The outspoken Democrat, who has served the 10th Worcester District since 1980, is an expert on family and foster care issues. She graciously opened the testimony in her possession compiled from years of experience on investigating committees and laid out for Massachusetts News some of the ugly truth about a half-billion-dollar bureaucracy run amok in our state, called DSS. 

Massachusetts News 
By Edward G. Oliver 

December 1--The biggest issue is due process, there really isn’t any for families," says State Rep. Marie Parente. She explained that DSS has failed to abide by its original mandate, which is to seek "first" to preserve and strengthen families. Instead, the agency has been virtually trafficking in children by acting as an unaccountable police force, judge, jury and executioner – where the DSS equivalent of execution is termination of parental rights. Rep. Parente insists DSS must be made to adhere to established legal standards in order to have a fundamentally fair system that will keep abuses and mistakes to a minimum.  

The Representative, who chaired a subcommittee on the 1993 Governor’s "Blue Ribbon Commission on Foster Care" and holds a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master of Science Degree in Human Services, told Massachusetts News that DSS:  

• Can almost be viewed as autonomous because it acts as its own court system and law enforcement agency. 

• Has perverted the system by affording families accused by DSS fewer rights than rapists and murderers. 

• Relies on the word of incompetent, sometimes mentally unstable social workers to make the momentous decision to remove children from a home.  

• Places foster children with vendors where they are sometimes molested and physically hurt and foster children are not provided a lifeline to contact the outside if they are in danger. 

• Has social workers who are not doctors or nurses strip children naked for inspection on a home visit. 

• Practices job security by "fudging" cases to keep the caseload up.  

• Puts the impetus on getting money and not on doing what’s right for the kids. 

• Has transformed its original mandate from keeping families together to becoming an investigative "child protection agency." 

• Summarily removes caseworkers who try to tell the Committee the truth about what goes on. 

• Denies families due process when it:  

• Removes and holds children without evidence of a crime,  
• Denies the accused the right to know their accusers by using anonymous reporting,  
• Does not read parents their rights although their words are used against them in court,  
• Denies or delays giving a family its records to help defend themselves,  
• Either does not give notice of or delays a 72-hour "fair hearing" for the better part of a year although a child has been taken,  
• Does not give access to a court appointed lawyer until the day a family or child enters a DSS courtroom,  
• Routinely terminates parental rights with nothing more than a legal notice in the classifieds.  

Too Many Reports of Abuse 

Commenting on the astronomical number of 51As (the initial report of suspected abuse), Parente says, "DSS boasts that there are over 90,000 Chapter 119, 51A reports per year. And we all know the first 30,000 are thrown out. They’re frivolous and some of them are mischievous. With the second 30,000, there isn’t enough evidence. The last 30,000 are looked into a little deeper, and about 400 to 500 cases end up in court every year. 

"When a child is abused there are other statutes that come into play besides 51A. Those other laws are designed to keep the child safe. Those really are the child protection laws and that kind of abuse is a crime against the child. Therefore, if the abuse is serious enough to remove a child, then the case should be turned over to a law enforcement agency, where people who do have a degree and training and experience in criminal actions can process them. Out of the 400 cases that go to court, there are not 400 people a year going to jail because they abused children seriously enough to take the child out of the home. So something is wrong when you look at how many cases are processed and how many people are not punished. If a DA has rejected a case for lack of evidence, a child should be returned." 

Asked why children are often taken from good parents, she replied, "It’s because of the incompetent social worker. The social workers don’t know how to quantify what they see when they’re inexperienced, brand-new, just out of college and are assigned twenty cases. If I went into a home and I were a brand new social worker, I’d look around and say, ‘Hmmm is this abuse or not? I’m not really sure. I’ll take the kid. That way I’ll be safe.’ So I yank the kid, and then after that everybody believes me anyway. So the kid stays out of the home. The safest thing for a social worker to do who doesn’t know what he or she is doing because of a lack of experience is to yank the kid. You’re safe. That’s the one good decision you can make without knowing anything, because you can take the kid out and say, ‘Well, maybe the kid will get back in the home.’ But by then, some of the vendors making money in the case don’t want the kid to go back home. 

"I remember asking one commissioner, ‘Do you ever administer psychological testing to your social workers?’ ‘No, why would I do that?’ ‘Has it ever occurred to you that they may be as sick as the people they are interviewing? You don’t think that people bring their problems to the job?’ I knew one woman, and so I called the DSS office where she worked and asked, ‘Does this woman talk about child molesting all the time?’ They said ‘yes.’ ‘And does she bring in leaflets and books?’ She was doing it to an excess. She’d been molested as a child, and in every case she handled she saw child molestation whether it was there or not. So first of all, the social workers in DSS should undergo a battery of tests. And we should look at their qualifications. Some have a degree in something else and say they are working toward social work. If you had a degree in architecture and were out of work, you could get a job with DSS and become asocial worker." 

How Lawyers Can Protect Parents 

Parente lists some issues lawyers should look at to help their clients, such as "anonymous reporting, the fact that they don’t get the 72-hour notice, the fact that it’s not always an experienced social worker that is making the decision, and the fact that the fair hearing is not always fair, even when it’s conducted. I think DSS has to come to grips with the constitutional rights that people have. You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty; but in DSS, you’re guilty until proven innocent.  

