Statement of Jody Wardell, Enon, Ohio

My name is Jody Wardell.  I have had extensive dealings with the Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) as a foster and adoptive parent in Ohio and as a military family stationed in Montana.  I have had positive and negative experiences with social workers but the negative experiences left indelible impressions upon me insomuch that I have gone back to school to obtain a social psychology degree. 

As you read through my testimony, here are a few things I would like you to remember:  1) I am not testifying to commiserate or complain but to ask that this committee simply begin by asking the right questions about our most vulnerable children; 2) Clearly understand that my views do not represent any group or religious affiliation.  3) What I say and what I do is purely out of love for this country, love for freedom, and love of the legislative process.  I alone am responsible for my opinions in my effort to exercise freedom of speech; and 4) my opinions are to express deep concern over possible constitutionally incorrect policies and procedures that are often promoted in legislative efforts under the guise of saving children.

My goal is to re-establish a standard regarding family as the fundamental and essential unit of society.  It is my desire to encourage you to search for universal truth, not merely believe “experts” touted by the department; experts who often line their pockets with taxpayer dollars only to conclude that “more studies” are needed.  

At my own expense I have been working to expose fraud, waste, and abuse within the Montana DPHHS Child and Family Service Division (CFSD) for 3 years.  I wrote and produced my own newsletter to keep Montana legislators informed and continue to work out of Ohio to help keep information circulating.  I also took more than 10 telephone calls during a 2 and a half hour talk radio show in Kalispell, Montana dealing with issues of abusive social work power.

Current social work abuse and neglect in Montana is undermining family as the fundamental unit of society, not only in terms of the trauma caused to the maltreated parents and children through false allegations, but also in gross abuse of taxpayer dollars.  The cost economically includes 1) the funds spent on child welfare services based upon false allegations and 2) the increasingly large sums of money dedicated to addressing issues based upon “precautionary principles” of “possible” consequences of abuse and neglect which in reality, simply do not exist.

Critics of the Montana DPPHS CFSD have begun to turn public attention toward what appears to be a DPPHS systemic problem.  A cultural problem that apparently has been ignored by Montana DPHHS bureaucrats for years:  Social workers can and do lie due to personal issues of dysfunction which cause maladjusted perceptions of abuse, compassion fatigue and burnout.

To date, there are no in-depth or rigorous financial analyses being conducted to give taxpayers a solid understanding of excessive costs of social workers maltreating the falsely accused, (i.e., the costs of not preventing social worker abuse and neglect) let alone a comparative study to the economic savings associated with preventing social worker abuse and neglect.   

It is a fact that most social workers would have Anne Sullivan arrested for child abuse by today’s standards for what could be, might be, or possibly be abuse.  Many would charge her with psychological, emotional, and physical abuse or the potential for abuse regarding the pioneering work she did with Helen Keller.   It is a fact that under current state and federal laws parents are often accused of abuse for using a variety of healthy, normal, traditional teaching techniques.  Doctors, School Teachers, Therapists, and even Psychologists feel threatened that they could be charged with a Felony for failure to report this same kind of “abuse” if they do not subscribe to a DPHHS social worker theory.

Anyone can be accused anonymously and never face the accuser, even if it was a therapist who heard the information from a second hand source.   Whether or not it was true, a child could be removed from school or a home, and then be listed in all “data” as “vulnerable” for years. 

What follows are but a few publicly documented problems.  I believe this shows just how skewed Montana DPHHS social work data is on “vulnerable” cases.  These types of problems are truly the tip of the iceberg when it comes to alleged corruption in current trend of what I believe is a new emergence of a civil religion, one in which there is no separation of church and state because of the combinations of power granted to the executive branch of government:

November 6, 2003 
Policeman fired over sex charges
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/news/stories/20031106/localnews/589954.html
Great Falls police officer Jeffrey Cathel was fired Wednesday amid charges that he had sex with two girls for several years.
Court documents describe on-going relationships with both victims, one of whom was 10 years old when Cathel first had sex with her and the other who gave birth to his son. Both victims are now adults.

http://www.gftribune.com/news/stories/20030803/localnews/1367.html

Woman battles to regain babies confiscated by Alaska, Montana
Montana took her newborn son, Joseph, from the Benefis East nursery Monday, just 14 hours after he was born. He is 6 days old. Brown may have a chance to regain custody of the boy in a court hearing Thursday at 11 a.m. before state District Judge Julie Macek. "By that time, my milk's going to be dried up," she said. "They really don't care."

