On April 5 my wife, and I had a male child born. At the time of delivery the doctor performed a blood test on the baby, and it came back that my wife had apparently partaken of THC sometime in the last 45 to 60 days. The CPS was called in, Rebecca Paris was the investigator. When the baby died on it's 14th day of life, after being in Intensive Care for the first 12 days, she held that we were responsible.in addition due to a police report that my daughter, age 5 was involved with a report of child neglect, (she was with a neighbor's child for a period of 5 minutes alone) which the police did not do anything about, Ms. Paris came to our place of residence, and asked that we both undergo drug testing. We refused on the basis of the condition of our civil rights being usurped, and as a result Ms. Paris filed a dependency action, and removed our two daughters, ages 5, and 3 from our custody one day later. Ms. Paris also claimed that we were negligent on our younger daughter's health care, as we missed a doctor's appointment shortly after the death of our son. Please be advised that as the result of the police investigation, and also forensic tests, we were not held to be responsible for our son's death.
We had to start a dependency hearing process that took from June until December to complete. At the end of the hearing the judge ordered that the case be dismissed due to CPS's wrongful application of law against us. Specifically she stated that this was a classic case of the system going amuck, and wrongfully accusing the parents of negligence. She also held that the THC issue has no merit, and should have not been used against us.
The result of this whole affair was that our youngest, who has Down Syndrome suffered from not receiving adequate therapy, specifcally in the Speech area, during the whole time that our daughters were in foster care. The children also suffered emotionally, and it took nearly 4 months to get them back into a proper life style, that they were accustomed. The eldest claimed that she had been spanked, and also subjected to other forms of punishment while in foster care, and even though we reported the fact, no action of any kind was taken against the foster parents. The eldest was also taken out of state on several occasions, without our approval. Also CPS was planning to have the youngest undergo a surgery on her heart. They wanted to have her chest split open for the procedure, even though we told them that sort of operation was not necessary, as we planned as according to our doctor's instructions to have the surgery after the youngest's 3 birthday, and that it could be done via vein surgery, and therefore eliminate the need for cracking her chest open. CPS refused to listen to us, and in fact even told the court that the surgery was not to be scheduled until the late spring, when in fact it had been scheduled for early January. We managed to obtain custody of the girls on December 19th, of 2006. We now have our daughter scheduled for surgery with her original doctor's in Hershey, PA.
During the trial Ms. Paris did her best to try to paint a picture of us being argumentive parents, utilizing the terminology of combative, when in fact no witnesses for either side held Ms. Paris's claims up. They all claimed that we were under stress, but then what with our conditions, they all understood the stress. Ms. Paris broke down during testimony, and cried claiming that my wife had called her names. Personally, Ms. Paris is lucky to get off just by having names thrown at her. She is a vindictive individual, and should not be allowed to pursue a career in Child Protective Services.
The stress that resulted from the seperation of our family from June until December was horrendous, and no family should ever be subjected to such abuse, especially by the government. We know that there are situations where children need to be protected, but not in our case. Ms. Paris intentionally set out to deny us our rights, and also attempt to remove our children from our custody permanently. She did not at any time claim that she wanted the children to be returned to us, but in fact did her best to degrade us, not just in the court, but also to our neighbors. The neighbors told us of how she held her investigation, and also her claims. I want to say, that Ms. Paris stated during the initial investigation that my wife and I were the "Talk of Tucson". Since we had only lived in Tucson up to that time for only 11 months, I told her that her statement was very exaggerated, but she went on the claim the fact.
I realize that the government agencies such as CPS are generally exempt from any liability due to their actions, but cases like this should be allowed to pursue legal action against the individual and agency who callously pursues such vindictive actions. Our daughters still suffer from the scars that were placed upon them, as well as us. We still do not sleep well. During the whole dependency process, my health suffered drastically. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, and it flared up tremdously during that time due to the stress, in addition to my not being able to have a full night's sleep from June until December.
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