My daughters had been visiting their mother a month before for a couple of weeks. Unknown to me at the time her house was infested with head lice. So when my daughters came home they brought the little 'friends' with them. The school decided to send the girls home where they, and the house, were treated (after they returned). All fine so far you figure? Not quite. The girls did not want to go home, because they love school. So they put on a big theatrical act of how they really did not want to go home. The school personnel sent a school employee, Wendy Phillips, home with the girls.
The girls were happy and giggling as they ran into the house... such a usual sign of their being abused in the house, and the employee followed them inside, without a knock, without invitation and without permission of any kind. When she was confronted by the child care provider I have in the home when I am at work she got defensive and started insisting that the carpet was not vaccuumed to her satisfaction. She was ordered to leave the house and was told her intrusion was neither welcome nor appreciated and that her thinly veiled attempt to deflect the issue did not go unnoticed. She got in a huff and left, went back to her office, and called me at work to complain about how shabbily she was treated. I asked her why she had illegally entered the house without knocking, without permission and without a warrant....and she very quickly found that she was going to get no sympathy from me. I pointed out that the girls were to have vaccuumed before they left for school but ran late that day and were going to do so when they got home. In other words, it was likely already done. She apparently did not like this and so she called SCF and made a false allegation that my home was 'unsanitary'. Never mind that it wasn't. Never mind that even if it WAS she had no LEGAL knowledge of such because her entry to the house was in complete constitutional violation. She wanted to get back at us because we did not kow tow to her whims.
Enter Chandra Snyder, caseworker of SCF.
This agent of CPS, without benefit of even viewing the house herself or even having someone else do so, decided that the claims were 'founded' and immediately submitted a petition to her superiors, and with their approval a judge, to remove my children from my custody! She had no evidence, since there was no evidence to be had. That did not matter. She contacted me once offering their 'services'. I told her at that time that the only 'service' I could use was assistance picking nits. She explained they did not provide that service, but that they had nice parenting classes. I told her I needed no parenting classes, just assistance picking nits, and if that was all, good day. She got the judge to rubber stamp her petition.
In this petition she claimed I had 'refused their services' without pointing out they had no relevant services. She pointed out that over the past several years there had been a half dozen or so complaints against me. She did not mention that half of the dates she listed in the petition did not correspond to any dates of complaints in my file,and the rest had been investigated with "Unfounded" being the result! She claimed we had a 'chronic head lice problem' in the home, even though this was the first case in the entire school year 1997-1998 in the home. Granted about 4 years prior we had a long run with them because my daughters had very long hair and we found it impossible to get all the nits, but neither the girls nor I wanted to cut their hair. After a while it became obvious it was not working so the hair was cut and that brought incidences of lice into the normal range.
So here we had two allegations... 'chronic head lice' which even the Health Department specifically states is NOT a sanitary issue, and 'unsanitary housing' without any evidence or even benefit of examining the home, photographing,etc. She tied it all up in a nice little package with the standard circular argument... that I had failed to provide a safe and healthy home environment for my children by failing to provide a safe and healthy home environment for my children!
The judge signed this pack of unsubstantiated lies on 2/10/98...but my children, being in such mortal danger from me and the home I provided that they had to be removed into state custody, were not kidnapped from their elementary school until 2/17/98! This clearly demonstrates there was no air of emergency on the part of SCF, which disproves any necessity to remove the children in the first place.
Here is where it REALLY gets good!
I get a call from the childcare provider that someone left a note on the door saying they took the children and to appear in court the next day, and call a number if I had questions. Boy, did I ever have questions! So I called. I got Chandra Snyder on the phone and she gave me her little innocent act and 'Who is this? What is this about,sir?' song and dance. I told her my name and told her she should know exactly what it was about, and asked for what reason she had kidnapped my children. She objected to the term and I pointed out how that is exactly the accurate term to use for what she did, whether she did it by abuse of authority or just grabbed someone at random off of the street. She said I will get to have my say and be able to get the girls back the next day in court if the judge approves. End of call.
The next day I go to court. Do I get to have my say? Nope. Do I get the girls back? Nope. The judge informs me that there is nothing he can do at this time other than to assign an attorney to me. I explain what Chandra Snyder told me, and she lies in court to the judge claiming she said no such thing! This is Wednesday. The attorney they give me is in court but cannot talk to me, and the earliest appointment she can give me is MONDAY! Yes, this is completely outrageous, but what can I do? I couldn't work because I was so upset, so I spent most of the time until Monday pacing in my house. I might have had three hours of sleep in this period.
On Friday I am 'allowed' to visit my girls at SCF headquarters under constant guard for 15 minutes. The childcare provider came along too. The girls are very close to her, and she loves them dearly as well. She is beside herself as well. SCF tells us that even though the girls can see the provider in the waiting area and are crying to see her and talk to her, that this is not possible. Here I find out from the girls that they have been to church twice already. At this juncture I will point out that I am not Christian... I am Wiccan. I made a specific choice to not indoctrinate my children into any religion until they had gained sufficient capacity to make such choices for themselves. SCF completely violated my rights in this regard as well as the rights of my children! As a government agency and through agents of the government (the foster parents) they chose to indoctrinate my children against my wishes,without my consent and in complete violation of the separation of church and state! I did not bring up anything while with the girls other than to tell the guard quietly that 'we have to talk' and finished the visit. Afterwards I lodged a formal and quite strong complaint about this, and was brushed off with the statement that they would 'mention my concerns' to the foster parents and that 'if the foster parents did not feel it would inconvenience them' they might abide by my wishes in this regard! Again, entirely outrageous! They did not just have them accompany them to the church... they had them in religious school already!
