Swain DSS workers banned from Cherokee | The Asheville Citizen-Times | citizen-times.com
CHEROKEE — Five social workers named in the police investigation into the death of Aubrey Littlejohn will no longer work on the Cherokee Indian Reservation.
The attorney general for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in a memo on Friday said the N.C. Division of Social Services approved a request that the social workers be excluded from duties in Cherokee during the investigation.
“Obviously we don’t have a comfort level until we see that this issue is resolved,” Principal Chief Michell Hicks said Monday.
The memo said social workers not involved in the investigation would work on the reservation.
Cherokee doesn’t have its own social services office. State offices in Swain and Jackson counties handle calls on the reservation.
The 15-month-old child died Jan. 10 after spending the previous day strapped into a car seat for 12 hours and given only bites of a hot dog and sips of soda, according to a search warrant filed by the State Bureau of Investigation.
Aubrey was a member of the tribe though living in Swain County.
Her great-aunt, Lady Bird Powell, discovered she wasn't breathing that night and took her to the Cherokee Indian Hospital. Powell called 911 along the way and tried to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, according to court papers.
She has denied the allegation that Aubrey was left strapped in her car seat and wasn't properly fed. She said in an interview that Aubrey was well-cared-for
Aubrey's mother, Jasmine Littlejohn, gave her daughter to Powell when she was only months old because she could not care for her. Littlejohn was in jail awaiting sentencing in a federal drug case at the time of the child's death. She is still in jail.
Social worker Craig Smith, who visited Powell's home five months before Aubrey died, has already been suspended with pay pending the outcome of the investigation. He was at the home acting on a tip that Aubrey fell down a set of stairs from an unbuckled car seat.
Smith told police he falsified records after the child's death to show he had made sure she was seen by a doctor for injuries from the fall, according to investigator’s statements in court papers. He told investigators his supervisor instructed him to fix the records. A preliminary autopsy found Aubrey had a broken arm that had healed before her death.
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The Problem with DSS
The Problem with DSS | Franklin Investigations & Consulting
Posted by peter on June 21, 2010 · 12 Comments
Imagine an all too familiar scene: Child Protective Services (CPS) is standing on your doorstep and informing you that a “report” has been made on your family, and although they can’t tell you who made the report, they tell you that someone back at the office felt that it warranted an investigation. Your family’s personal information has already been entered into a state “central registry” system, regardless of the outcome or findings.
When you ask why you don’t have the right to face your accusers, the social worker explains that the Department of Social Services (DSS) does not recognize such a right. When you try to tell the social worker that she cannot come in your home, you are informed that a possible outcome to your not complying with DSS involvement in your life is that you will be taken to court, and your children may be taken away and placed in foster care.
You have not recourse and don’t want to lose your children, so you are coerced into allowing a social worker and possibly law enforcement into your home, during which time your children are interviewed without your being present. Or maybe this was already done while your children were in school and you didn’t know about it until afterward.
Thus begins the usual first contact most families have with a government agency that is supposed to “help” people with food stamps, Medicaid and “protect children” from abuse and neglect.
Do parents no longer have the right to maintain the sanctity of their own homes? Are they no longer able to choose who has access to their children?
In North Carolina, DSS is under local management by the county. The state is responsible for developing policy, procedure and training, while the individual county is responsible for the implementation of the policy and the provision of services.
It is apparent to anyone who has ever had dealings with DSS, that in many counties, the law, codes, policies, procedures and mandates that have been put in place by our lawmakers are disregarded. Some DSS Directors believe that the policies and procedures are mere “suggestions,” and many of the social workers believe that they should be allowed to operate in a “grey area.”
Because of these and other misconceptions, many in the court system, including attorneys and Judges, are not certain as to the actual rules concerning DSS. Subsequently, these officers of the court find themselves trusting and/or relying on marginally informed DSS staff to either guide them, or be honorable enough to not violate their own rules.
If these were IRS agents, health inspectors, or law enforcement agents on your doorstep making demands of you that violated your constitutional rights as well as the policies of each agency, there would not only be those who could help you answer any concerns, but the court system would serve to insure that the law and your Constitutionally protected rights were upheld.
When it comes to DSS, any questioning or opposition to their involvement in your life usually results in your being termed as a person who does not believe in the “protection of innocent children.” Thus media scrutiny of this organization is frowned upon, and public exposure to any failures within the “child protector” business is extremely rare.
With Franklin Investigations & Consulting, there is now hope for families involved with DSS. With years of former CPS investigative experience, our company can help to insure your rights, and protect against any possible unjust, unfair or unlawful actions. We know how to use DSS’s own rules to PRESERVE YOUR FAMILY’S RIGHTS.
Franklin Investigations & Consulting can serve as your advocate to make sure that DSS treats you fairly and with respect.
The parents are the authority on their own children, and they have a right to know DSS’s legal authority. DSS has a duty to explain their involvement and to obey the law!
