foster care

Child Trafficking – A Game of Sex and Politics

Posted on by Helena

Charges against former IMF Chief accused of being involved in a prostitution ring in France will most likely – be dropped. Previous charges against him for rape and for allegedly groping were also dropped. The political game is a game of the elite and child sex trafficking is big business.

But it isn’t just France –

In fact, when reviewing specific charges against most US politicians for sexual ‘misconduct’, rape, etc…, the outcome is continually – no charge.

Hedge Fund manager, Jeffrey Epstein was charged with having had sex with underage girls and sex trafficking. His punishment? House arrest for one year. But that didn’t deter him from monthly trips to New York and his Caribbean island. There was tremendous pressure by friends in power to drop charges. In fact, the State Attorney claimed that the girls involved were not credible witnesses.

An online pedophile ring whose server apparently originated in the very liberal Netherlands was shut down by Europol police. There were supposedly 70,000 members, but a mere 184 arrests across the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Italy and Spain.  No names.  No convictions.

Terry Bean, a huge supported of President Obama, was indicted on sodomy and sexual abuse against a 15 year old boy. Two years later, he is still awaiting trial.

Geoffrey Dickens, a UK Conservative MP, had a dossier of allegations of sexual abuse committed by eight high ranking UK politicians. He gave his dossier to then Home Secretary, Leon Britton, and it was apparently destroyed. The new Home Secretary, Theresa May, claims it never existed. In 2012, Tom Watson, a Labour MP, stated that there is “clear intelligence suggesting a powerful pedophile network linked to Parliament and to Number 10.”

But it is now three years later and what has been done?

In 2014, a witness, (a victim now in his 40’s) came forward and claimed that these pedophiles not only sexually assaulted and abused their victims (as young as ten), they also killed them as sport. The crimes were committed between the late 1970’s and 1980’s and said to involve high ranking politicians, MP’s, etc…   These allegations are only now being probed, thirty years later. But will the political heavy weights quash any indictments?  Why would we believe otherwise when nothing has been done in the past.  It’s a hush business, open your mouth and you are dead.

Roughly the same time period another sex scandal was being probed. In the late 1980’s The Franklin Scandal surfaced in which allegations of White House involvement was implicated.  Boys Town was the source of the victims.   In that incidence, the only person to be charged was one of the victims – she went to jail for 4 ½ years for perjury.

A New York based pedophile ring was brought down in 2012. The Madame of the ring, Anna Gristine, stated that her clients included the elite of the elite, bankers, politicians, entertainment execs, etc… None were named and none were charged. She spent four months in jail.  A previous Madame who was indicted for similar charges stated she was prepared to name names.  Shortly thereafter, she was found dead.  The police ruled it ‘suicide’.

In the 1990’s Marc Dutroux built a prison in his basement where the children would be kept in cages – sexually abused – and then killed. His clients? Wealthy elite, politicians, CEO’s, bankers, those in position of power and wealth. None were named and none were ever charged.

So, where do the boys come from in these pedophile rings?

“Boys Homes” would appear to offer an endless supply of potential victims as was the case in the renowned Kincora Boys Home in Belfast and the ‘alleged case’ of Boys Town in Nebraska and the Ballarat schools in Australia. Other sources include Foster Care children, cults, Hollywood, Catholic churches, and the homeless. The stories are incredibly heart breaking, but they do provide an ugly look at the who and where and why investigations into sex trafficking are making little progress. It is bigger than we can even imagine.

And as long as the political pressure remains the client, nothing much will change.

Stolen Children – Australia Shamed

Posted on by Helena

Australia is in the throes of a critical increase in the number of children held in foster care! Currently, that number exceeds 40,000. At the same time, there are huge shortages of people willing to foster children, so they have lifted any potential obstacles to being approved to be a caregiver. Children find themselves shuttled from home to home, abused, lost, unattached, or institutionalized due to lack of available homes where abuse is rampant, and sometimes placed in an orphanage when there is no other available bed or housing facility.

Social Services claim a severe shortage of available employees and are over-whelmed by the sheer numbers. Anyone and everyone is encouraged to make a notification if they suspect abuse or neglect.

Between 2012 and 2013 there were nearly 273,000 such notifications with only 53,000 being substantiated, less than 20%. Still, the number is severe enough for the government to become concerned and question why the spike.

The closest corollary is the change in defining ’emotional abuse’. This category would seem to have the largest number of cases at 38%. But what defines emotional abuse is the real worry. Emotional abuse could be as loose as a parent yelling at a child, or a parent yelling at another parent which is then classified as ‘domestic violence’. These dysfunctions are now ruled as ’emotional abuse’ and warrant the immediate confiscation of all children from the household and placement in foster care.

