Arizona DCS Arrests Melissa Diegel as “Fugitive from Justice” While Living in Florida

Melissa Diegel is an Arizona mother who had her two daughters medically kidnapped back in 2014 for disagreeing with their doctors. Her story was covered by Health Impact News and inspired the beginning of our MedicalKidnap.com website. The Daily Caller is reporting that Diegel is being charged in an eight count indictment, and has been extradited from Florida, where she has lived since 2017, and is now incarcerated in an Arizona jail. Diegel lost her long battle with the State of Arizona and never had her two daughters returned. But apparently Arizona was not content to let Diegel move on with her life, and is now charging her with "child abuse" for seeking medical treatment for her daughters from 2011 through 2014, and prosecuting her as a "fugitive from justice." Diegel stated that she suspects Arizona may be worried about a lawsuit, since her oldest daughter is about to turn 18.

Court: Arizona DCS Errors and Lies Caused a Father to Lose Rights to his Child

Sloppy work, lack of evidence and outright lies caused a father to lose parental rights to his daughter, the Court of Appeals argued in an opinion that criticizes the work of nearly everyone involved in the four-year-long case. The Department of Child Safety, not the father, is to blame for circumstances that led to a juvenile-court decision last year to sever the father's parental rights, the appeals court wrote. "(A)ny perceived lack of a bond between Melody and Father was not because of Father's lack of effort, but because of DCS's delay, contact restrictions and substantial failure to try to unify Melody with Father," the three-judge panel wrote.

Judge Orders Children Returned to Parents Who Did not Take Child with Fever to Emergency Room

In a story out of Arizona that has received national attention, Judge Timothy J. Ryan ordered the children of a Chandler, Arizona couple returned home more than two months after police broke down their door at 1 a.m. to remove the children simply because the mother did not take one of them to an emergency room to check on a fever. In a turn of events that might be due to the public outrage over this case, Judge Ryan reportedly went against the recommendation of the assistant attorney general representing the Arizona Department of Child Safety who wanted the children to remain in state custody. While the children are all home for now by court order, the State of Arizona still retains custody of the children, and the legal battle continues for the children, even though there are no charges against the parents due to a lack of evidence.

Arizona Judge Orders Lawmaker and Media Out of Courtroom in Case Where Police Kicked Down Door Because Feverish Child was not Taken to Hospital

An Arizona Judge recently ordered state Representative Kelly Townsend and the local media to leave the courtroom during the trial of the Chandler Arizona family who lost all 3 of their children for failing to take one of them to the hospital regarding a fever. Police broke down their door at 1 a.m. in the morning and forcibly removed all three children. According to the Arizona Republic, Judge Timothy J. Ryan ordered one of their reporters and Rep. Townsend to "immediately" leave an April 10 pretrial hearing in the case. The judge was apparently upset over the media coverage this trial was receiving. This is consistent with how Arizona judges have acted in cases involving the State of Arizona removing children from their homes unjustly, as Health Impact News has been ordered several times in the past few years to take down our stories representing the families and victims of such actions. However, Health Impact News has never complied with such orders, as they violate the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

Was Arizona Family that had Police Break Down Their Door at 1 A.M. Targeted by Medical Community Because They Don’t Vaccinate Their Children?

A story out of Arizona that we first reported at the beginning of March has received national attention, due to video footage of police breaking down the family's door in the middle of the night because the parents did not take one of their children who had a fever to the local hospital at the request of a doctor. The police and social workers removed all 3 children from the home. In our original coverage of this story, we mentioned a quote from the parents that they did not vaccinate their children, but the parents did not, at the time, think this was a factor in their removal. In a follow up report published in the Arizona Republic by Dianna M. Náñez after the parents' first court hearing, Arizona Representative Kelly Townsend, who attended the court hearing, stated: “It was brought to my attention that these parents may have been targeted by the medical community because they hadn’t vaccinated their children.” Arizona law allows for parents to opt out of vaccines for their children for religious or medical reasons. Townsend said parents who don’t vaccinate their children because of medical concerns aren’t criminals and shouldn’t be treated as such. She worried physicians were using it as a reason to refer parents to DCS. “I think if DCS decides to use this as a factor they would be violating a parent’s right to have a personal exemption, a religious exemption and perhaps a medical exemption,” she said.

Police Break Down Door of Arizona Family at 1 AM to Medically Kidnap 3 Children Because Parents Refused to Take Child to Emergency Room with Fever

Local news media in Arizona have reported that a family had their three children forcibly removed from their home in the early morning hours after armed police forces broke down their door to gain entrance. The military SWAT-like actions of these armed police forces were captured on video by the family's security cameras. The incident is reportedly the result of the family's doctor reporting them to child services because they did not follow her advice and take their 2-year-old son to the emergency room due to a high fever. The parents claim the child's fever came down considerably on the way, and that he started playing with his siblings. They offered to bring him back to the doctor to verify he was not in danger, instead of spending thousands of dollars for an emergency room visit, but the doctor allegedly refused and reported them to social services. If local authorities truly believed the child was in imminent danger, why did they wait until the middle of the night when the entire family was asleep to break down their door and come in and raid their home, traumatizing the children and taking all three of them into custody? The parents do not even know where their children are located, and social services reportedly canceled their meeting.

