I
do my best to deliver factual information. The "Documents"
pages are there for you to look and see for yourself. An innocent man is
in prison for crimes committed by the corrupt, who run the reservation
the way a criminal organization would run a city if they had all levels
of government supporting and protecting them.
There are many more Good People in Spirit Lake than there are corrupt, evil people there. It is the system that is corrupt, evil and I expose here all that I can.
I can be reached at this email: Contact Cat . I respond to most of my emails, however, I reserve the right to not rspond to whack jobs. I keep all information confidential. For those who wish to attack, you'll either be ignored, or, if you are really clever, you'll end up on the Moron Squad page. Some insults are more entertaining than others. I share with the class.
For those interested: The 13th Mandated Report is out. No government Agency has yet to properly reply to any of them.
January 28, 2014 --- Printer Version (4)
Times A Million
You can internet search “Jesse Ryan Loskarn’s Last Letter” or read it here, in Daily Kos, only one of dozens of outlets that have published it. It’s a story of a fall from Grace, and worse. It’s really the story of a Five-Year-Old Boy who was molested, and who never got help. He grew into a molester, even while still a child, and became as an adult, someone with no self control, who sought out and became addicted to child pornography, all the while keeping his ugly ‘secrets’; both his own behaviors and addictions as well as the biggest secret of all: That he was molested as a child.
People who rape and abuse children like to tell themselves that the child will ‘forget’ about it. In fact, some who have molested infants have absolved themselves from any responsibility for the harm they have done, physically (they’ll heal), mentally (they don’t know what’s going on) and to another Human Being saying “They’ll forget”.
As if ‘forgetting’ makes it okay? That’s only one of many excuses they cloak themselves in. Clearly, children don’t forget. Nor do they ‘heal’ without a lot of intensive and long term therapy.
The damage is life long and it creates more abusers and more who enable or encourage abuse by their ‘sharing’ the pain, humiliation and indignities in child porn.
Ignoring the victims only creates more and more predators. Filled with self-loathing, craving the repetitive ‘fix’ of watching it happen to someone else, or worse, of doing it to someone else, lacking self control, they are all keeping secrets that will, if discovered, destroy them in the eyes of their peers, their families and society in general.
They live in a state of constant hunger for the images and experiences, and fear of being found out and having to face what they have become, losing everything.
This is why we have such a violent society. This is why there are more and more sex crimes against both children and adults, even the elderly. This is why there are more and more addictions as those in pain try to self-medicate, without healing resources and knowing that the law enforcement that was supposed to protect them, demonized them as children, protected the evil that was feeding upon them when they were helpless and could not fight back.
Politicians like to tell us that Drugs are the problem. They are not. They are the symptom. Drug addictions are treated as crimes rather than sicknesses. Addicts are demonized as weaklings or stupid, rather than as sick people needing help. Our resources go to hunting them down like rabid dogs, shaming them, incarcerating them, but not really treating them to help them to heal.
Those who fail to overcome childhoods filled with abuse, neglect, violence, rape and who are discarded by their families and communities, no longer see themselves as Human Beings or even connected to other Human Beings. They see themselves as players in a nightmare. Sometimes, they create the nightmare and feel like they have control over it, and other times, they suicide.
Jesse was a young, successful white male climbing the political ladders, albeit of the most intolerant and hypocritical sort, and he had a future ahead himself where he could have accomplished many things and been proud of many accomplishments. You can tell by reading his crystal self-analysis, that he had a good mind and was articulate.
And for all this, the only way he could see to end his personal pain and shame, was suicide. We failed him. Every suicide is our failure to connect to others. We failed him. We failed him when he was age 5 and the result was ongoing and lifelong, only revealed when he was busted for child porn. Only articulated when he suicided.
I am not excusing his behaviors. I am explaining how they were formed. I am saying to all of you that if we do not break this cycle of abuse, neglect, child rape, child trafficking, we are creating thousands more who will act out and create each, many times their own numbers, leaving us to this day and beyond with millions more who are creating millions more.
We can stop this. We must stop this or we will live in a world that has become a rising tide of sewage, and despite how much we dogpaddle with more locks, more alarm systems, more guns, and more fear, we will drown in it.
We must demand that those who are protecting the pedophiles, protecting the rapists, and those who are smearing and demonizing those who report the abuses, the rapes and the corruption, stand down immediately.
They must stand down and they must be replaced by those who are not politically beholden to any who have gone before them, all of whom have, in their own way, allowed this sewage to infiltrate every level of our government, our Justice Department, our police forces and our schools.
We must demand that the efforts expended on the part of those who are elected or appointed to all of these agencies, be to immediately rescue and rehabilitate these children while they are still children and can reconnect to Society.
Once they are adults, they are beyond our fixing. They are beyond their own fixing. They are without control and rabid with desire to re enact that which was done to them.
This is why we fight this fight. We see the future. This is that fork in the road for each and every one of us. If we do nothing, it gets worse. If we raise our voice, we add to other voices, and we begin to carry the power to change the course, which presently, if we don’t change, will overwhelm us.
It’s up to us to realize what we are looking at when we see the Human Wreckage. We have to remember when we see the addict, the violent offender, the sexual abusers preying on children, the suicides, that what we are looking at is our failure to them when they were children, and the future was not yet shaped beyond their control.
We have to take the reports seriously. We have to enforce the laws against abuse, seriously. We must also enforce the laws against those who obstruct the investigations, be they abusers themselves, or merely in positions of power and authority seeking favors, or greater career moves.
We cannot solve this as political warfare. We must work together, and we must work for a very long time to turn this tide, calm this storm, and bring us, as a nation, to safe harbors.
We must, each of us, individually or collectively, find a way to make abuse stop. We must, each of us, decide who we are and what we want to be in this world: Someone who protected children, made the future a safer more prosperous place: Or someone who allowed the exploitation to continue because we didn’t want to get involved?
We have a choice. These children do not.
One man tells his story, with his last breath, and it is clear that as a child he never healed, never ‘forgot’ and never reconnected with his own Humanity.
It’s time we stop shaming the victims. It’s time we stopped praising the politicians who refuse to address this. It’s time we started calling it what it is: Criminal. These crimes against children are creating future criminals and we must all of us, live in that future.
Those who have lied, covered up, allowed the corruption to skate freely off into the new day, have much to answer for. It’s time we hold them accountable.
We can start at the top of every agency, but we must also start with the bottom feeders who abuse, rape, neglect children for sport, and who also steal millions of dollars with impunity, while Elders and the poor freeze in weather that shatters records and bones.
We must start in Indian Country, and give the survivors, The Good People, the only thing they have ever asked for: Justice. If we can’t start there, we can’t start anywhere. It’s everywhere. But the core of the Evil that has sickened the present and the future hides, in plain sight in Indian Country and in every agency that enables it.
Our government failed everyone in Indian Country. It’s where they felt safe indulging in their most corrupt, vile behaviors. This is why we must rout it out there, first, where it built its nest and where it hides behind racism, ignorance, and national apathy.
We must wake up from this stupor of trusting that all is well and that those with the power are well-intended. We see clearly how those with the power use it to prevent help from getting to the children. They actively conspire to protect the abusers, and to mislead us as a Nation saying they can assure us that everything is being done to ensure the safety of the children, when in fact, they have not even bothered to learn the names of the children, nor have they investigated a single report.
Now that they have removed ONE child from the hands of her rapist, they still have not arrested him. None of the child rapists have been arrested. This, after more than 2 years of reports, all of them ignored.
Political hay was made. Power was assumed, authority delegated, all to those who protect those who violate children. These are the people shaping our future, filling it with sickness, self-loathing, fear, insecurity, addictions, violence, suicides and more.
Indian Country has been both their power base and their safe haven. But we can see them now. They are being forced to come into the light as they fight to demonize those who report the abuses. We see you Sue Settles, Yvette Rubidoux, Marrianne McMullen, George Sheldon, Kennerson, Tim Purdon, Scott Davis, James Murray, Hoeven, Heitkamp, Dalrymple …we see you Eric Holder… we see all of you.
Your response to reports of children being raped is to say you want to hear no more of it. Or worse, you want to form a committee, do a study… all the while the child is being raped. All the while all of those children are being raped. As if some political experiment is being conducted on creatures not considered Human. Shame on all of you.
Indian Country is where the abuses started, and where politically they thrived, flourished, become more powerful. Indian Country is the seat of where our government protected evil. This is where our government must be called to answer first.
We must take the power away from the abusers, and from those who enable and encourage them. If we fail to act, we fail our nation. We surrender all our power, all our wealth, all our resources, our children and our future over to the ugliest Evil possible.
You know where to find me.
~Cat
January 27, 2014 ---Printer Version (5)
In A Sane World
In a sane world, when someone saw an egregious wrong taking place, and spoke up, knowing that they would be fired for revealing the truth, we would expect that the wrong would be investigated, and those who were committing the wrongs, especially those who harmed or helped to harm the children, would be investigated as criminals and we would expect to see them in court.
Most of all, we would expect to see the children removed from harm, taken away from their abusers, their rapists and those who steal from them and allowed to be placed in places of safety where they could receive care, protection, help.
We would not expect to see the system, every level of government and law enforcement, align themselves with the abusers, the rapists, and those who placed the children in harm’s way.
We would not expect to see those who stood up to protect the children, smeared, lied about, ridiculed, threatened and harassed.
That we saw the worst instead of what we expected in a sane world, revealed to us that the problem is not just for the children, but for all of us as we watch the unfolding of outright corruption and malfeasance to the point of unmitigated evil, through the ranks of both law enforcement and all the government agencies which instead of protecting the children and investigating the crimes, set upon a mission to mistreat those who spoke up, protect those who committed unspeakable evils, and continued to work ever political and legal lever within their reach, to cover up the crimes, silence the story from ever being told.