Franklin Investigations & Consulting can work with you from the beginning of DSS involvement, and continue to serve as your advocate throughout the life of a case. If you already have an ongoing CPS case that has been petitioned into court, then you or your attorney should contact us immediately. If you have a court appointed attorney, then he or she can request that court appointed investigative services be utilized.
We must all work together to protect innocent children and preserve families!
About peter
Peter Franklin has over 12 years of experience in law enforcement, fraud investigations, child abuse and neglect investigations, freelance investigative reporting for local media, and experience in contracting along with cost and time coordinating and safety (EMSHA regulations) within construction and mining operations. Franklin is a graduate of Gardner-Webb University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Sciences/Criminal Justice.
Posted by peter on June 21, 2010 · 12 Comments
Imagine an all too familiar scene: Child Protective Services (CPS) is standing on your doorstep and informing you that a “report” has been made on your family, and although they can’t tell you who made the report, they tell you that someone back at the office felt that it warranted an investigation. Your family’s personal information has already been entered into a state “central registry” system, regardless of the outcome or findings.
When you ask why you don’t have the right to face your accusers, the social worker explains that the Department of Social Services (DSS) does not recognize such a right. When you try to tell the social worker that she cannot come in your home, you are informed that a possible outcome to your not complying with DSS involvement in your life is that you will be taken to court, and your children may be taken away and placed in foster care.
You have not recourse and don’t want to lose your children, so you are coerced into allowing a social worker and possibly law enforcement into your home, during which time your children are interviewed without your being present. Or maybe this was already done while your children were in school and you didn’t know about it until afterward.
Thus begins the usual first contact most families have with a government agency that is supposed to “help” people with food stamps, Medicaid and “protect children” from abuse and neglect.
Do parents no longer have the right to maintain the sanctity of their own homes? Are they no longer able to choose who has access to their children?
In North Carolina, DSS is under local management by the county. The state is responsible for developing policy, procedure and training, while the individual county is responsible for the implementation of the policy and the provision of services.
It is apparent to anyone who has ever had dealings with DSS, that in many counties, the law, codes, policies, procedures and mandates that have been put in place by our lawmakers are disregarded. Some DSS Directors believe that the policies and procedures are mere “suggestions,” and many of the social workers believe that they should be allowed to operate in a “grey area.”
Because of these and other misconceptions, many in the court system, including attorneys and Judges, are not certain as to the actual rules concerning DSS. Subsequently, these officers of the court find themselves trusting and/or relying on marginally informed DSS staff to either guide them, or be honorable enough to not violate their own rules.
If these were IRS agents, health inspectors, or law enforcement agents on your doorstep making demands of you that violated your constitutional rights as well as the policies of each agency, there would not only be those who could help you answer any concerns, but the court system would serve to insure that the law and your Constitutionally protected rights were upheld.
When it comes to DSS, any questioning or opposition to their involvement in your life usually results in your being termed as a person who does not believe in the “protection of innocent children.” Thus media scrutiny of this organization is frowned upon, and public exposure to any failures within the “child protector” business is extremely rare.
With Franklin Investigations & Consulting, there is now hope for families involved with DSS. With years of former CPS investigative experience, our company can help to insure your rights, and protect against any possible unjust, unfair or unlawful actions. We know how to use DSS’s own rules to PRESERVE YOUR FAMILY’S RIGHTS.
Franklin Investigations & Consulting can serve as your advocate to make sure that DSS treats you fairly and with respect.
The parents are the authority on their own children, and they have a right to know DSS’s legal authority. DSS has a duty to explain their involvement and to obey the law!
Franklin Investigations & Consulting can work with you from the beginning of DSS involvement, and continue to serve as your advocate throughout the life of a case. If you already have an ongoing CPS case that has been petitioned into court, then you or your attorney should contact us immediately. If you have a court appointed attorney, then he or she can request that court appointed investigative services be utilized.
We must all work together to protect innocent children and preserve families!
About peter
Peter Franklin has over 12 years of experience in law enforcement, fraud investigations, child abuse and neglect investigations, freelance investigative reporting for local media, and experience in contracting along with cost and time coordinating and safety (EMSHA regulations) within construction and mining operations. Franklin is a graduate of Gardner-Webb University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Sciences/Criminal Justice.
How adopting an angelic five-year-old blew our family apart
How adopting an angelic five-year-old blew our family apart | Mail Online
When Melanie Allen and her husband Rob, a quantity surveyor, adopted a five-year-old called Alex, they couldn't believe their good fortune.
Heartbreakingly beautiful, as well as affectionate, she seemed to be a dream child.
But as the months passed, Melanie and Rob, both now 44, began to see a very different side of their 'perfect' daughter - and found themselves sucked into a nightmare in which they faced losing everything ...
Jumping out of the car, I could just make out the small, lone figure waiting at the front door.
My heart began to pound. She was so beautiful - and she was smiling.
Her eyes seemed to have a magnetic pull, and as each step drew me closer, they grew larger.
The photo from the adoption agency had not done those eyes justice.
Nor had it captured the silken gloss of her fair hair, which hung to her waist.
I was in love already.