A foster parent receives an allowance ranging from $910 per month to $2720 for a child with a disability. In addition to this allowance, foster carers are reimbursed for clothes, education, daycare, supplies, activities, hobbies, medical, travel, therapy, establishment costs, life story work and respite. These enticements are offered in order to increase the number of carers willing to engage in the raising of the children as a licensed foster home. As residential parents refuse to come forward, these subsidies are paid to institutions.  In addition, NGO’s have been rapidly coming to the forefront as the government offers adoption subsidies for every child placed ranging from $30,452 to $44, 217. These are considered ‘facilitation costs’.  Post adoption subsidies may also be paid based on the adoptive parent’s income.

The business thrives on dollars and available children.

But there is a growing consensus that these same homes and institutions have an unsurpassed rate of physical and sexual abuse within their system. Some claim the perpetrators are the children themselves, others claim it is the adults, either way, the point is the system that is supposedly built to safeguard children is proving to be – the perpetrator.

The Royal Commission has been called to investigate, however their response has been weak, filled with inconsistencies, and flawed. Little has been done to right the wrongs, and the state is now themselves creating the abuse at a far more prevalent rate than the abuse they claim to mitigate. Children report being prostituted, raped, subjected to abhorrent violence, provided illicit drugs and worse. These children in the foster system are shown to have the highest rates of depression, anger issues, behavioral issues, mental health issues, dropping out of school, and are profoundly more apt to become victims of sexual exploitation, pornography and prostitution.

This is the fix, the government has instituted. In Australia, once a child is placed in foster care, the parent(s) lose all legal right to make any decision with regard to that child. Their medical, educational, housing, are all now transferred to the foster caregiver. If a foster caregiver deems the child should not ever return to the birth parent, the child is offered to the NGO for potential adoption.

The highest proportion of foster children are under the age of one – making them the most likely age group to be adopted. Coincidence?  Studies show that the increase in numbers in foster care is also in proportion to the fact that few children are returned to their parents – ever.  Parents are required to prove their innocence rather than a caseworker proving an allegation. Most of us think of abuse in terms of bodily harm, but in fact, the number of cases in which a doctor assessed physical harm were minimal. According to the last statistical data available, 2001, there were 476 hospitalizations of children that they categorized as having suffered some form of assault. Of those, 57% were attributed to the parents. That means that 271 cases could have resulted from parental abuse. Yet there are 40,000 children in foster care, the discrepancy is vast – .6%.

The second highest category which necessitates foster care is neglect at 27.5%. Cases have been lodged for such unqualifying negligence as running around without shoes, dirty, playing outside without a parent’s supervision, etc…  While these may normally be construed as simple childlike ways, today they constitute neglect and can be cause for abduction of the child and placement in an institution.

So why are caseworkers so intent on labelling and classifying some inane action as child abuse? Could it be as simple as meeting a quotient? Or could it be laziness in reviewing cases, following up on cases and searching for a better solution? Is the system broken?

It would certainly appear that is most definitely the case.  Despite scrambles to put band-aids on the open wound, the bleeding continues.

Monetary incentives are not the answer. This sort of solution is ripe for creating even greater fraud and corruption as the child is valued as property rather than as a living human being. Despite the government claiming that residential careworkers are highly trained and in a rigorous 3 to 6 month course, a recent study found that the carers lacked even rudimentary skills. Residential care has decreased dramatically, replaced with institutions and daycare facilities that operate in conjunction with each other. These facilities have transitory care with high turnover rates. The children are subjected to a far worse scenario than what they had at home and the monetary curve powers the pockets of just a few.  It is a system in chaos.

When there are not enough beds in orphanages, institutions and homes, according to this report, there are instances in which children are housed in motels and trailers. The risks are formidable.  The absurdity is incomprehensible.

The government has continued to try to distance itself from the situation through the utilization of NGO’s. But the initial claim stands as being made by a Social Services employee and subsidies are made without much verification or data.

In an effort to relinquish legal disagreements, in-home day carers have created contracts upwards of seventeen pages which contain language that may be considered questionable,   “The Carer may transfer, assign or novate this agreement to a third party by giving written notice to the Parent (but without needing the consent of the Parent).” This clause may constitute the sum of grievance many parents express as it implies the assigned caregiver has the right to assign the agreement to a foster caregiver without consent. The agreement for childcare also suggests that a third party right to ‘benefits’/payment is enforceable and inclusive. Therefore, a child under the initial care of an in-home carer may transfer their agreement to a foster institution as a third party. It also states the carer and any third party are immune from any legal suit or proceeding.

“If the Carer believes that another Care Provider Type (other than In Home Child Care) is more appropriate then the Parent agrees to do all acts and sign all documents to enable the Carer to transition the child the subject of the In Home Child Child Care to that other Care Provider Type as determined by the Carer.”

The effect of the above clause is to place the absolute right on a caregiver to intervene and make a judgement decision on behalf of the child as to whether they may live at home or be transferred to a different type of care such as foster care. Once in foster care, the child may be adopted out.