They hoped that by now, in fact, long before now, you all, we all, would have forgotten about it and they would never have to answer for their crimes and were free to continue the abuse, rape and trafficking of children while our tax dollars, millions and billions pumped into their salaries, their offices, their agencies, paid for all of it.
This went to the very top of each and every agency including the ACF, BIA, DOJ, and several State and Federal offices, right up to the Governor of North Dakota, Jack Dalrymple, and the office of USAG Eric Holder himself.
Yes, even Eric Holder was personally informed about the corruption and the danger to the children and that Timothy Purdon, USAG ND, was refusing to investigate. What did he do? He publicly singled Purdon out for the highest praise and commended him for his work. Where do you go to get an investigation when the very top of the tower gives his blessing to the most corrupt of them all?
And then we have Marrianne McMullen, top dog in the ACF, actively thwarting Thomas Sullivan from doing his job. She blithely stated that Kennerson of the Children’s Bureau (an $8Billion per year agency, for those tabulating the cost in tax dollars for all these people who refuse to do their job) had been working on … taking all appropriate measures to ensure the safety of the children of Spirit Lake Nation--- for the past year…
A claim she repeated in what appears to be either a copy-paste response to Mr. Sullivan’s detailed emails reiterating the urgency of the crisis and detailing the crimes being committed against the children… or it was an auto-responder set up to respond specifically to Sullivan’s emails… and it has been proven to be one of two things: Either an outright lie, or that Ms. Kennerson is the most incompetent person ever to head the Children’s Bureau and its $8Billion per year budget. Either way, Ms. McMullen, it proves, cared nothing about the crimes being committed against the children, nor the corruption that ran rife and stinking through the agencies whom she was so diligently defending, and working to re earn their faith by manipulating stories and silencing those who would reveal them.
McMullen is either incredibly incompetent, or she is completely corrupt. Or, she delegated such high priority reports to a woman who was either incompetent or corrupt and she failed to notice that there was no progress.
In fact, there were more brutal child rapes and more deaths of toddlers and young children. None of that moved McMullen to actually take seriously a single one of the 13 Mandated Reports.
Ms. Kennerson has suddenly seen herself as ‘high poppy’ (a term meaning that when the cutting blades come through, her head will roll while others seek and gain cover at her expense). Suddenly, after more than a year supposedly engaged in this ‘effort’, suddenly Ms. Kennerson wants to actually know the names of the children who are listed in the reports! Really? Only a year? Now you want their names?
Now, suddenly, she is hoping that Betty Jo Krenz is willing to speak with her…. Despite the fact that Kennerson ignored, rebuffed Krenz’s multiple attempts to discuss all of this over the past year.
Hard to know what to call it when someone has supposedly been on top of this and ensuring the safety of all these children listed in the reports, didn’t even bother to talk to the author of the reports until a full year later, and never bothered to get the names of the children who were listed in those reports.
Suddenly, after Kennerson saw her name start to show up, one child was removed from a household of several children and at least one Registered Sex Offender… only one child from that house… and no one has arrested the sex offender, despite the fact that even being around children was a violation of his parole.
And now, as the agencies who have been covering up this up, act like they don’t know what to do when they get a report of children being raped by known, registered sex offenders. They want to talk about a ‘study’. A study?
Let me see: If you were the person being raped, and you reported that rapist, would you want the police to make an arrest? Or for some agency to leave you in that home, and conduct a ‘study’? Which do you think would be your choice? Oh, and remember: While these children are being forced to endure rape, their rapists are collecting welfare checks as ‘foster parents’, while legitimate foster parents can’t seem to get a dime out of Tribal Social Services.
There is a movement in government to give even more judicial power to Tribal Courts so that these problems can be kept off the radar. They want Tribal courts, which presently are only supposed to deal with misdemeanors, to be able to rule on felonies such as rape, murder, and worse. They want to make it so that sex offenders who go through Tribal Courts, don’t have to register as sex offenders. Anywhere.
And we have seen Tribal Court and how they work. Judges need no law training. Only a high school diploma or GED. They are appointed by the Tribal Chair and they can be removed by the Tribal Chair with little or no notice. The Tribal Chair will of course, appoint good friends and family. Their rulings will be as binding as any Federal Court and if the Tribal Chair doesn’t want there to be any Appeals to any rulings, he or she can merely refuse to pay the paltry free to the State for Appeals courts.
Yes, giving tribes more complete autonomy sounds so ‘liberating’, but in fact, it further disempowers the tribal members who are already subjected to the whims of the corrupt, nepotism, and cronyism modeled after every criminal syndicate that ever committed crime or corruption.
The Federal Government is in a hurry to fast track this legislation so that they don’t have to face the ordeal of having the BIA, FBI, DOJ, DOI, HHS & IHS revealed for their thorough corruption and involvement in some of the worst crimes against children our nation has ever seen.
It’s a big problem. It’s going to require a cleansing of every agency from the top down and the bottom up. It has been in place for decades and it runs deep and deep into the pockets of those on both sides of the aisle as well as huge ‘charitable’ Organizations that have billions in ‘donations’ and government grants and who have influence in all political and corporate strata.
If we let them get away with this, if we let them have complete judicial autonomy, it will in effect, close the curtains, slam the doors and not allow us to see inside and what is being done with billions of our tax dollars, and worse, what is being done to these children. It will be as if the children on the rez are the property of the rez, and as such can be used to gain government dollars, but who are not entitled, by law not entitled, to any protection from those who prey on them.
We cannot allow reservations to become legalized child trafficking zones. We cannot allow these same government agencies that have engaged in these levels of corruption and criminal activity, to absolve themselves of any and all accountability.
We must demand accountability and demand it now. We must demand that Marrianne McMullen step down immediately, and be investigated for lying and for actively obstructing investigations into child abuse, child rape, and other criminal activities associated with those crimes against children.
Federal Protocols states that it is a felony to obstruct an investigation. In fact, it is a felony for any Federal Employee to ignore or refuse to investigate any Mandated Report of child abuse or sexual abuse of a child.
Given that her actions can be directly tied to the murder of Baby Laurynn, who, along with her twin sister, (as well as the other children detailed in those reports) should have been removed to a safe homes immediately upon that report being reviewed I would say that Ms. McMullen can, along with Tim Purdon who also obstructed the investigation, can be held criminally responsible for the deaths of that child and the others as well as the ongoing rapes and abuses.
One child was removed from the home of a notorious sex offender. But he has yet to be arrested. Nor have the other children been removed, nor the other rapists arrested…
And Ms. McMullen concerns herself with political image, and repairing any rifts that the reports of corruption may have caused between her department and all those agencies she protects. She is more interested, more determined to protect the corruption than she is in protecting any of the children.
She’s cornered now. Her own words have cornered her. She’s a few moves away from Check Mate, and she is unable to lie her way out of it. Her lies revealed. Her priorities revealed. Her cronies revealed.
My money is on her abruptly resigning, hoping that she can resign her way out of being investigated. Whomever signs that agreement with her, will be revealed and they too, will find there is no place to hide.
I wish that those who have, such as McMullen and Purdon, Sheldon and Murray, Sue Settles, and all of them, I wish they would hear the screams and cries of these children echoing in their heads and know that they are the cause of the misery.
In a Sane World, I would not be, this many years into this, demanding that someone just do their job, rescue the children, arrest the predators, and make this a better world by one degree. It would have never gotten this bad if the world were sane.
Maybe it is a sane world, and we are all just waking up to how corrupt it is. That can be overwhelming and depressing if we try to do it all at once. We have to decide though, what we want. Do we want a world where we shrug our shoulders and allow children to be trafficked, abused, raped, murdered? Or do we decide that this is where we make our stand and say: “No more.” ?
Where we see the corruption, we must rout it out. Starting with the agencies that are supposed to enforce the laws, and agencies that are supposed to protect the children, starting with those here, exposed for their corruption, we can start making changes and demand they, the people personally responsible, be held responsible, criminally liable, and investigated.
It didn’t get this way overnight and won’t get cleaned up overnight. This will require our determination, our ongoing vigilance and our moral courage to begin this clean up.
But if we don’t do this, and keep on it, we will never be safe among the children we allowed to be abused, trafficked, raped who survive, get bigger and stronger, and who have nowhere to turn except to crime, violence and addictions to act out their own rage and confusion.
We like to think that our government represents the best of us. If we want a better country, we need to get the pus out of the government, lancing the boils of corruption, and cleaning up the mess, over and over again until those in government, whether elected or appointed, know they answer to us.
If we don’t want to be sold out, we have to make it so they are either too afraid or too respectful of us to sell us out. Presently, it is clear: We are sold out to those who traffic in children. Those who sold us out think they are immune.
Meanwhile, children are being abused, beaten, raped, starved, humiliated, and driven to suicide… we can waste no time. McMullen, Purdon, Settles, Sheldon, all have their eye on the power grid and keeping their position in it secure, or planning their next move even closer to the top.
Reread all of the correspondence in the previous post. In fact, read all the previous emails and decide if you are just going to ‘forget about it’ or if you are going to demand from your elected at every level, from PTA to the White House, that they prove to you they have taken action to remove the corruption and will hold criminally responsible, those who have, until this point, worked to obstruct.
One has to pick a side when confronted with Evil. McMullen has chosen Evil. She thinks that being the handmaiden to Evil makes her powerful. It does not. It only makes her criminal. Demand Criminal investigations. Demand every agency get involved. Demand every elected official get involved.
Without healthy children, we do not have a future. We have a Fearscape. It’s up to us to change that.
You know where to find me.
~Cat
January 23, 2014 ---- Printer Version (5)
Heads Up Marrianne
Marrianne McMullen has painted herself into a corner. George Sheldon was smart enough to bail when he saw the writing on the wall, especially that by his own hand which revealed him as working NOT to protect the children, but to stop the reports of children being raped, abused, and worse.