Her foster father urged her forward. "Do you know who these nice people are?" he asked.
"It's my new Mummy and Daddy," Alex answered - so quietly that I had to replay the words in my head to make sure I'd heard them right.
With a thrill, I realised I had. And as I looked down at my new daughter, her eyes were brimming with a pleasure that mirrored my own.
Scroll down for more ...
Adorable on the outside: But Melanie Allen and her husband Rob discovered their adoptive daughter Alex was ruthless and manipulative (picture posed by model)
I'd always dreamt of rescuing "unwanted" children.
A year after our wedding, Rob and I conceived our son Daniel naturally, but we seemed unable to have a second child.
After 18 months of trying, we decided to pursue adoption instead.
It had taken four years of interminable form-filling and interviews to be accepted onto the adoption register but I knew that day in August 1997 that we'd found the little girl who was to complete our family.
Snuggling Alex under her Disney duvet in our four-bedroom semi in the Midlands that night, we vowed we'd love her for ever.
Certainly, if anyone deserved love and security, it was Alex.
Her mother, Michelle, was an alcoholic and drug addict, sustaining her habit by prostitution.
Alex was 18 months old when, acting on a tip-off, social workers broke into the flat to find her 22-year-old mother unconscious on the floor and Alex, malnourished, lying in squalor.
Alex was fostered until Michelle got clean from drugs.
But when returned to her mother's care, Michelle's new boyfriend, a paranoid schizophrenic, attacked Alex, hitting her under the guise of "punishing" her.
Finally, Michelle forced him out.
Alone and depressed, Michelle returned to her old habits.
One day she woke in hospital, having overdosed, to learn that she and Alex had narrowly escaped being burned to death after an attempt by Alex, aged three, to grill herself fish fingers.
Alex was made a ward of court and freed for adoption - which is how we came to meet her.
We'd been warned by social workers that Alex had learning difficulties and her vocabulary was very limited.
It was hard to put my finger on but her behaviour started to make me feel uneasy.
However hard we tried, she seemed incapable of learning anything.
I spent hours showing her the buttons to press on the TV remote control, button her top, brush her teeth, use a knife and fork - all to no avail.
Part of me wanted to scream: we loved her dearly but it seemed we could do nothing to help her.
Alex had been with us almost a year when I first began to doubt her.
Maybe she's faking it, I thought; or deliberately needling me just to get attention?
Then one day I overhead Daniel pleading with Alex to stop hurting our precious cat, Scooter.
She'd been pulling his tail. Looking into Alex's big, black eyes as I gently told her off, I found nothing there.
No emotion, no anger. But, as I stepped away, I heard her whisper to Daniel: "I hate you. You made Mum hear."
It chilled my blood.
Alex had been with us 19 months when I found her in the bath, very deliberately pouring water from a bath toy onto the floor.
For months I'd been mopping up water "accidentally" sloshed out of the bath and washing towel after towel.
Alex couldn't - or wouldn't - explain. "Mm, err...," she stammered, her face crumpling under the force of my fury.
"I dunno. I was, um, putting water, um, on the floor."
Later that night, I poured out our despair and confusion to my friend Sophie.
I knew that Alex was just a little girl with a hideous past who wanted to be loved but I couldn't help myself.
"I pace the floor sometimes thinking she's some evil person reincarnated, intent on destroying us.
"Then I curse myself for such hateful thoughts," I confided in Sophie. Sophie had no solution but she made me promise to get help.
Desperate, I rang the Post-Adoption Centre, a national charity offering support, and we were referred to a counsellor.
He was convinced that Alex was betraying a desperate need to be in control in a world where once she'd had none.
Alex had to learn that she was now in safe hands and that we were people she could trust.
It seemed like good advice and relief washed over us. But sadly it wasn't that simple.
Instead, Alex's tactics intensified.
One day, when she was still six, I told her she couldn't have a second lollipop before tea.
She spent the next five minutes glued to my side, mirroring my every step purely to wind me up.
Her tactics were bizarre but insidious: walking strangely, staring fixedly, tapping her feet incessantly, dressing completely inappropriately, often with clothes inside out or back to front.
Everything, in short, to make herself the centre of attention.
Friends, family and teachers were blinded by Alex's manipulative behaviour, blaming everything on her "learning difficulties".
At school she was the model student - bumbling but eager.
The exception was Alex's drama teacher, who herself had an adopted child.
She'd seen through her manipulative behaviour.
"Alex is not the self-effacing little thing she appears," she said ominously.
"It's the staring that first made me suspect. My son did the same when he was angry.
"I also think she's overplaying the helplessness. These kids are very good at playing innocent."
I wanted to hug the drama teacher with relief.
By now I dreaded time alone with Alex, so took a part-time job at our local university.
Still Alex dominated every waking moment, demanding constant attention.
I don't believe Alex disliked or resented Daniel but she sensed how precious his well-being was to us.
She disturbed his homework, interrupted when his friends came to play, stared at him at mealtimes and - most annoying of all - started waking him at 5am.
