Birth Announcement

On February 13th at 12:18 PM,
My granddaughter, Nadia Alma Marie Hererra
was born. She was 8 lbs, 9 and 1/2 ounces
and was 19 and 1/2 inches long.
My daughter, Shanna was a real trooper.
Considering that this was her first baby I was
amazed to see her in action. No pain meds, no
epidural and no epesiotomy. She never even whimpered.
Mother and baby are both doing well and living with the baby's
dad, who is making sure they're both safe and secure and loved.

Nadia had her first checkup yesterday and is already up to 9 lbs, 14
ounces! By the time I get to keep her she'll be too big for me to carry!

But what really makes me happy is that I'll be able to SPOIL THIS ONE
rotten and send her back home!

Grandpaw would really be proud!

June 11, 2006 ,Shanna Comes Home

I was making enough money online that I was able to pay for Maranda to ride a greyhound to Fulton Kentucky and bring Shanna home. I was even blessed with enough to give them $500 extra for food. We had moved into a beautiful townhouse apartment in Wichita with a pool, tennis courts, fitness center, the whole nine yards. I was finally able to give her a good life and a nice place to live.

The day Maranda left our cat had kittens and I had to deliver the first one myself because she wasn't able to get it out. It was so crazy and hectic that day, trying
to help her get ready to go and helping our cat at the same time, and Mandy really hated leaving and missing the event but Shanna was a lot more important so she left her in my capable hands and got the cab to the bus station. The next day I paid two of my friends to come over and have a cleaning party and we cleaned the apartment from top to bottom and made everything look nice for Shanna. I had planned to give up my room and sleep on the couch and buy her a nice bedset and curtains, but the time came up fast and we didn't get that done.

The day she got here we had a big party with all the neighbors and welcomed her home. We had no idea that she had accumilated so many things, but I guess in five years time it's hard not to. She had boxes and boxes of stuff and lots of suitcases and duffle bags. Needless to say we were hard pressed for space to keep it all, but we made do ok. The important thing was that she was HOME!

We spent the entire summer having fun by the pool and riding the bus to town when we needed things. She planned to finish high school the following semester. So we got her registered and she attended about two weeks and decided that she would rather just do it online.

Several months went by and I found a boyfriend. We met through the medical transportation service I was using. He was the dispatcher. Our relationship only lasted about nine months and we split up and I moved back in with Mandy. By this time Shanna had a boyfriend and had gone to Colorado to be with his family. She stayed about a month then came back. They broke up shortly after that and still are friends.

Then she met Roy. Roy was a really sweet guy, but he wanted Shanna to depend on him and not to call us ehenever she needed something. So their relationship didn't last long either. And the day she found out she was pregnant was the day they broke up.

We just found out a few weeks ago that it's a girl. We have a house now and it's big enough for all of us to have our own room. We've had no more dealings with social services and both girls are working, not on welfare or food stamps or anything. So we're hopeful that will never happen again. The law is very different here and they don't stockpile reports like they do in Kentucky. We stay to ourselves and don't give anyone a reason to call. Anthony is on medication and doing well in school. We found out that his problems with adhd were mainly because of boredom. His IQ is over 137 and he was just plain bored with first grade schoolwork. They now have him in an excellorated class so he's doing fourth grade work in the second grade.

Shanna is now into her sixth month of pregnancy and my grand-daughter will be born around February 12th. I think I'm going to be able to enjoy this one and finally find out what real joy is about.

Clay is still in foster care, but he's 18 now. He plans to get what he can from the state and let them pay his way through college and marry his high school sweetheart. Then he plans to come here also. My oldest son Jordan already has his master's degree and is stationed at Fort Knox and plays the tuba in the Army band.

Shanna will be a wonderful mom. I have no doubt about that. Now i have a lot to look forward to and I plan to be around to spoil the grandkids and hold this beautiful family God gave me together. Despite all the heartaches and problems, we are strong and I can see my kids will make a big difference in this world. Their daddy would be so proud if he were here.

Please keep us in your prayers.

Becky

David's Final Battle

David lost his fight on the 21st of December.
I think I had told you he had a brain tumor, well they
finally got around to doing the biospy to see what it was.

But about a week or two before that they replaced another
stint in his heart. Then afterward, because they were doing
the biospy they didn't want him on the anticoagulants.

3 days after his biospy on the 18th, he left the hospital against
medical advice, then he lied to me and said that the doctor had released him. When I went to pick him up they hadn't wheeled him down, but he was standing in the parking lot alone in 8 degree weather.

I'm sueing the hospital for neglegence, for one thing when a patient has brain surgery until they've been declared competent it's against the law for them to allow them to sign out on their own. They should have consulted with me on it and kept him safe until then.

