One man’s voice Thoughts, rants and commentary from a husband, father of five and professional web geek

Government abusing homeschooling families

I just received an email that describes a horrible exercise of power on the part of local government. A homeschool family in the Almaden Valley area of San Jose is under tremendous attack from the Santa Clara County Social Services Department of Children and Family Services, Child Protective Services. What you are about to read is actually happening in our free society, even to this day. Please keep the Johnson family in your thoughts and prayers.

Synopsis of our Situation - The Johnson Family (my family) - is currently under siege by the Santa Clara Social Services, Department of Children and Family Services (DFCS) - Child Protective Services group (sometimes referred to as Emergency Response). The department's intense interest in my family stems from an allegation of child abuse related to our oldest son who was adopted at birth, and who suffers from drug and alcohol abuse in-utero and a condition called Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). It is my understanding that the mother of a baby sitter made the report after talking with her daughter who has never met my adopted son, and only sat one time for my two younger children for one day in our home. The sitter observed
inconsistencies the furnishing of my oldest son's room and observed the smell of urine. On this basis this, the mother, who has never met any member of my family, or stepped foot in our home, or discussed the circumstances surrounding our son, reported us to the police as child
abusers.

Because we are home schoolers, we initially consulted the HSLDA who advised us not to allow CPS into our home or to interview our children unsupervised. We were further advised to seek the services of a local attorney to ensure that our rights as parents were not violated as we work to clear our names related to the allegations of child abuse, which we did.

The DFCS, as a result of our refusal to allow them to interrogate our young children without supervision, together with the fact that we home school and therefore they are unable to gain access to our children without our permission (as is commonly done when children attend school outside of the home), went to court and swore out a Protective Custody Warrant to force themselves into our home, to have their way with our children, and to remove my oldest son into their protective custody. Today, my wife and children are in hiding to protect our family, in a location not even know to me, while I have been engaged in a very distressing and disruptive court battle in an effort to have the Protective Custody Warrant quashed, a request that was denied last Friday.

To date, no one at DFCS has been interested in understanding our unique parenting needs, the resources we have used and the third parties who can speak to quality of our parenting, and love that we have for of all of our children. Their action, based on our stance of "tell us what you are
concerned about so we can give you reasonable access to our family to resolve them", has been to take the child and ask questions later. They have leveraged the courts in this effort.

Since DFCS has no interest, nor apparent requirements to ascertain the facts before they have ripped our family apart, we've decided to share them with you. Perhaps when you speak out someone in the agency will finally listen to how they are about to destroy yet another family in an effort to "protect" a child that does not need protection and initiate policy based changes. This is why I urge you to come out Tuesday evening! Feel free to forward this note to anyone you think would be interested in this important issue. This is a completely free event paid for out of my paycheck.

Thank you for your support,

Mark I. Johnson

It is shocking to me that any government agency has the power and ability to do something like this. What have we come to? Shame on the SCSS DCFS. You have way overstepped your boundaries.