She tried his patience terribly.
We were now convinced that Alex was a very seriously damaged child.
It felt too much for us to handle alone, so in early 2000 our doctor referred us to CAMHS - Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services - a government-backed network of therapists.
"It's her ability to control her emotions that worries us the most," I explained to our therapist.
"If it weren't for her anger, I'd say she was a machine. And it's destroying us."
The therapist, though, seemed blinded by Alex's charm, calling her "Little Scrumptious".
With her, Alex was all simpering smiles, acting the shy, slow learner for all she was worth.
Desperate, I started doing my own research. And that's when I finally made the breakthrough - in a brochure we'd been given when we first applied to adopt.
It described a child identical to Alex - steely, controlled and staring.
Her condition had a name: Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).
Imagine attachment as a string between infant and mother.
The infant's needs for food, warmth and touch are answered. Now imagine an infant like Alex, born into an environment where its carer is unable to respond due to mental health problems or drug-induced oblivion.
This infant's string is useless, so it has no sense of belonging to anyone; nor anyone to it.
The consequences are immense. Fear, rage, lack of conscience (neglected children are not taught right from wrong), lack of compassion or empathy.
By the time the infant is removed from its environment, it's a broken soul.
But, as we were about to discover, RAD was only part of the problem. Alex, now eight, also had a voice in her head - telling her what she could and could not do.
It came tumbling out one day after a couple of years when we battled to understand why Alex had refused a simple instruction to say "Thank you".
She admitted that her "voice" had ordered her not to.
Suddenly everything clicked into place. It wasn't just her anger Alex kept hidden.
She seemingly wanted nothing because the voice demanded total secrecy, forbidding her to reveal her emotions to anyone. Even us.
I was convinced that Alex desperately needed treatment in a hospital specialising in disturbed children.
I pleaded with her psychologist: "We're living with a child who's secretive beyond belief, who's got a voice in her head, who talks of death - threatening to kill me at the drop of a hat - who's filled with hate, who at eight years old can't even write her name and who can shut herself down like a computer."
But Alex was such a consummate actress that no one believed us.
She mirrored the attitude of whoever was talking to her, seeming to know precisely what each person wanted to hear.
By now Rob was at the end of his tether.
"I don't know how much I can take of this," he whispered. "I want my life back."
Tense and on edge, we decided we had only one option - to get the adoption annulled.
Instead, we'd foster Alex.
That would free her from the expectations to attach to us, and us from the expectations of making her our daughter.
And, if it got no easier, we could hand her back.
Our announcement to Alex's social worker was like a bomb going off.
Suddenly, the authorities went into action, doing anything to prevent us annulling the adoption.
Our social worker agreed to refer Alex to a hospital specialising in children with RAD. We were thrilled.
And then everything changed. I'd refused Alex a treat - an outing with my sister - because I knew she'd be so disruptive.
An hour later, I was at the kitchen sink when I heard a single clicking noise behind me.
I spun round to find Alex pointing Daniel's red metallic spud gun at me, her eyes locked to mine.
I looked down. A 2in nail lay on the floor, inches from my feet. I was too stunned to speak.
I bent down, picked up the nail and held out my hand.
"It works better with potatoes," I said.
I found Rob and recounted the incident.
"That's it! I want her out of the house!" he said. "We've got Daniel to think about.
"I'd never forgive myself if..." He couldn't finish the sentence.
The next day I rang the hospital, begging for news about our appointment - only to discover our social worker had never even referred us.
We gave Social Services one last chance: a week to confirm a date for a hospital assessment.
The deadline came and went. We'd been abandoned.
Alex could sense something different in the air. I wasn't ignoring her mind games; I simply wasn't reacting.
When she did her usual routine of stumbling into the car in a deliberately clumsy heap, I ignored her.
I was waiting for the treacherous moment we'd be breaking the news to her that she was moving on.
About a week after the gun incident, Rob returned from work to tell her.
Alex, then nine, was sitting propped against her bedroom wall with her knees up, eyes straight ahead. I think she knew.
"Alex, love, we've got something to tell you," I said gently.
The eyes she turned on me were dead.
"You're going to be staying somewhere else for a while, just until we've found someone to help you. I'm sorry."
My tears weren't for me. They were for the girl who'd never been loved: not by me, not by anyone.
Alex simply nodded, barely displaying a hint of emotion.
Later, Rob sought her out in her bedroom. "Alex, do you want to go?"
Alex looked up, flat, as though defeated. "I want to stay," she said. "But the Voice wants me to go."
It was so honest, it was heartbreaking.
Two days later, we gathered Alex's belongings, put her suitcase in the car and drove our daughter to her new home.
The peace that descended on our house that evening was the saddest I'd ever known.
I agonised about what we'd done and how Alex was coping with rejection for a second time.
Gradually, though, life got back from normal and we began to enjoy life again.
But this was far from the end. Alex had been with her foster mother almost a year when our lives imploded again.
We'd been visiting her every 12 weeks and had taken her to a restaurant where we'd played a silly game where the children had fallen on the floor.
