the rodney king of cps cases?
In an anti-CPS case the ACLU did take, a Pennsylvania woman is trying to stop authorities from taking her unborn child because the baby's father was convicted of sex crimes 22 years ago.
The mother, 31-year-old Melissa WolfHawk, has already lost a 21-month-old child to the state after they doubted her husband's parental fitness.
On the face of it, this would seem to be a slam dunk for the anti-CPS crowd, but the unsavoriness of the male protagonist makes this more like the Rodney King of CPS cases.
It was business as usual for police to racially profile and harass black drivers. Unfortunately for those who wished to fight such abuses, when a case was caught on film and became a cause célèbre the victim was of such a low character it lent credence to the police's actions.
Here we have overzealous CPS workers "monitoring" a pregnancy and threatening to take a child that hasn't been born yet just because they don't like the daddy. As with Rodney King, activists can only lament at what a pathetic specimen the daddy in their test case turned out to be.
Mr. WolfHawk, the husband and father, pled guilty in 1983 to rape, attempted rape, sodomy and attempted sodomy against two teenage girls. After spending a decade in prison, he changed his name from John Joseph Lentini to DaiShin WolfHawk. That's enough to make you still wonder about the guy. Now the unemployed man claims to be the chief of an Indian tribe that's not recognized by the federal or any state government, but which he claims is comprised of 175 families in eight states. More things that make you go "Hmmm."
The ACLU has stepped in saying that Mr. WolfHawk has already served his time and should not be punished further. They also say that the state of Pennsylvania had no right to question Mrs. WolfHawk about her unborn child and that they violated her rights to due process by threatening to "take" her baby and leaving notes on her door saying they were "monitoring" her pregnancy.
At the very least, that has to be considered harassment in practically anybody's book.
CPS attorney Karen E. Rismiller has written, "Schuylkill County Children and Youth Services believes this child's physical and emotional health is in danger because of the abuse perpetrated by the natural father against other minor children." You can mentally append more than two decades earlier to that.
I can't help but wonder about the detrimental effects to the baby's physical and emotional health from stress created by harassing the mother, not to mention putting it in a strange and also possibly harmful environment and depriving it of its natural parents and maternal affection.
Welcome to America 2005, where the government can monitor your pregnancy if they feel so disposed and threaten to take a child who hasn't been born yet and against whom you haven't raised voice or finger. When the government can cherry pick who they like as potential parents, we have a problem. When the government can take action based on what might happen, we have a problem. When the government starts creating arbitrary ideas about what they think will endanger your child's "emotional health," everyone is a possible target.
What a great case to wage war against CPS and other governmental abuses with... if only the father wasn't such a disreputable, questionable character.