In case you missed Family First on TVOne’s Good Morning show this morning and wanted to see it..

You can watch the interview here
starts at 2 hours 5 minutes. Has 4 minute ad part way through. You can change the format to Broadband if you want to by clicking on the option at the bottom of the screen. 2 blocks of 5-7 minutes.

It is worth watching as you can get an understanding of the ideology of two of the key promoters of the anti-smacking law, and how much further they may wish to intrude into family homes with their agenda – an agenda being driven by the UN throughout the world. Especially note the comments towards the end by the former Children’s Commissioner.

If you are concerned about the bias of the interview (as many people were who contacted us today) you can give the programme feedback on goodmorning@tvnz.co.nz

Kind regards

Family First NZ

http://www.familyfirst.org.nz

Is this happening or going to begin happening in New Zealand?

OUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK
Court blasts state’s strip-search of children
Social worker enters Christian school without cause, tells kids to remove clothing

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Two children who attended a private Christian school in Wisconsin were illegally strip-searched and had their constitutional rights violated by a state social worker, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Monday.

In Michael C. v. Gresbach, the court said state worker Dana Gresbach violated the children’s Fourth Amendment rights to freedom from unreasonable search when she entered Good Hope Christian Academy in Milwaukee, Wis., had the children pulled from the classrooms and told them to remove their clothing when she suspected the parents of spanking in February 2004.

Stephen Crampton, vice president of legal affairs and general counsel for Liberty Counsel, represented the parents of 8-year-old Ian and 9-year-old Alexis when they sued the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare and the caseworker.

“We are obviously pleased with the result, but candidly, we wish they had been more harsh on this renegade department that has ruined the lives of so many well-intentioned families already,” he told WND.

Crampton said this type of overstep is common among social workers, and they often do not give it a second thought.

“The social worker performed these strip searches as a matter of routine, estimating that in perhaps one-half of the 300 or so cases she handled every year she subjected kids to a partial disrobing,” he said. “In fact, she testified that she considered it so routine that she did not bother to discuss her intentions with her supervisor, even though she spoke to her on her way to the school.”

The state had several social workers file affidavits saying they would have followed the same procedure. Crampton said, “That is an alarming admission, and we suspect you would find a similar pattern in social service offices all over America.”

When Gresbach entered the school, she handed her business card to Principal Cheryl Reetz and told her she needed to see Ian and Alexis. Reetz asked the social worker if she could call the children’s parents, but Gresbach refused to allow it, saying she would contact them at a later time. The principal then asked if she could remain in the room to observe the interview, but she was denied permission to do so.

According to court documents, state officials claimed they made efforts to speak with the parents and stepparents of the children, but the visits never occurred.

Crampton said the mindset of most social workers is that parents are the problem.

“They go to great lengths to lock parents out of the process, treating them as the enemy, and ultimately doing more harm than good by driving something of a wedge between the children and their parents,” he said.

The social worker spent nearly 15 minutes alone in the room with each child. She searched Ian’s wrists for bruising and asked him to pull up his shirt. He complied, and she examined his back for suspicious marks. Gresbach then privately inspected Alexis, asking her to pull down her tights and lift up her dress. The worker was unable to find any sign of injury on the children’s bodies.

Gresbach’s behavior is not a one-time incident uncommon among social workers. In Doe v. Carla Heck, the court addressed an eerily similar child abuse investigation where children’s rights to freedom from unreasonable search were violated by the same state agency on the premises of another private educational facility.

“The problem almost always arises only in private schools,” Crampton said. “Public schools, as agents of the government, routinely roll over and give social workers access to any student they wish to see, provide a room for them, and in short serve up our children on a platter, without bothering to contact parents,” he said.

Gresbach claimed she was entitled to qualified immunity because her actions were reasonable under the Fourth Amendment; however, the court disagreed.

“We do not exempt child welfare workers from adhering to basic Fourth Amendment principles under non-exigent circumstances – to do so would be imprudent,” the court stated. “… we do not believe that requiring a child welfare caseworker to act in accordance with basic Fourth Amendment principles is an undue burden on the child welfare system, particularly when it is necessary to conduct an examination of a child’s body, which is undoubtedly ‘frightening, humiliating and intrusive’ to the child.”

Crampton said Christian families have the freedom to follow scriptures in administering corporal punishment and should not have their rights violated by power-hungry government officials.

