Signed.

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Brian Hawes was murdered by his mothers new boyfriend. His mother not only participated in abuse of Brian and his brother, but ordered it, watched it and abused them herself according to the criminal complaint.  She has only been charged to date with 1 count of failure to prevent and will only face a maximum of 6 years.
The citizens of Racine are outraged (as you will be able to see by the comments posted online through the newspaper). Many emails and calls have gone to the District Attorney to demand more charges (the criminal complaint would reflect these charges could be easily proven). The Human Services/ Child Protection Unit failed to protect these kids, numerous complaints were called into HSD 1 just a week before his murder. The agency that is supposed to protect children didn't, no one followed up removing the boys from the home. Brian would still be alive is someone at HS/CPS had taken action by removing them. Please sign the petition and forward it to everyone you know, people are starting to listen, don't let this little guy or his brother down, we wants justice and accountability.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/72/justice-for-brian-hawes-protection-for-all-wi-children

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As months passed, Rob's mother became increasingly unhappy. "My whole dispute with them was, 'When is he going to get psychiatric treatment?'" she says. "I think they had to get to the root of his problems—like why was he so angry? Why was he so destructive? I really think they needed to go in his head somehow and figure this out." She didn't think the shocks were helping, and in 2002 she sent a furious fax demanding that Rob's electrodes be removed before she came up for Parents' Day. She says she got a call the next day from the executive director, Matthew Israel, who told her, "You don't want to stick with our treatment plan? Pick him up." (Israel says he doesn't remember this conversation, but adds, "If a parent doesn't want the use of the skin shock and wants psychiatric treatment, this isn't the right program for them.")

Rob's mother is not the only parent angry at the Rotenberg Center. Last year, Evelyn Nicholson sued the facility after her 17-year-old son Antwone was shocked 79 times in 18 months. Nicholson says she decided to take action after Antwone called home and told her, "Mommy, you don't love me anymore because you let them hurt me so bad." Rob and Antwone don't know each other (Rob left the facility before Antwone arrived), but in some ways their stories are similar. Antwone's birth mother was a drug addict; he was burned on an electric hot plate as an infant. Evelyn took him in as a foster child and later adopted him. The lawsuit she filed against the Rotenberg Center set off a chain of events: investigations by multiple government agencies, emotional public hearings, scrutiny by the media. Legislation to restrict or ban the use of electric shocks in such facilities has been introduced in two state legislatures. Yet not much has changed.

Rob has paid little attention to the public debate over his alma mater, though he visits its website occasionally to see which of the kids he knew are still there. After he left the center he moved back in with his parents. At first glance, he seems like any other 21-year-old: baggy Rocawear jeans, black T-shirt, powder-blue Nikes. But when asked to recount his years at the Rotenberg Center, he speaks for nearly two hours in astonishing detail, recalling names and specific events from seven or eight years earlier. When he describes his recurring nightmares, he raises both arms and rubs his forehead with his palms.

Despite spending more than three years at this behavior-modification facility, Rob still has problems controlling his behavior. In 2005, he was arrested for attempted assault and sent to jail. (This year he was arrested again, for drugs and assault.) Being locked up has given him plenty of time to reflect on his childhood, and he has gained a new perspective on the Rotenberg Center. "It's worse than jail," he told me. "That place is the worst place on earth."

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Photo: Larry Sultan

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Rob Santana awoke terrified. He'd had that dream again, the one where silver wires ran under his shirt and into his pants, connecting to electrodes attached to his limbs and torso. Adults armed with surveillance cameras and remote-control activators watched his every move. One press of a button, and there was no telling where the shock would hit—his arm or leg or, worse, his stomach. All Rob knew was that the pain would be intense.

Every time he woke from this dream, it took him a few moments to remember that he was in his own bed, that there weren't electrodes locked to his skin, that he wasn't about to be shocked. It was no mystery where this recurring nightmare came from—not A Clockwork Orange or 1984, but the years he spent confined in America's most controversial "behavior modification" facility.

In 1999, when Rob was 13, his parents sent him to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, located in Canton, Massachusetts, 20 miles outside Boston. The facility, which calls itself a "special needs school," takes in all kinds of troubled kids—severely autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar, emotionally disturbed—and attempts to change their behavior with a complex system of rewards and punishments, including painful electric shocks to the torso and limbs. Of the 234 current residents, about half are wired to receive shocks, including some as young as nine or ten. Nearly 60 percent come from New York, a quarter from Massachusetts, the rest from six other states and Washington, D.C. The Rotenberg Center, which has 900 employees and annual revenues exceeding $56 million, charges $220,000 a year for each student. States and school districts pick up the tab.