April 9, 2003 - Social worker pleads guilty to buying cocaine from client
A former social worker admitted Wednesday that she bought cocaine from one of her clients. Rita Watson Bennet, 49, pleaded guilty to possession of dangerous drugs and official misconduct. The Bozeman woman gave curt answers to the questions put to her by District Court Judge Nels Swandal at a change...

bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2003/04/09/news/drugsbzbigs.txt

July 17, 2002 - "http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2002/07/17/news828.txt">Social worker pleas innocent to buying drugs from client
A Bozeman social worker pleaded innocent in district court Monday to charges that she coerced one of her clients to supply her with cocaine. Rita Watson Bennet, 48, faces three drug-related felony charges as well as a misdemeanor charge of official misconduct, for allegedly committing a crime in her...
bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2002/07/17/news828.txt

May 31, 2002 - Social worker charged with extorting cocaine from client
A case worker employed by a state welfare agency paid a Gallatin County man $300 for a bag of cocaine after telling him she would let him return home to his family if he supplied her with drugs, according to documents filed Thursday in a Bozeman court. Rita Bennet, a 48-year-old Bozeman woman, was a...
bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2002/05/31/news49701.txt

http://www.missoulanews.com/Archives/News.asp?no=942
Who Guards the Guardians? by RUTH THORNING, Photos by CHAD HARDER
Originally Published: 5/4/2000 In the Feature-News section

…This teenager knows what she is talking about. A few years ago, the state’s Child Protective Services (CPS, then known as the Department of Family Services) came to her school and swept her and her sisters away from her family. They were apart for three and a half months. She remembers it vividly. The scars run deep. They will always hurt.

Montana State Supreme Court reverses lower court decision

The absence of an adjudication prior to approval of a treatment plan renders the statutory requirements of § 41-3-609(1)(f), MCA, unsatisfied.  The District Court failed to comply with statute and provide fundamentally fair procedures at each stage of the termination proceedings, as required by due process, thus erring in terminating R.W.’s parental rights.

How does one expose the level of corruption that appears to exist in the Department of Health and Human Services Division of Child and Family Services?

• Montana DPHHS seems to be a closed, society of opinion and gossip, which has power to self-exempt and justify abuses of power in the name of “saving children.”
• The social workers who control the power also control the way information is presented and interpreted, whether or not it is true or correct.
• There seems to be no way to get anyone up the DPHHS chain of command to listen because social workers appear to operate in a closed society of friends so no one really reads all of the documentation in the credible files because they rely on “nutshell” history dictated by groupthink phraseology.
• Therefore data that has been collected for Montana to receive the federal funding it depends upon is and has been skewed and incorrect for years.

Allow me to show you how easily it is to be deceived by “credible” record and file keeping, let alone data collected based upon false reality worlds:  (See: The Social Animal by Elliot Aronson and The Color Code, by Dr. Taylor Hartman)

SOCIAL COGNITION:  The ability to select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions and very often done using subjective opinion based on personal experiences of:  “what is bad and what is good?”

The right questions then become:

What is the social workers personal history of “abuse” and what type of personality are they?  Addictive?  Emotional? Immature?  Psycho-sociopath? 

If a rape victim or physical abuse victim goes into counseling to “help others,” how much baggage is brought to social cognition based upon the trauma?  How recovered is the social workers ability to reason and not misinterpret normal behavior as “possible” abuse?

COGNITIVE MISERS:  Burned out social workers simplify and reduce information overload.  They must be watched for “social cognition patterns” in language as “experts” interact with one another.  Because social work lends itself to civil religious belief that “we all are capable of abuse,” it becomes important to look at nods, gestures, lack of eye contact or a glance away, and repetitive phrases that are used as information decoys since they are key rituals used in social work communication.