“That social workers and bureaucrats don’t like it is no reason to allow the trampling of the constitutional rights of parents and their children,” he said. “It is the high privilege and high responsibility of parents to oversee the care, custody and education of their children, not the state.”

Hi Barbara,

UPDATE – Don’t get mad – get even..

even more signatures!

Petition 1. “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in NZ”
Due date for required signatures – June 29th
How many more signatures are needed –  only 15,000
Reason? – because of the potential invalidating of signatures, we would like to submit 20,000 more signatures than are needed – to avoid any doubt!!!

Petition 2. “Should the government give urgent priority to understanding and addressing the wider causes of family breakdown, family violence and child abuse in NZ”
Although this petition has now expired (and is currently being counted), it is still worth asking people to sign the 2nd petition while they sign the first petition. The number of signatures gained is a statement in itself.

DOWNLOAD PETITION FORMS

Thanks for your efforts on this. We have also commissioned Research on attitudes towards the anti-smacking law one year on from when it passed. Initial results make VERY interesting reading. More details to come next week.

Kind regards

Bob McCoskrie
National Director

www.familyfirst.org.nz | About us | Media Centre | Contact Us | Support Us |

Kaa wrong on smacking

http://www.thefamilyparty.org.nz/conference.php

15 May 2008. Family Party leader Richard Lewis has expressed disagreement with Dr Hone Kaa’s call for Maori to maintain opposition to smacking.

Mr Lewis says Dr Kaa’s description of all smacking as ‘violence against children’ is misleading and unhelpful towards the real issues of abuse.

“It’s disappointing when Maori leaders buy into the same rhetoric as politicians like Sue Bradford who brand all parents who smack their children as child abusers. We are all very concerned about child abuse. But there is a world of difference between responsible corrective discipline and the bash,” said Mr Lewis.

Dr Kaa has called a cross-party meeting with Maori politicians next week to talk about strategies to reduce Maori Child Abuse. Maintaining the repeal of Section 59 is high on the agenda for the hui.

“I wonder if Dr Kaa is going to invite contribution from Maori like myself who care deeply about child abuse but who don’t agree with his position on the smacking issue. Or is he merely propping up the flawed position of the Labour-led Government that most New Zealanders, including many Maori, happen to disagree with,” he added.

The Family Party will be holding a conference in Mangere this Saturday and will be signing up people to the petition calling for a referendum on the issue. The Family Party is calling for Section 59 of the Crimes Act to be reinstated.

Conference details: http://www.thefamilyparty.org.nz/conference.php

MEDIA RELEASE

9 May 2008

Study Shows Child Abuse Rate Affected by Family Structure

Australian research shows that children under five living with a non-biological or step-parent are up to 77 times more likely to die from a violence-related injury than those living with their biological families.

A review by Deakin University of more than 1000 coroners’ cases between 2000 and 2003 found that stepchildren are at dramatically raised risk of being victims of fatal accidents, as well as physical abuse and homicide.

Children living with single mothers were no more likely to die from either violent or unintentional causes than those in biological families. But children living with neither biological parent, such as foster children and state wards, faced up to a 102 times greater risk of death.

Study author and psychologist Greg Tooley said the study appeared to back up theories that parents were biologically driven to be extremely protective of their offspring, less so than step-parents – also known as the ‘Cinderella Effect’.

He also said that despite sensitivities over the issue, the findings should not be ignored and child-welfare agencies needed to take it into account when assessing at-risk cases.

“This research is very relevant to the NZ setting as we seek to tackle our unacceptable rate of child abuse,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “It doesn’t mean that every step-parent is a child abuser but it does highlight potential risk factors.”

“The misguided solution to child abuse was banning smacking, but this research reiterates what UNICEF, CYF and other international research has highlighted – that the likelihood of a child being injured or killed is associated with drug and alcohol abuse and family breakdown and structure.”