"She was in tears after you left," her social worker said icily.
According to Social Services, we'd also "harmed" Alex by insisting she suffered from RAD and heard voices in her head.
Social Services were seeking a care order which meant Alex could never return to us.
Over the next few months, they marshalled a case against us.
We were dangerous parents who had systematically abused and harmed an innocent child. I was crushed under the weight of pain and grief.
What had we done to deserve this? Could we lose Daniel, too?
In our different worlds of pain, Rob and I found ourselves torn apart, rowing constantly.
Finally, we decided it was best if Rob moved out to a flat nearby.
Devastated, I was prescribed anti-depressants. Meanwhile Daniel, then 13, was suffering nightmares.
We soon discovered we were in a Catch 22 situation.
Our solicitor warned that we stood little chance of successfully contesting the care order - which was the only way to clear our name - because, at that time, Alex wasn't displaying enough disturbed behaviour to convince the judge just how damaged she truly was.
Our only option was to consent. Soon, our daughter for six years was no longer our responsibility.
Meanwhile, Alex's behaviour had become increasingly bizarre.
She was muttering to herself and threatening to run away - but social workers were still blaming her "learning difficulties".
Three weeks after the order was granted, Alex grabbed painkillers and matches and locked herself in the bathroom at her foster home.
Police broke down the door to find her cowering under the sink, surrounded by burned out rolls of toilet paper.
Refusing to talk, she was rushed to hospital to check she had not taken an overdose. She hadn't.
A few days later, her foster mother, Janet, left her youngest charge, Maisie, five, in the bath while she answered the phone.
Fired by a jealous rage, Alex burst into the bathroom, pushed one hand over her face and the other on her stomach, and deliberately pushed her under the water.
Only Janet's return saved the child's life.
Alex was removed immediately and placed in a small residential unit for disturbed children.
Two years on, the unit serves 15-year-old Alex well: there are no expectations on her to bond or to love.
She is still legally our daughter but I fear for her future.
I hope one day she will get the treatment she needs.
Alex is a people-lover who, under different circumstances, would have so much to give.
With luck, she might yet be given the chance to love and to feel loved.
Unhappily, Rob and I are still separated, though we remain very close.
Although shaken by the experience and still somewhat fragile, we have at last begun to move on.
Aside from the strain those years put on Daniel, now 17, we don't regret our decision to adopt Alex.
She taught us - a normal middle-class family in an ordinary town - so much about the complex makings of a human being.
We considered legal action against Social Services but the idea of embroiling ourselves in an ugly legal battle was as unthinkable as leaping into a snake pit.
Instead, we settled for an apology "for the way things had turned out for us" - and, most of all, for Alex.
We were all horribly let down by Social Services.
Even now, incredible as it might appear, Alex remains untreated.
She has not seen a psychiatrist since the care proceedings.
She has simply been "lost in the system".
We still visit her every three months - but, sadly, with each visit we see her becoming increasingly withdrawn.
Alex deserved a chance of happiness, but because Social Services are underfunded, understaffed and weighed down by bureaucracy, our family was destroyed. It's so tragic.
Adapted from The Trouble With Alex: A Child Too Damaged To Love by Melanie Allen, published by Simon & Schuster on April 7 at £12.99. Melanie Allen 2008 To order a copy (p&p free), call 0845 606 4206.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-554769/How-adopting-angelic-year-old-blew-family-apart.html#ixzz1HLhlBuup
When Melanie Allen and her husband Rob, a quantity surveyor, adopted a five-year-old called Alex, they couldn't believe their good fortune.
Heartbreakingly beautiful, as well as affectionate, she seemed to be a dream child.
But as the months passed, Melanie and Rob, both now 44, began to see a very different side of their 'perfect' daughter - and found themselves sucked into a nightmare in which they faced losing everything ...
Jumping out of the car, I could just make out the small, lone figure waiting at the front door.
My heart began to pound. She was so beautiful - and she was smiling.
Her eyes seemed to have a magnetic pull, and as each step drew me closer, they grew larger.
The photo from the adoption agency had not done those eyes justice.
Nor had it captured the silken gloss of her fair hair, which hung to her waist.
I was in love already.
Her foster father urged her forward. "Do you know who these nice people are?" he asked.
"It's my new Mummy and Daddy," Alex answered - so quietly that I had to replay the words in my head to make sure I'd heard them right.
With a thrill, I realised I had. And as I looked down at my new daughter, her eyes were brimming with a pleasure that mirrored my own.
Scroll down for more ...
Adorable on the outside: But Melanie Allen and her husband Rob discovered their adoptive daughter Alex was ruthless and manipulative (picture posed by model)
I'd always dreamt of rescuing "unwanted" children.
A year after our wedding, Rob and I conceived our son Daniel naturally, but we seemed unable to have a second child.
After 18 months of trying, we decided to pursue adoption instead.
It had taken four years of interminable form-filling and interviews to be accepted onto the adoption register but I knew that day in August 1997 that we'd found the little girl who was to complete our family.
