It was an SS Nazi slogan, now used by today’s family courts to determine custody:
It is also… the prime directive of all Child Protection Services.
“Justice denied anywhere, diminishes justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is an undeniable correlation between the above-mentioned and today’s Child Protection Service system which we have found to have it’s origins partly traced back to the Nazi Lebensborn project.
A substantial number of children were also taken away from their German parents by a form of social services to be placed in the Lebensborn program for the sake and security of the “fatherland” and “in the best interest of the child”
“In the best interest of the child” is also a favorite line, perpetually quoted by today’s Social Workers, Child Protection Services and Family Court Judges to denote a perceived authority and perceived expertise over the family unit. However, they are only invoking an ambiguous term without any clear definition to obtain a winning condition, under the color of law.
Decades of unqualified, unmonitored and regressive (rather than progressive) interpretation by untrained judges, social workers and guardian ad litems in secret family courts have effectively stamped out individual rights. The phrase has become a slogan to hide behind for family law professionals. The perverse directions issued in family courts seem to be getting worse; just like Hitler’s henchmen, it’s as if judges and family law professionals are trying to outdo each other in the scale of their human rights abuses and decide what rights a parent (and in some instances, grandparents) should have in the life of their child.
The Experts’ Views:
- Judge Watson L. White
Superior Court Judge, Cobb County, Georgia:
‘There is something bad happening to our children in family courts today that is causing them more harm than drugs, more harm than crime and even more harm than child molestation.”
- Judge Brian Lindsay
Retired Supreme Court Judge,
New York, New York:
‘There is no system ever devised by mankind that is guaranteed to rip husband and wife or father, mother and child apart so bitterly than our present Family Court System.”
- Bro Will Gaston:
‘Best interest of Children’ doesn’t love and care for children. It’s about the industry collecting the money.”
Robert H.Mnookin, Child-Custody Adjudication: Judicial Functions in the Face of Indeterminacy, 39 Law & Contemp. Probs.,
The best interests test has long been the subject of academic as well as judicial criticism for being indeterminate, providing little guidance on how to weigh the different needs of individual children, especially as they change over time”
- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Children Under the Law, 43 Harv. Ed. Rev. 487, 513 .
“Best interests operates as an empty vessel into which adult perceptions and prejudices are poured.”
- Oliver Cyriax, 1998, INPOWw and NATC
The term the ‘best interests of the child’ is no more than a label affixed to the case retrospectively, irrespective of current research, irrespective of best opinion, irrespective of the facts of the case, irrespective of governing principles, irrespective of the merits of the case and irrespective of the outcome. This is an inevitability; all decisions (whatever they are) must by definition be in the best interests of the child since otherwise they would contravene the law. The definition of ‘the best interests of the child’ is whatever decision the Court reached.
The Nazi roots of “in the best interests of the child”. Oliver Cyriax, NATC and INPOWw:
“The best interests of the child”
It is a sad fact that the term ‘the best interests of the child’ has yet to receive a preliminary definition. This means that the primary criterion of these cases is not a criterion but an infinitely amorphous variable (affixed to the decision by way of subsequent justification).
In the sluggish intellectual waters of the Family Division, no thought has yet been given to whether a child’s benefit would be better advanced:
a) by a system that allowed the resident parent to deprive a child of material contact with a non-resident parent (or ‘father’) for good reason
b) by a system which allows the resident parent to deprive a child of all or all material contact with a non-resident parent for no or no material reason.
Since these two ‘models’ give rise to different outcomes (children with two parents or children with one parent; parents with children or parents without children) on a wide scale, the oversight is odd.
Further, since the two definitions are opposite to one another in one of the most important matters concerning children (should they be raised as quasi-orphans?) then if one model is represents working towards the ‘benefit’ of the child’, the other represents working towards his detriment .
Charles Pragnell, 25 Aug 2011:
(Charles Pragnell is an independent social care management consultant, a Child/Family Advocate, and an Expert Defence Witness – Child Protection, and has given evidence to Courts in cases in England, Scotland, and New Zealand).
www.fassit.co.uk
“That is because we still adhere to this term “In the best interests of the child”, which was first coined by the German government in the 1940s as a euphemism to justify and excuse their maltreatment of children. The term has no universally and commonly agreed criteria and is extremely highly subjective, and completely dependent on the beliefs, values, and attitudes of the adult making such a decision. It is their personal beliefs, values, and attitudes which drive social workers in their decision-making regarding the competence or otherwise of parents to care for their children, and the process becomes a matter of persuading the Courts that their beliefs, values, and attitudes are correct.
The children become merely a secondary party to this process. The quality of parenting of children can only be evaluated by very careful and objective observation and study of how parents meet their children’s physical, emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual needs and any determinations regarding a child must be demonstrably and measurably to the benefit of the child.
Here at Megalalert, we and our many supporters are not saying that the Family Court System in the state of Maine and many other states can be compared to the ways of the Nazi’s or to Hitler’s regime. We are just pointing out where the phrase “In the Best Interest of the Child” came from and strongly recommending that there be a change!
It is also… the prime directive of all Child Protection Services.