Family First NZ has a 5-point strategy to deal with the real causes of child abuse. www.stoptheabuse.org.nz

ENDS

For More Information and Media Interviews, contact Family First:

Bob McCoskrie JP – National Director

Tel. 09 261 2426 | Mob. 027 55 555 42

FULL RESEARCH:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-4HWXM5P-3&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6e341e4ccddb27ab5e89ec19dfca5c00

http://christiannewsbulletin.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/parents-losing-custody-for-homeschooling-kids/

Parents losing custody for homeschooling children

A German couple already being threatened with jail time because they have been homeschooling their children say their nation has taken a turn for the worse, with a new federal law that gives family courts the authority to take custody of children “as soon as there is a suspicion of child abuse,” which is how that nation’s courts have defined homeschooling.“The new law is seen as a logical step in carving up family rights after a federal court had decided that homeschooling was an abuse of custody,” said a letter from Jurgen Dudek to officials with the U.S.-based Home School Legal Defense Association, an international advocacy organization in support of homeschooling.

It was about a year ago when WND reported a prosecutor in the German state of Hesse was seeking three-month prison terms for the Jurgen Dudek and his wife, Rosemarie, the parents of six children, even after they already had paid a series of fines.

Officials with Netzwork-Bildungsfreiheit, a German homeschool advocacy group, said the prosecutor, unsatisfied with the fines, wanted 90-day terms in custody for the parents.

The latest letter from the family described the new law as granting various local social services agencies vast new powers, especially the “Jugendamt” offices, which are responsible for looking into situations if there are allegations of “child abuse.”

“They have in effect been authorized to give expert evidence in court which the family judge has to follow … The withdrawal of parental custody as one of the methods for punishing ‘uncooperative’ parents thus is made even easier,” the letter said.

In recent years Germany has established a reputation for cracking down on parents who object, for reasons ranging from religious to social, to that nation’s public school indoctrination of their children.

WND has reported several times on custody battles, children being taken into custody, and families even fleeing Germany because of the situation.

Now comes the new law that, according to Dudek’s letter, has, “understandably, led to a kind of panic among the homeschool community in a country where ever since Hitler’s times it has been against the law to educate your offspring completely without the state.”

Mike Donnelly, a lawyer for the HSLDA who has worked on situations that have developed in Germany, said it’s not exactly clear how the law will affect the situation.

However, “the fact that Germany’s Federal Government would pass a law taking away due process when it comes to taking children away from their parents just because they are not attending school points to the sheer hostility of the German government towards homeschooling,” he told WND.

“The German Jugendamt system is under increasing scrutiny by the European Union as well as other international organizations because of the sheer numbers of custody cases in proportion to actual substantiated abuse and in relation to the overall population,” he said. “For homeschoolers, the Jugendamt represents the tip of the spear in the government’s persecution of parents who simply wish to educate their children privately at home – a freedom protected by governments of virtually all free societies.”

He said as a result of the combination of last year’s German court ruling that it is an abuse of parental rights to keep children away from public schools and the new plan, “the Jugendamt is now the most powerful and frightening force in repressing homeschooling in Germany.

“Families in Germany are being put under increasing pressure to stop homeschooling or face losing custody of their children just because they homeschool – instead many families flee the country. This reprehensible behavior violates the natural rights of parents and children and must be opposed by all free societies,” he said.

Practical Homeschool Magazine has noted one of the first acts by Hitler when he moved into power was to create the governmental Ministry of Education and give it control of all schools, and school-related issues.

In 1937, the dictator said, “The Youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.”

Dudek told the HSLDA that, “Without wanting to overdramatize things this move by the justice ministry … can be compared to Hitler’s law of empowerment … That law gave him a free hand to turn Germany into the dictatorship it has become so ‘famous’ for.”

“Homeschoolers will be among the first to feel the wrath of our quasi-GESTAPO for the young: there is an explicit paragraph in the law dealing with the Jugendamt’s duty to enforce ’schulpflicht,’ the ‘punishment’ for [homeschooling] automatically being the withdrawal of parental custody,” he wrote.

He said although some officials had not yet signed the law, it appeared unstoppable.

In his own family’s case, he must appear in court on June 18.

One of the higher-profile cases on which WND has reported was that of a teen who was taken by police to the psychiatric ward because she was homeschooled.

The courts ruled it was appropriate for a judge to order police officers to take Melissa Busekros, 15 at the time, into custody during January 2007.

Officials later declined to re-arrest after she simply fled state custody and returned to her family.

Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has commented on the issue on a blog, noting the government “has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion….”

Drautz said schools teach socialization, and as WND reported, that is important, as evident in the government’s response when a German family wrote objecting to police officers picking their child up at home and delivering him to a public school.

“The minister of education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling,” said a government letter. “… You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers. … In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement.”