Stolen children. Stolen childhoods. A Crumbling Crumb of a system…

Child Sex Trafficking – The New Norm

Posted on by Helena

Pretty Woman – remember the movie? A prostitute and her best friend openly talked about their choice to make money by selling sex. It was portrayed as just another means of making a living. It should be legal after all because women should have the right to do with their bodies whatever they please.

But of course it wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t legal and the ‘pimp’ was never mentioned.

As a society, we pass through era’s of extreme wherein rights are confused and cross boundaries of ethics, morality and values. The line is muddied to allow behavior that ordinarily we would never condone. But it comes from a place of vindictiveness. It comes from a place where freedom is manipulated to represent something perverse. And then the freedom slips and the pendulum ultimately betrays someone else on the other side.

Sex trafficking, child trafficking, slavery. Why do we as a society do so little to mitigate this kind of slavery? Our focus is on black vs white all while truth would have it as our children. The statistics are staggering, albeit rough. Estimates give the industry a tab of anywhere from $9 to $32 billion in annual revenues. The number of children drawn into the industry in the US is also a rough figure from 100,000 to 300,000. Pimps are said to handle 4 to 6 girls. Each girl brings in about $150,000 per year. Denver has the second highest pay at an average of $31,000 per week.

Who is buying?

Research has shown that for the most part, those paying for sex span the gamut of normalcy. Average Joe, regular job, perhaps married or in a relationship, and not really sure why he pays for sex. They are out of touch with their feelings and with values. They have buried their feelings of hatred toward women and find prostitution a release. The buyers tend to have feelings of anger and contempt toward women and dehumanize them as being property subject to their sexual whim. The average life span for a prostitute is 34. Prostitutes have the highest rate of ‘workplace’ homicide than any other ‘profession’.

Years ago, I wrote about the relationship between children raised in day care settings and the long term effects that might have on their inability to bond. Children raised in daycares are not touched as often, are not tended to in a nurturing, fretting motherly way. They are confined in a small space competing for attention with 20 to 30 other children. They are only 2, 3 and 4 years old, but their life has been institutionalized. Everything about their life is regulated by people they barely know. Turnover in teachers is high and thus even this bond is typically destroyed over and over again.

I know this because I once owned a day care. We catered to 70 children and I vowed that my children would never have to attend. Daycare had become a drop point for parents who didn’t want to be parents. But that isn’t how daycare started. It began with a more noble cause at heart in the administration of Head Start. I volunteered there as a child with my mother. The purpose of Head Start was to allow single mothers a chance to get off welfare by having a safe place to tend to their children while they trained for a good job. But it morphed.

Today, daycare is by far the norm. It’s given fancy names like Piaget and Montessori, a learning environment. But in truth, it remains – daycare, a drop point for mom’s who don’t really want to be moms. It is used by the poor, the middle class and the wealthy. It is the pendulum at full swing in the opposite direction. And we are now seeing some of the effects – including an inability to bond.

Sex is used to create a bond that is lacking. Porn isn’t enough because there is no interaction. In a research study done in the UK, some men claimed they had some delusion that sex with a prostitute might lead to a relationship, others claimed it was simply a release, an act without emotion. But even more interesting, a good portion of the men said they knew the woman was in an involuntary setting and they felt no desire to help. They really just didn’t care.

The sex trafficking business is only so profitable because it has a steady stream of buyers. Eliminate the buyers and the market collapses, it is simple economics.

So how do you eliminate the buyers?

First, foremost and easiest should be to make solicitation illegal for the buyer. But while that may appear an easy solution on the face, few states in the US and few provinces in Canada actually act on this proposal. Police arrest the prostitute, the buyer leaves, and everything goes back to normal the next day. Why? Because men want to believe that a prostitute is performing consensually, it is prettier, it is Pretty Woman. And because, our media would have us believe that this trade is just as it was since the beginning of time. But it’s rise may link to the empty feelings of abandonment, being raised in a daycare institution, and having no other model to feel a sense of morality. As such, it becomes an entitlement. “I deserve it” attitude.

If we can’t move past the first hurdle and create a morality and legal issue on the part of the buyer, the industry will continue to abduct and traffic whomever they can because money is the driver. Statistics show a small percentage of pimps or traffickers being arrested. And most return to the job because it pays and they haven’t the education to do anything else. There have been a few buyers prosecuted, but the numbers don’t support any real effort to curb the activity. Media reports tend to put the victim label on the Madame or even the Pimp and certainly the buyer – he didn’t know – Most often, the only victim, the girl, the prostitute, is the one punished.

How do you retrain buyers?

It starts with raising your own children. It starts with nurturing, instilling values, living values, and filling the voids of emptiness. It means teaching compassion and evolves into education. It means defining sex as something very special to be shared only with a spouse. It means giving back a child their life, whether it is your own, or the abducted one sold and humiliated, and given the status of property. It means when you think looking at porn is harmless – you are engaging in the trafficking of children. And that child could be yours.