The right questions are:  

What happens then in the narrative of the case file?  Once a lie is told, like the game of gossip, how does it get repealed from the “credible” files?  How does the social worker interpret body language in relationship to herself?  What types of manipulations do social workers interject into their writings while editing out their social cognition patterns from the equation?

SOCIAL CONTEXT:  Files are colorfully painted with social worker opinion, evident in redundant psycho-freak terminology, steeped in psycho cultural and social babble. 

The right questions become:  Could it be that too many social work teams are stacked with group-thinkers or like-minded individuals or are teams of “experts” being formed, not rotated frequently enough to challenge opinions or facts? 

One of the first things that I teach victims of DPHHS abuse is to learn the psycho-phraseology of the social work community with whom they are forced to work.  Social workers have a language all their own, and one must truly pinpoint social worker definitions of what “is” is. 

COMPARISON OF ALTERNATIVES: Is the information / data framed or posed to help you compare possibilities by reaching out to you through emotional stimulation or factual evidence?  What is the social worker “hook” and is it the only thing that keeps drawing your attention?  If the “hook” was a lie or incorrect perception, does that affect the comparison?

CONTEXT ACCESSIBILITY:  Does the situation appear to be better or worse than it is, depending upon to what it is compared?  What is the decoy? How and when is information placed?  What is the first and last thing you remember?

PRIMING:  The order of the information to preface and enhance the punch line the social worker wants you to hear.  Note the order of information as it graduates to frenzy, and then note the accessible information based on the social workers experience.  Are you traumatized by the emotional might be’s or is there clear evidence present?

Example:  Your Honor, Mother was on time for the visit but, there was no warmth in the visit, and remember the house was dirty and she might be suffering from Munchausen by Proxy therefore, well, draw your own conclusions, because the sky is falling, the sky is falling, and it will hit you on the head if you do not grant me power to save this one child…because I am the only one who cares about this child…

If a parent is falsely accused of abuse do you understand the stress in the lives of the family members? 

Asking the right questions:

Asking the right questions of DPHHS is paramount to getting the right data if you are to serve the truly vulnerable.  Here are few that might be of some value:

• What law or rules state what child abuse is not?
• Are social workers required to advise the accused of their Miranda Rights like the police must do?
• If children are to been “seen, heard, and believed” then what are the administrative rules that define what one is to do with a child who is a pathological liar?
• Do social workers have a personal history of dysfunction that might cloud their judgment? I.e. how many are married, divorced and how many marriages, shack ups, with or without children?
• How many social workers uphold the traditional family, father, mother, and children, as the fundamental unit of society?
• Are they qualified to meet the needs of families with different values from their own life styles and moral standards?
• Is there a break down on the length of time a social worker remains in DFS, from interns to administrators?
• Are they given regular psychological evaluations to rule out compassion fatigue, compassion burnout, or victim-over identification problems?
• What kind of personal mental health training is given to social workers and who qualifies, teaches, and determines adequate training?
• Is there a pattern of personalities and frequented teams of individuals that appear to be a combination not friendly to families?  I.e., outside agencies frequented, therapists frequented or does the agency not prefer certain therapists because they are too family oriented?
• Does DPHHS admit or confirm human error in their agency or do they justify wrong doing with “doing the very best” they can do?
• How many quit the department because no one up the chain has done anything to stop rogue social work in the last ten years?
• How often are parents told, "Good luck, cut your losses and run" once the agency is involved?
• Can confidentiality really be maintained by teams of volunteers or treatment teams yet parents are not given the same information as these strangers due to confidentiality or “need” for the child’s privacy?
• Why is forcibly removing a child not considered arrest?
• What internal disciplinary procedures are codified or do social workers have more compassion for their own? 
• How thick is the wall of silence within the agency?

Anger or Righteous Indignation?

Several years ago a dear friend of mine told me that she never knew she could annoy someone, until she met me.  She could tell when I was finished listening to her or tired of her.  To say I was surprised at her comment would be an understatement.  I know I annoy people.  How was it she, after 40+ years of living on this earth, just figured out she could annoy someone?

How is it abusive social workers think they are not annoying?  Well, simply put, like true abusers do, they sit in this state called "denial."