I keep reminding all that Mr. Sheldon, whose profound failure as head of DCF in Florida led to 2009 being the year when Florida alone having more child deaths while in State care than all the other States combined, was then promoted into ACF to work directly under Ms. McMullen who needed a stooge to carry out her political agenda. He was perfect for that.
I remind all, again, that his successor abruptly bailed a few months back, and investigations plus good journalism have revealed that the policies put in place by Mr. Sheldon, made it impossible to rescue children from known abusers. In short, any offense committed by any guardian was written off, and the files closed if the offender verbally promised to ‘never do it again.’
When they did it again, there was no history, because the files were closed, and the same practice of getting a promise was repeated. This led to some of the most horrific, vicious cases of sexual abuse and child torture and murder Florida has ever seen.
With the Directorship of DCF in Florida wide open, Mr. Sheldon has to get himself into a position that would enable him to block, thwart or sabotage any investigation into past practices on his part or because of his insane policies.
Only someone who enjoyed children being abused would create such polices that left them with no protection whatsoever.
So, Mr. Sheldon is now running for Attorney General for the State of Florida. That is the only position he can gain that will allow him to cover up his own criminal negligence, incompetence, and enabling of the worst child abuse possible.
I repeat Mr. Sheldon’s actions here because I think he needs to be criminally investigated for his part in trying to stop the investigations into the abuses, rapes and worse, of the children of Spirit Lake.
“Watch Your Queen”
It’s also clear from Ms. McMullen’s actions since the departure of Sheldon from her hangar of Flying Monkeys, that she was not misled by him, nor was he betraying her trust in how he performed his job while under her supervision. He was in fact, carrying out her directives, with her full and complete knowledge, and at her pleasure.
This most recent exchange between McMullen and Sullivan are very revealing. It’s like watching a chess game wherein one player has been overconfident and is suddenly in a panic, making moves that reveal more weaknesses, and which would be clear to all watching who know the game, leading inevitably to Check Mate.
“Watch Your Queen” is the courtesy warning from the player with the upper hand, to the player who is losing ground, and pieces.
George Sheldon was a piece. I suspect that when all this comes down, he will be investigated to a degree no one expects and it will reveal a very dark side of him that will stain the agencies he has worked for, for decades to come.
It’s becoming apparent from his performance both in DCF and ACF that his mission has been to protect the worst abusers, at the expense of the most vulnerable children. What kind of man does that?
I doubt that he will go quietly. I am sure he will reveal all his connections and all the inside secrets of those who supported him, enabled him, protected him. He will, as all cowards do, buy his way out by selling out everyone else. Ms. McMullen still relies on him as an ally. That is her mistake.
As her latest snippy response to Thomas Sullivan’s pertinent concerns reveals, she is in panic mode. Desperately on the offense, failing in her efforts to twist Sullivan’s words and actions to make him the bad guy, her offense reveals her weakest points, and clearly that she is on the side of political power and connections over the safety and well-being of the children.
Mr. Sullivan’s response, which incorporates in the last paragraph, the latest blow to the structure that has kept the abusive in a position of powerful, a paragraph in the Omnibus Bill that was signed by President Obama last Friday, which puts all of this one step closer to a Congressional Investigation.
Clearly, there are some in elected office who are following this string of abuses and who are appalled. They are stating that those responsible will have to answer. It’s time for McMullen and the rest of her ‘team’ as well as Purdon, and all his gang, to take notice: This is not going away. In fact, you will have to answer for your actions, and your inactions.
Personally, I’d like to see an in-depth investigation into the personal involvement of each and every one on the opposing side. This level of systematic, organized resistance to protecting the children doesn’t come by coincidence. Nor does the smearing, libeling and lying about what is said or done.
Well, the new Omnibus Bill is a huge crack in the wall of the Opposition. Let’s see who the smart ones are and who will see the writing on that wall and decide that now is both the time to start protecting those children and pursuing the criminals as well as buying themselves the best deal possible with investigators in what is sure to be the biggest, ugliest scandal to hit our government since Abscam, or the Hookers, Blow & Microwaves for Oil Leases that also stained the Dept. of Interior not so long ago. This latest will reveal that by not sending anyone to prison for that, they have allowed a corrupt Department to both continue corruption, and traffic in children.
With that in mind, I give you the hysteria response from the panicky McMullen and the calm, factual response from Mr. Sullivan.
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2014 12:43 PM
To: Sullivan, Thomas (ACF); Greenberg, Mark (ACF)
Cc: Murray, James (ACF); McCauley, Mike (ACF); Chang, Joo Yeun (ACF); Kennerson, Marilyn (ACF)
Subject: RE: Spirit Lake
You are well aware that ACF is not an entity that does direct casework or direct, individual investigations on reported cases of abuse. We support organizations that do that.
As I've mentioned before, it is highly unfortunate that the way you have chosen to engage with key parties in this situation has damaged some of the most critical relationship needed for achieving progress for the children and families of Spirit Lake. We are in the process of rebuilding those relationships so that we can move forward in a productive way with the bodies that are charged with doing the work that you describe in your email.
Notice how she did not sign this one “Marrianne”? Methinks she dropped her manners.
From: "Sullivan, Thomas (ACF)" <thomas.sullivan@acf.hhs.gov>
Date: January 23, 2014 at 3:59:12 PM EST
To: "Mcmullen, Marrianne (ACF)" <Marrianne.McMullen@acf.hhs.gov>, "Greenberg, Mark (ACF)" <Mark.Greenberg@ACF.hhs.gov>
Cc: "Murray, James (ACF)" <james.murray@acf.hhs.gov>, "McCauley, Mike (ACF)" <Mike.McCauley@acf.hhs.gov>, "Chang, Joo Yeun (ACF)" <JooYeun.Chang@acf.hhs.gov>, "Kennerson, Marilyn (ACF)" <marilyn.kennerson@acf.hhs.gov>
Subject: FW: Spirit Lake
Ms. Mcmullen:
I am puzzled by your response to my email because in it I neither implied nor stated that I believed ACF would be directly involved in the delivery of services to the young boy about whom I had written more than four months ago. There seems to be a "straw man" quality to your response.
Based on your September 23, 2013 email, I did expect you to discuss this young suicidal boy's situation with the Children's Bureau, Ms. Kennerson and the BIA. It seems to me that, despite your assurances about the boy's safety, none of that occurred.
You seem to have a deep desire to blame me for the problems at Spirit Lake. These problems developed over a lengthy period of time, starting at least 15 - 20 years ago, long before I became part of ACF or assumed this position here in Denver.
These problems developed because of the malfeasance of a wide variety of state, federal and tribal officials. Some profited from this arrangement and moved on. Their replacements as well as those who remain in place continue engaging in the corrupt manipulation of their duties for their own benefit and the benefit of their relatives and cronies. What they have done and continue to do, I believe, are crimes. Truth-telling about these crimes tends to make me unpopular with those engaging in such criminal activity.
My sources have been working to correct this corruption of the Spirit Lake child protection system for more than seven years with little apparent effect. They are furious with the libel and slander directed at them by the state, federal and tribal leaders who appear to support the continuation of the criminal corruption and who refuse to do anything to rescue kids from the full-time care and custody of addicts, abusers and rapists.
Even though I have chosen to engage the key parties in this criminally corrupt enterprise with detailed facts, the leadership of my own agency has refused to support me, has tried to silence me, has prevented me from travelling to legitimate meetings in an about this region. If this isn't retaliation, what is?
Truth-telling is powerful. Even though we have been met at every turn with lies and distortions, we are prevailing because the continued repetition of the truth is impossible to rebut.
Our continued repetition of the truth keeps this criminally abusive behavior on people's minds and requires the corrupt to develop ever more creative lies. My nine page December 19, 2013, email to you described in detail the contradictions made by many who oppose us. It is difficult to keep your story straight when one is constantly lying. As Mark Twain once wrote, "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
By trying to silence me and by removing me from any involvement with the development of solutions to this situation, you have provided hope to the corrupt and criminal. Your approach to a "solution" will delay the placement of children in safe homes for up to 18 months. How many more American Indian children will die at their own hand, be murdered, be raped, abused, neglected during this 18 month period?
The solution is simple: those engaging in their criminally corrupt activities must stop now, not tomorrow, but now. They must begin operating within the statutory and regulatory authorities that are supposed to guide their performance in office. Every one of their actions must focus on insuring the safety of the children of Spirit Lake. This is not a shift away from my recommended "Step One, Step Two and so on" approach outlined at the conclusion of my January 17, 2014 email to you but rather is an expansion of that approach and a request for leadership to begin fulfilling that role. Those in charge must demand the criminal corruption stop now.
While my words have had little effect, the following words should finally compel some honest attention to the plight of the American Indian children of the Spirit Lake Nation: "Spirit Lake Tribal Social Services -- The Bureau (of Indian Affairs) is directed to report to the House and Senate committees of jurisdiction on the progress of its efforts and the adequacy of child placement and judicial review by the Tribe and the Bureau. The Secretary is expected to take all necessary steps to ensure that children at the Spirit Lake Reservation are placed in safe and secure homes." From the 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill Report, page 21.(Pages 19 - 22 detail instructions to the Bureau of Indian Affairs included in the agreement). This bill was signed into law by the President last Friday.
Thomas F. Sullivan
Regional Administrator, ACF, Denver
I bolded that section. The more you read it, the more you can sense the impending poop storm about to hit those who thought they were too high up, too important, too well-connected to worry about being investigated.
You are in Check, Ms. McMullen. Your next moves will be critical on this board. We are all watching.
You know where to find me.
~Cat
January 21, 2014 ---Printer Version (3)
Millions Stolen, Poor Must Pay
A man wrote to me in desperation the other day. He’s one of the few full-bloods out there on the rez. He had been working to support himself and several members of his family, all his life, and recently, because of the weather, was out of a job and out of money.
He’s an Elder on the rez, and thought he would qualify for the LIHEP fund to help him get fuel to warm his house. He was turned down. Mardell Lewis told him, point blank, “There is no money in the fuel program”.
