Saving Grace One Day At A Time
One Family's Story
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11/2/16 Grace is not safe today.
This ordeal started in 2012 with details of sexual abuse disclosed as early as the fall of 2014. Grace's mother was shuffled through the Children & Youth and family court system with no lawyer until her trial in 2016. Why would she need one? She has committed no crime. She was degraded, accused of crying wolf by the hearing master who presided over the conferences since 2012 when she attempted to present information concerning what her daughter told her. She was silenced at every turn.
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When Grace was able to give details of what, when, and where sexual abuse happened to her, it was Grace's protective mother who everyone pointed at, saying she made it all up.
(A Utah attorney told a mother in the same situation that if she reported the abuse of her child she would lose custody...and so it is true in the state of Pennsylvania too.)
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No one acted to protect Grace except her mother and her mother, not the reported abuse, was going to trial.
On 9/14/16 the family entered the courthouse without sleep and nervous. However, the day long no jury trial went amazing well. All fell into place. The protective mother had several witnesses who confirmed Grace's accounts of sexual abuse, including, and especially Grace's trauma therapist. There were many helpful details to her testimony even though Grace has not disclosed more information to her since Grace has been with her abuser. Grace tells family he tells her not to tell and this is revealed during the trial.
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The abuser's father refused to testify for him and left the building and one of his other witnesses just didn't show. At the end both the protective mother's lawyer and Grace's Ad Litem agreed on supervised visits for the abuser if there were anymore allegations, so it seemed custody would be given back to the mother.
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The ruling two weeks later did not reflect what went on in court and the judge expressed anger about the pre-trial letters (before mother had a lawyer or a court date) expressing concern for the child and politely asking the judge to review the therapist's documentation.) This was important enough to him that he included it in his ruling which eliminates any definitive guarantee that this mother had a fair and impartial trial if the judge was angered before the trial even began.
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He sentenced poor Grace to life with her abuser..
The complete story and specific legal details have been temporarily removed because of
upcoming legal proceedings and privacy. However,we will tell you that once upon a
time we believed that something really horrible would have to happen before a child was
taken from a parent who has done nothing wrong. When people would lament, “Why doesn’t
child protection services do something," my response was, “We really wouldn’t' want
to live in a culture were children were taken from their parents so easily and without
cause." I was so naive. And the frightening truth is we do live in that culture and it's
not some eastern culture where women and children have little value. It's right here in the
U.S. Anyone with normal reasoning would say that it has to be more than a contempt
of a custody order in the face of real danger that takes a child from their parent...there has to be more to the story.
A marital break up several years ago landed on 50/50 custody of their child. But the storm
that was brewing was something so sinister that it (and all it's fallout) would go down in this
family’s history as the worst thing that has ever happened and there has been plenty of the
really hard stuff. This was their Pearl Harbor. Boundaries of basic social trust are broken
beyond repair.
Grace went to her first line of defense, her mother, when she could take no more of her
father’s abuse, and without going into the many and specific details her mother believed
that those put in place to protect the innocent would move mountains to keep Grace safe.
This is not the case at all.
This young mother had already endured religious and emotional abuse in her marriage
and there were several levels of the abuse… there usually is. She did not do things
perfectly, and who does, but no human being deserves how she was treated. And when they broke up she was counting on him loving their child enough not to flood her carefree little
world with cruelty…because low self esteem told her maybe it was her that was
the problem like he said. When Grace gave details of the abuse it was clear to those who
love her that she was sickened by it...
Some are just speechless when she talks about it.
Instead of sending the calvary to protect those who can’t protect themselves, all eyes turned on this mother as the game player and “crying wolf.” Child protection services had less than minimal involvement and an opinion from the start, and other agencies were pretty much
the same...
That being said, wouldn't you expect those put in place to protect would make decisions that
would keep a child with her protective parent and keep her away from the reported
abuser while things are sorted out, for as long as it takes, especially when there
is a therapist’s documentation and testimony that the abuse happened? The judge was
expected to be the judicial white knight.
That is not what happened.