I wrote this to a homeschool mailing list today... this is yet another comment on the CBS News attack on homeschooling earlier this week:

Its bothering me that it seems some people apparently think the Warrens weren't homeschooling and/or deserved the attention of social service agents. I don't see any evidence of either, from what little I've learned from news reports.

My views are based in part on my approximately 15 years of study of CPS laws, cases and tactics. I own the Fight CPS website and have received thousands of emails about CPS cases, mostly from parents who feel they and their children were unfarily victimized by the agency. (My website is pretty much abandoned right now because I've moved on to other things but since it still receives 50-100 hits every day, I'm keeping it on the web for now.)

If the AZ situation, of which we know little, was so severe, why were the Warrens allowed to keep custody of their children? It wouldn't make sense that they would serve probation then leave the state with the kids if they were such terrible people.

Also if there was any evidence of real abuse the social workers in NC would have gotten a court order to interview or remove the children.

So that leaves us with a messy house in which lived some troubled teenagers. I happen to have teens the same ages as those boys: 13 and 14. One of mine has bipolar disorder and between that and puberty I've seen a lot of really bad behavior. One of the articles I read mentioned there were holes in the walls of their home. Well, there are sometimes holes in the walls of my home too. My children put them there, especially my daughter before she got her bipolar meds last spring. Does that make me a bad parent? I've never put a hole in a wall in all my life.

So here's what I think happened... the family was under a lot of stress because of harrassment by NC CPS workers and the pressures of daily life with teenagers. The 14 year old got out of hand one day. Maybe he was playing with the gun and accidently killed his sibling, then killed the other one and himself. Maybe he did it intentionally in a fit of rage - who knows? But there was no evidence of child abuse. The main known problems these parents had were a messy house and yard, and an out of control teenager. Common sense will tell anyone that when there's 2 boys close in age in a house there's likely to be a lot of arguments.

More articles about the Warren case. I would really like to read a statement by the parents but I can't find anything like that today. After what they've been through I can't blame them for not wanting anyone to know their private thoughts about their tragedy.

Parents Of Teenagers Found Shot Had Legal, Financial Problems In Arizona, NC
WRAL News

Does DSS target homeschoolers?
World Newspaper Publishing

The Warrens in Court (what the judge said when acquitting them)
WB22TV Cache

Example of a leap of logic in a blog that states, in part,
"... is it the fault of home schooling that two deranged religious fanatics abused and tormented their kids at home for years before one of the children took the only way out of the situation that he thought possible?"


I don't see the evidence that the Warrens (1) weren't homeschooling, or (2) abused their children for years. They are also accused by the neighbor of keeping the children isolated and even imprisoned with bars on the windows.

People say all kinds of nasty things about parents these days - that's why there's so many false CPS reports filed. What people see in a situation may have nothing to do with what's really happening. Did you know that about 82% of the calls to CPS are either immediately discarded, or later found to be unfounded? Even so, there's thousands of children removed from their homes every year, in cases where charges are later unfounded. That's why I take whatever the neighbor said with a grain of salt.

The kids were getting candy from the neighbor (according to one of the news reports linked above) and probably gave him a sob story so they could get more candy. Some kids do that. So he called CPS on the family and made their difficult life more hellacious than ever.

Well, that's my take on it. If you have evidence these children were severely abused please let me know, but in the meantime I'm using the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. These parents were never proven guilty of anything except a weapons charge. Remember the AZ charge was settled with a plea bargain (and good parents plea bargain often, to get the gestapo off their backs) and the children remained with the Warrens.

Anyhow, this is another way of me saying the See-BS report was much ado about nothing. A tragedy occurred. There was no provable child abuse involved. See-BS managed to use a lot of rumor and innuendo to try to influence lawmakers to create restrictive legislation.
  ¶ 11:45 AM