Snuggling Alex under her Disney duvet in our four-bedroom semi in the Midlands that night, we vowed we'd love her for ever.
Certainly, if anyone deserved love and security, it was Alex.
Her mother, Michelle, was an alcoholic and drug addict, sustaining her habit by prostitution.
Alex was 18 months old when, acting on a tip-off, social workers broke into the flat to find her 22-year-old mother unconscious on the floor and Alex, malnourished, lying in squalor.
Alex was fostered until Michelle got clean from drugs.
But when returned to her mother's care, Michelle's new boyfriend, a paranoid schizophrenic, attacked Alex, hitting her under the guise of "punishing" her.
Finally, Michelle forced him out.
Alone and depressed, Michelle returned to her old habits.
One day she woke in hospital, having overdosed, to learn that she and Alex had narrowly escaped being burned to death after an attempt by Alex, aged three, to grill herself fish fingers.
Alex was made a ward of court and freed for adoption - which is how we came to meet her.
We'd been warned by social workers that Alex had learning difficulties and her vocabulary was very limited.
It was hard to put my finger on but her behaviour started to make me feel uneasy.
However hard we tried, she seemed incapable of learning anything.
I spent hours showing her the buttons to press on the TV remote control, button her top, brush her teeth, use a knife and fork - all to no avail.
Part of me wanted to scream: we loved her dearly but it seemed we could do nothing to help her.
Alex had been with us almost a year when I first began to doubt her.
Maybe she's faking it, I thought; or deliberately needling me just to get attention?
Then one day I overhead Daniel pleading with Alex to stop hurting our precious cat, Scooter.
She'd been pulling his tail. Looking into Alex's big, black eyes as I gently told her off, I found nothing there.
No emotion, no anger. But, as I stepped away, I heard her whisper to Daniel: "I hate you. You made Mum hear."
It chilled my blood.
Alex had been with us 19 months when I found her in the bath, very deliberately pouring water from a bath toy onto the floor.
For months I'd been mopping up water "accidentally" sloshed out of the bath and washing towel after towel.
Alex couldn't - or wouldn't - explain. "Mm, err...," she stammered, her face crumpling under the force of my fury.
"I dunno. I was, um, putting water, um, on the floor."
Later that night, I poured out our despair and confusion to my friend Sophie.
I knew that Alex was just a little girl with a hideous past who wanted to be loved but I couldn't help myself.
"I pace the floor sometimes thinking she's some evil person reincarnated, intent on destroying us.
"Then I curse myself for such hateful thoughts," I confided in Sophie. Sophie had no solution but she made me promise to get help.
Desperate, I rang the Post-Adoption Centre, a national charity offering support, and we were referred to a counsellor.
He was convinced that Alex was betraying a desperate need to be in control in a world where once she'd had none.
Alex had to learn that she was now in safe hands and that we were people she could trust.
It seemed like good advice and relief washed over us. But sadly it wasn't that simple.
Instead, Alex's tactics intensified.
One day, when she was still six, I told her she couldn't have a second lollipop before tea.
She spent the next five minutes glued to my side, mirroring my every step purely to wind me up.
Her tactics were bizarre but insidious: walking strangely, staring fixedly, tapping her feet incessantly, dressing completely inappropriately, often with clothes inside out or back to front.
Everything, in short, to make herself the centre of attention.
Friends, family and teachers were blinded by Alex's manipulative behaviour, blaming everything on her "learning difficulties".
At school she was the model student - bumbling but eager.
The exception was Alex's drama teacher, who herself had an adopted child.
She'd seen through her manipulative behaviour.
"Alex is not the self-effacing little thing she appears," she said ominously.
"It's the staring that first made me suspect. My son did the same when he was angry.
"I also think she's overplaying the helplessness. These kids are very good at playing innocent."
I wanted to hug the drama teacher with relief.
By now I dreaded time alone with Alex, so took a part-time job at our local university.
Still Alex dominated every waking moment, demanding constant attention.
I don't believe Alex disliked or resented Daniel but she sensed how precious his well-being was to us.
She disturbed his homework, interrupted when his friends came to play, stared at him at mealtimes and - most annoying of all - started waking him at 5am.
She tried his patience terribly.
We were now convinced that Alex was a very seriously damaged child.
It felt too much for us to handle alone, so in early 2000 our doctor referred us to CAMHS - Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services - a government-backed network of therapists.
"It's her ability to control her emotions that worries us the most," I explained to our therapist.
"If it weren't for her anger, I'd say she was a machine. And it's destroying us."
The therapist, though, seemed blinded by Alex's charm, calling her "Little Scrumptious".
With her, Alex was all simpering smiles, acting the shy, slow learner for all she was worth.
Desperate, I started doing my own research. And that's when I finally made the breakthrough - in a brochure we'd been given when we first applied to adopt.
It described a child identical to Alex - steely, controlled and staring.
Her condition had a name: Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).
Imagine attachment as a string between infant and mother.