So, he was heating his house with his oven and with a space heater and some sort of “ice house heater” which is a propane tank with a heater on top of it.
He ran of fuel on those items and has no way to heat his house.
He writes:
Hello
I just wanted to tell that this evening I invited our chairman Dr. Leander Russ MacDonald over to my place to have a talk with him about why some people could go up to the tribal office and get a loan as they call it when you know they wont pay it back
well anyway I have been out of heating fuel for the last week and a half now I use a little space heater and my oven with my ice house heater to heat my house and he told me because the past chairman Rodger Yankton and the past vice chairman Duane Jackson spent 3 million dollars on their own authority with out the rest of the council approval and the audit that was done showed that most of that money was federal money and was spent wrongfully and the current council now has to pay that back so he is saying that there is no money now till the first of the fiscal year now
last week I went to see my district rep Mardell Lewis to see if she if can help me to buy some fuel till I can get paid and she said yes I can help you with that come back later today and I will have it ready for you so I left for a couple of hours and went back up there to see if my assistance was ready well to my surprise it was a whole $50.00 purchase order made out to the marina and the marina don’t deliver propane
and that’s not all Russ told me earlier that there is no money to help people with assistance and then he tells me yeah I will be going to Washington next week for the whole week so do you think he is paying for his trip out of his own pocket since the tribe has no money to help the ones in need of assistance.
So, there it is. Elders and people who have never before asked for any assistance, but who happen to not be related to Tribal Council or their friends, find themselves literally, ‘frozen out’ of any assistance.
That Russ can so casually acknowledge that Roger and Duane stole over $3M from the tribe without even the slightest hint that either Roger or Duane should be held accountable or made to pay it back, is typical of how it works in Indian Country. Those who steal millions can keep the profits of their corruption. The government will not pursue them at any level.
The Tribal Council can continue to gallivant all over the country, with no hesitation to bill the taxpayers and the tribe for their trips, but find enough money for fuel assistance in this record breaking cold? Hahahaha! Surely you jest!
Yes, $3Million has been stolen from the tribe and yes the Tribal Council still spends tens of thousands of dollars on each trip, sometimes 10 times that, depending on whether there is a casino at the venue, and that $3Million that is missing must be paid back, but not by those who stole it, but by those who need it and are cut off for the lack of it.
This is the kind of corruption that is encouraged by the BIA, HHS, DOJ, USAG, IHS, FBI and the lot of them.
If anyone in any community outside of the rez had to live under this much corruption and then were told that those who steal can keep it, but those who had nothing to do with it must suffer until it is paid back out of the funds that were intended to help them, what would your life be like?
When the laws are not enforced, they become meaningless. They become a joke. Here is one place where crime not only pays, it is supported at every level of Tribal, State and Federal Government.
I am sure there are some really good business deals that go down wherein those who steal are backslapping with some very big players who also do not want to pay a fair price for the lands, water and air they damage, nor for the resources they extract. This is where big money plays and the rest of us pay, now and later.
People in North Dakota can now light their drinking water on fire, just like the other places in the documentary, “Gas Land”. Those who stole the clean drinking water, turned it into chemical soup, will never have to pay you back for what they have damaged. You will have to fight in court and for decades, but not against the corporations, against your own government. If you get anything out of it, it won’t be enough to make you whole again, nor the water drinkable, and it won’t come from the pockets of those who did the damage… it will come from taxpayers and it will come at the cost of programs that were intended to help people.
The rez is a microcosm of a larger problem. What we allow to continue to happen on the rez, will and is now, spreading throughout the land. The big boys, the powerful, the politicians all profit from this. You and I all pay for this.
What is happening to the man in Spirit Lake is happening to many of the Elders and the poor out there. The Tribal Council has money to spend on themselves, but not a penny for those in desperate need.
When this situation becomes your situation, and it will, remember: We are all related. If we don’t push to rectify this now, and hold those accountable that do the damage, steal the millions, then we are saying that it is okay for our government to participate in the dismantling of our lives and shattering of our communities by corruption.
Literally: Steal from the people and then make the people you stole from, pay.
You know where to find me.
~Cat
January 20, 2014 ---Printer Version (11)
Spectacular Failure at the Helm
These agencies, as I said in the last posting, are infested with people so politically driven, they’ve lost sight of Human Decency. Their goals are to gain power, connect to those in power, and to keep as much of that power for themselves as is possible for as long as possible.
That Is achieved through the practice of covering the backs of the powerful. Silencing reports that would disrupt the ‘power grid’ of the political elite, is key to being recognized as a ‘team player’ by those who are above.
These agencies control budgets in the tens of billions of dollars per year. That is a lot of money. That is a lot of power.
The greatest threat to those in power would be anyone that would dare to do their job. In the kingdom of the corrupt, those who possess integrity are to be feared, dismissed, ridiculed and silenced.
And so they have tried. Oh how they have tried to silence those who raise their voices and produce reports that would, if there were sanity or decency in the Kingdom, result in laws being followed, children being rescued.
But those who run their little corners of the Kingdom of the Corrupt know that if one part falls down, they will all fall down. They must stay united against those bringers of reports who demand the laws be followed.
The have tried everything to rid themselves of Thomas Sullivan, or to silence him. They have lied about him, ridiculed him and those who have been sources for him. They have smeared and they have ignored. They have even, under the direction of the Ice Queen herself, Marrianne McMullen, via her underling, George Sheldon (Now running for Florida Attorney General), forbidden him from using official stationary to issue his reports, denied him travel to conferences imperative to the reports he has already made, not allowed him to speak to any congressman or senator that would seek to investigate any of those reports…
But they have not been able to make him go away. Throughout these past two years, and with dead children piling up like firewood, rape victims being dismissed, neither Mr. Sullivan nor those who have been sources for him or inquiring of him for help to make the carnage stop, can quit.
He knows that we have laws and that those laws have been steadfastly ignored, trampled on, and dismissed, by those whose charge it is by the offices they hold, to enforce those very laws or demand they be enforced, but he also knows that going silent, letting those who protect evil win, would require the utter and absolute destruction of everything he stands for and what he believes in.
Mr. Sullivan is not prepared to surrender. He is not prepared to sell his soul for political peace or power.
Those who have, long ago sold that precious part of themselves, are now confronted with a growing stack of facts, and increasing public interest in exactly what is going on and what has been going on.
It’s not looking good for those who rule the Kingdom of Corruption. As a collective, they were once all powerful. The General Public neither knew their names, what they did, nor did they care about it. Behind that wall of anonymity, they thought they were safe forever. They could do what they wanted. They moved in circles above the rest of us, and they forgot that all it would take would be one scandal to shine a light on all of them.
Now, there are repeated scandals, and still they remain, unwilling to either do their jobs, or to route out the more corrupt within their own ranks.
They stick together, the ACF, BIA, FBI, DOJ, HHS, in what used to be an invincible wall, polished by mythology of infallibility, but which has been revealed lately, to be more a pile of manure that has been stacked and arranged to appear to be departments, agencies and credibility.
Children are dead, horrifically murdered, abused, neglected, raped, mutilated because those people, at the heads of those agencies chose to provide political cover for one another rather than to do their jobs. It’s starting to show.
Media barely covers it. There are stories of abuse, neglect, murder and suicide that never get to the News in TV or Print. But when the stories start to seep out through those walls of apathy, lies and ridicule… when the stories begin to emerge, they begin to merge with the stories that preceded them, and the warnings of more to come as related in those 13 Mandated Reports (still being ignored by McMullen, Purdon, and the rest of them)… and it is becoming that ignored leak in the basement that is now flooding into the day room, and causing embarrassment to The Ice Queen, whose blithe dismissals of urgent reports, show her to be a most despicable Human Being, at best.
But remember: She became that because she was surrounded by that as she climbed the political ladders of success. She saw what it took to gain favor with the most powerful people in our government, and she was willing to sell her soul to gain that. If she were the only one, the only incompetent or the only corrupt, it would be easy to rid ourselves of her and install someone with integrity and character, competence and compassion. She feels safe in what she has become because all around her, soulless, vapid, power driven individuals have seized and are clinging to power.
They all cling to one another, now, nails digging into arms, angry and afraid because they are by clinging together, protecting one another, covering up for each other, exposing the chain of corruption and abuses of power that not only endanger the children, but all of us, now and in the future, in ways that are slowly, surely, being revealed to all of us as this scandal continues to ferment.
Take notice on who all Marianne McMullen cc’s in her emails. They will become more important later on as we continue paring down the lies and obstruction.
I will show you the original email that she was responding to a little further down the post. I want you to be able to grasp the entirety of her disdain for these children & the urgency of their situation.
________________________
-----Original Message-----
From: Mcmullen, Marrianne (ACF)
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 1:25 PM
To: Sullivan, Thomas (ACF); Greenberg, Mark (ACF)
Cc: Murray, James (ACF); McCauley, Mike (ACF); Chang, Joo Yeun (ACF)
Subject: RE: Spirit Lake
Hi Tom:
Apologies for not getting back to your previous email; it was an
oversight on my part.
As I've communicated before, though, the Children's Bureau is leading
this effort for ACF and is actively managing work with both the Tribal
leadership and Tribal social services. CB is also working with the state
of North Dakota and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to address child
protective issues at Spirit Lake. I'm sure the CB staff in your own
office can give you updates about these ongoing efforts.
As I think you know, an assessment is underway that will help provide a
roadmap for policies, practices, procedures and staffing levels that the
Tribe needs to establish successful child protection services.
As always, specific knowledge of incidents of abuse should be reported
using the appropriate hotline.