And the doctors, the cardiologist for not telling me about the danger of him not getting the anticoagulant for two weeks, and the neurologist for not telling us about what could happen in the event that he had problems with his heart after the brain surgery.

3 days after telling me that his doctor had sent him home and I picked him up, thinking everything was ok and not getting any further instructions, David woke me up kicking the bottom cabinet and slamming the top one in the bathroom. I asked him what he was doing and he didn't answer. That was the mini stroke. I called the ambulance and they came and he told them that he was just trying to take a dump in his own house and asked them in a not so polite way to leave. They told me that they could force him and get the cops involved but he might be the one that got hurt. So I let them go on.

About an hour later after he'd been asleep and seemed to be ok he got up again, and this time he walked down the hall to where I was sitting on the computer. He looked at me and smiled. I said hi Babe.
He just looked at me. I knew then that something wasn't right. He walked around to the back side of me and I turned my chair around.
He just smiled at me again and I put my hand on his arm and asked him if anything was wrong. Then he just fell sideways and hit his head on the stove.

I yelled out for Mandy and ran to the phone. The damn internet wouldn't disconnect so I had to come back in here and shut the computer down. Then back in there again. He was having grand mal seizures and Mandy was screaming at me, calling me names and yelling at me to hurry up. She was trying to keep him from hitting his head again, and he was choking on his tongue.

I was trying hard to pay attention to the lady on the phone and waiting for it seemed like hours for the ambulance.

When they got here they tried to get him up, and he started fighting them. They wound up having to force him out in the cold and snow with no shoes or shirt. He was calling us bitches and yelling for his daddy who had been dead for thirty years.

When we got to the hospital we were met by the chaplain. That let us know that things were grim. We were there for hours while they did another heart cath and finally they said that he had suffered a massive heart attack on the way to the hospital. Then the brain surgeon came in and said that the problem was that he had been given the anticoagulants and they couldn't move him from where he was to do a brain scan. If there was any bleeding or swelling it would have to wait until they got his heart stabolized.

The next day we were back again still not getting any answers other than he was in a coma and we needed to contact his family. So we got his brother to come and he stayed with us as did our pastor and a few friends from church. One by one the 5 doctors who were assigned to him told me that they agreed that it would be futile to try to keep going with this. He would more than likely either be a vegetable or would never be able to do any of the things he enjoyed, the quality of his life would not be anything worth living for. I knew that this wouldn't be something he would want. We'd talked about it many times.

So on the 21st as we watched, one by one, all the tubes of meds, all the lines and connections that held him in a temporary mechanical state of "whatever" were disconnected one by one. We watched the monitors as he went from seeming to override the controls to giving us hope that he just might do it on his own, to the final acceptance that he was truly gone as the last bit of residual "juice" from the machines ran out and there was nothing there but the death that he had probably already experience even before he was connected to all these tubes and lines. This entire process took only 15 minutes.

The very last thing we all saw as he went from this "life" to the next...
His eyes went from fixed and dilated to normal for just a brief second and he looked directly into the eyes of his first born child and it was like he was saying...It's ok..I'll catch you later. Love you sweetie.

So now I'm "married" to my daughter and we have a 5 year old son to raise.
David never got to see his other two children, Shanna and Clay, but I did get to see them, and even though it wasn't the best of circumstances, I found out the one thing that had me worried all this time...they still love me. And the name Mama is reserved exclusively for me. They'd been waiting over five years just to be able to say it again. All of this hasn't changed them in the least. They're still the same beautiful children they always were and even more so now that they're almost grown.
My heart still swells with love every time I remember what Clay said to me when I asked him if I looked any different from what he remembered. He said, You just look like Mama. Mama..I just love saying it. Mama, Mama..Mama..!"
Shanna was so beautiful with her long straight hair with little frosted streaks and wearing her nice new clothes and sporting her new class ring. She's staying in the state's care long enough to finish her schooling to be a nurse. Hopefully she'll be able to help prevent the kind of abuse that happened to her daddy. Right now, Clay is just happy playing football and having a cute cheerleader for a girlfriend. I said I would like to meet her some time and he said..."You will!"

Merry Christmas, Happy Newyear, God bless.

Becky

Why I published this blog

My name is Rebecca Beasley.

I published this blog mainly so that I can keep all this straight in my own mind and to make some sort of a record of the events of the last 18 years that we've been the victims of the social services system. Also maybe if we get something done about this it won't continue to happen to other people like us.

But I also did this in the hope that someone would be able to help us. We still want our children back and we feel that they have been kidnapped.