“Justice denied anywhere, diminishes justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is an undeniable correlation between the above-mentioned and today’s Child Protection Service system which we have found to have it’s origins partly traced back to the Nazi Lebensborn project.
A substantial number of children were also taken away from their German parents by a form of social services to be placed in the Lebensborn program for the sake and security of the “fatherland” and “in the best interest of the child”
“In the best interest of the child” is also a favorite line, perpetually quoted by today’s Social Workers, Child Protection Services and Family Court Judges to denote a perceived authority and perceived expertise over the family unit. However, they are only invoking an ambiguous term without any clear definition to obtain a winning condition, under the color of law.
Decades of unqualified, unmonitored and regressive (rather than progressive) interpretation by untrained judges, social workers and guardian ad litems in secret family courts have effectively stamped out individual rights. The phrase has become a slogan to hide behind for family law professionals. The perverse directions issued in family courts seem to be getting worse; just like Hitler’s henchmen, it’s as if judges and family law professionals are trying to outdo each other in the scale of their human rights abuses and decide what rights a parent (and in some instances, grandparents) should have in the life of their child.
The Experts’ Views:
- Judge Watson L. White
Superior Court Judge, Cobb County, Georgia:
‘There is something bad happening to our children in family courts today that is causing them more harm than drugs, more harm than crime and even more harm than child molestation.”
- Judge Brian Lindsay
Retired Supreme Court Judge,
New York, New York:
‘There is no system ever devised by mankind that is guaranteed to rip husband and wife or father, mother and child apart so bitterly than our present Family Court System.”
- Bro Will Gaston:
‘Best interest of Children’ doesn’t love and care for children. It’s about the industry collecting the money.”
Robert H.Mnookin, Child-Custody Adjudication: Judicial Functions in the Face of Indeterminacy, 39 Law & Contemp. Probs.,
The best interests test has long been the subject of academic as well as judicial criticism for being indeterminate, providing little guidance on how to weigh the different needs of individual children, especially as they change over time”
- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Children Under the Law, 43 Harv. Ed. Rev. 487, 513 .
“Best interests operates as an empty vessel into which adult perceptions and prejudices are poured.”
- Oliver Cyriax, 1998, INPOWw and NATC
The term the ‘best interests of the child’ is no more than a label affixed to the case retrospectively, irrespective of current research, irrespective of best opinion, irrespective of the facts of the case, irrespective of governing principles, irrespective of the merits of the case and irrespective of the outcome. This is an inevitability; all decisions (whatever they are) must by definition be in the best interests of the child since otherwise they would contravene the law. The definition of ‘the best interests of the child’ is whatever decision the Court reached.
The Nazi roots of “in the best interests of the child”. Oliver Cyriax, NATC and INPOWw:
“The best interests of the child”
It is a sad fact that the term ‘the best interests of the child’ has yet to receive a preliminary definition. This means that the primary criterion of these cases is not a criterion but an infinitely amorphous variable (affixed to the decision by way of subsequent justification).
In the sluggish intellectual waters of the Family Division, no thought has yet been given to whether a child’s benefit would be better advanced:
a) by a system that allowed the resident parent to deprive a child of material contact with a non-resident parent (or ‘father’) for good reason
b) by a system which allows the resident parent to deprive a child of all or all material contact with a non-resident parent for no or no material reason.
Since these two ‘models’ give rise to different outcomes (children with two parents or children with one parent; parents with children or parents without children) on a wide scale, the oversight is odd.
Further, since the two definitions are opposite to one another in one of the most important matters concerning children (should they be raised as quasi-orphans?) then if one model is represents working towards the ‘benefit’ of the child’, the other represents working towards his detriment .
Charles Pragnell, 25 Aug 2011:
(Charles Pragnell is an independent social care management consultant, a Child/Family Advocate, and an Expert Defence Witness – Child Protection, and has given evidence to Courts in cases in England, Scotland, and New Zealand).
www.fassit.co.uk
“That is because we still adhere to this term “In the best interests of the child”, which was first coined by the German government in the 1940s as a euphemism to justify and excuse their maltreatment of children. The term has no universally and commonly agreed criteria and is extremely highly subjective, and completely dependent on the beliefs, values, and attitudes of the adult making such a decision. It is their personal beliefs, values, and attitudes which drive social workers in their decision-making regarding the competence or otherwise of parents to care for their children, and the process becomes a matter of persuading the Courts that their beliefs, values, and attitudes are correct.
The children become merely a secondary party to this process. The quality of parenting of children can only be evaluated by very careful and objective observation and study of how parents meet their children’s physical, emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual needs and any determinations regarding a child must be demonstrably and measurably to the benefit of the child.
Here at Megalalert, we and our many supporters are not saying that the Family Court System in the state of Maine and many other states can be compared to the ways of the Nazi’s or to Hitler’s regime. We are just pointing out where the phrase “In the Best Interest of the Child” came from and strongly recommending that there be a change!
I commend megalalert for researching the origin of the expression "in the best interest of the child". It is a well done posting.
ReplyDeleteI, too, react negatively when I hear this too often used expression.
Keep up the good work. I plan on being at the meeting on the 31st and hope to meet both of you there