angiEmedia

That disturbed mug you see to the left is foster mom Jennifer Ann Montag. Montag, a 40 year old Weber County, Utah foster mother, is another of the very caring foster moms chosen by the careful selection process used by a CPS agency. You’d think this process should be a snap in Utah. As you may know, Utah feels like a throwback to the days when crime didn’t pay and streets were safe. The citizens have strong family values and widespread involvement in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church. Personally, very nearly every Mormon I’ve ever known has been a polite, responsible, and decent person. Many of them are very devoted to community service, too. So you’d think that in Utah, finding good foster parents would be easier than in much of the United States.

Profile of a Caring Foster Mom: Jennifer Montag

The government did find a very caring foster parent in Montag, but not of the sort you might expect in Utah. Montag cared so much about her 14 year old foster son that she bedded him, allegedly had sex with him repeatedly, and when discovered threatened to kill herself if she was exposed and couldn’t be with her young love any longer.

(from Foster parent faces felony charges of sodomy, rape)

Weber County sheriff’s deputies were called to Montag’s home in Hooper on Wednesday and told she’d been caught by a family member in her bedroom with her 14-year-old foster son, who was naked, according to court records.

Montag allegedly confronted the family member after being discovered, court records state, telling him, “You will ruin our family. I could go to jail, and if I do, I will kill myself.”

Sheriff’s detectives interviewed the alleged victim, who informed them that he “would protect the family and not get anyone in trouble.” The teen said he’d spoken with Montag, and she’d told him not to disclose their alleged sexual contact to police, the charges state.

During an interview with Montag, detectives said she admitted to being in a bedroom with the naked teen, which they said would have amounted to lewdness. But investigators said a Division of Child and Family Services caseworker interviewed the boy’s sister, who also lived in the Montag home. The girl allegedly told the caseworker she was aware of a sexual relationship between her brother and Montag.

Montag’s husband told deputies the couple became foster parents about four months ago. He said he had called the family’s caseworker about possibly having the alleged victim and his sister removed from the home.

Yes, you read that correctly. The foster father wanted the children removed, but the CPS caseworker didn’t do anything about it. Even if he explained the children were at risk, why would they care? They want kids like these in the system to keep their federally funded Title IV-D profits flowing. Child abuse pays when you’re part of the government. You can make a long-term career out of it, just be sure to overreact to accusations and yank as many children away from their parents as possible.

That a woman sexually abuses children shouldn’t come as a surprise. Take a look at the web site Female Sex Offenders for hundreds of other examples of nationally publicized female sex offenders starting from January 2009.

Community Involvement to Stop CPS Abuses

Montag is an embarrassment to the residents of Utah, especially to the LDS Church which has its fingers in much of the government to a degree unlike most states. Yet despite church involvement, Utah CPS agencies behave like those in all the states. They abuse children and parents in their quest for Title IV-D funding to keep their agencies running and provide job security for their employees.

To this morally bankrupt and illegally abusive social workers and their management, profit is more important than protection. Perhaps CPS should stand for “Child Profiteering System” rather than “Child Protection Services”. Verifying that foster homes are safe for kids isn’t a priority. It doesn’t help make more money, so CPS doesn’t put adequate effort into it.

(from Woman accused of sex with teen foster son)

Liz Sollis, spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Human Services, said all foster children have been removed from Montag’s home.

“We act immediately in getting them to a safe place,” Sollis said.

Montag passed background screenings in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The check includes national criminal databases, as well as child abuse and elder abuse databases.

Problems like this aren’t going to change without the community fighting back against CPS and similar government agencies to make them actually focus on protecting children rather than profiteering by persecuting families. They must be forced to obey the laws, stop victimizing children, and to do all they can to keep children with their biological families where they are statistically safer than after CPS yanks them away and dumps them in foster homes or other facilities. Yet despite decades of investigations of these agencies all across the US and groups performing government oversight such as grand juries and newspapers calling for reforms, little ever changes. We can expect the Jennifer Montag abuses and even worse ones, with dead children killed by CPS actions, to continue until the outrage boils over to burn these agencies down and replace them with something that protects children without systematic corruption and abuse of power.

The Politics of Child Abuse in America

Publisher’s Description
Child abuse policy in the United States contains dangerous contradictions, which have only intenstified as the public slowly accepted it as a middle class problem. One contradiction is the rapidly expanding child abuse industry (made up of enterprising psychotherapists and attorneys) which is consuming enormous resources, while thousands of poor children are seriously injured or killed, many while being “protected” by public agencies. This “rediscovery” has also led to the frenzied pursuit of offenders, resulting in the sacrifice of some innocent people. Moreover, the media’s focus on the sensational details of high-visibility sexual abuse cases has helped to trivialize, if not commercialize, the child abuse problem. As such, child abuse has gone from a social problem to a social spectacle.

By the 1980s the child welfare system had become a virtual “nonsystem,” marked by a staggering turnover of staff, unmanageable caseloads, a severe shortage of funding, and caseloads composed of highly dysfunctional families (many with drug-related problems). To make room for these families, public agencies rationed services by increasingly screening-out child abuse reports which contained little likelihood of serious bodily harm.

In The Politics of Child Abuse in America, the authors argue that child abuse must be viewed as a public safety problem. This redefinition would make it congruent with other family-based social trends, including the crackdown on domestic violence. Children must have the same legal protection currently extended to physically and sexually abused women. This can be done by creating a “Children’s Authority,” which would have the overall charge for protecting children. Specifically, Children’s Authorities would have the responsibility for providing the six main functions of child protection: investigation, enforcement, placement services, prevention and education, family support, and research and development.

Offering a unique perspective on the cold reality of this crisis, The Politics of Child Abuse in America will be a provocative work for social workers and human service personnel, as well as the general reader concerned with this timely issue.

Reviews

“Excellent and provocative.” — Choice

“Central to the future of a nation is how it treats or allows its children to be treated. No topic in our time is more important than what we as a nation do to protect our children. In the last several decades concern with child abuse has taken center stage. Yet the issue is not child abuse, but how child abuse is defined and addressed. Costin, Karger, and Stoesz examine this issue in detail. Their study is a watershed event in the discussion about child abuse in the United States.

In the long view of history, what is significant, what stands out are voices that identify fundamental and driving issues and develop lines of inquiry which significantly address these issues. This is the strength of The Politics of Child Abuse in America.” — Duncan Lindsey, School of Public Policy and Social Research, University of California, Los Angeles and author of The Welfare of Children

“This book is extremely well-written and readable. It is powerful and hard-hitting at the same time that it is scholarly and intellectually honest. The authors provide a clear, integrated, conceptual historical perspective on the rise of the current child welfare system. They explain the concepts that have guided the system, past and present, and develop and overarching interpretive framework that fits the facts well while accounting for how the system has evolved toward the crisis that it is presently in. The authors jump right into today’s heated debates, and emerge with their own unique entry to the current field of proposals for restructuring the system.” — Leroy H. Pelton, Ph.D., School of Social Work, Salem State College

Further Reading

Child Social Worker Solicits Kids for Pornography

Teach Your Children: Government is Dangerous to Their Lives

Georgia Court OKs Teacher Sex with 16 Year Old Students

Maine Mom Puts Her Kids on Her Live Internet Porn Show

Female Sex Offenders Escape Detection Due to Sexism

Canadian Mother Webcasts Self and Toddler Bestiality with Dog

Woman accused of sex with teen foster son

Foster parent faces felony charges of sodomy, rape

Jennifer Montag, Utah

Foster parent gets it on with teen foster son

Real Facts About the Foster Care System