Yes we had problems. What family doesn't? I don't care how perfect a family looks, there's not one perfect family on the face of the earth. But we have been victimized in so many ways, by social services, by neighbors who we trusted to help us, by the police, by judges and by the state of Kentucky.

If being poor is a crime. We're guilty. If needing help is a crime, we are guilty. And if loving our children and wanting to do what we thought best for them is a crime, we are guilty.

Since Arkansas..Losing the Fight

After David moved with me to Arkansas and we renewed our vows things went smoothly for a while. We got into church together and attended regularly and we both attended a mental health day treatment center to help us resolve some of our independant issues over everything that had happened, and since we were together we thought it would make the process of getting the kids to us work even faster. But that wasn't the case. It seemed that they didn' t want us together and they said they called Arkansas and they wouldn't work with us, so I called them back again and found that no one had even called them from Paducah.

We would send letters and money to the kids through the social worker as the judge said would have to be done, and the kids would often tell us they hadn't received anything from us. We knew the foster parent's address so we started sending things there. We knew what we were doing went against the court but our children were dissappointed when they didn't get their gifts and we felt that it was the only way we could insure they got them by sending them registered mail and having them sign for them at the post office. Also that way we knew they were received.

We got a letter that said what was being told to the judge and it stated that we were refusing to follow the court order stating that we could not send directly to the kids, and that nothing we had sent was "appropriate" and that we had not sent them enough money...or what they thought was enough, also that we had sent more for Shanna's birthday than for Clays and were showing favoratism for one child over the other. The reason we sent Shanna more than Clay was for one thing, she had just turned 16 and it was a special birthday and part of the money was to be split with Clay, but that's not the main reason, the main reason was that when we sent the money to Shanna I had just gotten an inheritance, and the next month we were moving again and had lost everything we owned to the people who bought it for pennies on the dollar. We barely had enough to make it to where we were going and only took enough to fill our Ford escort and still made the time to make sure he got something even though we weren't able to send as much as we'd sent the previous month.

They also never got around to forming a case plan for us, and we never knew for sure what was expected and we were always wondering if our kids were ok or not.

David woke up one morning crying and upset over the kids and he called the foster mother and tried to ask her to just let him know they were ok. She screamed at him and said that everything we'd sent to the kids there had been thrown away, including money, pictures, wal mart gift cards and presents we'd sent.

Earlier this year we found out through a friend who works with social services that the foster parents were in jail for stealing money from the foster kids funds and that they were using our children for slave laborers to work their farm and keeping them drugged and subdued so they wouldn't tell anyone.

They were moved to a new foster home and we still don't know for sure where they are.
We have some clues but no exact address.

We did send the kids gifts this past Christmas. They were sent around the first of December. The kids didn't get them until the middle of January, and we're not sure if they got everything we sent or not. They're not allowed to tell us anything.

You Have to Read it All to Understand..Leave Your Comments Please

Here's what really angers me the most of all. This is the ultimate slap in the face.

Pam and Charles, the ones who lived next door and molested our daughter, the woman who was threatening our kids to the point they wouldn't go to school...got our property after we finally got enough of their abuse and left. They had the house torn down and moved into a new habitat for humanity house across town and put our chain link fence on their new property.

But that's not all. This is even worse.

The last time I was in Paducah, I ran into Pam at the pizza place by the housing project where Mandy used to live. She had a baby in her arms. I asked her who's baby it was and she said it was her "grandchild". I knew their boys weren't old enough to have kids, so I said.."umm...excuse me for asking but...?" and she said it was the baby their FOSTER child just had....a little girl.

So a known child molester in Paducah is now made a foster parent by the same people who put our family through hell and took our children away. They were allowed to call in on us, take away our home and molest our child...who was already disabled and having problems in school, threatened her and caused her to stop going, caused me to be put in jail, got our children taken from us and they are still walking the streets...fine upstanding citizens who contribute their DRUG money to the habitat for humanity? And why? Because Pam's dad is a city official in the city of Paducah!

And guess what? Before they moved to Paducah Kentucky, there were allocations of sexual abuse to their own sons and Pam's brother was the one who took the fall. This was in the state of South Carolina. This couple has a long track record of sexual molestation, drug dealing and child pornography in at least two states that we know of. And this is the kind of people that social services chooses to take care of YOUR children.

Leaving Texas and Heading Back to Kentucky

Even with the trials in Texas we had felt freedom, and it felt good. We were never harrassed by social workers and if the kids tried to keep from going to school the police would actually come into your home and make them get up and get dressed and take them to school. And they didn't prosecute the parents. They made the kids toe the line and if there was a dispute it was discussed in a kind way and no one was pushed or shoved into a police car.