Marrianne
Notice how blithely she dismisses the entirety of all Thomas Sullivan’s reports, as head of the very agency that is charged with ensuring the safety of children in care, she tells him to “report… using the appropriate hotline”. Notice also how she frames how unimportant these detailed emails that Sullivan sends, with urgency and danger carefully detailed in each bulleted or numbered point he makes…. She frames all this as so forgettable it was reduced to an ‘oversight’. You know, like forgetting to move your coffee stirrer to the trash, or forgetting to water your potted plant before you go on vacation…
Yes, by all means… dial 911? He reports to her, and other responsible agencies, repeatedly that these children are at high risk, in urgent need of rescue and that the BIA, and other associated agencies and organizations have done nothing to protect these children, and have instead, smeared, libeled, ridiculed and even interfered with the mandated reporters, while protecting outright, the most dangerous pedophiles and abusers in whose hands these children are repeatedly placed, while reports against them are dismissed, sometimes within hours, with no investigation whatsoever.
Remember: Baby Laurynn was one of those children placed in a hostile, dangerous home, with a known severely abusive woman, and the reports which included Laurynn and her twin sister, were summarily dismissed by Marrianne McMullen, George Sheldon, Timothy Purdon, the Director of the BIA, the (then) Director of Tribal Social Services, and that child was horrifically murdered, her tiny body thrown down a ravine, into the mud, stomped & kicked repeatedly until she was dead. Not yet three-years old, her then lifeless body was washed and dressed for bed and her death was originally attempted to be passed off as SIDS.
When all the agencies that Ms. McMullen supposedly is in contact with fail on such a grand scale resulting the murder of a helpless child, one would think that Ms. McMullen would begin to actually take notice and perhaps, do something other than all within her power to obstruct and silence the only person in her entire department that has even attempted to do the job of protecting children.
Ms. McMullen’s concerns lie elsewhere. Clearly, more for the political connections and less, nay, not at all, for the safety of children. To her, Mandated Reports are a nuisance. Dead children? Oh well. And, as you will see, it’s an attitude that runs throughout ACF and the agencies that are supposed to protect children, but which are so infested with political cronyism, they no longer function, and have lost sight of their mission, or even Human Dignity and Decency.
Abused children who are murdered, or suicide are easily replaced with more abused children, thanks to the spectacularly failing system, run by the most incompetent, the most uncaring, the most corrupt collection of political allies ever assembled.
Notice also that she shovels the totality of her responsibility over to Marilyn Kennerson of the Children’s Bureau, who has supposedly been working on this for the past year or so--- without contacting Mr. Sullivan even once?
NOTE: It occurs to me that Ms. Kennerson is not very bright. She would be an easy fall guy for McMullen when this all blows up. McMullen can claim that she was assured by Kennerson that all was being attended to and she had no clue that Kennerson was so incompetent… this would completely wash McMullen of any culpability. It also paints Kennerson as the key person responsible for Baby Laurynn’s horrific murder. Had Kennerson been doing her job… you see? Very clever. But I would expect nothing less from a political power climber. Kennerson is “expendable” in the greater scheme of things. Or is she?
Mr. Sullivan responded:
On 1/17/14 1:33 PM, "Sullivan, Thomas (ACF)" <thomas.sullivan@acf.hhs.gov>
wrote:
Ms. Mcmullen:
Thank you for your email response.
It is clear from your response that nothing has been done by any federal
or state agency or Tribal entity to protect that young suicidal boy who I
referenced in my September 23, 2013 email to you. The cynicism of your statement in that email that, "Marilyn Kennerson with the Children's
Bureau is working with the BIA to assure this child's safety." is
unparalleled.
What steps did you take "...to assure this child's safety"?
Did you speak to anyone in the Children's Bureau about my September 23, 2013 email? Did you speak with Marilyn Kennerson about that email? Did you speak with anyone at BIA about that email? Or did you do nothing?
As a result of your email response I wrote Ms. Kennerson and requested a briefing on what the Children's Bureau was doing at Spirit Lake and what the Children's Bureau had accomplished at Spirit Lake. That briefing took place yesterday in my conference room. The major points communicated during that briefing session were:
1. Ms. Kennerson has been to Spirit Lake in multiple meetings during the last several months with the Tribal Chair and Council, the TSS Director, Benson County Human Services staff, and others.
2. Ms. Kennerson asked for the name of the young suicidal boy referenced in my September 23, 2013 email to you. It is difficult for me to understand how Ms. Kennerson had an assignment in September, 2013 "...to assure this child's safety" and never asked me for his name previously. I am assuming that someone notified Ms. Kennerson of that assignment before the end of September, 2013.
3. After Ms. Kennerson asked for the name of that young suicidal boy, I understood that it was unlikely she had the names of the individual children cited in my January 15, 2014 email to you even though according to your email she would be responsible for working with the state and BIA to "...address child protective issues at Spirit Lake." For that reason I provided those names to her as well.
4. It was clear Ms. Kennerson has heard all the unbalanced negative characterizations from the current TSS Director about a long term Foster Mom whose license he has refused to renew. I pointed out some of the reasons for his actions focusing on the fact that this Foster Mom has
been a source for me and has been an iron-willed defender of the kids in her care. It was apparent that Ms. Kennerson had heard nothing of this side of the story. I told her that I believed what the TSS Director was doing was criminal interference with a mandated reporter fulfilling her
responsibilities and that eventually effective law and order would return to that Reservation and these kind of issues would be revisited.
5. Ms. Kennerson spoke of the current activities being conducted under the auspices of the Children's Bureau including recruitment, training and the development of policies and procedures.
6. Ms. Kennerson said recruitment was difficult because of the bad reputation that Spirit Lake had. I said it was a well-deserved bad reputation, that the problems had been persisting, unaddressed, for more than 15 - 20 years, that the corruption and ineptitude of the current TSS leadership had lead to many good foster homes and parents withdrawing from the Tribal program. A few years ago there were 11 licensed foster homes on that Reservation. Today there are 3.
7. Ms. Kennerson spoke of the Assessment which was being conducted by the National Resource Center for Tribes and Casey. She said she thought the assessment was approximately 60% complete. Her body language, however, suggested to me that there has been much less progress than that.
8. Ms. Kennerson asked if the people who I have been speaking with on the Reservation would be willing to speak with her. I told her I would ask.
I also told her that she was entering onto some treacherous ground, that for more than seven years my sources have been ignored, ridiculed, libeled and slandered by some federal, state and tribal leaders and that they were angry at the unwillingness of those same leaders to rescue
Spirit Lake children from addicts, abusers and rapists. I also told her that if they got a sense that you were treating them in the same way they would immediately terminate that meeting.
9. When I asked one of my sources, Ms. Betty Jo Krenz, if she would be willing to speak with Ms. Kennerson, she immediately replied, "Yes." Ms. Krenz went on to say, "I wish she had agreed to speak with me back on February 27, 2013 when I approached her in person at a meeting in the casino in Ft. Totten. She had no time for me then." She also said, I have sent her a few emails with my name, email address and telephone number but she has ignored them all. I have received no response to them." (emphasis mine)
(NOTE: You can see how suddenly, it appears as if Kennerson is either trying to save her own hide, or has caught on to being set up to take the fall. It is clear she recognizes that McMullen never considered her part of the team, but rather, only convenient to ‘take one for the team’. )
(Mr. Sullivan continues…)
10. In essence, there seemed to be much activity about Spirit Lake, lots of meetings and talk, but very little actual accomplishment.
The record concerning Spirit Lake is quite consistent. My sources and I have been libeled and slandered, called liars and, I suspect, worse. We have been reassured that all of the problems are being handled, much the way you responded to my September 23, 2013 and January 15, 2014 emails.
In reality, little if anything has been done to assure the safety of the children at Spirit Lake. There is every indication their safety is at even higher risk today than when I filed my first Report more than 18 months ago.
Some, I understand, have asked for a plan to correct the situation for those 100+ children cited in my Reports. Here is a simple plan: Step One: Start by knocking on the door of a single house where a child or children are known to be placed in the care of an addict, abuser or rapist.
Evaluate those children, determine whether they are being cared for appropriately. If they are not and the failure to care is consistent with the removal standards of the Tribe's Children's Code, remove them to a safe, loving home on or off the Reservation.
Step Two: Repeat Step One and so on, and so on until the placements of all 100+ children have been visited. Once the placements of these 100+ children have been reviewed and there is some assurance they are now in safe placements, the next step should be to deal with the multitude of kids who have been placed in good home but who are unable to get any documentation of their status as well as to begin tracking down those children who have disappeared from the Reservation.
Thomas F. Sullivan
Regional Administrator, ACF, Denver
——————————————————————
Now, when you read the next section, which is an abbreviated version of the original email sent to Ms. McMullen. The previous (missing) paragraphs both too graphic and too revealing as to the identity of the children involved)
Part of the January 15th email to Marrianne McMullen:
From: Sullivan, Thomas (ACF)
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 12:18 PM
To: Mcmullen, Marrianne (ACF); Greenberg, Mark (ACF)
Cc: Murray, James (ACF); McCauley, Mike (ACF); Chang, Joo Yeun
(ACF)
Subject: Spirit Lake
Ms. Mcmullen:
- Almost four months ago I sent you the attached email out of concern for this young boy who had run away from an abusive foster home……
(Note: The rest is too graphic, too identifiable. But did you catch that he had informed her more than 4 months prior? Yes, it was so unimportant as to be relegated to the bin of casual ‘oversights’.) (Mr. Sullivan continues…)
5. The four prior numbered paragraphs have provided brief descriptions of the unspeakable physical and/or sexual abuse being endured by American Indian children placed in the homes of addicts, dealers and abusers at Spirit Lake by individuals and organizations who seem totally unaware of, or unconcerned for the long-term implications of such treatment of children.
It has been well established for more than 10 years that children who are physically or sexually abused are more likely to attempt suicide as they grow older. In her research published in 2003 Widom reported that abused and neglected children were almost 2 and 1Ž2 times more likely to attempt suicide than children who were not abused or neglected.
