July 2, 2007
In a decision that has stunned professionals throughout the country, the jury awarded Mr. and Mrs. Roska $1 each in damages for the illegal removal of their son, making $2 the current value of parental rights.  

Rusty Roska, age 11,
taken by DCFS
without a warrant

June 25, 2007
Roska v. Sneddon
10th Circuit Court
Judge Dale Kimball

Appeals pending

Judge Kimball's order on state's MIL
June 18, 2007

In 1999 workers from the Division of Child and Families Services (DCFS) and a police officer stormed their way into the Roska’s home in Layton, where Connie Roska ran a daycare, and removed the Roska’s son, Rusty, then twelve years old. In violation of basic Constitutional rights and Utah law, they did not have a warrant. They announced that they were taking Rusty into state custody as an experiment to see if he would get better away from his mother.  The social worker had been reading stories about a condition known as “Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy," a highly controversial and unproven psychiatric diagnosis which assumes that mothers gain attention by making their children sick. Among other things, Connie was accused of forcing doctors to remove Rusty's healthy appendix, then his gallbladder. The workers refused to listen to Rusty's attending physician who was on the phone during the removal telling them not to take him.  Rusty, who was getting better but was still in a wheelchair and was still fed through a tube was misfed and mismedicated in foster care and became frighteningly ill.  He was returned a week later, without apology.  The Roska's sued the state, and the workers were found guilty of violating the family's Constitutional rights.  The State appealed again and again over a period of years, at great expense to the family and the taxpayers.  The courts continued to uphold the worker's guilt.  The July jury trial was for the purpose of deciding the amount of damages, punitive and compensatory, to be awarded to the family for the illegal acts of the DCFS workers.  The jury voted to compensate the Roskas just $1 each for the horror caused them by the State of Utah and not to punish the workers (they are indemnified by the state) for their illegal acts. After assuring the jury that the Roska's attorney would be paid for his legal expenses, the Attorney General's Office instead filed a motion to deny his fees and then filed suit against the Roska's for $4000 in attorney fees.  Appeals are pending.

Parker Jensen
Primary Children's and the State of Utah nearly forced him into chemotherapy he did not want or need

The Jensen's have filed suit
against the state of Utah

Parker Jensen, age 12, with 
Utah Representative Mike Thompson

read the Parker Jensen story here

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