We didn't have it easy, but at least where we lived was nice and we had furniture and we even had a cat the kids got attached to, but when we left, we had to leave it all behind. We just couldn't afford the $450 a month rent and paying for a washer and dryer and trying to find a car when they charged every two weeks on payments instead of once a month.

Mandy had an apartment now where we had lived when she was born, and we thought we would just stay with her for a couple of weeks and find a place of our own, but it didn't turn out that way.

David made friends with this guy who was a really bad alcaholic and we stayed with him and we did find a trailer but it was far from what we needed, it was really bad to tell the truth. But we planned to move there and just make the best of it. It was in the country and close to a good school and we knew Pam didn't work there. And they promised to help us. So we painted and cleaned and got furniture and prepared to move in.

My self esteem was really low and David hardly ever complimented my cooking or told me I was pretty, and I had pretty much gotten used to it, but I was thrown for a loop when this man we were staying with told me that he had prayed all his life for a good woman like me and that he would do anything if I wasn't married and would stay with him. I was an idiot. I fell for it hook line and sinker and even had the nerve to tell David that I had changed my mind and wouldn't be going with them. The kids had gotten to the point of talking to me like a dog and when I would cook something David would eat and not say, this is good or anything... and if I asked, he would say...well I'm eating it aren't I?

I just needed some encouragement. I didn't need to leave my family and move in with a stranger. But that's what I did. I felt like I was doing the right thing at the time. This man
needed someone to take care of him. He was lonely, and I was a fool.

One of the last memories I have of my son is sitting across from me eating pizza with tears in his eyes and me telling him that I had to do this for me. FOR ME? WHAT RIGHT DID i have to do it for ME!

David got another girlfriend and they took off with the kids. I didn' t know where they were until the day that we went to court, and I guess I was frantic with worry and felt guilty for not being able to give them the kind of life they deserved, so when the judge asked me if I wanted the court to protect my kids I said yes...what was I supposed to say? What mother would say No I don't want my kids to be protected.

They had headed to California and on the way there in Flagstaff Arizona his girlfriend ditched them. She had her own car. So she took the money and took off. They had to wing it back by picking up hitchhikers and all I could think of was what if my kids get killed by some crazy serial killer.

They made it back ok, and I got to see them for a while. Me and my "boyfriend" moved into a trailer then a house out of town and we hoped they would come and stay with us, but they never did. Then Mandy told me they'd left and wouldn't tell me where they went.

I knew they were ok, because I figured that they'd gone to Alabama. And I would hear from Mandy if anything was wrong. She came and stayed with us and brought Tony a few times, but Dwight was a real asshole and possessive and I felt like I had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Just one word from David and I would have headed to where they were and not gone to Arkansas with Dwight, but I felt like I had made my bed hard and would have to lie in it.

I had been in Arkansas for about three months when I got the certified letter from the social worker. The kids were safe. They'd been picked up and David was in jail. That's all she told me when I called. They would see that they were sent to me as soon as the paperwork was done and they could be sure that everything was ok where I was. Dwight wouldn't stop drinking and had gotten more abusive, so I kicked him out and made him stay with his brothers.

I started counceling and got back in church.

David came to live with me. We renewed our vows and we've been together ever since, but the kids are still in foster care and the system has made it impossible for us to get them back.

They took our rights away last year after the attorney that was appointed for us was paid by the state to lose our case.

We haven't seen or heard our son's voice in almost three years, and it's been 4 years since this all happened. Our daughter has called once, and we've spoken to her a few times online, long enough to fill in some of the details of what's been going on since they were taken.

She's 18 now and he'll be 16 on September 18th.

They plan to keep them past their 21st birthdays and there's no telling what they've been told or what they remember about the parents who love them more than they'll even know.

But what happens now is anyone's guess.
We just want to put our family back together. We want to mend the broken pieces and have a chance to start over again. How many times do we have to start over again?

David has had 3 heart attacks, he has two stints in his heart and we just found out he has multiple schlerosis, and I have emphasema and am on oxygen. All we ever wanted was a normal life with the children we love and to be happy, whatever that means.

If someone could help us have a little bit of happiness before we leave this world we would be going to our graves in peace.

Shanna and Clay, we love and miss you so much. Please come home.

Mom

Still Together and Making it (Somehow)

So many things happened between the time of my arrest over the year long speeding ticket and the birth of our grandson that it's somewhat of a blur. Somehow we made it despite the fact that the only thing we had to get me out of jail was the van that we had just paid off about a week before this happened. We paid $1800 for it and all David could get from the dealer who sold it to us was $300. But in order to get me out of there he took the money and got a cab to come bail me out. There were fines on top of that, so we were in court a lot during this time. We were still also fighting Shanna over going to school and we didn't know this, but she told Mandy later on that Pam had been threatening us at school...(she was the secretary) and was telling Shanna that if we didn't stop the investigation of Charles that something really bad was going to happen to us.
She also said that they would "make our lives a living hell."