The infant's needs for food, warmth and touch are answered. Now imagine an infant like Alex, born into an environment where its carer is unable to respond due to mental health problems or drug-induced oblivion.
This infant's string is useless, so it has no sense of belonging to anyone; nor anyone to it.
The consequences are immense. Fear, rage, lack of conscience (neglected children are not taught right from wrong), lack of compassion or empathy.
By the time the infant is removed from its environment, it's a broken soul.
But, as we were about to discover, RAD was only part of the problem. Alex, now eight, also had a voice in her head - telling her what she could and could not do.
It came tumbling out one day after a couple of years when we battled to understand why Alex had refused a simple instruction to say "Thank you".
She admitted that her "voice" had ordered her not to.
Suddenly everything clicked into place. It wasn't just her anger Alex kept hidden.
She seemingly wanted nothing because the voice demanded total secrecy, forbidding her to reveal her emotions to anyone. Even us.
I was convinced that Alex desperately needed treatment in a hospital specialising in disturbed children.
I pleaded with her psychologist: "We're living with a child who's secretive beyond belief, who's got a voice in her head, who talks of death - threatening to kill me at the drop of a hat - who's filled with hate, who at eight years old can't even write her name and who can shut herself down like a computer."
But Alex was such a consummate actress that no one believed us.
She mirrored the attitude of whoever was talking to her, seeming to know precisely what each person wanted to hear.
By now Rob was at the end of his tether.
"I don't know how much I can take of this," he whispered. "I want my life back."
Tense and on edge, we decided we had only one option - to get the adoption annulled.
Instead, we'd foster Alex.
That would free her from the expectations to attach to us, and us from the expectations of making her our daughter.
And, if it got no easier, we could hand her back.
Our announcement to Alex's social worker was like a bomb going off.
Suddenly, the authorities went into action, doing anything to prevent us annulling the adoption.
Our social worker agreed to refer Alex to a hospital specialising in children with RAD. We were thrilled.
And then everything changed. I'd refused Alex a treat - an outing with my sister - because I knew she'd be so disruptive.
An hour later, I was at the kitchen sink when I heard a single clicking noise behind me.
I spun round to find Alex pointing Daniel's red metallic spud gun at me, her eyes locked to mine.
I looked down. A 2in nail lay on the floor, inches from my feet. I was too stunned to speak.
I bent down, picked up the nail and held out my hand.
"It works better with potatoes," I said.
I found Rob and recounted the incident.
"That's it! I want her out of the house!" he said. "We've got Daniel to think about.
"I'd never forgive myself if..." He couldn't finish the sentence.
The next day I rang the hospital, begging for news about our appointment - only to discover our social worker had never even referred us.
We gave Social Services one last chance: a week to confirm a date for a hospital assessment.
The deadline came and went. We'd been abandoned.
Alex could sense something different in the air. I wasn't ignoring her mind games; I simply wasn't reacting.
When she did her usual routine of stumbling into the car in a deliberately clumsy heap, I ignored her.
I was waiting for the treacherous moment we'd be breaking the news to her that she was moving on.
About a week after the gun incident, Rob returned from work to tell her.
Alex, then nine, was sitting propped against her bedroom wall with her knees up, eyes straight ahead. I think she knew.
"Alex, love, we've got something to tell you," I said gently.
The eyes she turned on me were dead.
"You're going to be staying somewhere else for a while, just until we've found someone to help you. I'm sorry."
My tears weren't for me. They were for the girl who'd never been loved: not by me, not by anyone.
Alex simply nodded, barely displaying a hint of emotion.
Later, Rob sought her out in her bedroom. "Alex, do you want to go?"
Alex looked up, flat, as though defeated. "I want to stay," she said. "But the Voice wants me to go."
It was so honest, it was heartbreaking.
Two days later, we gathered Alex's belongings, put her suitcase in the car and drove our daughter to her new home.
The peace that descended on our house that evening was the saddest I'd ever known.
I agonised about what we'd done and how Alex was coping with rejection for a second time.
Gradually, though, life got back from normal and we began to enjoy life again.
But this was far from the end. Alex had been with her foster mother almost a year when our lives imploded again.
We'd been visiting her every 12 weeks and had taken her to a restaurant where we'd played a silly game where the children had fallen on the floor.
"She was in tears after you left," her social worker said icily.
According to Social Services, we'd also "harmed" Alex by insisting she suffered from RAD and heard voices in her head.
Social Services were seeking a care order which meant Alex could never return to us.
Over the next few months, they marshalled a case against us.
We were dangerous parents who had systematically abused and harmed an innocent child. I was crushed under the weight of pain and grief.
What had we done to deserve this? Could we lose Daniel, too?
In our different worlds of pain, Rob and I found ourselves torn apart, rowing constantly.
Finally, we decided it was best if Rob moved out to a flat nearby.
Devastated, I was prescribed anti-depressants. Meanwhile Daniel, then 13, was suffering nightmares.
We soon discovered we were in a Catch 22 situation.
