[Linny]

Larue:
Thank you for your heartfelt post. This event happened three years ago. Those that were affected, went into counseling as soon as space was available. (We literally called them two days after the disclosure.) We continue to believe that there might be children who were not related due to some information we found; but thus far, no one has come forward.
And, it wasn't counseling provided by the 'system', thank God. We deliberately chose an independent entity. They were wonderful.

Your sentiments about making the right choice are appreciated more than you may realize. MANY adult survivors of sexual abuse (and those who were abused by siblings and relatives) have come up to us to say the same comments you have written.
I cannot understand how anyone could allow innocent children to deliberately be in harm's way, for the sake of ONE child in the family. As someone commented, and stats show, these kids are incredibly adept at finding the seconds/minutes to molest and assault others. Alarms, buzzers, detectors and (as was suggested to us as well)....even monitors, WILL NOT keep ALL innocent children SAFE at all times---despite 'line of sight supervision'. Nothing will.

Sincerely,

Linny

[AvaScarlett]

Just want to say God bless you Linny. What a hard decision-but surely the right one.

[PabloandCarlosMama]

Linny,

You made a brave choice. This is such a complicated situation on so many levels. I know the laws vary in each state, but they are primarily designed to protect the offender or suspected offender. I agree that you should have a right to know, but it will take a lot of reform to get there.

It's really easy for folks to cast judgment when they haven't lived through this. My hat's off to you for standing up for your family.

Dinah

[Empty_Nest]

Another thing to consider is, if you had brought this child back into the home and he re-offended, then you would have been guilty of not protecting your other kids, and CPS would have been on your neck about that.

You were darned if you did, darned if you didn't. You made the only choice you could to let him go.

And I think the issue of a new family not being made aware of his potential to re-offend is out of your hands. It's now up to his case workers. Scary thought, but I don't see any other option.

[Linny]

Empty-nest.....
You are absolutely correct. This is one thing dh and I KNEW was a real possibility! We thought this, and his testing confirmed that he was VERY likely to offend again and HAD to HAVE 'line of sight supervision' at ALL TIMES. (Which, according to the tester, was almost impossible to do! Go figure!)
Anyway, we knew that to even bring him back into the home would mean we were deliberately putting the younger children in harm's way. Not only was this against our ethical beliefs, but also really, against the law.
Funny how the laws are supposed to protect the innocents, but when the predator is in your own home, somehow those laws are not supposed to apply?

To the rest of you who've responded since my last post:
It's been three years since this happened, and even now, reading the encouraging and thoughtful comments you've written are appreciated more than you could know. ((((HUGS))))

Most Sincerely,

Linny

[Empty_Nest]

We went through this in 1988. Not with sexual abuse, but with physical abuse. Several of our kids came to us one day and asked for locks on their bedroom doors. I will never, never, EVER forget the looks on their faces. Our oldest child, then fifteen and very strong, had told them she planned to kill them in their sleep. They believed her, and they were terrified. With good reason, since she was a master of abusing them in ways that didn't show, then threatening them to keep them quiet so we never knew. It's amazing how clever a disturbed child can be. We only found out about the abuse after the abuser's placement disrupted and the other kids felt free to tell us what had been going on.

She was placed in a foster home with three younger children. We did everything we could to warn CPS of the danger of putting her with younger kids, but of course they didn't believe us when we told them about her violent tendencies. They were too busy trying to blame us for everything that had ever happened to this kid. No common sense was applied. They even tried to blame us in court for things our daughter said happened to her when she was five, SIX YEARS BEFORE WE EVEN KNEW SHE EXISTED. That's the uphill battle we fought in that mess. We were the parents, therefore anything the child did wrong was all our fault. The first eleven years of her life didn't matter at all.

I was on the phone with our daughter one time when she was babysitting the younger foster kids. It just chilled my blood, the way she was talking about them and to them. There wasn't a thing I could do. We had tried to tell CPS what they were dealing with but they just assumed we were lying and trying to make our daughter look bad, since she had made false allegations against us. In their minds, anything negative we said about our daughter was just more ammunition to use against us in court. We got nowhere at all, and it always came back to bite us when we tried to do the right thing, no matter what it was when it had to do with her. It was horrible.

I don't know if she ever abused the other foster kids or not. I'd be surprised if she didn't do something to them. But I never felt guilty about it because I DID WHAT I COULD. I gave CPS accurate information about our daughter's potential for violence and abuse. There was no way I could make them act on it or even believe me. The ball was squarely in their court, and after I let them know about how badly our daughter could act, it was up to them to protect the other children and the foster mother. I had to focus on helping our other seven kids, who were terrified and struggling through the investigation and its aftermath, as were my husband and I.

[joskids]

"Empty Nest" - your story gave me the chills!! It's important that you shared it. We've seen other situations very similar to yours and possibly had one in our home before we discovered what had gone on with threatening our other children. We let those children go also but you never forget. Thank you again for sharing this -- hopefully others will see it before they find themselves in the same situation. It is our job to keep EVERYONE safe in our home although CPS, at times, just doesn't seem to understand that!!!

[Empty_Nest]

What CPS did to our family was ABUSE. There is no other word for it. Allegations MUST be investigated, absolutely. But there should be some common sense and accountability on thier part, too. There was no place we could go to report what the CPS worker did to us. There was no help. We were completely alone in the situation except for our local placing worker. Things got so bad she actually advised us to move away and change our last name in order to protect our remaining kids. It shouldn't be that way. We could have probably helped our daughter heal even if she never came home, but CPS wouldn't let that happen because it would have interferred with the worker's hidden agenda, which she had made clear to me in private before I wised up and started taping all conversations with anyone from CPS. It's an ugly, ugly black mark on an organization that claims to care about maltreated children.

[joskids]

I know of others who HAVE moved away just to get away from CPS and what others think they know about a family who has children removed (voluntarily). Everyone thinks they know better, would have done a better job, etc. -- but you don't see those same folks trying to adopt either, do you? CPS workers all have their own agenda and, again, it is generally not in the best interest of a child or the family either. And disturbed children are so good at getting others to believe them. I hope that things have improved for your family and that you can move on to make a positive life for your entire family.

[Empty_Nest]

This all happened in 1988-89. We did move, but we didn't change our names and didn't hide our new address from CPS, either. But what we went through did change how we parented and not for the better. We lost the closeness we had had with our children. We were all so afraid after that. It also destroyed our trust in just about everyone, because we never knew what innocent thing would be twisted around to make us look guilty of something. It was all so sick and so sad, and it didn't need to be that way.

Nobody thinks about the overall long-term effects of an investigation. Then again, I'm not sure ours could even be called an investigation because of all the lying and back-stabbing going on by the CPS worker who told us one thing and then told her superiors and the court something entirely different. Hence, tape recordings of every word any of them uttered to us. It was amazing how fast that case dried up once we went on the offensive, started recording them, told them where to cram the confession they wanted us to sign or risk losing our other seven kids, and told them to either arrest us or leave us alone, but it was never officially closed.

I'm sure there are government workers somewhere who actually care about children, and I'm sure they work hard for the children and families they serve. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to work for the county we lived in at that time.