These research results were confirmed two years later by Dube and Anda, writing in the June, 2005 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine who found "a history of suicide attempts was more than twice as likely among both men and women who experienced child sexual abuse."
A few years ago when he was Acting Director of Behavioral Health at the Rosebud IHS Hospital in Rosebud SD, Dr. Daniel Foster, an enrolled
member of the Blackfeet Tribe in Browning, MT, in an email to me, wrote, "It is unusual for me to work with a man or woman, boy or girl who has not had their trust sexually betrayed by a person they ought to have been able to trust. It is a big elephant in our front room and a factor in some of the hopelessness/rage many of our young express in their choice of hanging as a problem solver."
Just before this past Christmas I received a flurry of communications
notifying me that there had been three suicide completions (all by
hanging) by high school boys from the Standing Rock Reservation in the prior thirty days. Two of the boys, one 15 years of age and the other 17, attended McLaughlin High School in McLaughlin, SD on the South Dakota side of the Reservation. The enrollment of this high school is just under 130. The last completion, on December 20, 2013, was by a 17 year old who attended the Community Grant High School in Fort Yates, ND on the North Dakota side of the reservation. The enrollment of this high school is a bit above 170. All three of these boys were originally from Cannon Ball, ND.
It is too late for any intervention that might help those three boys from Standing Rock who chose "..hanging as a problem solver".
Those Spirit Lake children described in paragraphs # 1 – 4 of this email daily confront life with much abuse and little hope. These are indisputable facts.
How much longer can those children absorb that abuse all alone with no assistance from the adults who know exactly what they are enduring and do nothing to rescue them?
I believe none of us want children dead by their own hands. But that is exactly what we will get, if Tribal, state and federal leadership continues to do nothing, persisting in their claims that "everything is fine, there are no problems".
Thomas F. Sullivan
Regional Administrator, ACF, Denver
_______________
To which McMullen replied:
-----Original Message-----
From: Mcmullen, Marrianne (ACF)
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2014 12:43 PM
To: Sullivan, Thomas (ACF); Greenberg, Mark (ACF)
Cc: Murray, James (ACF); McCauley, Mike (ACF); Chang, Joo Yeun (ACF);
Kennerson, Marilyn (ACF)
Subject: RE: Spirit Lake
You are well aware that ACF is not an entity that does direct casework or
direct, individual investigations on reported cases of abuse. We support
organizations that do that.
As I've mentioned before, it is highly unfortunate that the way you have
chosen to engage with key parties in this situation has damaged some of
the most critical relationship needed for achieving progress for the children and families of Spirit Lake. We are in the process of rebuilding those relationships so that we can move forward in a productive way with the bodies that are charged with doing the work that you describe in your email.
_________________
Get that? How ‘dare' Sullivan point out to McMullen the sound case studies and research that also prove that children being raped is a problem?
McMullen does not see the children as her priority, but rather the supporting of the very agencies that are clearly, through the 13 Mandated Reports, so corrupt as to make these children’s lives a living hell and leads very likely to their suicide or murder. She has reports on her desk that define clearly how these agencies she feels she must at all costs, including the lives of Baby Laurynn and others like her, support those same corrupt or at best, fatally incompetent agencies and organizations.
It is “unfortunate” that Sullivan has persisted in making reports? Really? What does that sound like to you all? In what way is Mr. Sullivan doing his job as the law requires, “unfortunate” and for whom?
Recently
I guess she has dropped the auto responder of Ms Kennerson of the Children’s Bureau being solely in charge of all this and taking all appropriate measures to ensure the safety of children whose names she never bothered to convey to her, nor did Ms. Kennerson bother to ask until recently…
And it is nice to know that Kennerson, once bent on ignoring all communication entreaties from Betty Jo Krenz is now hopeful that Mrs. Krenz will speak with her…
Well, someone somewhere decided to do their job on Sunday. One child was removed from the home of a convicted serial rapist, child abuser. A child that had been placed with him by Tribal Social Services. How many years that child had to endure the sexual abuse I do not know.
I do know that she was pulled out of that house on Sunday and the rapist is angry. He still has other children for his convenience, but that one was removed.
I can no longer say “not a single child has been rescued.” One, out of more than 100 known, has been rescued. This could have been done long ago. She never should have been placed in his home. Nor should the other children who currently live with him.
After all this time, and having no confidence in the laws and the system that were supposed to protect her to begin with, do you think she’s going to trust that she won’t be thrown back into that hell hole? It’s going to take a lot of time, therapy and support before she can grow to trust law enforcement or the system that has so spectacularly failed her up to this day… but it’s a start.
Somebody took Step One.
One down and a little over 100 to go… in this one reservation…
*Fade to flute, drums, singing… and a wide vista of Indian Country children waiting their turn to be safe. *
“It’s unfortunate…”
For whom, Ms. McMullen?
You know where to find me.
~Cat
January 17, 2014 --- Printer Version (2)
Open Letter From Betty Jo Krenz to Thomas Sullivan, ACF
(First: She quotes from the ACF Website:)
Mission: To foster health and well-being by providing federal leadership,
partnership and resources for the compassionate and effective delivery of
human services
Values
* Dedication to promoting hope and opportunity for those in need of human
services
* Excellence in our performance, exemplified by innovations and solutions
that are anchored in available evidence, build knowledge and transcend
boundaries
* Professionalism in the manner in which we provide services, the
attitude we bring, the relationships we build, and our commitment to the mission
of the Administration for Children and Families
* Integrity of the Administration for Children and Families as an
organization, personified in ethical conduct by each of us
* Stewardship of the resources entrusted to us by the people of the
United States and accountability for and transparency in our actions as public
servants
* Respect for those we serve, with whom we work and with whom we partner
_______________
As a former tribal social service worker and whistleblower I have to
wonder:
The children of Spirit Lake Nation are in a crisis. This has been going
on for a long time. I have assisted in planning many funerals for
children from this reservation who died at the hands of abusers or due to
suicides because they lost hope that things would ever change or be
better for them and their families.
When I made the decision to turn in the tribe, BIA and state of ND for there wrong doing in the child welfaresystem I had hope that the federal government or agency that could assist these kids was going to be the ACF. I had read the mission and truly believed it would be in their ballpark to fix this mess and make sure the
kids were treated with respect and dignity. Realizing they needed
services that are granted to them as United States Citizens. The values
of the ACF talk about promoting hope.. I see no hope here.
Please Thomas Sullivan can you or your supervisors direct me to the
person or persons who can help a group of children who are in great need. I have
asked the BIA, FBI, ACF and everyone else who would listen to please help
these kids. Every morning I read the paper and expect to see an obituary
for another young child that could have been saved if everyone would just
do their jobs.
I have spent most of the last two and a half years of my life
communicating with national news media outlets and I get comments from
across the country asking how they can help and what can be done.
I am asking you guys that question. I am a simple farm wife with no office or
staff. I field phone calls from people on reservations from across the
country asking me to help bring their problems out into the open so the
problem can be fixed. I don¹t know what more to do as the writing is on the wall..the problems exist. I am tired of people passing the buck.
Thank you
Betty Jo Krenz
January 16, 2013
The Stupid, The Corrupt, The Auto Response Tactic -- Printer Version (7)
More and more, over the past 40 years or so, agency appointments have become nothing more than political payoffs for high dollar fundraisers, less and less about qualifications for the position, or as reward for previous outstanding good works in the field.
It’s been an insidious process wherein political “rewards” were doled out in seemingly unimportant, innocuous departments of agencies, some meaningless desk in an office that required no pens, paper or connected phone, while those who knew how to run the agency or department worked around the “appointee”.
Slowly at first, and then more swiftly, the appointees, the ‘rewardees’ if you will, wanted bigger paychecks, better payoffs, more status, and began popping up in more and more strategically important strata of the agencies, making it more and more difficult for those who actually knew what was going on and who were doing the real work, to work around them.
They not only wanted to take credit for the good work of others, they wanted to be in a position to make the decisions as to what work would or would not be done… and more and more agencies became permanently infested with this virus of cronyism to the point that there are almost no positions, especially top level and immediately below, that are not completely taken over by the incompetent or the corrupt, leaving us with stunningly stupid or counter intuitive decision making that boggles the mind with their destructiveness and outright criminal behavior.
This is how the Department of Interior, which controls the BIA and several other agencies, as well as oversees which lands and resources are given to which corporations or individuals. That led to the ‘scandal’ of the “Coke, Hookers, Microwaves,” in the agency responsible for collecting the royalties for our national resources: Oil, lands, minerals, water, etc. (See New York Times Article, 2008)
Yes, the agency responsible for collecting trillions of dollars from the corporations that exploit our national resources, was selling us out for sex, drugs and sometimes as little as the cost of a hooker for the night. No one was fired. They were shamed, and some were ‘transferred’, but no one was fired, much less went to jail for such an egregious breach of the public trust. Oil, Gas, Mining Conglomerates had easy access and paid nothing for the leases, long term, still in force, in this ‘oil boom’, and we taxpayers and citizens got righteously screwed.
But, because so many involved were so tightly connected to both the big donors and to the Administrations, past and present, no one lost their job, much less went to jail.
Camouflage
The general perception of government is that it is too big and everyone in it is incompetent. “Must be a gubmit job” is the standard punch line and everyone shrugs their shoulders. We think of government as incompetent by nature.
It is not. There is a good structure, and there are really good people who have integrity and who work ethically at their jobs. They do their utmost, day in and day out trying to make the system work, despite the bigger, fatter, heavier obstacles of cronyism appointees making it tougher and more impossible to achieve any legitimate goals.
The problem is not the agencies, but the incompetent and the corrupt who are heading them. These are critically important to the safety, security, economic well-being of our nation, and they are jam-packed with people whose only ambition is to get appointed, collect a paycheck and either clueless as to how to function in their position, or who are, such as in the Department of Interior, there to deliberately sabotage and undermine the agency. (Many of the high fundraisers who became appointees were also lobbyists or worked for lobbying firms, for Oil/Chemical/Gas companies), so naturally, they sought out and were given positions that most profited those corporations.