Is Arizona a Hub of Child Sex Trafficking? Why does Arizona Take the Highest Percentage of Children from their Homes?

It has been well-documented that the State of Arizona removes children from their homes and places them in foster care at a rate that is higher than any other state in the U.S. In 2015, Arizona House Democrats wrote a letter to the governor asking why this rate continues to increase, and has reached a rate of 1 out of every 100 children in Arizona is in foster care. In 2017, reporter Bob Ortega ran a series of articles on the state of Child Welfare in Arizona in the Arizona Republic. The front page of a January Sunday edition had a photo with this inscription: "Every 40 minutes, an Arizona child is removed from his or her home. We’re still asking, Why?" In 2017, Health Impact News reported on the arrest of Arizona foster parent David Frodsham, who allegedly ran a child pornographic and pedophile ring out of his state-approved foster home. After he was arrested, one of his foster children, Devani, was placed into another state-approved foster home where 80% of her body was burned by scalding water, forcing the amputation of her toes. Another boy who was part of his foster home aged out of the system at 18, and filed a lawsuit for $15 million for years of torture and sexual abuse. In April of 2018, federal law enforcement officials arrested Arizona residents Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin after years of investigating their involvement in human trafficking, including child sex trafficking, mainly through their online classified ads website “Backpage.com.” The website was also seized and closed down. Backpage.com has been linked to 73 percent of all child trafficking in the United States, as was revealed in a Senate investigation in 2017. Why are these horrific situations allowed to continue in Arizona? Why was it necessary to bring in federal agents to arrest David Frodsham, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin after years of being involved in sexually trafficking children? Is there something going on in Arizona preventing local authorities from dealing with what appears to be a massive child sex trafficking system?

Arizona Lawmaker Wants to Mandate that Parents are Fully Informed of Vaccine Ingredients and Side Effects Before Children Receive Shots

The Arizona Daily Star is reporting that one Arizona lawmaker, State Senator Paul Boyer, is taking a different approach to "mandatory vaccine" policy. Instead of mandating that all children should be mandated to receive vaccines even over the objections of their parents, this lawmaker wants to instead mandate that parents are fully informed as to the ingredients in vaccines injected into their children, as well as the known side effects, so that they can make an informed choice. Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Service writes: "A state senator wants to mandate that parents be told exactly which ingredients and chemicals are in vaccines before their children are inoculated. The bill introduced by Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Phoenix, would require that any health professional provide not just the positive effects of vaccinations but also the full list of ingredients and side effects before a vaccine could be administered. He pointed to a list from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that says vaccines may variously contain phosphate, bovine serum, formaldehyde, fluoride, yeast extracts or human diploid fibroblast cell cultures (cultures of human fetal tissue)."

Arizona Twin Boys Suffering from Environmental Illness Medically Kidnapped from Parents Feeding them Organic Diet

Six-year-old twin boys in Mesa, Arizona were taken into custody by the Department of Children Services (DCS) for “Neglect” due to food intolerances. Both boys have had a lot of chemical and food sensitivities their whole lives, starting from when they were weaned from breastfeeding. “We have constantly struggled with their food sensitivities, one step forward, two steps back,” Jessica, acupuncturist and mother of the twin boys says. From very early on, both boys suffered with joint pain, irritability, headaches, horribly dark circles under their eyes, swelling all over the body, difficulty sleeping, heel pain, itching, rashes that got so bad they turned purple and great bloating. The family removed different foods such as wheat and other processed foods, switching to a real food diet so popular today that it was thoroughly explained in a recent documentary on Netflix called “The Magic Pill”. Their problems subsided until the were literally thriving with no negative issues. They began taking tennis lessons, taekwondo and playing at the local playground regularly. The boys started at a local charter school in August of 2018. Shortly thereafter, they experienced great change in their bodies. They felt yucky overall, suffered from joint pain, weakness in their muscles and headaches. The problems escalated. DCS took custody of both boys two weeks after one was admitted to the hospital. The parents were told they were taking custody of the boys due to medical neglect. They said the boys were in pain due to abuse from the parents.

Arizona Adoptive Mother Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for Scalding Young Foster Girl Who was Part of Pedophile Ring

The Arizona woman convicted of scalding a little girl placed in her care by Child Protective Services has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, followed by 15 years probation. Samantha Osteraas could have received up to a 30 year sentence at her hearing on December 3, 2018, but Superior Court Judge James Marner of Pima County felt that Osteraas "deserved some leniency," according to the Arizona Daily Star. A group of concerned citizens called the AZ DCS Oversight Group says that they tried to submit a Victim Impact Statement to the court, but were refused. The judge's clerk threatened to throw the group representative out of the courtroom if the document was distributed, but the group had already given it to various media representatives before giving it to the clerk. Osteraas was found guilty in October of reckless child abuse for waiting for several hours before calling 911 after then 5 year old Devani was scalded in the bathtub. Devani suffered 3rd degree burns to more than 70% of her body and had to be placed into a medically induced coma. She lost all 10 of her toes and has undergone 29 surgeries since the crime against her almost 2 years ago. During the trial, Devani, now 7, testified that Osteraas held her down in the bathtub with a pink towel.