Copyright 1994 Steven & Ellie Lee
Introduction
Ours is a story that must be told. It is a story of the misuse of a system designed to protect children and help families. We feel with passionate conviction that to remain silent would be to remain powerless to effect a positive change for other children, for other families who may find themselves victims of a sometimes unjust and abusive child protection system. Many times this system (Child Protective Services, Children's Services Division, Human resources and Services, etc.) either fails to protect children who need help, or harms children and their families who should be left alone. Sometimes this happens because of the negligence, lack of wisdom, or lack of experience of investigators. Other times husbands, or more often wives will use this system against their spouse without concern for the effects to their children or their own soul. Lastly, the child protective system is used by the so called "criminal justice system," where the threat of having your children taken away is used to coerce testimony from parents.
This system has been distorted to the degree that parents are sometime fearful to bring their children into the emergency room of a hospital with a burn or a broken arm because their children might be taken away from them and they may be charged wrongly with child abuse. These charges may be dropped and the child returned after irreparable harm has been done to the child, the family, and the parent's reputation. Other people aren't so lucky. They live in a hellish limbo with their children in foster care for years, going to juvenile court every so often, and having their families ripped apart.
Although the circumstances of our case were unique, similar types of institutional abuse of families occurs every day. The newspapers are rife with stories like ours, but people tend to think it can't happen to them. The next time you read a story of Child Protective Services putting a child in foster care, read between the lines. Mistakes and worse are made with people's lives every day.
It needs to be said that some social workers and investigators have only good intentions and truly want to help people. They feel, as we do, that it is imperative to protect the innocence of children, and to secure their emotional, physical, and mental well-being. Some of these people follow the medical credo, "Above all, do no harm." Unfortunately, this attitude is a rarity, and the system itself does not support such an attitude.
When a government agency undertakes the cause of protecting children from harm and gives individuals the authority to make judgments about situations in which they may have neither the wisdom nor the experience to interpret correctly, mistakes can occur. It is inevitable that at times human error will be a factor in the often psychologically complex issues of familial interaction, especially when abuse or neglect is suspected. In our situation, not only were errors in judgment made, but there was malicious or at best an inhumane and deliberate intent to use our family as pawns in a scenario that had nothing to do with protecting the safety or well-being of our children. The individuals involved seemed to feel they could act with impunity and without care for the impact their actions made upon our family. This is frightening and should be taken as a warning by those who believe in social justice and in the protection of civil liberties.
Our family suffered anguish and trauma at the hands of people who claimed they were helping us. Our innocent belief in truth and justice was betrayed. Our sense of safety and security in the world was shattered by the cruel injustice our family experienced. Replacing this is an awareness that we live in a society in which we must be wary and highly protective of ourselves and our children; protecting ourselves not only from the random mugger or thief, but from the government itself.
Our experience demonstrates only one facet of the erosion of freedom in the United States and the "inalienable rights" which our constitution was meant to protect. If individuals are apathetic and do not speak out to shed light on injustice, there can be no change. To be silent is to discard hope for the future of our children, and the children of generations to come.
Steps must be taken to prevent things like this from happening in a "free" society. History teaches that we must learn from the past or we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Sometimes it is little things we can just ignore. Sometimes we hope it will just go away. Sometimes it is happening to the "other guy." Sometimes we just turn our head in fear, disgust, powerlessness, or apathy. So, in little steps or big, fascism, Big Brother, the Judicial System, the "Moral" majority, or the Media walks on us, erodes our freedoms, denigrates our humanity, and destroys our civil liberties and our human rights. Speak out, and act we must, before the next Crusades, the next witch burning, the next Auschwitz.
The following is a true story. A few of the facts may be altered, not intentionally distorted, but as seen through our eyes, the eyes of other people involved, and as documented by hundreds of pages of letters, official papers, psychologists' reports, and court documents. We originally intended to use the real names of people involved throughout the story, but, in order to prevent troublesome law suits, and to protect innocent people, many of the names will be fictitious. Nonetheless, this is a substantially true account of a traumatic and devastating series of events in our life. Our need to expose the true nature of these events gave impetus and inspiration for the writing of this book. Our life before this time formed the backdrop, set the stage into which these events penetrated and destroyed a life which we had created with so much dedication, creative vision, and diligent hard work. To understand fully the impact of the government's intrusion into our lives it is necessary to understand the human dimension of our lives; the hopes, dreams, and plans we had for ourselves and our children, the feelings, passions and awareness which compelled us to create a life for our family which contained integrity, satisfaction and creative joy.
This is also the story of the union of two people and the life they lived together. Behind every case number in the files of social agencies is the reality of sentient human beings with lives that should be valued and respected. Without this awareness, the travesty of justice which struck our life will continue to strike the lives of other families.
And so begins our story . . .
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