"DYFS would never remove a child simply based on that child's name," Bernyk said

No but they would remove the child if they didn't like what the parents are teaching them or for any other reason they can come up with.

If the parent is a Crack addict they work like hell to keep the child in home but if the parent has the wrong religion or politics they rip them out and try like hell to keep them out.

They could do great work if they weren't libs.

It will be pretty bad if the basis for removal was that the parents were teaching the kids Nazi beliefs.

But given the absence of facts, best not to form too many opinions just yet.

Hadn't heard that one, Hoosier.

At least they weren't Greek lessons! Whew!

I sort of understand why they named one daughter "Aryan Nation." (If you name one kid "Adolf Hitler," and you have another kid, well, ...) What I don't get is "JoyceLynn."

I assume that there has to a procedural due process right for the parents to challenge the removal? Maybe we'll learn more about the reasons then, but at the moment it looks awfully suspicious. I'd have to think that teaching beliefs to kids, even odious ones, is protected by the First Amendment.

What I don't get is "JoyceLynn."

They just thought it "sounded pretty"(?).

This is being applauded in some corners despite the lack of information, to date, about the purported ground for removal -- including by people who say we should presume that authorities have a neutral and appropriate basis.

I don't see any reason to presume that they have an inappropriate basis either. I don't know the details and I'm quite content with not coming to a conclusion either way.

"is it really so unthinkable that parents who name their kid "Adolf Hitler" might actually also be bad parents for other reasons?"

I suppose that is at least possible.Joint injuries from hours of goose-stepping. A gun butt upside the head if caught eating french fries.

I wonder how long before we find out if these people are registered Republicans.


They're fascist Hitler-lovers. OF COURSE they're registered Republicans!

Ex-Fed - But when parents have unpopular beliefs and practices, skepticism and scrutiny of claims of abuse or neglect is appropriate. We saw that in the case of the debacle in Texas over the FLDS raid, frequently discussed here.

Yeah, how dare the State of Texas intervene on behalf of adolescent girls whose parents believed thaey had a god-given right to coerce into marrying and being impregnated by adult male church members. I do not believe the state has a legitimate right to proscribe polygamous marriages, as long as they are uncoerced contracts. freely entered into by persons who are able to give lawful consent, and that no party is being forced against their will to remain in the contractual relationship. FLDS should have never taken the children who were pre-pubescent girl or any of the males, but they had a legitimate concern about some of the children.

Justice O’Neill, joined by Justice Johnson and Justice Willett, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
[. . .]
Evidence presented in the trial court indicated that the Department began its investigation of the YFZ Ranch on March 29th, when it received a report of sexual abuse of a sixteen-year-old girl on the property. On April 3rd, the Department entered the Ranch along with law-enforcement personnel and conducted nineteen interviews of girls aged seventeen or under, as well as fifteen to twenty interviews of adults. In the course of these interviews, the Department learned there were many polygamist families living on the Ranch; a number of girls under the age of eighteen living on the Ranch were pregnant or had given birth; both interviewed girls and adults considered no age too young for a girl to be "spiritually" married; and the Ranch’s religious leader, "Uncle Merrill," had the unilateral power to decide when and to whom they would be married. Additionally, in the trial court, the Department presented "Bishop’s Records" - documents seized from the Ranch - indicating the presence of several extremely young mothers or pregnant "wives"[1] on the Ranch: a sixteen-year- old "wife" with a child, a sixteen-year-old pregnant "wife," two pregnant fifteen-year-old "wives," and a thirteen-year-old who had conceived a child. The testimony of Dr. William John Walsh, the families’ expert witness, confirmed that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints accepts the age of "physical development" (that is, first menstruation) as the age of eligibility for "marriage." Finally, child psychologist Dr. Bruce Duncan Perry testified that the pregnancy of the underage children on the Ranch was the result of sexual abuse because children of the age of fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen are not sufficiently emotionally mature to enter a healthy consensual sexual relationship or a "marriage."

Evidence presented thus indicated a pattern or practice of sexual abuse of pubescent girls, and the condoning of such sexual abuse, on the Ranch[2] - evidence sufficient to satisfy a "person of ordinary prudence and caution" that other such girls were at risk of sexual abuse as well. Id. § 262.201(b). This evidence supports the trial court’ s finding that "there was a danger to the physical health or safety" of pubescent girls on the Ranch. Id. § 262.201(b)(1); see id. § 101.009 ("‘Danger to the physical health or safety of a child’ includes exposure of the child to loss or injury that jeopardizes the physical health or safety of the child without regard to whether there has been an actual prior injury to the child."); cf. Tex. Dep’t of Human Servs. v. Boyd, 727 S.W.2d 531, 533 (Tex. 1987) (affirming the termination of parental rights for "endanger[ing] . . . the physical well-being of [a] child," and holding: "While we agree that ‘endanger’ means more than a threat of metaphysical injury or the possible ill effects of a less-than-ideal family environment, it is not necessary that the conduct be directed at the child or that the child actually suffers injury. Rather, ‘endanger’ means to expose to loss or injury; to jeopardize."). Thus, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the Department met section 262.201(b)(1)’s requirements.