The Rotenberg Center is the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. Over its 36-year history, six children have died in its care, prompting numerous lawsuits and government investigations. Last year, New York state investigators filed a blistering report that made the place sound like a high school version of Abu Ghraib. Yet the program continues to thrive—in large part because no one except desperate parents, and a few state legislators, seems to care about what happens to the hundreds of kids who pass through its gates.

In Rob Santana's case, he freely admits he was an out-of-control kid with "serious behavioral problems." At birth he was abandoned at the hospital, traces of cocaine, heroin, and alcohol in his body. A middle-class couple adopted him out of foster care when he was 11 months old, but his troubles continued. He started fires; he got kicked out of preschool for opening the back door of a moving school bus; when he was six, he cut himself with a razor. His mother took him to specialists, who diagnosed him with a slew of psychiatric problems: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Rob was at the Rotenberg Center for about three and a half years. From the start, he cursed, hollered, fought with employees. Eventually the staff obtained permission from his mother and a Massachusetts probate court to use electric shock. Rob was forced to wear a backpack containing five two-pound, battery-operated devices, each connected to an electrode attached to his skin. "I felt humiliated," he says. "You have a bunch of wires coming out of your shirt and pants." Rob remained hooked up to the apparatus 24 hours a day. He wore it while jogging on the treadmill and playing basketball, though it wasn't easy to sink a jump shot with a 10-pound backpack on. When he showered, a staff member would remove his electrodes, all except the one on his arm, which he had to hold outside the shower to keep it dry. At night, Rob slept with the backpack next to him, under the gaze of a surveillance camera.

Employees shocked him for aggressive behavior, he says, but also for minor misdeeds, like yelling or cursing. Each shock lasts two seconds. "It hurts like hell," Rob says. (The school's staff claim it is no more painful than a bee sting; when I tried the shock, it felt like a horde of wasps attacking me all at once. Two seconds never felt so long.) On several occasions, Rob was tied facedown to a four-point restraint board and shocked over and over again by a person he couldn't see. The constant threat of being zapped did persuade him to act less aggressively, but at a high cost. "I thought of killing myself a few times," he says.

Rob's mother Jo-Anne deLeon had sent him to the Rotenberg Center at the suggestion of the special-ed committee at his school district in upstate New York, which, she says, told her that the program had everything Rob needed. She believed he would receive regular psychiatric counseling—though the school does not provide this.

As the months passe

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from - Mary D.

Alert: America is Abusing Childrens lives!   Focus:  Children Action Request Petition Location:  California, United States

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/-help-stop-child-executions

"PLEASE EVERYONE SIGN!" FWD TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS ! THE PETITION IS HANGING! COME ON LET'S GIVE IT A PUSH! THESE CHILDREN NEED YOUR HELP! THANKS FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT !    

Supporters of Juvenile Inmate Djinn Buckingham Sell His Artwork to Raise Money for Attorney's Fee - Associated Content
Society & Culture 

At the age of twelve, Djinn Buckingham was arrested and convicted for the house fire, and death of his cousin Sierra. He was charged with criminal homicide, one count of arson, six counts of irritated assault and six counts of reckless endangerment. His ...

California: Repeal Law Jailing Children for Life (Human Rights Watch, 14-1-2008)
Society & Culture 

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GALVESTON, Texas - A woman believed to be the mother of a 2-year-old whose body was found in Galveston Bay told police she and the girl’s stepfather beat and tortured the child to death, court documents show.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21977817/

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Hi All:

I will first start by apologizing if I have posted this in the wrong group and in the wrong thread.

I have started a Canadian Advocacy Group in Care 2 Connect, if anyone wishes to join us please dont' hesitate to contact me at my Care 2 email box.

This group will cover everything from Employment Insurance to Child Services and Family Law Issues for information and discussions,

Alice Daniels.

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No truer words were ever spoken Dougie.  I thought things were bad enough when I grew up.  The older I get the more foreign I feel on this planet.  It is frightening and beyond belief to see what has happened to our so called civilized "society". 

I do not have enough words or enough hours in a day to pray adequately for the attrocities that go on in "day to day" life anymore.

The fight against these things go on regardless. 

Thank you all for noting these stories and praying for the children.

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ALL are Noted!!  Thanks for posting these!! 

As sad as these stories are....the children need to be heard too!!

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