All we knew was our kids were refusing to go to school. Mainly it was Shanna, but it was starting to roll down to Clay too. I had homeschooled but since being put in jail over the speeding ticket the judge said that no one who was involved in his court cases would be allowed to homeschool. I emailed the state senator about this and he was reprimanded and made to apologize to me.

This really ticked him off and he got even more determined to make me toe the line and he charged me with unlawful transaction x 2 because of the kids missing so much school.

Shanna had already missed a lot due to her surgeries. She'd had 11 of them altogether to repaid the palate and sinuses, and also her ears had pi tubes in them. So now here came social workers again..Pam had kept her word. She was calling them, she was having family members to call them and we were averaging at least one or two visits a month, all on some dumb thing like not having a bandaid on a cut finger or they weren't wearing the right shoes with the right pants..
or once it was because Clay had fallen off the bumper where he was standing watching his dad work on the car.

Mandy was in early labor for the last two months of her pregnancy and on one of the false labor calls we were on the way to the hospital and got pulled over. The officer pulled David to the back of the van and I heard him say.."Mr. Beasley did you ever get that "feeling" when you changed your little girl's diaper? David said..HELL NO! What kind of question is that?!! And he said...
all I can say is if that baby turns out redheaded I'm going to hang your ass!

We were dragged to the police station...all of us, a couple of months later, right when I was dealing with finding a new place to live, David and I had seperated because of all the stress and we'd been staying at the homeless shelter. They made us all go there to be questioned. They suspected David of being the one who molested Shanna and of being the father of Mandy's baby.

We know now where this all came from...you guessed it. Pam and Charles.

And it's still not over.

The Fight Continues

We lived in the same house for nine years.

It started out a nice little comfy home for us and our little ones, but now they were turning into teenagers and the problems got even worse. We took them out trick or treating for Halloween the year our oldest daughter was 13, and when she got sick the next day we didn't think a lot of it, other than the fact that she ate an entire bag of candy, but we grew concerned when it didn't end the day after. So I took her to the hospital.

It took several hours for them to find out what was wrong and I had gone to get coffee and came back to find her crying uncontrollably. She finally told me that she was pregnant by a 28 year old black man who we had thought of as a friend and had never suspected of any wrongdoing.

We both knew what would probably happen when we told her dad about this, so we kept it a secret until the appointment he had with the county attorney over a settlement he was expecting. That was about two weeks away but we did everything we could to keep this to ourselves and not let him suspect anything. She was still having terrible morning sickness but we told him that she had a bad stomach virus that would last about two weeks at least.

The day of the appointment came and we went with him to the attorney's office. We figured this would be about the safest place to unload news like this, so we waited for the appropriate time and just said it.

He got upset like we expected, but in the presence of the county attorney he kept his cool. He said that we would work it out somehow and he cried.

Mandy had to quit school because the morning sickness was so bad. She applied for adult learning classes and tried to go as often as she could. And if you read the earlier posts, you would know that Mandy was the one who had been diagnosed with adhd when she was 3 and wa on meds, but since she was pregnant she couldn't take them and that diagnosis had been changed since then to odd..or oppositional defiance disorder. She wasn't afraid of anyone, had no respect of authority and would fight anyone who she thought was against her. So we had a battle on our hands just keeping her from getting upset, but the inevitable happened. We got into an argument and she wound up hitting me and we had to call the juvenile cops.

About a year before this day, I had been pulled over for speeding. I knew I wasn't speeding, but wasn't going to argue about it, I knew I wouldn' t win, so I went to court prepared to pay the $20 and kept my mouth shut. Anyway, after court, they had tacked on court costs and it was going to be over $100 which I wouldn't have until I got my ssi check. So I said I would be back to pay it then.

I went to pay it when I got my check, and they told me it couldn't be found.

The night they took Mandy to Juvie, we didn't find this out until about a week later...they picked her up and threw her into the cop car. When she told me this I called the police station to complain and about ten minutes later, I was on my way to jail over a year old speeding ticket that couldn't be found.

How Much More?

We did get back together. I had to sign a waver on the epo and sign a bond to get him out of jail.
Mandy had another episode with her opd and went to juvie again, and they took the baby away because the trailer THEY put us in wasn't fit.

We moved again and got visitation with the baby and worked it out to get him back and the very day that we got him back they handcuffed me right after the decision was made and put me in jail because of Shanna not being in school. I had even called a truent officer on her myself and he refused to make her go citing that it was the last day of school.

