Kimberly Lowe, director of the Center for Court Reform with the Global Family Alliance, is also one of ten Republicans seeking to win the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Tim Kaine. She sees a quest by the Left to influence children as one of the last but perhaps most important steps in an effort to increase power.
"What's horrifying is that it's our taxpayer dollars that are being used to remove children from families. We are currently losing one child per minute to the government based on false accusations," Lowe said on American Family Radio Friday.
According to Lowe, $29 billion in funds available through the Adoption and Safe Family Act is being poorly managed. ASFA was enacted in 1997 with the stated purpose of improving safety for children and placing them in permanent homes primarily through adoption. It is considered the most sweeping change in federal child welfare in almost half a century.
Like a lot of government programs, ASFA's current reality has gotten off track from its original intent, Lowe said.
"We spend $29 billion of our taxpayer dollars to remove children instead of relocating that money, so that way we can address education, housing stability, mental health, ACC access, opioid addiction treatment … ," she told show host Jenna Ellis.
"Economic policies designed to force Americans to rely on the government just to make ends meet hasten our country's descent into a Marxist dystopia." (Kimberly Lowe, in her article "How the Courts Fostered a Family Crisis," posted on AmericanGreatness.com)
Policies designed to weaken & separate families
In a recently published article, Lowe accuses "corrupt judicial systems" and widespread human trafficking of "haunting" America's family and child welfare policies. Judges are too quick to divide parents and children, Lowe argues – and sometimes those decisions, she says, are driven by the lure of available federal dollars that can be directed to the courts.
"Our courts are not actually constitutional courts; they're admiralty courts. So, a lot of people think when they go into a court situation that they're going to have some type of rights to their family. But in reality, the government owns and controls our children – and the government decides what happens to our children," Lowe described.
Through a program within the Administration of Public Services, many state courts can be reimbursed for the costs of adjudicating child support and paternity matters in certain circumstances. The result, she explained, is that a child without his or her parents would create a need for child support.
"It is an incentive to remove fathers out of the picture when you get a certain amount of money per month if the dad isn't in the picture with child support," Lowe said.
According to the family advocate, it's not only fathers who are subject to these types of courtroom outcomes.
"Currently in family courts and just regular divorce situations – and I'm talking about middle-class families and even affluent families – they're removing the mother out of the family at a really high rate; and even more horrifying, children are being placed back with their abusers. We have almost a thousand children murdered at the hands of their abusers."
According to childhelp.org, 1,840 children died due to abuse or neglect in 2019. More than 70% who died were age 3 or younger. Statistics also show that 80% of cases involved at least one parent.
Children, parents separated too quickly
Every case is different, but Lowe believes the courts act too quickly to separate children and parents.
"This is definitely a societal problem, but the problem is that it's become a $50 billion industry. So, when parents go to courts, it's become a for-profit business. And in no way are they doing anything to make sure that our families stay together or that we have some type of 50-50 shared parenting. Much of the time they remove parents completely out of the picture," Lowe said.
But the good news, she added, is that the problems in America's courtrooms can be fixed.
"The solution is that there has to be oversight over our courts, and we have to make our courts constitutional courts …. We have a lot of really great laws, but none of those laws actually get followed by judges because it is a financial gain for everyone," she said.
Lowe argues that the federal money could be reallocated to help states, some of which may lack resources. In many states, court employees don't have the experience or training needed to make informed family decisions, she said.
"In places like West Virginia, social workers don't have to have any education at all because they're completely overwhelmed and overburdened [by their workload]," Lowe said.
She believes a federal employee placed within each county would benefit children.
"We can afford to have someone in each of those offices to make sure that the laws in your state are being followed, [and to] make sure that the Constitution is being followed because a right to be with your family is really a First Amendment right of association," Lowe concluded.
