Due Process for Alabama Shouldn’t be Too Much To Ask

Guest Opinion by Terri LaPoint

The Constitutional Due Process Rights of Alabama citizens should not be a thing of controversy. There is no debate over whether or not someone should be informed of their rights when dealing with law enforcement, yet the idea that parents dealing with DHR should be notified of their Due Process rights is apparently a radical concept to some within the Alabama bureaucracy. 

In a recent hearing with the Children and Senior Advocacy Committee in the Alabama House of Representatives, DHR commissioner Nancy Buckner told lawmakers that “children will die” if HB340 – the DHR Transparency and Due Process Notification Act – passes.

Quite the opposite is true. Child Protective Services is funded by taxpayers based on the assumption that it protects children from abusive parents. However, according to The AFCARS Report: Alabama, less than 19% of children are taken by DHR for their families for any kind of abuse – physical or sexual. These are the children who most need intervention by DHR, yet over and over again, I hear from families that these children are left in those situations by DHR or are actually placed by DHR or family courts into homes/custody situations where real abuse is occurring. 

Children in foster care are at least 6 times more likely to be abused, raped, or molested, and at least 10 times more likely to be killed in foster care than they are if left in their own homes, even if that home is a troubled home. Study: Children from Poor Parents, Even if they have a Drug Problem, do Worse if Put into Foster Care - Medical Kidnap Foster Homes: Where Good Kids Go To Die - Medical Kidnap Florida Foster Parents Charged with Hundreds of Sex Crimes Against Children in Alabama - Medical Kidnap

The problem is that DHR sometimes gets involved in families where they shouldn’t. Children are removed too often from innocent, loving families, or from families with relatively minor issues who may need a little help. I’ve spent the last decade of my life investigating stories of “medical kidnapping,” where children are taken from good families over a medical disagreement or a medical condition that looks like abuse but isn’t. The trauma is unimaginable – for both parent and child.

Lawmakers have heard from constituents who have fallen victim to an agency with almost omnipotent power to rip their families apart, and Rep. Kenneth Paschal’s HB340 is the result. It is a chance for the legislature to give parents tools to keep their families together. Lt. Governor recently admitted to a group of Republican Women in Montgomery, “DHR is a mess.”

HB340 is a great bill, and I was somewhat dismayed at the responses by DHR and the governmental agencies that work with them at the Congressional hearing on March 19. DHR has many tools at their disposal as they remove children from their families in their purported purpose of protecting them. They have qualified immunity. They operate largely in secret without any transparency. And they have an army of lawyers and a lot of (taxpayer) money. Innocent parents have very little to nothing to fight back and protect their family from an overzealous bureaucracy (DHR). 

Isn't this the very reason the Founders of America sailed across the ocean and eventually established the United States of America, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights - to protect the citizenry from the overreach of government and to preserve our rights? The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution secured:

the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I remember witnessing a Shelby County DHR social worker informing a young mother whose newborn she took away that “there are two people who don’t need a court order or a warrant to take a child, and that’s law enforcement and the Department of Human Resources.” Who else, then, does the Fourth Amendment apply to if not to DHR and the police?

The only hope that many of the innocent parents have in Alabama is that pro-family and pro-justice legislators will stand up for them and their children and pass this bill. 

According to the latest AFCARS report - ChildMaltreatmentAR2023_FINAL - less than 16% of allegations against parents are substantiated. Nancy Buckner stated in the hearing that unsubstantiated doesn't mean not guilty, just that they didn't have enough evidence to substantiate. However, the reality is that substantiation can and does happen based on lies, planted or false evidence, and refusal to consider exonerating evidence. It happens all the time. I've seen it in just about every case I've ever dealt with [but remember, I deal with mostly innocent parents falsely accused of abuse]. 

In Arizona, Rep. Kelly Townsend fought very hard to get an amendment on a bill there which: 

Prohibits a DCS [equivalent to AL DHR] worker from knowingly influencing the outcome of a matter before a juvenile court or DCS by:

a. Lying about a matter

b. Withholding material information;

c. Fabricating evidence; or

d. Failing to disclose known exculpatory evidence

See also - Alabama DHR Woman Indicted: Faking Credentials and Collecting $864K in Medicaid funds for Kidnapping Children - Medical Kidnap - Federal Right to Lie Case 15-55563 | By Kathlee Arthur | Facebook and Judges Reject Orange County’s Claim That Social Workers Didn’t Know Lying In Court Was Wrong – OC Weekly ‘Tidal wave’ of ramifications possible in falsified drug, paternity tests in Dale County - al.com

It took me a long time to figure out why children were being "medically kidnapped" or taken from loving homes, while truly abused children were being left in their homes. Just about the time I figured it out, a social worker whistleblower confirmed that the children who are truly abused are often considered "damaged goods" who are "unadoptable" by the system, while children who are loved and wanted are considered "adoptable." Why would this matter? Because of ASFA - the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 - Hillary Clinton's brainchild. This is billions of dollars of federal bonus money given to states that ONLY happens when states remove a child, place them into foster care with strangers, and adopt them out to strangers. 

There was no discussion at the hearing at all about the fact that there have been consistent reports of child sex trafficking victims coming from foster care. In 2018, the Department of Justice stated chilling words I will never forget: The largest supplier of children for the child sex trafficking industry in America is the foster care system. 

Both ALGOP and the Alabama Federation of Republican Women recently passed resolutions in support of this bill. What could be more pro-family than protecting the rights of non-abusive parents to raise their own kids? It really should be a bi-partisan bill, because people who are fighting to get their kids back don’t care what party one belongs to; they just want their kids home. 

Due Process is a treasured American value, which begs the question: Why are some in government fighting so hard to deny notification of due process rights to parents? Why do they not want transparency in arguably one of the most powerful agencies in government, the one with the power to rip families apart?

Some would say that the innocent have nothing to fear from DHR. I would argue that the innocent who don’t know their rights are the quickest to lose their children when DHR comes knocking on their door. I’ve seen it happen too many times. 

If our legislators won't stand up for the Constitutional due process rights of their constituents, who will? Please contact your Representative and encourage them to vote "Yes" for HB340. 

Editor’s note: HB340 may be read HERE

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