Public Testimony to the City Council General Welfare Committee on May 5, 2005
Oversight: Participation of New York City Foster Children with HIV and AIDS in Clinical Trials

Good Day Everyone. My name is Rolando Bini, the Executive Director of Parents in Action, an organization that advocates for Family Preservation and System Change.

I want to thank the City Council for finally having this long-overdue Hearing.

I want to thank ACS Commissioner John Mattingly for having brought a vision of significant change into ACS. The abuses of ACS and specifically the abuses at the Incarnation Children's Center (ICC) are events that happened before he became Commissioner. These are evils that he has inherited and rather is trying to eradicate. I am convinced that if he had been in charge of our local CPS agency 30 years ago, half of the prisons in New York State would be empty today.

The mere fact that he has ordered an investigation by the Vera Institute of Justice is a bold step that would have never happened under Commissioner Scopetta or any of his predecessors. ACS like most bureaucracies, has developed a culture of self-preservation where truth becomes secondary and "protecting the agency" the primary goal. Similar to the "wall of silence" of our Police Department most of its employees, but specially those with many years of service are willing to lie, deceive, and cover-up in order to protect the good name of the agency. In this process, the best interest of the Child, the best interest of the Child's Family, and Truth get many times thrown out the window. So far, Commissioner Mattingly has shown to be willing to break that wall of silence and bring transparency, accountability and I hope justice.

I urge everyone, but especially the City Council members to, with an open mind thoroughly educate themselves about the facts related to the experiments with HIV positive Children, because the facts that they will eventually discover are so horrible that will change forever their concept of what our "Child Protective Agencies" really are.

In order to understand how such monstrous crimes anyone could commit against innocent Children, one must understand the environment in which these facts occurred.

Foster Care is a profit-driven Industry. Children are taken away under any imaginable excuse from the people who offer the less resistance: poor Black and Latino Parents. 97% of the 19,000 Children in Foster Care are Black and Latino, less than 1% White.
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The "Business with Children Industry" treats those Children as Chattel. They are just a commodity that feeds a vast profiteering enterprise. CPS workers, Foster Care agencies, Doctors, Nurses, Psychologists, Psychiatrist, School Guidance Counselors, Attorneys, Judges, etc. make a living out of the suffering of these innocents.

This Business in reality is an assembly line that also feeds other industries: the prison, homeless, and mentally ill populations could not grow without a constant feed from Foster Care Children. Think about it. If we could heal society and have no Foster Children, thousands of people would be out of jobs.

According to Northwestern University Professor Dorothy Roberts in her book Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare: "It costs the federal government eleven times as much to provide foster care as to provide public aid to families".

I encourage everyone to carefully read the report Children as Chattel: Invoking the Thirteenth Amendment to Reform Child Welfare, written by a former ACS worker. In few words, Foster Care is a continuation, in a subtle way, of the old system of slavery and involuntary confinement. The report can be found at http://familyrights.us/bin/white_papers-articles/children-chattel/
I am including a copy of that report.

In the specific case of the Incarnation Children's Center, run by Catholic Charities, a "humanitarian" agency that gets the lion's share of this racketeering enterprise, we only found out about these "Guinea Pig Kids" due to the fact that Jacquie Hoerger, a nurse who used to work there, had a fall-out with the administration and she decided to spill the beans. If that were not the case, the experiments still would be going in full force.

When poor Black and Latino mothers go to deliver at a public hospital in New York City and their blood or their Child's blood test HIV positive, then ACS intervenes. Either the mother gets coerced into allowing her Child into the Incarnation Children's Center or ACS takes custody of the Child and ships the Child to the ICC. Either way the Child is going to be given these very toxic and even lethal drugs. All of course "in the best interest of the Child". We know that HIV tests are not reliable, that there are many false positives, that it cross-reacts with pregnancy, the flu, and many, many illnesses, previous or present.

In the case where attempts to coerce the mother fail, ACS takes the Child and then charges her with neglect. My question is: Does it also take away from her any other Child that she may have, since she is considered neglectful? In what way, shape or form could this be considered in the best interest of those Children? In order to justify their initial abuse, the whole family gets destroyed. This would be similar to the inhuman and perverse "logic" of taking the Children away from those mothers victims of domestic violence. In this specific case, in Nicholson v. Scoppetta, Judge Jack Weinstein called ACS practices, "tantamount to slavery". The issue of clear and non-coerced consent must be examined.