As if we weren't already having it hard enough trying to pay high rent and keep food in the house for six people, we both had fines to pay. Stress was starting to build again and Mandy
wasn't doing well. She refused to take her meds and wouldn't go to school, clean up after herself
or take care of Anthony, and her behavior was rolling downhill on the other two, even though they were pretty good kids all in all, and I do love them all the same, but something had to be done. A psychiatrist who had seen Mandy for over two years wanted us to let her stay in the hospital until she turned 18 but David wouldn' t let it happen. So now we had to decide whether to force her to face reality and learn to live as the "immancipated adult" that social services told her she was or let her stay and tear the entire family apart piece by piece. It was all I could do to keep my own self halfway sane, and David was going through "middle age crazy" at the same time, and thinking the grass might be greener somewhere else, so we hooked her up with a lady at her church as guardian and proceeded to push her out of the nest.

She went to a nursing home in Illinois for a couple of months and found out what it's like to really have rules. Now she had a bunch of elderly people telling her what to do.

David and I grew apart, he started cyber chatting and would leave for a week or so at a time and we wouldn' t know where he was. He would come back and say he had been just clearing his mind and had been staying with "friends" he met online but we knew different.

Finally it got to the point where I had to decide for myself..did i want to be alone and crazy and lose my kids anyway, or did I want to find someone who would love me and take care of me and the kids and take a chance that might happen anyway? I just couldn't stay there and keep being pushed to the edge and never know whether my husband was my husband or someone else's.

So I met someone online and he paid my way to come and meet him and his girls.

Shanna and Clay went with me. David and I had gotten back together but this time I wanted to hurt him like he'd hurt me. And I didn't think of the consequences. I just had to find out for myself.

So we rode the 1500 miles to Texas and I tried to live with someone else, and after a week, it wasn't working. He said he wasn't used to boys and that Clay and him were never going to hit it off and his daughter had said that Clay was knocking her dad and so he told us we would have to leave.

I emailed David and asked him how he felt about us coming home.
He got in the van and headed that way and 11 miles into town the van broke down.

We stayed at the salvation army for two months, then got an apartment and stayed another two months and couldn't afford it. We had no car and both of us were sick. So we headed back to Kentucky on the next greyhound, leaving everything we owned behind once again.

They Almost Succeeded

After all we'd been through as a family it still wasn't anywhere near over.

David and I were seperated, the kids were torn up, I was a basket case, and we
were going back and forth between what used to be our home and the homeless
shelter trying to keep our dogs taken care of and stealing away from the people
who lived there every chance we could and spending every little dollar we could
get on a hamburger or something to make us feel normal and happy.

Mandy hadn't had the baby yet but he was about to be born any day, and she
was in the labor room every other day with false labor, and I was still facing the
unlawful transaction charge for Shanna not going to school. And as it turned out
even after we moved, Pam got moved to the county school where Shanna would
be attending and started threatening her there too.

My whole day was shot by the time I got Mandy to the hospital, then took Shanna
and Clay to school and had to fight to get her out of the car and got her into the school
just long enough for her to cut and run away and I'd have to chase her and start the
whole process again, then after all that, the principal would say she wasn't going to force
her to stay.

The very day that cooperative ministries moved us into the trailer Mandy's water broke.

I couldn't be two people. I guess that was my crime.
I had to arrange for someone to get us there to see the baby be born, and I had an epo on
David, but he showed up anyway and we planned to get back together.

Nothing happened when he was there and we saw our grandson come into the world, but right after he was arrested for violation of the epo.

The Anniversary

When we got back from our anniversary things seemed wierd. I don't know how to explain it other than we felt that something wasn't right. Shanna seemed distant. She didn't smile. She didn't laugh and cut up as usual and one night I found her crying, she was on her bed, face down lieing on her knees and I heard the sobbing and asked her what was wrong. She said...oh I was just praying. So I thought maybe I was imagining things and just shut the door and gave her her privacy.

About a week later, Mandy came in with her and said there was something we needed to know. Shanna didn't want to tell us. She was afraid we wouldn't understand and she thought that she might have done something wrong.

We listened as they told us what happened the night we were away.

Clay had slept with the boys in the other room. Mandy and Shanna had slept together. Pam and Charles were in their room and when Shanna called out and asked for a drink of water and aspirin for her headache, Charles came into the room. He handed her the glass of water and stuck his hand up under the cover and touched Shanna's privates. She screamed and he put his hand over her mouth and whispered.."you know you like it..be quiet or you'll wake up Pam." She screamed through his hand...Pam! Pam!!!!" He kept on prodding and poking. It hurt her and she cried. Mandy was asleep. She always slept hard, but she said she woke up when she heard Shanna scream and she tried to get Pam to come too, and Pam yelled from the other room, shut up and go to sleep!

