. The government defines what the people (abused spouse) can and can?t do in the same manner as captors decide what their victims may do. The government has the guns and it will put people in jail if they disobey.

Then throw in the enemy, be it a bad economy, an enemy attack, immigrants, blacks, Jews, Muslims, Tea Partiers, communists, or anyone or anything that can be used to provoke fear and an artificially manufactured need for security. Government might also declare a voice of reason to be an enemy should that voice speak out against a given government policy. Too many people will identify with the government and give up any and all liberty in order to feel safe and secure, as did the bank employees in Stockholm.

Give in to having naked photos taken or acquiesce to a total stranger copping a cheap feel just so you can board an airplane. Let government-approved political parties decide whom you may vote for in a not-as-free-as-you-think election. Yield to the ruler who tells you what you may or may not ingest while he steals half of your paycheck, makes foreign enemies in your name, and sends your children off to war for the sake of oil or some other political interest.

Jaquish made another reference in her column, one that?s better known to the general public than Hayek. Invoking the world of Star Trek she spoke of the Borg, a hive-minded collective that assimilates both the people and technology of other species. The Borg catch phrase is, ?Resistance is futile.?

But resist we must.

Jaquish wrote, ?Today, we gradually surrender our freedoms to an insatiable federal government that feeds on our hard-earned dollars to accumulate more power to control our lives while eroding our liberties. If we silently acquiesce to expanding federal government power that diminishes our rights as set forth in the U.S. Constitution, we are complicit in creating a society as oppressive as the one from which our forefathers chose to separate.?

While the Constitution does not give us our rights, her point on surrendering to a continuously expanding government and being complicit in creating an oppressive society is well-taken.

The Borg gain strength by stealing the people, technology, and wealth of other races. Government is Borg-like in that it gains strength by stealing the wealth and liberty of its people, who are more than willing to be assimilated ? surrendering their individualism and their rights ? under the pretext of protection, all the while pretending they?re free.

The American reaction to the attacks of September 11, 2001, will go down in history ? along with similar reactions to the sinking of the Lusitania, the stock-market crash of 1929, Pearl Harbor, and the Kennedy assassination ? as another instance of the Stockholm syndrome on a grand, national scale.

The good news is that fewer people today are willing to give up their liberties for the sake of safety than there were soon after 9/11. According to a recent USA Today story, 47 percent of people surveyed in 2002 were willing to make the tradeoff. Today, that number is down to 25 percent. That?s still 25 percent too many, but such is human nature.

It?s up to the rest of us to bring about the necessary changes that will put an end to the dissolution of liberty. Resistance is not futile.
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Richard Schwartzman is managing editor at Chadds Ford Live in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

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