A Flawed System

For those of you whoever wondered how a child ends up with serious harm once Children and Family Services are involved here is how it happens! This story involves my family, so I will give you the history on why the call was placed.

My sister is a bipolar alcoholic, who if you know her it is like a roller coaster! Since she had her daughter, a month shy of 6 years ago has depended on her family for all kinds of support. All but one year she has lived with our mother since her daughter was born. She is the queen of bad decision making with no concept of long term consequences, she is an instant gratification kind of girl. Case in point in 2005 she had her boyfriend take pictures of her and mailed them into Hustler magazine, which this past summer earned her $300 when they were published. So she meets this guy on the Internet dates him for 4 months and decides to marry him in a month. After the marriage, thinks it is a great idea for this man she has not known for at least a year to adopt her daughter. Now I will tell you that when she was married to her 2nd husband, she legally adopted his son, which when they split up she fought paying child support and now to this day she has nothing to do with him. Yup you guess it she is a walk away kind of gal. Her current, 3rd husband is about $80,000 in debt because of consumer and lawyer fees of fighting his ex wife over custody of their boys. Which he tells us it would be great if he could adopt her because this way he wouldn't have to pay as much child support to his ex wife and would have another deduction on taxes. So yes the interfering family that we are step in and said No it is not a good idea that he adopts your daughter. Called the biological father and told him why we thought it wasn't a good idea and please don't sign off. Thank goodness he didn't. This made the husband very mad and it was directed at my mom, partly because he is a coward picking on a 65 year old lady. During this time these are the things we have learned about him in their first year of marriage, caught him in lies about his past, has porn addiction, ex wife accused him of child porn and kick my sister out of the house twice, once she had to call police because of his bad temper. This is what we know he has done to her daughter, taken a bath with her(that turns my stomach!), stepped on her foot when she would not get out of his way(hard enough to leave a mark and left her with a limp), disciplines her with a trick: if she argues with him he will tell her to go ahead and do it and when she does she is spanked, spanked when she spills something and was never spanked until they were married and has only been by him. When we confronted my sister with this she would defend her husband telling us how she is trying to save her marriage. This is the incident that lead to the phone call to Children and Family Services: She was sitting on my mom's lap and they were reading a story, mom put her hands on her hips to move her and she winced. Inquiring what happen, she was in bed doing her homework and had a question and started down stairs to ask her mom that is when her step father stop her at the top of the steps and told her to go back to her room, she didn't listen and he spanked her hard enough to make her loose her balance and fall a couple of steps bruising her hip. When my sister was confronted again defended her husband. That day was the last time my mom has seen her granddaughter.

This is why I think the system is flawed:

I will agree I don't think that would warrant a child being removed from the home. I would think it could constitute parenting classes for both of them. The social worker assigned to the case never contacted any one in our family, including the person who made the call for a different side of this so called family. The didn't conduct any surprise visits to the house only scheduled ones, show up there any given Monday afternoon and my sister has put away a 12 pack. Led the social worker to believe this was all at the hands of a jealous over dramatic interfering mother in law and this social worker believed them, shame on her. Case is now closed.

So, where is it today? Well right after this happen my mom got harassing phone calls from her and his family which didn't stop until I told my sister we recorded them and would file charges if they continued. My sister has told my mom she is the cause of all their problems and now that she is out of their life she is at peace and they have a wonderful marriage. She told her she will spare her daughter the life of dysfunction and will fight to protect her from my mom. And that my mom needs therapy. What do I think? Crazy is as Crazy does! The girl is Crazy, mentally unstable. My mom will pursue grandparents rights. Even though she was told by my sister that if she did and lost she would never see her granddaughter again. Then, lastly she told mom that her granddaughter didn't even ask about her.

For the four years it took to get pregnant with Katy, it was a really difficult time for me. It was more than the 3-4 times a week trip into Center City, Philadelphia at 6am, more than all the crazy hormone pills or shots I gave myself, more than all invasive procedures and when I say invasive I mean the doctors, nurses, ultra sound techs saw more of me than my husband ever did, more that the track marks left in my arm by the viles of blood they would take to know what my hormones were up to, it was the emotional pain that I agonized over the most. These emotions of wanting another child are still very raw and painful for me even to this day. I always thought the emotions would be different if I was adopting, I was so wrong. What I didn't know is that receiving the information packet would bring all of that pain of infertility back, because once again I needed someone else and their approval to have a child. After having Katy I knew I never wanted to go through that again but here I am...

I have been thinking(among other things) a lot lately about our adoption plan. No I haven't gotten out the information packet, it is still in the basket in my kitchen. Infact, if my eyes happen to catch a glimpse of it my body just shudders with intimidation and fear. But usually when I have my next thought it comes after prayer or scripture study or quiet times during one of my many trips to and from Westminister taking and picking up kids from school. I was thinking what is my journey. We all get to where we are at, whether it be physically, emotionally, spiritually,or intellectually by taking our own journeys. So here is my epiphany: This is my journey it is the road we(I, Malcolm is just along for the ride) need to take to know the decision we make or the outcome is the one right for our family. Maybe it is what I needed to go through to have undenying faith that there is another one out there that will join our family and then again this journey will also let me know that our family is complete. A dear friend that I have made here in Maryland titled her blog "Wait a little while to welcome what you're after" and I think that is what I am doing. What am I after my complete family, whom ever that might include.