We look at government agencies that fail to do their jobs as ‘incompetent’ and shrug it off. We should be looking at them as “Corrupt” and holding investigations and putting criminals in prison for their part in the corruption.
“Incompetence” is the disguise. Corruption is the problem. Weed out the corruption, penalize the corrupt, and we gain a government that is more cost efficient and just plain more efficient and effective.
But first we have to stop accepting “inept” and “incompetent” as excuses.
It’s true in every agency of government: SEC, which controls the rules that are supposed to govern Wall Street and financial institutions which robbed us blind and knocked our economy into circling the porcelain bowl back in 2008, was rife with appointees and the policies in place from previous administrations, almost all of whom were selected from those same institutions and lobbying firms that the SEC is supposed to ‘control’.
What we have in place to ‘fix’ the mess of that crash, were more appointees of …. The same crowd! (Because they broke it, they would know how to fix it).
The FCC, FEC, SEC, BIA, DOI, DOJ, HHS, IHS, etc. all riddled with politically rewarded Directors and Secretaries. Each White House Administration makes the top appointments and they in turn, lock in their friends to key positions below them.
All of this brings us again to the ACF top dogs and their unfathomable, inexplicable attacks on Thomas Sullivan as if he, by making reports about children being systematically abused and placed in dangerous environments, is the enemy of their agency, rather than it’s star player.
They have gone so far as to literally forbid him from making or having access to any reports generated by his agency, division or in relation to any of the 13 Mandated reports he has made thus far.
Marrianne McMullen takes a breezy attitude to his urgent requests for a response to reports detailing horrific child sexual abuse, and in one email, where he repeats that he has not had a response from her in over 4 months, she delivers this vague, unconcerned response:
-----Original Message-----
From: Mcmullen, Marrianne (ACF)
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 1:25 PM
To: Sullivan, Thomas (ACF); Greenberg, Mark (ACF)
Cc: Murray, James (ACF); McCauley, Mike (ACF); Chang, Joo Yeun (ACF)
Subject: RE: Spirit Lake
Hi Tom:
Apologies for not getting back to your previous email; it was an
oversight on my part.
As I've communicated before, though, the Children's Bureau is leading
this effort for ACF and is actively managing work with both the Tribal
leadership and Tribal social services. CB is also working with the state
of North Dakota and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to address child
protective issues at Spirit Lake. I'm sure the CB staff in your own
office can give you updates about these ongoing efforts.
As I think you know, an assessment is underway that will help provide a
roadmap for policies, practices, procedures and staffing levels that the
Tribe needs to establish successful child protection services.
As always, specific knowledge of incidents of abuse should be reported
using the appropriate hotline.
Marrianne
It was an ‘oversight’. I guess there were other, more important matters on her desk other than the detailed reports of ongoing, unrelentingly brutal child abuse and retaliation against the children who reported the abuse, by the BIA and the Tribal Social Services as well as the Tribal Chairman and Tribal Council.
She’s talking about an ‘assessment’ that is underway.
She was informed of criminal abuse and she is talking about an assessment, not an investigation, and not anything about rectifying the situation with any sense of emergency.
She is told that children are being raped, forced to live with sexually abusive adults who are also known drug dealers, and to her, there is nothing urgent about any of this.
Mr. Sullivan, as we have seen from last year’s email threads of those above him in the ACF, is an annoyance.
Even after the brutal beating/stomping death of a child that had been listed in one of Sullivan’s 13 Mandated Reports, and left in that same dangerous home, there is nothing urgent enough for Ms. McMullen to actually take an active interest in say… doing her job? Apparently, not.
Further, upon Ms. McMullen’s orders, all of this pesky business of hundreds of children being raped, beaten, neglected or murdered, has been handed over to a woman named Marilyn Kennerson of the Children’s Bureau.
Even more surprising, Ms. Kennerson has had this responsibility for over a year now… and has not issued a single report, nor has she investigated a single case. Ms. Kennerson knows who butters her bread. She won’t do anything to rock that boat, so that’s the way the ACF likes it.
It’s not about protecting children--- it’s about political payoffs. And anyone that tries to do their job is a threat to the entire corrupt and inept operation, and they must, at all costs, be isolated, frozen out, and forbidden. There is a multi-billion dollar system of corruption, and Ms. Kennerson’s Children’s Bureau gets over $8Billion a year--- to make sure no one interferes with the system of money coming from government to corrupt agencies and tribal governments, flowing back into the campaigns, charities and foundations which also pay these same politicians and their donors; all of it dependent on the number of children they can keep in the system and generate Federal and State dollars based on ‘head count’.
The more damage to children, the more money. The more damaged children survive to damage children of their own, the more the cycle of payout and payoffs grows.
Ms. McMullen and her cronies are skilled at the art of disinterested in safety or well-being. To her, the problem is not children being raped, abused, neglected or murdered… the problem is people trying to prevent it. Those pesky types and their integrity are moved into isolated positions while more cooperative, more politically savvy players such as Marily Kennerson, are moved into position to do ‘assessments’ on what you and I would call “Criminal Acts Against Children”.
What is there to ‘assess’? Is child rape something that requires assessment? Or does it require the law to step in and make arrests and perform investigations?
They would like to mask this as government incompetence and we all walk away shaking our heads in disgust. But it is more than that. It is a criminal conspiracy. These agency heads are covering up reports about criminal acts against children. They are siding with the abusers and the corrupt in other agencies to do this. There is no other explanation.
They can’t say they did not know.
They would like to say they didn’t know. They’d like it if you never knew their names. They never have to stand in front of the cameras and do the “fell through the cracks”, “we are studying how this happened to insure it will never happen again,” “blah, blah, blah…” that we all know by heart now, and which means “nothing will be done, get over it, let’s argue over birth control, or guns, or just have the media focus on the latest celebrity meaningless gossip." (Expect the next 4 weeks to be filled with “Justin Bieber arrested for drugs” as if anything Justin Bieber does has any effect on any of us as individuals or as a nation. Media is complicit in the art of distracting us from anything relevant to our daily lives or our real issues with government. Media is a corporate monopoly. )
If you want to know how deep the contempt runs within the ACF for Mr. Sullivan’s urgent reports, just know this: Each time he has written to Marriane McMullen he has received this response:
Hello Tom: Thank you for this information. Marilyn Kennerson with the
Children's Bureau is working with the BIA and the tribe to make sure
that all appropriate measures are being taken to assure this child's safety.
Marrianne
Ever wonder what those ‘appropriate measures’ are? We are going into the third year of these reports with not a single case being investigated, nor a single witness interviewed.
It’s an auto response. He’s received it to a series of detailed emails/reports of abuse and of both children who are at high risk of suicide due to the abuse as well as a report of 3 suicides in December of children who had hung themselves due to both the abuse and the lack of any law enforcement investigating their claims.
Marriane likes to write them off. Ms. Kennerson likes to ‘assess’. No one wants to answer the questions, or respond as they are legally obligated to the Mandated reports.
So, let’s take a look at Ms. Kennerson and those who work with her, shall we?
marilyn.kennerson@acf.hhs.gov ask her what these appropriate measures are and what progress she has made in the past year or so, and when does she think she can actually investigate any of the 13 Mandated Reports. Ask her why she has not interviewed or spoken with anyone mentioned in any of those reports. I’ll wait.
You can phone Marilyn at (303) 844.3100
Glenda Lacey is the one under Marilyn that has the North Dakota beat… let’s ask her the same questions. Just what has she done and why are these same children, who have been reported on for over a year, still in danger? glenda.lacey@acf.hhs.gov I’m sure she’ll love hearing from you. Phone Ms. Glenda Lacey at: (303)844.1174
If these all powerful agencies and their top dogs can’t save one child from being stomped and murdered, raped and abused, despite all the reports and warnings, what good are they? Why don’t we demand they be fired and replaced by those who will do their job and who will, at the very least, take the concerns of those who have reported criminal abuses against children by predators and corrupt officials, seriously.
Above all, let’s replace them with someone who will not silence the only man who dares to do his job and who cares about the safety and well-being of these children. Let’s replace Ms. Auto-responder with someone who will actually read these reports and not filter them as ‘spam’.
A Note On The Storm
There was a huge freeze that hurt a lot of Good People in Spirit Lake last week, and there is another, more huge, more fierce storm moving in and it is expected to last for 2-3 days.
The Tribal Council, which was able to find hundreds of thousands of dollars to ‘back pay’ Justin Yankton who was fired for stealing from the LIHEP program, and James Yankton who was fired from the surveillance job at the casino for failing multiple drug tests…. And a few others managed to get ‘back pay’ illegally. It was no problem for the Tribal Council.
But for some reason, the Elders and the poor running out of fuel during this time and asking for fuel assistance is brushed off with “Sorry. No funds left in the LIHEP/Elders programs. You have to wait,” is a disgrace.
I know people who can’t afford the heat are suffering and getting sick and some will die. Nor can they afford the ruptured pipes and broken windows that will surely result from these past two freezes.
This Tribal Council cares nothing for the people they are supposed to represent. I am sick of these reports of them traveling all over the country. It is not necessary. If they can afford back pay for criminals, they can afford fuel for those who need it.
If they can’t afford fuel for the Elders and the poor, they can’t afford to travel to every conference on the freaking map!
Shame on the Tribal Council, every single one of them. Shame on Russell McDonald as Tribal Chair!
I grow more disgusted by the day. People, the people in your community are suffering and dying and no one will lift a finger to help them.
Clarice got back in and ripped off the families on their Christmas bonus/ Economic Impact Payments, allowing only a measly $300 for adults and a pittance of $100 per child. For that, families were supposed to buy warm coats, boots, for themselves and their children and fuel for their homes?
You can bet that Clarice’s home is nice and warm… as are the rest of the Tribal Councilors’.
