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July 2, 2004
Mother Sues State for
Racketeering: She Says Officials Kidnapped Her Children
By Diane Bukowski
The Michigan Citizen
DETROIT — Starletta Banks has not seen her three children, Darius,
now 11, Danielle, now 7, and Darren, now 5, since the year 2000, but
she says she is determined to have them come home again to her
loving arms.
“It’s been devastating,”
said Banks. “It’s been hard holding jobs and eating and sleeping.
You can’t even imagine the Christmases and birthdays I’ve spent.
When we get them back, whenever that is, it will be Christmas
because I’ve gone on buying presents for them all this time.”
Starletta Banks
displays pictures of her children.
She hasn’t seen them since 2000.
Banks says her children were
essentially kidnapped by Governor Jennifer Granholm, Attorney
General Mike Cox, and various judges, administrators and doctors to
be used as “cash cows” for the benefit of the state’s child foster
care system. That system is largely farmed out to private non-profit
agencies who receive federal funds for each child. She says the
alleged kidnappers have profited because they sit on the boards of
agencies in that system.
On June 6, Banks filed suit
in U.S. District Court under federal racketeering and civil rights
statutes, demanding her children’s return, and calling for an
immediate investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the
alleged misuse of federal funds by the State of Michigan in hers and
thousands of other foster care cases.
“I’m going to fight them
with everything I’ve got, until my children are returned to me, and
I want other families to join me,” said Banks, who, so far, is
representing herself in the case. Banks resides with her mother and
father Barbara and Leo Banks, who are supporting her suit. The suit
was inspired by a similar action in Los Angeles County that opened
an investigation into 30,000 foster care cases there.
“Plaintiff was severely
damaged and her family destroyed by the kidnap under color of law of
her three children,” reads Banks’ complaint. “Defendants used the
Michigan state foster care system as a ‘child for profit’ machine,
with eighty percent of their caseload contracted out to private
agencies who are paid federal monies by the case. . . Defendants sat
on the boards of agencies that received federal monies for the ‘care
and custody’ of children, while actively participating in, or making
judicial decisions on cases involving child custody or termination
of parental rights including plaintiff’s case.”
Banks’ parental rights to
her children were terminated by Wayne County Juvenile Court Judge
Patricia Campbell in October, 2000, after a series of events that
began two years earlier when Banks took Danielle, then an infant, to
Henry Ford Hospital after she fell out of bed. (See “Attorney
General Seeks to Take Children,” Michigan Citizen Mar. 12-18, 2000.)
The baby sustained a skull
fracture, but the hospital contended at the time that other X-rays
showed evidence of old rib fractures. Subsequent studies, however,
showed no such old fractures. The family now believes that
Danielle’s X-rays were initially mixed up with those of another
infant.
At the time, the court took
temporary custody of Banks’ two children. Her third child was born
later and also taken based solely on the accident with Danielle. The
children were assigned to Orchard’s Children’s Services, where
workers eventually recommended that they be returned to Banks after
she successfully completed a parenting course at Black Family
Development.
The workers said the
children had been traumatized by their removal from their mother,
repeatedly cried and asked for her, and were scared of being left
alone.
However, after an Orchard’s
worker withdrew the recommendation for return, Campbell terminated
Banks’ rights, despite the fact that no charges of abuse or neglect
had ever been brought against her. Banks’ parents were later
appointed as guardians, but that status was terminated in 2001 and
the children were returned to foster care.
Banks appealed to the
Michigan Court of Appeals, which ruled against her in July of 2002.
The State Supreme Court has since refused to hear the case.
Banks contends that numerous
state officials who participated in the termination of her parental
rights also are members of non-profits connected with the foster
care system, creating a blatant conflict of interest. They are cited
as individual defendants in her case.
They include appeals court
judge Kathleen Jansen, one of the three judges who denied her
appeal, who sits on the Macomb County Child Abuse Neglect
Information Council, and Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver, who
chairs the “Governor’s Task Force on Children’s Justice and Family
Independence Agency.”
Although she was not the
attending physician, Dr. Annamaria Church testified against Banks on
behalf of Henry Ford Hospital. Besides heading the pediatric
residency program at the DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids,
she is also involved with the state’s non-profit Children’s Trust
Fund, which doles out $70 million annually in funding to various
non-profit child welfare agencies including foster care programs.
“My lawsuit showed every
foster care case was tainted because officials in Los Angeles County
failed to disclose their conflicts of interest,” said Dr. Shirley
Moore, National Director of Legislative Affairs for the American
Family Rights Association.
In response to Moore’s
actions, as well as an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit and an
expose by the Los Angeles Daily News, a judge ordered a review of
foster care placements in that county.
“Up to half of the 75,000
children in the systems and adoptive homes were needlessly placed in
a system that is often more dangerous than their own homes because
the county receives $30,000 to $150,000 in state and federal
revenues for each placement,” wrote the Daily News.
Moore said the situation in
Michigan is far worse, because officials at all levels up to the
state are involved, and there is no recourse here except federal
court.
Press representatives for
Governor Granholm and the state’s Human Services Department would
not comment on Banks’ action due to the pending litigation, and the
attorney general’s representative would not comment due to
“attorney-client privilege.” An attorney for Dr. Annamaria Church
had not returned a call for comment by press time.
http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=75&twindow=&mad=&sdetail=1904
http://familyrights.us/news/archive/2005/july/mother_sues_state.htm
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