Because social workers deal daily with “garbage in,” because they are steeped in looking for, searching for, and in justifying abuse allegations they very often fail to recognize their own emotional dysfunction or mental instability in producing “garbage out” accusations, suppositions, and rhetoric.  True social work abusers fail to or are incapable of sincerely recognizing their own irritating faults, which can and do drive normal people into sore frustrations, and genuinely concerned individuals over the edge.  Abusive social worker provocations are then misinterpreted as anger in the falsely accused. 

What I'm suggesting is: we each can, have, or will annoy someone in our life span.  Social Workers, many who all too often come with excess dysfunctional baggage, might be prone to picking at normal, healthy individuals thereby creating a dysfunctional situation when none initially existed prior to social work "intervention." 

It is easy then to see how a DPHHS CFSD superior might ignore, deny, excuse, and belittle legitimate concerns regarding true abuse of social work practices in the CFSD.   Dealing with a "team" of social workers might very well be the reason a falsely accused individual is "emotional" or "anxiety ridden” or even "sorely frustrated." 

Social Workers do escalate problems with arrogance, rudeness, and lack of compassion toward those they are to be preserving in families.  Social Workers do commit abuse or omit meeting the needs of the very souls who come to them for help.  Social workers often become the abusers, falsely bearing witness to things as they appear from narrow minded, biased opinions because they think they "know it all."  They too often believe their "training" makes them invulnerable.  As team members, they can become subject to groupthink hysteria.

The victim of false allegations has nothing to do but worry about clearing his or her name in order to get a child back.  It can be emotionally draining.  It is absolutely demoralizing.  It is physically consuming.  The victim of social worker abuse might be broke, broken hearted, and broken somewhat in spirit, especially when no longer knowing in whom to trust.

Who do you trust when the lies and deceits are unveiled?  Your therapist?  Your neighbor? 

When you read your "credible file" with ambiguous language or subjective opinion, no facts, how do you feel?  What do you feel when your words are twisted, grossly misrepresented, and even falsely attributed it to you?

Therefore what?  Stop ignoring what you hear from the victims of social work abuse!  Stop telling victims of multiple character assassinations and emotional rape to calm down.  Think about their trauma of having to, for years, retell the horrific story to everyone they meet, hoping that one person will have the guts to take them at face value. 

Remember: Too many social workers believe that they are above reproach, without guile, somewhat filled with arrogant superiority for having "overcome" their sick, personal and family dysfunctions (all too often worn as a "Red Badge of Courage").

Most victims of DPHHS did not need anger management until they stared into the faces of the dysfunctional social worker with her/his "team" of closed consensus puppets. 

Perhaps now, when looked upon in this prudential light, the anger of the victims might be then classified more in the line of righteous indignation.  If so, ought not the greater part of compassion be exercised unto the wounded and weary victims of social work abuses, valiantly sacrificing all to save a beloved child from the clutches of such wretched practices?

To summarize information:

1. Current social work abuse and neglect is undermining family as the fundamental unit of society, not only in terms of the trauma caused to the maltreated parents and children through false allegations, but also in gross abuse of taxpayer dollars. 
2. The cost economically includes a) the funds spent on child welfare services based upon false allegations and b) the increasingly large sums of money dedicated to addressing issues based upon “precautionary principles” of “possible” consequences of abuse and neglect which in reality, simply do not exist.
3. The problem with launching another study to collect data from an organization comprised of DPHHS maintained and controlled “confidential” files is that data can be manipulated without ever being adequately reviewed or challenged within the social context of DPHHS social work culture. 
4. Excessive damage is being done to families and children through false allegations.  Children are languishing in the government warehousing process while others are being killed and maimed because too many social workers suffer from misplaced loyalties or cognitive misers suffering from emotional instability.

Therefore asking the right questions becomes imperative to seeking solutions lest the new civil religion of social work become the cultural downfall of society.  After all, social worker job security is not the fundamental unit of society.  Family is.

Please feel free to call upon me to be of service at any time.  I welcome the opportunity to be of help in this process of protecting the most vulnerable citizens in our society.