Good People of Spirit Lake, you have to look out for one another, check in on those in your family, and those who live by you. You’re on your own. And it’s getting worse.
We have to stick together, work together, help one another and not allow those who are elected or appointed, wallow in the rewards of their corruption.
Keep telling me what you know. Keep sending me documents. We keep fighting because quitting is not an option; not for us, and not for the children.
You know where to find me.
~Cat
January 13, 2014 --- Printer Version (5)
The Circus is Still in Town
No sooner had Jean Robertson applied for the Pity Permit in FB wherein she wanted all her ‘good work’ and her ‘good heart’ to counterbalance that eensy-weensy drug charge, than she realized, possibly after it was posted in this blog, that she was still on the Stupid Track, and the train was coming… because her FB page was suddenly disappeared. She either locked it down completely, or locked it down so tight her tears could not get out.
Seems that Ms. Robertson has a history of small, irresponsible behaviors if you look at her record. Her ‘kind heart’, also part of the mythology required to run with the corrupt in Spirit Lake Nation. She has consistently breached confidentiality, attacked and smeared those who have put their effort into ending the endangering of children, and to have children removed from some of the most sexually deviant homes, good-hearted people such as Jean Robertson, shove them into.
Given that she posts both her smear campaign against good and decent people onto the same FB page where she wails over being busted for drug possession, for the entire world to see--- she clearly has no concept of who she is and the damage she is doing. Her only concern is for herself.
I am told that she is a cousin or sister (and it could be both, if you get my drift) to Kevin Brownshield Dauphinais, whose corruption and incompetence in the way he ran the Tribal Social Services, is the stuff of legend. Long after he is gone, the damage continues to grow, children continue to be raped and murdered, and the unqualified, incompetent and chronic offenders he hired, carry on as if he never left.
This latest episode with Jean Robertson? Proof that nothing has changed in Tribal Social Services and the Federal Government continues to be a horror joke with the children paying the price, hourly.
To ‘solve’ this problem, the Federal Government is moving at all possible speed to divest itself of all responsibility for the safety of these children, and the accounting of missing funds, now up into the billions, in the places we call “Indian Country”. They are moving to give more autonomy and control directly to the very tribal councils that have proven to be nothing more than mini-mafias, tied into a larger systematic, government funded scheme that both disempowers all but the most corrupt in each tribe, and is soon to be even more unaccountable for the child trafficking, child rapes and murders--- while increasing how much government funding is dumped into the entire criminal enterprise.
That is how the government ‘handles’ problems that they have, for decades, created and can no longer even pretend to control.
If something as heinous as child rape can be waived off as ‘that’s just the way they are’, our government playing both deaf and blind while those who profit from the corruption are free to buy, sell, rape and murder children with no consequences and no fear of anyone even looking, what do you think is going to happen? One reader told me that they ‘hope that Indians take this opportunity to change the way they do things.’
Sure, make millions and billions from corruption, child trafficking, embezzling, rape, and murder, and have the Federal Government come in to back you up when the Good People rise up to rid themselves of this stink, essentially allowing the crimes against children to continue without consequence—ever… and the incentive to ‘change’ is where?
Clearly, the only incentive is for the abusers and the corrupt to have more power, more protection from a government we pay with our tax dollars, to encourage the corruption and to flourish within it.
It is only a handful of corrupt and abusive people running the rez. But they have backup and support from every Federal and State Agency on the map.
A clear example is Timothy Purdon, USAG, ND who, despite there being 50+ cases of child rape reported every month on Spirit Lake alone, has in the past 3+ years he has been in charge, brought only two cases to court. That’s two cases out of more than 1800. For this, he was praised to the skies by his boss, Eric Holder.
For refusing to charge a 38-yr old man who admitted raping a 13-year old girl, because ‘there are always two sides to these rape stories’… he was praised by Eric Holder?
Kevin Brownshield Dauphinais ripped off millions from the agency he ran on the tribe. He also started several ‘family’ businesses and accessed even more in government funding, none of which he was qualified for in the first place.
It appears that the government is clearly bent on protecting and enabling the most corrupt, and praising a USAG who refuses to arrest or prosecute an admitted child rapist, clearly, CLEARLY, this year will be even more heartbreaking, more horrific than last year.
Those who dare to stand up to the rapists and the abusers are ‘taught a lesson’ by both the Tribal Chairman and the BIA Liaison Agent, by them fabricating outrageous false claims against her in order to remove the children from her care that she dared to stand up for and to protect.
That the children are suffering and in sub standard care is part of the lesson she is being taught. The more they suffer, the more she suffers. It’s a message to the children as well, to make an example of them for testifying against their rapist father… they will be ‘taught a lesson’.
There is no political will in the Tribal Council to change any of this. Most of them are involved in protecting the abusers in their families or they themselves are abusers.
Last year, when the Tribal Council voted to give back pay in the hundreds of thousands to tribal councilors who had gotten caught ripping off the LIHEP low income heating/fuel program and were fired over it… back pay. Or for James Yankton who had been fired for failing all of his drug tests as he was running surveillance at the casino… back pay. Years of it.
Back pay was easily found for those specially connected but for some reason, as record breaking cold was snapping the bones of poorly built and maintained homes on the rez, where elders were shivering and getting sick, where children had no warmth…. Those who asked for fuel assistance were dismissed with “There is no money in the program for the Elders or Fuel Assistance.”
They find money if it is going to those who are corrupt… but they dismiss those in real need saying that the program was on empty.
So, don’t tell me that anyone on Tribal Council gives a hoot for anyone in their community. They think of themselves first, the corrupt second and the rest of you can just go mutter off.
Our government has failed not only the Good People of Spirit Lake, but the entirety of Indian Country, and it has been very profitable and protective of the worst abusers.
If anything is going to change, ever, we have to change this first. The corruption goes throughout our government in the guise of appointments and hirings wherein the only qualifications are your willingness to go along, your ability to raise campaign funds for those elected to those offices, and your personal, social, family connections to those in power.
Agencies, overall, have become so corrupt and inept that they no longer serve the people as intended, but rather, only serve the political machines that birthed them, and rewarded them for their political loyalty.
That has to change. We have to change it.
We have to be aware of what we are seeing and to divine the truth out of the lies we are told by all concerned.
We have to look at where the funding comes from for these organizations and foundations that also say they ‘serve’. We must see which master they serve. How much money is government sourced? How much is corporate and what have they actually accomplished besides creating more political connections that benefit a handful, personally, to the detriment of the rest of us, collectively, starting with the children.
Given that there is no proof that even one Mandated Report has been investigated out of the 13 filed by Thomas Sullivan, and since those reports have been denied, ridiculed and ignored, more children have died, it is clear to all of us that what is being uncovered by those seeking to remove the children from danger, is a system wide corruption on par with the cartels and other criminal organizations.
When government acts or reacts in the same ways and to the same ends as does a crime syndicate, we must recognize that this monster is huge, and it has grown in the shadows, protected by distractions, ignored by media that has been, for the most part, trained like seals to bark at shiny fish and provide entertainment with an aversion to information that we would all need and should have, if we are to clean up the corruption, rid ourselves of the inept, or make our lives more secure, less fearful in the future.
This is not a Republican vs Democrat political issue. This is our government twisted and perverted to where it protects the criminals while allowing more and more horrendous acts of violence and depravity upon the children in Indian Country, and throughout the nation, where there are people deemed as disposable to our society.
We must stop throwing away Human Beings and condemning children to becoming the fuel of our fears or angers. If we can’t, all of us, come together in and around Indian Country and see the harm that is being done and the laws being made to ensure that those doing the harm suffer no consequences, and those who speak out are retaliated upon with the full support of every level of government--- if we can’t come together to change that, starting in this one place where we know it is so rampant… if we can’t or if we lack the political will to unite to protect these children, our nation is doomed.
If we can’t save the children from the clutches of known predators, we cannot help anyone and our government, our laws, are just a joke, meaningless and ironic.
We have to look at the laws imposed and the damage done. We have to look at the Indian Child Welfare Act, which disempowers anyone that tries to rescue a child from abusers, and gives tribes the right to ‘do with children as they please’, as if they were property.
We have to look at the lack of accountability on the part of both government and the agencies that hand out billions of our tax dollars based on how many children are listed, and not on the programs actually provided, and there is no accounting to be sure that money is not being thieved from all of us.
Until we have actual accountability, and laws are enforced to protect the children, and abusers are removed from authority, these children will continue to be so many pounds of meat, bought and sold, traded and abused, with no rights, no protections while politicians continue to pay off their fundraisers with appointments that put them in control of the lives and well being of children, who are then treated like chattel, with no rights, no voice, no recourse against those who harm them.
We must do better than we have done. We must investigate, ask questions, and demand answers. So far, Purdon has not had to answer to anyone. The softballs gently tossed to him by media have had no follow up questions and no request for proof of anything he claims.
He still claims that Thomas Sullivan’s reports are ‘lies’, but has refused to say which reports are false. In fact, he has refused to respond to Thomas Sullivan.
Sullivan remains isolated in his job, forbidden from making reports. The problem doesn’t go away by refusing to allow a man to do his job. It gets worse.
There are too many in high positions, including George Sheldon, Marrianne McMullen, Tim Purdon, and a list of 30 others… making it worse. These raped, abused and murdered children are on their watch, blood on their hands and they should be held accountable.
WE must hold them accountable. WE must demand from every elected official that they be held accountable. We must demand from media that they take this seriously, and they do their job which is to seek real answers to real questions, not just provide a forum for PR paddy cakes.
These children cannot do this. Only we can. If we can stop it in this one place, we can begin to stop it throughout the system and the nation. We can make our own lives better by working together and looking far enough ahead to see both the improved outcome of our collaboration and collective scrutiny, as well as the likely worsening consequences, if we fail to act and to persist.
You know where to find me.
~Cat