My second point is that the drugs used in these experiments were known to be extremely toxic and even fatal, even in adults. Would not be cruel and unusual to use them is Babies and Children with much less body mass, knowing already the results? Could the almost infinite thirst for profit by the drug companies have been the driven force to have trials for eventual FDA approval and thus huge commercialization and profits? What better than use Children who had no protection: their natural protectors, their Parents were forced away from the picture? Were the Best Interest of the Pharmaceutical Companies put ahead of the Best Interest of the Children?

My third point is that from the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic it was known that a complete nutritional intake is a viable therapy, with no side effects. I want to quote Dr. Roberto Giraldo's paper (page 3):

"Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, researches have provide scientific evidence that supports the possibility that AIDS can be effectively prevented, treated, and overcome by guaranteeing an optimal nutritional status to the individual or the patient. However, it seems that propaganda spread by pharmaceutical companies to commercialize antiretroviral medications has prevented these ideas from being widely accepted, despite the toxicity of these medications."

I am including a copy of the paper by Dr. Giraldo: NUTRITIONAL THERAPY FOR THE TREATMENT AND PREVENTION OF AIDS: SCIENTIFIC BASES. This document can be found at: http://www.robertogiraldo.com/eng/papers/NutritionalTherapy_SADC_2003.html

There is a document published by the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) and FAO titled Living well with HIV/AIDS, A manual on nutritional care and support for people living with HIV/AID that it can be downloaded from the FAO website at ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y4168E/y4168E00.pdf. I urge everyone to read it. The manual explains the relationship between good nutrition and HIV/AIDS and considers good nutrition as an alternative to toxic drugs. My question is: If it was known that a nutritional approach to HIV is the one that has no side effects or toxicity, then why that approach was not used with these Children? Wouldn't that have been in their Real Best Interest?

Another question is: Where were the so-called Law Guardians, those Lawyers appointed by the Family Court Judges over the objections of the Parents, allegedlly to protect the Children? The only thing they "Guard" is the business interests of this scheme, and make sure that the Children stay as long as possible in Foster Care and that eventually they are put-up for Adoption.

What about the Family Court Judges whose only function is to "legalize" this scheme? Just because it happens to be "legal", does not mean that is not a crime. Remember the Nuremberg War Tribunals. Family Court in New York City is an Institutionalized System of Injustice, they rubber stamp anything that ACS or the Foster Care agencies asks them to. There is no Jury or Due Process, hearsay is acceptable and with those standards an elephant can pass as a flea or vice-versa. According to the Office of the Public Advocate, Parents only win 16 cases out of every 1000 against ACS in Family Court, and this includes appeals. In the most important initial step, the 1028 Hearing, ACS refuses to provide statistics, but a generous estimate is that Parents win 2 cases out of every 1,000 cases against ACS. To be found abusive or neglectful in NYC Family Court, has nothing to do with reality, all it means is that you are Black or Latino and on top of that poor.

If 99% of the Children used for drug trials are Black and Latino because they or their mothers tested HIV positive at delivery; does this means that only 1% of all other Ethnic groups in NYC tested HIV positive?

I understand that Foster Care Parents are also a vehicle to have Children under their care being given this toxic drugs, and in those cases where after realizing that the Drugs were poisoning the Children, and they refused to keep giving these drugs, those Children were taken away from them. How many Children were involved and how many still are?

My last question. According to Gerald McKelley, spokesman for ICC there are more than 25 other Foster Homes in NYC where similar trials have been done. Which are those?

We hear that the "trials" have stopped and that the Children are only getting "treatment" but the Children are getting exactly the same toxic drugs. The only difference is in semantics: when data, statistics, and a report is written is considered a "trial", but when this is not openly done is considered just "treatment".

These inhuman experiments could never have happened without the climate of total impunity in which the so-called Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies operate. The CPS Division of ACS is the Greatest Child Abuser in NYC. In order to save one Child, they destroy one thousand. Either moron's logic or clever evil social engineering. With the complicity of the so-called Law Guardians and the Family Court Judges they have artificially created thousands of Forced Orphans; Children who have Parents who desperately want them back, all of this to prepare them for the prison, homeless, and/or the mentally ill populations while making profits.
This Foster Care system is based in false premises and has been setup in such a way as to produce maximum Social Harm to certain Ethnic groups, irrespective of the good intentions that the majority of its actors may or may not have. We need to Stop this State Sponsored Child Abuse and Family Destruction.

I think that having the Vera Institute of Justice do an investigation is a good first step, but there should be a parallel investigation by the NYC Department of Investigation that has Subpoena powers.

God Bless You All