Parents decry state 'tyranny'
"And this is just the first wave," promised Terry Trease, a Salt Lake parental rights advocate who walked the flanks of the crowd arming them with fliers and encouragement not to stop now but to become part of Phase II of Accountability Utah's parental rights reform. People need to wake up, he said. "Child protection in Utah is state-run tyranny."
Saying such things isn't rabble-rousing, said Trease and other parents who are convinced that during the past 15 years the so-called protectors of the family have become the abusers themselves, lobbing "for the sake of the child" bombs into the family unit, then ducking behind the ramparts of self-serving government policy.
"The battle has begun," Davis County activist Dave Hansen said. "They like to say the Jensens are an isolated incident, but they're just one in a long train of examples of the state being out of control, so out of control people don't know for sure who their children belong to."
The state isn't trying to take anyone's children but to protect them from abuse and neglect, said Mollie McDonald, the court-appointed guardian for Parker Jensen, the 12-year-old Sandy boy who has become the poster boy of the parents' rights reform effort in the past two weeks. He has been diagnosed with cancer, and his parents have been court-ordered to get him chemotherapy. They don't believe the cancer diagnosis, and they don't want chemotherapy.
Despite a settlement reached Friday in the Jensen case, it is viewed as the latest mark in a battle line that started being drawn 15 years ago when the specter of child abuse was becoming a permanent resident in the American psyche, and government was organizing child protection services to root it out.
Everyone seemed to have an abuse story in the mid-1980s, and government in the early 1990s adopted the strongest possible tactics for protecting children. Utah lawmakers ranked the most serious forms of it in the same criminal class as murder by removing the statute of limitations for victims.
For years, no stance against abuse was too tough to take, said former Rep. Matt Throckmorton, R-Springville.
"The pendulum swung too far," said Throckmorton, who spent his two-year tenure toe-to-toe with the Utah Attorney General's Office over how deep that agency should be involved in child protection cases. "Certainly, no one wants to let abuse go on, but a lot of falsely accused parents got their families permanently wrecked over the years."
"That's what parents are so upset about," said Jolaine Moffett, co-founder of Citizens for Child Protection Reform. "The system created this big monolith and then defies its own rules by violating falsely accused parents' constitutional rights.
Comments
- Jazz in back of line for free agents 1:19 a.m.
- Okur signs two-year extension 1:18 a.m.
- Marion to Mavs, Stackhouse to Griz 1:16 a.m.
- Price for redistricting plan challenged 1:04 a.m.
- Basketball campers learn service 1:02 a.m.
- Parra fills in as speedskating coach 12:57 a.m.
- Center of Excellence aims to help 12:54 a.m.
- Royals rally past Red Sox 12:49 a.m.
- Phillies' offense bails out Moyer again 12:48 a.m.
- RSL hoping to earn crowd's support 12:46 a.m.
- Send Boozer to the Bulls?
- Stadium of Fire flag burning was fake
- Restaurant destroyed by fire
- Okur signs two-year extension
- A primer for the 6th Potter film
- Jazz won't meet Lopez on Europe trip
- Blazers may offer Millsap a contract
- MWC, WAC rushed into BCS
- 'The Story of R.C. Willey'
- Jazz in back of line for free agents
- Bronco collecting a galaxy of recruits
138 - Letters: Palin mistreated
136 - Teachers struggle with district cuts
134 - Blazers may offer Millsap a contract
122 - Send Boozer to the Bulls?
82 - Fairness of BCS debated
81 - Moon landing: Let's hear from you
73 - Chaffetz eyes challenging Bennett
72 - Services bids farewell to Jackson
70 - Letters: Time for a revolution
69
As more and more dads are put out of work in this economy, I've been...
The photographs are mysterious, brooding, dark. They show dimples and...
Blazers get the unbalanced trade they seek while not signing Millsap away...
Ricky Bobby - THE JAZZ DO NOT WANT TO TAKE BACK EQUAL SALARIES. They want to...
Despite the fact that logging has all but stopped in the pacific northwest...
My understanding of what FAIR is trying to do, is to provide well thought out...
Jazz will resign Milsap. If they don't it will be ahuge mistake. First off,...
I was waiting for it to be burned on the big metal structure right by the...
Hey Ute fan... the Utes had a good season. And keep throwing that BCS bowl...
Tyrus Thomas is in the last year of his contract too so what is the point for...
CougarKeith, people don't know how to properly retire the flag, what they did...
It is just talk but since it was brought up: IF we can get Prizbilla &...



You can be the first to comment on this story.