When we first started Disclosure, one of our main focuses in downstate was the utter corruption to be found in the state agency, the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).
Missy Laslie, in her usual habitat….a party
We actually began investigating DCFS a year before we developed the paper, as it turned out that former Edwards County prosecutor Brian Shinkle was utilizing the agency to threaten suspected dope manufacturers: by removing their kids from them, whether they were charged or not. We spoke with many women who had sat in on ‘meetings’ with Shinkle and DCFS agents, wherein the agents threatened the women with taking their children if the women didn’t agree to what Shinkle wanted from them…which was to pin them with a meth conspiracy, many of them having never had anything to do with meth.
Central to all of this was was one Holly Kocher, who was running the DCFS office in Olney at the time (2002) and is still there…this time, eleven years later, she’s doing much the same thing she was doing in ’02: warning “certain” people about what reports were being made about the horrible conditions in which their children were kept, and making sure that her family and friends were protected from DCFS scrutiny. Here now is the front-page article emerging from Lawrence County, “Is DCFS tipping off family members?“:
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LAWRENCE CO.—The possibility of a DCFS employee tipping off family members to “clean up their act,” their homes, their kids and themselves is a good one in the case of one Lawrence County woman who has until recently been able to evade charges for her alleged dope activities.
The situation revolves around Richland and Lawrence counties Child Protection Specialist Holly Kocher, long-time DCFS employee, and the mother of some of her nieces/nephews, Melisa Laslie.
And the emergence of this case brings to light a long-term issue Disclosure has covered for a decade now:
Whether DCFS employees are protecting their own relatives when concerned citizens turn those relatives in for child abuse or neglect.
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You can read the rest of the story by clicking this link to get started with your online subscription, or pick up a print version (they are FLYING off shelves, so hurry) at these vendors! We are attempting to replenish those vendors that have sold out, so be patient….we’ll get them re-stocked as we can!
The trashed-out house outside of St. Francisville where Melisa Laslie lies with her kids; others reported to DCFS would have already have had their children taken from them due to “unfit conditions,” but not Laslie…since one of her babydaddies is a brother of DCFS’ Holly Kocher