We called the police. David tried to hold back from going over there and beating him to a pulp. It wasn't easy. I had to hold him back. When the police got there they said they would have to do an investigation and that Shanna would have to be examined.

So we took her in to be examined. They did a pelvic exam and found that there had been penetration and there was scarring, but since he didn't use his penis there was no dna to prove what was done, they said she could have done it herself.

Charles was questioned but he said that the last time he did a lie detector he almost lost his wife, so he refused.

A few weeks later they found out he had molested his 4 year old neice and he was put in jail. Shanna had to go through mental evaluations and was run through the mill, tested and questioned, called a liar, and threatened by Charles wife at school. She worked at the school and was telling her that if we didn't get the cops off them she would have someone to hurt us really bad.

So Shanna started refusing to go to school.

I home schooled for about two years after that, but the abuse continued after Charles got our of jail. And when I had to put the kids in for evaluation and testing for homeschool, it all started again. Shanna refused to go, they were both starting to act up and I was charged with unlawful transaction of a minor and put in jail and fined.

Each Report Adds More Fuel to an Already Blazing Fire

In Kentucky when social services is called, they have to follow up no matter how silly or farfetched it seems. I can understand this to some extent, but what bothers me is that even if a call is unfounded, the report goes into a file and stays there until the child turns 18 and each report, no matter whether it's true or not builds up a case against parents and even if someone has something against them, or someone does something to harm their child that has nothing to do with them, they still put paper into the folder and sometimes it's just blank paper, or a signature..and the judge looks at the size of the file, not what's inside as a reason to take a child away.

This family started out just like any other family. A loving couple who had hopes and dreams for their children and wanted only the best for them, and they wanted to stay at home and be there for the little first steps and first smiles. They didn't want to be tied down to jobs and have someone else calling them to say..Clay took his first step today, or Shanna got her first tooth, or Mandy made the football team!

But social service's goal is for every family to be the "norm" which is supposedly a two career home, parents both working to provide money, kids in public school, everyone juggling, everyone going on vacations to the bermudas every year, or whatever. And most of them are working and have their children in daycare from the time they're born, and from what I've seen most social workers are either unmarried, divorced seperated, or if they're married their husbands eventually make them quit the job or they end up divorced anyway. I know that it's not an easy job and I don't for one minute envy them, but they get hardened to the task and start to think that every parent is a potential abuser or neglecter of their children.

After all, offering their services is what puts food on their table. If they don't have clients, they don't have a job. So they go out looking for people who will need their "help." And they try to keep them in the system as long as possible and watch every move the family makes for signs that they're not quite the "perfect" Brady bunch family.

The stress on the family is enormous as well. They never know when one of the neighbors is going to call on social services because they know that they've got a social worker and they feel it's their duty to report when one of the kids gets a bump or a bruise, falls on the sidewalk while skating or they think the kids aren't wearing the right clothes or they just happen to see them dirty after they've been playing in the mud.

So they start to develop a mentality of being watchful and worrying over everything their children do. They just can't have a normal life and relax and enjoy the funny things they do or allow them to play with other kids because they never know when someone will report them for something and another paper will go into the steadily growing file.

We went through this for several years, and when Shanna was nine years old, the worse of all happened. We had gone out to celebrate our tenth anniversary. It was the very first time we had ever spent an entire night away from our kids. The next door neighbors had offered to watch them and we agreed, even paid them in advance...but what happened next was the beginning of the nightmare that is still going on, and we don't know if we'll ever wake up from it.

Does it Ever End?

David and Becky continued to do well, and even got to see her son now and then even after the adoption. The new baby was born, a son who they named David Clayton, "Clay" for short. He was healthy and thriving and no sign of any problems. Becky was even able to breastfeed him and the nursing kept her on an even keel, the house was always clean and supper was always on the table when David came home. The other two kids were in school. Shanna was still at Easter Seals and Mandy was in kindergarten, and soon after they moved Shanna out and she graduated to regular headstart.

Since they had the son the wanted, and didn' t want more kids, Becky had her tubes tied and the day of the surgery she and David were resting after a long night and with the kids and an early morning at the hospital. They were suddenly awakened by a loud knocking on the door like someone was trying to break it down, and when David jumped up and opened the door he was greeted by a social worker and a police officer who informed him there was a warrent for his arrest.

"What in the hell is this about?!!"

They said that the head start teacher had called and said that Shanna had bruises on her butt and that she had obviously been been beaten.

