A little over a year ago, a young woman approached us with a harrowing tale of the child forced upon her when she, the mother, was in her early teens. In photos they appeared more as siblings than as mother and child.
That child had shaped this mother’s character and her life’s mission with singular ferocity.
The general pattern of abusers is that they often leave children when they are very young to be raised with their mothers. As soon as the child is somewhat self-sufficient, capable of speech and reason, then the abusers become interested in the child. That is when the child can be taught, directed, then intimidated and controlled.
As is the case with the majority of the clients taken on by the FCVFC, at a certain time this child had been transferred into the hands of her abuser, because of dark secrets related to criminal acts covered by dark money.
The story was familiar. Through the years this young mother fought hard and harder to get her child back.
But ever more powerful were the forces that pretended to work for the best interests of the child but actually worked against them: using protocols of behavioral science, psychiatry, medical practice, and twisted law to accomplish their dark purposes of ripping the child from her only protective parent.
This case took place in the South, that part of the South that says “bless your heart” as an insult within a sneer. Here were appointed agencies, lawyers, social workers, and therapists to control the narrative in court and keep at bay truly interested parties who truly cared about the Best Interest of the Child.
Symbiotic agencies such as Child Protective Services worked with nonprofit agencies such as Julie Valentine Center abuse counselling services that evince detailed accounts of abuse from victims, helping them “regulate their emotions.”
Then instead of being in the fight for the victim’s release from abuse, these agencies agree for the victim’s records to be sealed and buried beneath court orders that must be subpoenaed by lawyers.
Abusers consciously intend to preemptively defend against potential prosecution of their crimes. And who works to free vulnerable young victims trapped in the hands of their abusers? Almost no one, because of the expense and the intense level of push back from agencies drunk with power and bloated with public and private funds.
Children are medicated, undereducated, left with no skills, and fed a false narrative stating that their families abandoned them and there is no other alternative except to be in the hands of their abusers.
Public agencies such as CPS are funded by taxpayers. That is, state taxes charge residents for CPS to abduct and abuse children. Additional child care funding expenses are pulled from the federal budget for child care services and perhaps legal services.
In this part of the South, the social workers have lawyers, the GAL lawyers have lawyers, the child supposedly has a lawyer.
The only subject who does not have a lawyer is the Protective Parent, who then is ultimately charged with some form of contempt for asserting their rights and is then sent to jail and charged with paying the fees for their child’s abuser’s lawyer, who has falsely accused the child’s protective parent with crimes against the child.
In the case before us, success was achieved despite the lawyer who appeared as promising when we hired him. Once retained and paid, his law firm staff revealed their “bless your heart” attitude, clearly shared with and supported by their boss. Messages were never returned, documents promised weeks earlier were not prepared. Spoken complaints were met with being hung up upon and a refusal to pick up further calls. Written complaints against the staff to their boss were met with accusations against the client as to interactions that never took place. Complaints to the lawyer about his multiple deficiencies were met with the look of indifference and the implied sarcasm challenge to …. See what you can do…..
So we put the lawyer aside and worked around the court, the facilitators of the child’s physical and emotional isolation. We had to find her and gain access to her and strike the moment she turned 18.
We retained the services of an excellent private investigator. The family, three generations, finally mobilized behind their own to work together and implement plans. Finally they broke through the resistance of the captors with the booming majestic voice of the military man maternal grandfather “get out of my way.” The henchman for the perpetrators of harm were locked in place, silenced and frozen, as the grandfather spoke compelling words of love to his granddaughter, not seen for years. She heard him, saw them, and the rest is history
The direct call to the child was, “We love you, we have never stopped fighting for you, we are fighting for you now, come home.” And the first most important steps to freedom were taken as the child, now a young woman, walked out the door.
Had she remained, she would have continued as a source of disposable income to her abuser’s family. We suspect she would have become a broodmare for baby income/support and fraudulently made to appear as requiring SSI so that she could not move forward with the education and career she desired and for which she is fully capable.
As of this time, an amazingly seamless transition has grown as bonds of intergenerational love and loyalty have been reunited as we fight through the isolation of the child. The threats, the lies, the intimidation continue to be resolved, and lives are transformed in all of the best possible ways.
This particular case was special because though the battle had been fought over years of empty, thoroughly corrupt litigation involving all of the usual larceny, lies, and abuse of court process, in the end, three generations stood together and in unison raised their voices for the child to come home.
Freedom was won through hard-fought litigation, always grudgingly released by a bitter judge with nasty last words. All parties are exhausted and the sense of freedom is experienced with lingering anxiety related to the fear that the black hand can still reach out, even when that is not true.
Children and their Protective Parent need to gather at home to slowly shake off the nightmare survived but not yet removed from their minds or the muscle memory of their bodies. Survivors grieve for their own lost years, horrible experiences, and known victims left behind. For this reason we rarely if ever discuss “successes” as the victories are so very fraught with deep and profound sadness and mourning.
“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning” is a thought measured out over a very long course of time and a complex recovery process, unique to each survivor.
As we celebrate our “success” in fulfilling the promise of this family, we never lose sight, thought or awareness of that heaviness that for some, the freedom that should come “automatically” at age 18, or at the time of release may not be accessed.
The fear of “freedom” and loss of ability for self-direction does not automatically lead to an embrace of a new life. Sometimes instead there is a view that they cannot survive in this new state of freedom. In cases like these, when the longed-for 18th birthday is achieved, sometimes suicide is the chosen course of action.
We live and work in love and hope, always with the knowledge of the urgency to move with great speed. We long to release each child from the abuses imposed by the amoral, autocratic, racketeering blood sport engaged in by juvenile, dependency and family courts across the country.