Our solicitor warned that we stood little chance of successfully contesting the care order - which was the only way to clear our name - because, at that time, Alex wasn't displaying enough disturbed behaviour to convince the judge just how damaged she truly was.
Our only option was to consent. Soon, our daughter for six years was no longer our responsibility.
Meanwhile, Alex's behaviour had become increasingly bizarre.
She was muttering to herself and threatening to run away - but social workers were still blaming her "learning difficulties".
Three weeks after the order was granted, Alex grabbed painkillers and matches and locked herself in the bathroom at her foster home.
Police broke down the door to find her cowering under the sink, surrounded by burned out rolls of toilet paper.
Refusing to talk, she was rushed to hospital to check she had not taken an overdose. She hadn't.
A few days later, her foster mother, Janet, left her youngest charge, Maisie, five, in the bath while she answered the phone.
Fired by a jealous rage, Alex burst into the bathroom, pushed one hand over her face and the other on her stomach, and deliberately pushed her under the water.
Only Janet's return saved the child's life.
Alex was removed immediately and placed in a small residential unit for disturbed children.
Two years on, the unit serves 15-year-old Alex well: there are no expectations on her to bond or to love.
She is still legally our daughter but I fear for her future.
I hope one day she will get the treatment she needs.
Alex is a people-lover who, under different circumstances, would have so much to give.
With luck, she might yet be given the chance to love and to feel loved.
Unhappily, Rob and I are still separated, though we remain very close.
Although shaken by the experience and still somewhat fragile, we have at last begun to move on.
Aside from the strain those years put on Daniel, now 17, we don't regret our decision to adopt Alex.
She taught us - a normal middle-class family in an ordinary town - so much about the complex makings of a human being.
We considered legal action against Social Services but the idea of embroiling ourselves in an ugly legal battle was as unthinkable as leaping into a snake pit.
Instead, we settled for an apology "for the way things had turned out for us" - and, most of all, for Alex.
We were all horribly let down by Social Services.
Even now, incredible as it might appear, Alex remains untreated.
She has not seen a psychiatrist since the care proceedings.
She has simply been "lost in the system".
We still visit her every three months - but, sadly, with each visit we see her becoming increasingly withdrawn.
Alex deserved a chance of happiness, but because Social Services are underfunded, understaffed and weighed down by bureaucracy, our family was destroyed. It's so tragic.
Adapted from The Trouble With Alex: A Child Too Damaged To Love by Melanie Allen, published by Simon & Schuster on April 7 at £12.99. Melanie Allen 2008 To order a copy (p&p free), call 0845 606 4206.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-554769/How-adopting-angelic-year-old-blew-family-apart.html#ixzz1HLhlBuup
Monday, March 21, 2011
NH supreme court hears case of homeschooled girl ordered into public school – Roanoke Homeschooling
NH supreme court hears case of homeschooled girl ordered into public school – Roanoke Homeschooling | Examiner.com « The Preservationist
NH supreme court hears case of homeschooled girl ordered into public school – Roanoke Homeschooling | Examiner.com.
“Homeschoolers must never take for granted the freedom to educate their children at home. As attested by the case of 8-year-old Domenic Johansson of Sweden, who was taken from his parents by the government and placed into foster care because his family homeschooled him, in many parts of the world, the freedom to homeschool is being challenged and revoked. Driven by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is a movement to curtail parental rights, and especially home education, through Europe and many other parts of the globe. It is this treaty which gives the government (more specifically an international committee of 18 individuals) the power to determine the “best interests of the child” over parents. Not surprisingly, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been used to regulate or eliminate homeschooling in countries that have ratified it, as part of the child’s “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds” (Article 13, part 1).”
NH supreme court hears case of homeschooled girl ordered into public school – Roanoke Homeschooling | Examiner.com.
“Homeschoolers must never take for granted the freedom to educate their children at home. As attested by the case of 8-year-old Domenic Johansson of Sweden, who was taken from his parents by the government and placed into foster care because his family homeschooled him, in many parts of the world, the freedom to homeschool is being challenged and revoked. Driven by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is a movement to curtail parental rights, and especially home education, through Europe and many other parts of the globe. It is this treaty which gives the government (more specifically an international committee of 18 individuals) the power to determine the “best interests of the child” over parents. Not surprisingly, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been used to regulate or eliminate homeschooling in countries that have ratified it, as part of the child’s “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds” (Article 13, part 1).”
NH man charged with assaulting son with belt
NH man charged with assaulting son with belt - Boston.com
ROCHESTER, N.H.—Police in the New Hampshire city of Rochester say a man is facing charges he hit his 3-year-old son in the back with a belt several times.
Forty-five-year-old Thomas Goodwin Jr. appeared in court Monday after he was arrested and charged with assault and other offenses. He's being held on $25,000 bail.
ROCHESTER, N.H.—Police in the New Hampshire city of Rochester say a man is facing charges he hit his 3-year-old son in the back with a belt several times.
Forty-five-year-old Thomas Goodwin Jr. appeared in court Monday after he was arrested and charged with assault and other offenses. He's being held on $25,000 bail.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)