Now I understand that many of you reading this are Christian, and might see this as a "Good Thing", but consider this. If they can do this to ME and MY children, they can do it to yours. How would you feel if, for example, I was some kind of Evangelical Wiccan, and was given as a foster parent custody of your children by the state. Now let us assume I do the same to your kids with my religion as these foster parents did to mine. No longer such a "Good Thing" is it? Keep that in mind, please.
I go to the attorney on Monday. She is pleasant and she understands my stress. She asks what the allegations are. I tell her and show her the petition copy I was given. She rolls her eyes at the head lice claim... that,she says, is no grounds for removal. She asks if the home is clean. I tell her it is lived in, and not a museum, but it is tidy and it is most assuredly not 'unsanitary'. She asks if they took pictures of the home. I tell her they did not...that they never even visited the home. She asks me to take pictures of the home and I agree to do so and she gets on the phone and makes a meeting between herself, myself, the Guardian Ad Lietem (GAL) for the girls and Chandra Snyder for Tuesday.
Another thing I point out to the attorney is that due to their mother leaving in 1993, and in the same year their being sexually molested by a (now ex-) family 'friend', the girls had been in counselling with the Marion County Children's Mental Health. This is something the school knew about, and SCF at least should have known about, and that I had spoken to their therapist about what had happened and she was absolutely LIVID! There was, in her opinion, no justification for this kidnapping, and that doing so for these girls was likely the worst possible thing, since they NEEDED stability and their last stable thing in their life was now gone, completely blown away! She said she would never have authorized or supported such an action by SCF unless they had shown distinct clear and present risk to the girls of severe abuse. Now we know why Chandra Snyder did not bother to check with the therapist!
At the meeting on Tuesday It is agreed to by all present that Chandra Snyder and another agent will visit the home and discern whether the home is unsanitary or not. It is then restated that if it is not as claimed in the petition the girls will be returned to my custody. Chandra Snyder, in a tactic she will use often, then chimes up with "I never agreed to that!". Every single person at the table other than Chandra Snyder picks their jaw up off of the table and states in no uncertain terms that she most assuredly did. Chandra Snyder then says she will again agree if I sign a list of conditions we would arrive at. We arrive at an acceptable, if extorted, list of conditions. Chandra Snyder says she will meet me at my home the next day, Wednesday, to view and to also have me sign the agreement. I try and bring up the religion aspect and am told it is not the time or place. The meeting breaks up.
Wednesday morning, Kidnapping plus 8 days, and Chandra Snyder calls. She has some errands to run after work so she cannot come by that afternoon... it will have to be Thursday morning. "Is that ok with you?" she asks. I explain to her it is not, and that the agreement was for Wednesday afternoon. She tells me it is not negotiable. I ask her why did she ask me if it was ok with me then, if it did not matter what my answer would be? She hung up the phone.
Thursday morning the 'inspection team' arrives. Chandra Snyder and her companion nearly turn the house upside down. They insist on looking in drawers, cabinets, etc. When I balk at this they say that then they will have no alternative but to find that the house is unsanitary, even though they cannot find anything in the house which would have it qualify as such (and they looked EVERYWHERE they could!). So I capitulate. What choice did I have? Then the capper of the day is when she gives me the list I am to sign. There are a number of items the group had agreed to remove but which Chandra Snyder put back in on her own. Also several other items are restated in ways I found to be objectionable. I mentioned that this was not the agreement I was to sign. She told me that it was the only one there would be and that she would not agree to anything else, and that if I wanted to challenge it the court date was in April. So, given no alternative with this extortion on her part, I signed the agreement she presented.
The girls came home from school Friday afternoon. I, for no reason other than a feeling, checked their hair before they came in the house. When they were kidnapped by Chandra Snyder they were absolutely clear of nits and lice. Their heads looked like they had spent the past week and a half literally swimming in a pool of live bugs! There were HUNDREDS of nits all throughout their hair. Well, needless to say the treatments started again but I immediately phoned my lawyer, the GAL and SCF to point this out. I asked how could this possibly happen? The girls were allegedly kidnapped because of head lice. It would stand to reason that the foster parents should have checked them regularly. I asked if they had and was told no they had not. The girls told me that at the church, where they should never have been, there were several children with long hair and nits from tip to scalp.
When I confronted Chandra Snyder about this she would not even consider any fault on the part of SCF or the foster parents. She tried to claim that the gestation period is such that these were from nits in the girls' hair when they were taken (kidnapped). I pointed out that this would be fine if there were just a few nits and only immature bugs, but their heads were crawling with dozens of fully adult bugs and no immature bugs could have laid this many nits. Also I pointed out that the girls had no nits when they were kidnapped. Chandra Snyder would hear none of this, other than to claim in court during the next appearance that the girls were again infested upon returning home and that I had made 'wild and unfounded accusations' that this was from foster care! I seriously doubt the young woman can even discern the truth anymore from her consistent pattern of lies! In that court hearing I pointed out, and my attorney and the GAL confirmed, that within MINUTES of the girls returning home I was on the phone to them about this issue.
The judge did nothing about Chandra Snyder's lies.
===============================
U P D A T E
Feb 22, 2000
===============================
===============================
U P D A T E
Jan 26, 2004
===============================
Back to CPS