Notwithstanding this evidence of a pattern or practice of sexual abuse of pubescent girls on the Ranch, the court of appeals held - and the Court agrees today - that the trial court abused its discretion in awarding temporary conservatorship to the Department because the Department failed to attempt legal steps, short of taking custody, to protect the children. Based on the language of section 262.201 of the Family Code, I disagree. Subsections (b)(2) and (b)(3) of section 262.201 require the Department to demonstrate that "reasonable efforts, consistent with the circumstances and providing for the safety of the child, were made to eliminate or prevent the child’s removal," Tex. Fam. Code § 262.201(b)(2), and that "reasonable efforts have been made to enable the child to return home," id. § 262.201(b)(3). The Court suggests, consistent with the mothers’ arguments in the court of appeals below, that the Department failed to adequately justify its failure to seek less-intrusive alternatives to taking custody of the children: namely, seeking restraining orders against alleged perpetrators under section 262.1015 of the Family Code, or other temporary orders under section 105.001 of the Family Code. Id. §§ 262.1015, 105.001.

In Re Texas DFPS (Tex. 2008), Justice Harriet O’Neill dissenting, May 29, 2008

Here's at least one piece of evidence: It appears from the article quoted that DYFS was already in touch with the family for a number of years. Presumably, the parents have been Neo-Nazis all this time. So if that were really the reason for this intervention, why now? Why not sooner?

"BTW, do we know what, if anything, the senior Campbells do to support themselves, along with little Adolph, Aryan, and Jolynn?"

Mostly door-to-door sales of "How To Win Friends And Influence People."

is it really so unthinkable that parents who name their kid "Adolf Hitler" might actually also be bad parents for other reasons?

No, it's not unthinkable that parents who'd name their kid "Adolf Hitler" might be bad parents for other reasons, such that the state would be justified in either temporarily or permanently removing their children from their care.

However, particularly given that government child services agencies are, and have long been, anything but bastions of apolitical competence, anybody with a lick of sense ought to be presuming shenanigans until there's been a satisfactory showing to the contrary. The burden should be on the bureaucrats who are removing the kids, not the parents whose kids are being taken removed.

Given the lack of information, we risk suspending might weights from slender threads here. But a few things seem clear to me.

1. The kids were being taught a repugnant social philosophy.

2. That's not grounds for removing them from the home.

3. We don't know if there were other grounds.

4. That an action is justified does not mean that an overreaction is justified -- in this or the FLDS case. I am quite willing to believe action was justified in both cases. I don't know if there was an overreaction in this case, and tend to think there definitely was an overreaction in the FLDS case.

hattio.
Evidence otherwise doesn't always work.
Some time back, what is known in Michigan--and possibly elsewhere--as Child Abductive Services took a kid due to suspected abuse.
Turns out she had a copper deficiency and that led to easily broken bones. The state actually knew that, but to cover their sorry asses, they refused to change their view. Eventually, the parents divorced due to strain and some goodly time after that, the daughter was returned. She was an emotional mess and the father sued for therapy expenses. Our legislators invoked sovereign immunity after somebody told them how to spell it.
"reasonable" rules of confidentiality are designed to keep the information secret even if the kid in question is dead. It's designed to last at least until the moron in question has retired.
On form, as the Brits say, lacking information, I suspect the state is wrong and require them to prove otherwise. I know there are some rotten parents, but CAS seems to miss them on the way to somebody whose kid got into [hard] lemonade at a Tigers game.

people who say we should presume that authorities have a neutral and appropriate basis.
Dude, questioning authority is so November 3rd.

Would it have been the same for kids named Osama, Che, Joe Stalin, or even George Bush?
Osama/Usama's not that unusual a name, Che is as popular as Obama, nobody would recognize "Joe Stalin", and they'd never break up a Kuwaiti-American family.

Yick is a common Chinese surname. Bernyk would be pronounced "Burn Yick" which is terribly anti-Sino and patently offensive. We should demand it be changed.

Children should not belong to, nor be the responsibility of, the state.

Guest
Of course he knows. Hoped we didn't.
The usual.

I'm curious (as I was when the FLDS storm hit the Texas court system):

How many of the commenters (some of whom who apparently assume that the primary goal of most abuse-and-neglect investigation and adjudication systems is the persecution of parents for purposes of mis-guided P.C. social engineering by librul guvment bureaucrats) have actually sat through even a day's calendar in such a court, let alone actually practiced in their local systems?

Do investigators go on personal crusades? Sometimes. (See, e.g., McMartin.) Do legal system functionaries, be it DCS investigators, police, DA's or judges, hate being forced to say publically or semi-publically : "Yep, I thought I knew what was going on here, and I screwed up big time, and did a lot of damage?" No foolin'.

. . . but a very substantial amount of these folks'time is nevertheless spent trying to find some possible "least-horrible" alternatives for folks who for a host of reasons:


(a) mostly shouldn't ever have had kids in the first place, but did,

(b) are grievously un-equipped to deal with having done so, and so

(c) are raising their kids in a fashion which is quite often hair-raisingly awful.

I'm curious as to whether those commenters who state, flat-out, that they assume New Jersey Department of Youth and Family Services either is wrong, or is wrong and malicious, hold the same view of their local police department. . .

Caliban.
An agency which claims and has the privilege of taking from us our most precious possessions ought to have a standard of behavior higher than the DMV. And a due process less laborious than that provided by a Mafia loan shark.
And a provision for widely publicizing the innocence of the innocent parents even if it means acknowledging a screwup.
While I know of some miserable parents, the unfortunate fact is, many foster parents are pretty bad, too. Frying pan to fire is not an improvement.
Given the repeated pattern of CAS screwups, I am comfortable with presuming they're wrong and requiring to be convinced otherwise.

My mother's one scientific publication is cowritten with Joseph Stalin "Joe" Felsenstein

anybody with a lick of sense ought to be presuming shenanigans until there's been a satisfactory showing to the contrary

Yes, in the absence of evidence we should all jump to whatever conclusion best fits our own preconceived notions.