After the Temporary Custody Hearing where they took our children and gave them to my Mother, they presented my wife and I with a written order for things we were expected to do in order to regain our parenting rights. This list was extensive, we were expected to provide urine drops randomly at the cost of $45 apiece, attend a parenting class separately from each other, and participate in a St. Vincent Catholic Charities home visit.
Home visit
My wife had not been living at her home for about 3 weeks when the St. Vincent charities lady came to do the home visit. The house had basically been shut up and I was living in the apartment they had forced me to get for her to be able to move back in. My wife had used her food stamps to put food into my Mothers house as that is where she had been living.
When they came to do the home visit, they listed the disheveled state of the home and lack of food in refrigerator both as unacceptable living conditions. This caused my wife to have to stay at my Mothers for another couple of weeks while she fixed the problems.
The worker also asked my wife about the medications they found for my oldest daughter's supposed "Asthma." My wife explained that our family doctor had bot prescribed it and we did not feel she needed it. This also went into the report as a check against us.
Months of nothing
I will admit right now that I did not complete any of the recommendations that were put on me. I went to the parenting class and I could not stomach it honestly. I could not sit there and basically be told that I had to be the type of parent they dictate I should be. I dropped out of the class.
My wife on the other hand, did everything that the CPS recommended. She did her urine drops and they were all clean. She completed every class without argument. She was a saint.
Final Hearing time
6 months after they took our children, we had our review hearing. Neither of us had seen our daughters for the entire time. My step daughter was still in Ohio with her real dad, and he was doing everything he could to ignore her and ruin her life. CPS had my daughters attending counseling and both of them had been diagnosed with ADHD, although neither of them had ever had any real trouble in school and barely even got a "Needs Improvement" on their report cards.
When we went into the court room, we were told to sit at different tables from each other and it was explained that we would only be allowed to speak at the end of the hearing after all the evidence had been presented.
The Child Advocate then proceeded to read reports to the judge and list how my wife and I were unfit parents. She explained that I was dangerous and displayed this during the incident at my daughters school, you know, the incident where I didn't even get out of the car. My wife did not have the best interests of the children in mind and displayed this by not protecting them from me by bringing them to my house to exchange Christmas gifts and inviting me to watch a movie and have dinner with them, in defiance of the parole order that stemmed from the imaginary incident at the school.
The St. Vincent's report was read, explaining how we did not keep a clean house as shown by the kitty litter that was not emptied while my wife was not allowed to live there, and the trash that was also not emptied. It was also noted that there was little food in the house, but not that my wife had put food in my Mothers house while she lived there.
Also, we were horrible parents for not giving our daughters unneeded medication that was prescribed by an urgent care doctor at my Mothers behest.
Our turn to speak
When it was my wife and my time to speak, I tried to explain that this whole thing started from an incident at the school that did not even happen, and we shouldn't have even been there. The judge told me that if I wanted to show the court I was a good parent I should have done the classes they told me to do. I tried to explain that I had not done them as I had a parole order that said I couldn't see my kids in effect anyway, and how had the parole office over-ruled the court in the first place? I was told I was done speaking and to sit down.
My wife was more subdued than I was and just pointed out that she had complied with everything the court had asked.
The judge then promptly ruled that we were unfit parents and that my Mother would have permanent custody of my daughters. Our rights were terminated as parents. My step daughter would live with her real dad in Ohio.
So what happened?
I did not see my daughters for about 7 years. Both of them were put on federal SSI checks for ADHD (Checks that went right to my Mother) Neither of my daughters finished high school, and currently they both live with their Mother (My ex wife) in Arkansas working at Mcdonalds and Subway. They both hate me and think I am a terrible person as they only have what other people told them about me to go on. My oldest was 7 when all of this happened, and my youngest was 4. My step daughter lived with her dad in Ohio for about a year. He kept leaving her with hid dad while he went out and did drugs, until she moved back to Michigan and lived with her Grandmother.
I ended up on Heroin and homeless after this, I lost my identity as a person when I lost my family. I make no excuse, just state facts.
If we would have been offered family counseling and help instead of having our family broken up, who knows what things might have looked like. As it happened, the only people that benefited from this whole thing was CPS and my Mother. CPS got their money and so did my Mother.
I did not speak to her for years and finally made up with her recently just before she passed away, although we never did speak about what she did to us in the name of getting another government check.
Please Read...
I have now finished telling what happened, and I want to be clear, my wife and I did argue, and I was drinking and using drugs when this whole thing happened, but I did not use in front of the children. They were not physically or sexually abused, and the arguments they heard were not physical, or really more aggressive than what you might see on T.V.
I do not claim to have been a saint, however, The CPS agency was aggressive in how they dealt with our case and had a predetermined outcome planned when they began the case against us. My Mother planned on having custody, and that is exactly what happened.
You can read the first chapter of this story --HERE-- , the second --HERE-- the third --HERE-- , and the fourth --HERE--
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