NEED HELP! Five years ago, I would have never needed or considered doing this. We were a very stable middle class family. I had raised two children and decided to go back to school and take some classes in psychology. I became very interested in that and social work and soon quit a 20 year job to return to school. Cutting our income in half was bad but after winning an academic scholarship at the end of two years, I went on for a degree in Social Work. I drove 100 miles per day to school. In the meantime, everything went haywire. I graduated in May of this year and have not gone to work because of family responsibilities. While in school, I dealed with a son in drug addiction but now with a long period of recovery. He became a father out of wedlock to a precious baby girl in 2003. She was abandoned to him at 2 1/2 years old with mother coming back in a few months. Shortly after, a 1 1/2 year custody battle began that became ridiculous. He now has custody of her. Both of them live with my husband and I. His work has been cut by the economy to part time. He has no government help or child support aiding with this child. My husband has just had a week a month cut from his job due to economy. Our savings have dwindled away with attorney fees, medical bills, even with a bond to get me out of jail on a false criminal charge. If not for my education, I would have never considered this lawsuit, but I have watched wrongdoing of Childrens Services, classism, false accusations placed in agency files and passed around to others for months concerning me when they were not only untrue but could have been easily tested for validity. Some of these things I have documentation of, a tape recorded interview with the head of an agency showing many mistakes, etc. Other things, I have very strong circumstantial evidence concerning. Nobody here wants to fight the state. The DA’s office sure doesn’t want to be involved when they work for the state also.
Some of the many issues include:
1) Sexual abuse of my then 2 1/2 year old granddaughter. The story came to me after a long period of talking about this person in a very traumatic story one night after seeing his father who looked very much like him. I asked her to tell dad and granddad the next morning. She said enough without going into details as she did with me. They took her to Childrens Services. It was thought that I MANIPULATED the child to tell this, and I doubt was ever even documented.
2) Mother and father still had custody but both sets of parents were ordered by the court to supervise with parents at all times, including me. At the same time, they held a document saying that I was believed to have character flaws, mental illness, abuse prescription drugs, and take illegal drugs. Do you leave a child with a parent that needs supervision to be done by someone like this?
3) I walked out of a Family Meeting according to them because I was unwilling to compromise or something similar. I did walk out and told them the reason why. I had listened to what would be to everyone’s convenience for half an hour. Not once did I hear anything concerning “what was in the best interest of the child.” They also wanted both parents to sign away custody to grandparents. My son refused to do so without it being heard before a judge. I refused to sign to take custody until both parents were said to be unfit before a judge.
4) My son’s lawyer called and asked to see him and that he bring parents. When we got there, papers were already waiting for everyone to sign. Based on a conversation with Childrens Services, she had decided that there was no use representing him. She wanted him to sign rights to us. She would then become our attorney and fight to be able to get us JOINT custody with the other grandparents. She was fired.
5) For about two years this child did not know where home was. She usually was ordered to spend three days at one place and four at the other.
6) My son had held temporary custody since the abandonment. One night probably a year into this hearing, she was talking to me in bed before going to sleep. All of a sudden she said, “Don’t you know that my daddy don’t have custody anymore. Nana and Papa do” I just let it go and said nothing. The next morning I went to the courthouse to see the documents of the hearing. She was right! For 5 months they had held custody of the child. My son nor any of our family realized this. It was done on a court date where the judge had plainly said that he would not discuss custody that day…only visitation. He sent us in a room to decide on visitation for the next 2 weeks and said when settled, we were dismissed. The grandparents lawyer came out and returned to the podium. He said “your honor, we have one piece of business that we didn’t address.” The judge asked what, and bringing the paper to the judge, he said that it was the visitation agreement that we had made to be signed.
I would LOVE to at least have some more comments here!
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