In 2008, a sitting Georgia state senator stood in front of an audience and said this about Child Protective Services. It has become a protected empire, built on taking children and separating families. She wasn’t guessing. She said she had worked on some 300 cases in her own state, and hundreds more across the country. She wrote a bill to rein the system in. The bill was defeated in committee. She lost her reelection. And the federal adoption bonuses she tried to make her state refuse? They’re still being paid today.

This is the Father’s Advocacy Network podcast. I’m Adam Neuerburg. Today is a history episode. It’s the story of Nancy Schaefer, the Georgia senator who looked inside Child Protective Services, called it a business, and tried to change the law. We’re going to hear what she saw, mostly in her own words, and look at how much of what she warned about is still on the books.

Nancy Schaefer served in the Georgia State Senate. And by her own account, for four years she was confronted with families struggling to get their children out of what she called the clutches of Child Protective Services. She could have looked away. She dug in instead. She worked on probably 300 cases statewide, she said, and hundreds and hundreds across the country, in nearly every state. In 2007 she published a report with a title that didn’t leave much room for interpretation. The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services. She called it scathing herself. And she followed it with an update. Her conclusion, after all those cases, was blunt. In her words, she was convinced there is no accountability in Child Protective Services.

Now, notice what she did not say. She did not say no child ever needs protection. She said plainly that there are children who need to be removed from wretched situations. Her report, she said, was about something else. The children and parents caught up in what she called legal kidnapping. Legal kidnapping. Those are the words of a state senator, standing in public, with her name and her career on the line.

In 2008, Schaefer introduced Senate Bill 415, relating to juvenile proceedings. Listen to what it would have done, because every piece of it tells you what was wrong. First. Under Georgia law at the time, as she described it, the Department of Human Resources could hold a child in emergency care for seven days without a court order. Her bill would have cut that to 72 hours. Seven days. A full week where the state can hold your child, and no judge has to look at it. She wanted it down to three days. Second. It would have required a court order to enter the home of a parent or guardian to seize a child. A court order. To come into your house and take your kid. Third. It called for family court to be open to the public. Her reasoning fit in one sentence. Confidentiality and secrecy in family court protects the wrong people.

Fourth. It said immunity would not extend to seizures of children found to be in violation, or to giving a child medication over the objection of the parent. In other words, if you take a child unlawfully, or you medicate a child against the parent’s wishes, you don’t get to hide behind immunity. And fifth. It would have barred the state from applying for, receiving or accepting adoption incentive payments under the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. So what happened to it? In her words, the bill suffered such defeat in the Judiciary Committee. She said she was cut off at every juncture. And she said she was defeated in her own reelection, by another Republican, the month before she gave this speech. A court order to take a child. Open courtrooms. No immunity for unlawful seizures. No bonus money for adoptions. Ask yourself who would fight against that, and why.

Schaefer answered that question herself. She said this is why victims of Child Protective Services get no help from their legislators. And she laid out the conclusions she’d come to. She said poor parents, not always but oftentimes, are targeted to lose their children, because they don’t have the means to hire an attorney and fight the system. She said caseworkers and social workers are very often guilty of fraud. That they withhold and destroy evidence, fabricate evidence, and seek to terminate parental rights unnecessarily. Those are her charges, from her own casework, made in public by a sitting senator. She said the separation of families is growing as the business grows, because state and local governments have grown used to these taxpayer dollars to balance their budgets. And she told the audience to look at who is getting paid. State employees. Attorneys. Court investigators. Guardians ad litem. Court personnel and judges. Psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, counselors. Foster parents and adoptive parents. All of them, she said, looking to the children in state custody to provide job security. Then she got to the money. The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, she said, offered cash bonuses to the states for every child they adopted out of foster care. Her logic was simple. To receive those bonuses, local agencies would need more children. And she put it in words most people would never dare say about a child welfare agency. They must have merchandise that sells.

She said some counties offered four to six thousand dollars in bonus for each child adopted out to strangers, and another two thousand for a special-needs child. And she said that was only the starting figure, multiplied by how far the state exceeded its baseline number of adoptions. So states and communities, she said, work hard to hit their targets. And here’s the part of this history that isn’t history at all. According to FAN’s research, federal law still pays states $5,000 to $10,000 for each foster-care adoption above a baseline. There is $75 million budgeted for it in fiscal 2026.

She also spoke for the grandparents. Many called her, she said, trying to get custody of their grandchildren before they were lost in the system. When grandparents lose grandchildren to strangers, she said, they’ve lost their own flesh and blood. And the children lose their family heritage. And she raised the danger inside the system itself. She cited a 1998 report from the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, saying six times more children died in foster care than in the general public. And that once removed to official safety, children were far more likely to suffer abuse, including sexual molestation. Official safety. That’s what the state calls it.

So what did she want done? She called for an independent audit of every state’s Child Protective Services. She called for a federal congressional hearing. And she called for abolishing the federal and state financial incentives that, in her words, turned the agency into a business that separates families for money. Then she said something you rarely hear from anyone inside government. After all the injustice and harm she had seen, she said, she wasn’t sure reform of the system was even possible. In her words: The system cannot be trusted. It does not serve the people. It obliterates families and children simply because it has the power to do so.

She said the taxpayer believes this system protects abused and neglected children, while the people inside it benefit from a system that converts children into cash. She said many children disappear and are never heard from again. And she called what was happening in America a criminal political phenomenon that must be brought to an end. And she ended where FAN begins. With faith. God will not stand for what is happening to our children and our families, she said. His heart beats for these children. He will lift up the downtrodden. That’s why this organization exists. Ephesians 5:11. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. Nancy Schaefer was exposing them in 2008, in public, as a sitting state senator. Two years after that speech, Nancy Schaefer and her husband were found dead in their home. The official ruling was murder-suicide. That’s the record, and that’s all we’ll say about it. What we will do is keep her words in front of people. Her bill was defeated. The adoption bonus money she fought is still being paid. And the families she spoke for are still waiting for the accountability she said did not exist.

If you’re a parent or a grandparent caught in this system right now, here’s where to start. This isn’t legal advice. FAN is not a law firm. One. Document everything. Every visit, every call, every name, date and time, and what was said. Write it down the same day. Two. Request your records in writing. The case file, the reports, the evidence they’re relying on. Keep copies of everything you send and everything you receive. Three. If your child has been removed, find out exactly when a judge will review it, and how you get a lawyer for that hearing. Ask in writing. Four. Grandparents and relatives, speak up early and in writing. Ask for the children to be placed with family, and keep proof that you asked. Five. Put every request to your attorney in writing. If you want evidence or witnesses in front of the judge, say so in writing. If the answer is no, ask why, and get that in writing too. And six. Tell your story to the people who make the laws, with your documents in hand. Nancy Schaefer listened because families showed up. Then go to fathers advocacy network dot com slash case help.

Nancy Schaefer’s story, the archive footage of her speech, and the full transcript are at fathers advocacy network dot com, along with every source. If her words made you angry, share this episode. Send it to your state legislator. And follow the show, so you don’t miss the next one. I’m Adam Neuerburg. This is the Father’s Advocacy Network. Let the silenced speak.