"I’ve always thought that anonymous reporting, which DSS accepts, is contra the oldest constitution in the world. That’s the Massachusetts Constitution which predates the federal constitution. They tell the parents that they can’t tell them who the accuser is, but they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that. Everybody has the right to know who his accuser is. What if it’s your ex-lover? What if it’s your brother’s wife who doesn’t like you and reports you? You have a right to know who it is because only then will you be able to point out that it’s frivolous or that it’s just harassment.  

"When DSS plays court and plays detective and policeman, they never ever read rights. They contaminate the case. I’ve asked DSS a thousand times, ‘When your social workers knock on the door because they’ve received a complaint, do they say, "I’m here from DSS and what you say can be used against you?"’ Are the Miranda rights read? No, they’re not, but yet down the road everything they write ends up in court against the parents. 

"So, the whole thing is, maybe the child should be removed, maybe DSS is right in doing it. But damn it all, there’s a system, and, they can’t pervert that system."  

Asked if anything is happening to correct such blatant constitutional abuses, Parente replied, "No, they have powerful friends and I keep trying. I’ve been able with the help of a very wonderful committee of Reps and a wonderful researcher, Marian McCarthy, to make changes – over ten of them over the past ten years. We’ve made some major changes. But, this year with those things having been done, my big impetus, my big focus is going to be on due process, all those things that I mentioned to you." 

New Adoption Law Will Hurt 

Acknowledging that federal dollars play a big role in determining the fate of children, Parente points out that a federal adoption law passed in 1997 offering monetary incentives for speeding up adoptions has the states scrambling to comply. Massachusetts passed their hurry-up law this March, and she fears it will only exacerbate the problem for people with children caught in the system. 

"The federal government decided that they would reimburse states handsomely for processing adoptions within twelve months. If a child is removed from a home, it can take four or five months before a hearing is held. The law says it must be held in 72 hours, but it almost never happens in 72 hours. We’ve had complaints from the Cape Cod area… you’ll find four, five, six, seven months before they get a hearing. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking towards adoption. So with not much time left, the family has to try to scramble to save their child from adoption. If the social worker has erred in removing the child, the family is in serious trouble." 

In order for DSS to rush a child through to the adoption stage, DSS must be able to terminate parental rights. To illustrate her point, Parente had an aide bring the day’s newspapers into her office during our interview and opened a Boston Herald to the classified section. She found a tiny legal notice on page 74 titled, "Care And Protection Termination Of Parental Rights, Summons By Publication" and had this reporter read the words back to her. After the reporter read right past the key words buried in the legal terminology, she had to point them out: "The court may dispense the rights of the person named herein…" 

Parente says of the legal notice, "That may be the only notice and if that person isn’t around and lives in Connecticut or lives in Florida and doesn’t see that notice, he or she has lost their parental rights. You read it. They don’t need to give you any other notice to terminate your parental rights. It’s the most dangerous thing that I’ve ever seen. And you can find that in any newspaper any day. There are five, six, ten, or even twenty of them on some days. Parental rights are terminated this casually." 

She continues, "I blew this up once and sent it to all the members of the House. Look what they are doing! A court now doesn’t have to give you notice beyond this. That’s a blood relationship and the person may be absent for a lot of reasons. Maybe the person is in rehab; not every drug addict hates his kids, or her kids. Some of them are better than other parents. They abuse drugs and their own bodies but they love their kids. Who’s to say just because you put the kid in a foster home that the kid is safer? We’ve had a lot of abuses by foster parents. So, this is one of the most dangerous things they’ve changed. I’ve tried to fight it. And concomitant with that is another law that says that when a judge conducts a hearing, he doesn’t have to put his reasons in writing for terminating parental rights. He does not have to have proof that services were offered. What are we doing here? Are we stealing kids? I thought this was terrible. I don’t care how bad a mom or dad is. The system has to work, the system was created for people to have their rights. 

"That is the big issue for families. Now that the rush is on for adoption both by parents seeking adoptive children and by DSS because they get rewarded by the federal government, families are under pressure. I remember the last time when federal money speeded up the adoption machine and my colleagues said, ‘We’re gonna make a lot of money on this one.’ And so the impetus became getting money and not what’s doing right for the kids. How can you get a kid adopted in one year with that threat hanging over a family that can’t get a 72-hour hearing, sometimes for seven months? 

"They have perverted this system, and DSS has made itself a court. They are a court system, and nobody’s saying a word about this. Their fair hearings, their judgments, their accusations are all true, no matter who disagrees. They believe an incompetent social worker that they just hired. You go into court, the court always says to the DSS worker, ‘And what do you say about this?’ 

"So DSS holds all the cards. You stand accused by DSS who has 75 lawyers and you don’t have the resources to have good legal representation. You get a court-appointed lawyer that perhaps hasn’t been receiving money from the court. What kind of representation is that? What about the child getting a court-appointed lawyer that never sees the child? What about all those bench warm-ups where the judge calls them all up close and the DSS lawyer is practically directing the judge? Where is the justice for the family that has not abused the child and some inexperienced social worker has classified the case as neglect and abuse? So that’s why I think that something needs to be done. Due process, due process and due process."