580,000 children will spend Christmas this year apart from the families that love them. That's almost four times the number of troops we have deployed in Iraq.
Some of these children, in all honesty, probably should be away from their families. These are, after all, the children in US foster care, and some of these parents are truly abusive and neglectful, and need to find homes where they can be loved and grow to their potential.
But statistics show THESE children are in the minority. 97% of all child removals will never see the inside of a criminal court. That's over half a million parents who have their children removed without due process, a cherished tradition in our American legal system. Only 44% of those children who have been removed will ever be returned to the custody of their parents.
Why does this injustice happen on a regular basis? Mainly because most Americans who allow this system to exist misunderstand the nature of the system. Most parents are charged in CIVIL court actions to remove their children, which requires a "preponderance of evidence" rather than the much higher standard of reasonable doubt required for criminal convictions. This means that much evidence that would be inadmissable in a criminal court is introduced in a civil court, and it further means that parents have VERY limited rights as far as legal representation is concerned. They have no right to have a lawyer provided for them until/unless the state initiates proceedings to terminate parental rights. And since poverty is the main reason why children are removed from their home, despite "official" protestation that it is not, the parents are unlikely to be able to retain an attorney when the retainer can consume over a third of the parent's annual salary.
Hidden in the JU blogosphere is a blog by a writer who goes by the name "trueandfree". Trueandfree's blog can be found here: Link . Trueandfree has consistently documented abuses of power that have kept Amy Joan Schneider, an Illinois woman, from seeing two of her children for over three years. Ms. Schneider is one of the many who will be spending Christmas without her children, children effectively kidnapped by the state; which has no business in such matters. I won't taint the details of Ms. Schneider's case by rehashing them here, but I would encourage all of you to visit the linked site to discover the facts for yourselves.
When we're confronted with the FACTS of the truly evil actions of our government, we SHOULD be outraged. We should be infuriated beyond belief. But too many are complacent, and in their complacency they enable a government that, while acting with the purest of intentions, has repeatedly infringed on the rights of the innocent in their pursuit of the guilty.
This year, my family will be hanging an extra stocking in the hall. This stocking will be white, to represent the innocence that is stolen by an uncaring government when children are snatched from their homes. Our extra stocking will be a memorial to the too many families that will spend this Christmas without their children. Every holiday from now one will include a special commemoration for these families. While we can't do much, we CAN remember and pray that next Christmas, these children will be returned home.