David stood there for a minute, still stunned at this, and then it dawned on him. The kids had a blanket that they loved, a black granny square afgan, and they had slept with it the night before and he had been in a frantic rush that morning to get them off to school and get his wife to the hospital for her surgery, so he had neglected to wash them off as thoroughly as usual.

So he directed them into the kid's room and showed them the afgan and asked if these "bruises" that washed off with the soap and water that he produced were what the teacher had claimed were the result of a beating.

They blubbered an apology and left.

The next morning, David went to the school and asked the teacher to come into another room and right there in front of her and several other teachers, he pulled down Shanna's pants and showed them the "bruises" that had magically disappeared overnight.

Again, they blubbered an apology and he took his little girl back home and soon after that they started looking into homeschooling.

Get a copy of your case file | CPS False Accusations

Get a copy of your case file | CPS False Accusations
This is just what I've been looking for. Now maybe I can get some help to fight this injustice to our family.

This Wasn't the First Time...

Becky was already distrustful of social workers because they had taken her first child from her when he was only two weeks old and gave him to her aunt and uncle. She had been hospitalized for bipolar disorder when she was in the army reserves. They had just put too much pressure on her and she had gotten sick..physically sick, a really bad viral infection, put back on duty too soon and it was all it took along with the heavy medication for coughing..a strong opiate drug called "GI Gin" and it had taken it's toll on her mind.

She had been hospitalized several more times for this and treatment was worse than the problem. The drugs made her feel "stupid" and it was hard to get out of bed and walk to across the room.

When the social worker came she was afraid it was going to happen again. She did everything to comply with their wishes and took their offers of help, first putting the kids in daycare and looking for work, even though she wanted to stay at home and just be a mother to her children.

Where they had moved it took a lot of gas going back and forth for them both to jobs, Becky had gotten work through the Easter Seal Center in the opportunity workshop, a sheltered vocational rehab program that was designed to help her get back on her feet, and David was working at Paducah Rigging. The social worker came about once a week to make sure they were doing everything they were told to do, the home health nurse came twice a week, and there was a lady that social services hired to help her clean the house, (which she was doing quite well even with the problems with the baby and their three year old daughter)

They evaluated their three year old and decided that she had adhd and needed to be put on medication as soon as possible. (social workers somehow are able to decide these things from their experience and by observing children at play) So on top of taking the kids to daycare, dealing with doctors appointments, both parents working, hardly seeing each other or their children, now they had to see a physchiatrist and phsychologist for their other child as well. And their life was no longer simple. It got more and more complicated, and as if that wasn't enough, this social worker decided that she was going to help them get custody of Becky's son back and so they also had to seek an attorney, go back to court and be treated like criminals and put in under an even bigger microscope. The custody battle was very ugly, Becky's aunt would bring her son over after coaxing him on what to say and this four year old would say things like..."you're not my real mother you're just my "biological mother".

After about four years, the court made a decision. Jordan would remain in the custody of his great aunt because they were more stable and didn't have social workers coming to their home. And they had more money, so they won the case and Becky tearfully signed the papers to make it permenant and allowed them to adopt her son.

After the damage had been done, the social worker came and released them from her care. They moved again because of the stress and expense and went back to town, found a house close to Becky's mother, right across the street and they tried to start over again fresh.

Before they had been there a week, still trying to get things situated and having a new baby on the way, another social worker came. This time they said that it was because they were "in the system" and that since they had moved and didn't tell them, they were "required" to follow up on them and make sure they were doing ok.

Again they complied, and the whole thing started again. Now they were made to put charts on the wall to remind them when to give the girls baths, Shanna, the one with the cleft palate was put in Easter Seals at the age of 18 months. She had already had 4 operations and was also going to the commission for handicapped children, it seemed like they would never be allowed to have a normal life. They were always under the microscope and being made to feel like they were stupid and couldn't take care of their own family and needed help to know how to make a doctor's appointment or tie a child's shoe or clean up their home.

Becky finally had enough. She called an attorney and found out that unless they had a warrent that she didn't have to allow them in her home. So the next time the social worker showed up, she told her to leave. She left after trying to threaten her and when Becky asked her how she got her experience to tell her how to raise her kids, she replied, "I babysat."

Where Were They?

We can only speculate on this part, but some of what we know now we were told by our children when they were able to talk to us away from the social workers.

While David was away at the store, the children were picked up by social services and taken to a temporary shelter about five miles away. Social workers in Kentucky had lied to the FBI and said that David was armed and dangerous in order to be given permission to go across two state lines to capture the kids and have David arrested.

Around 3 am the next morning the kids sneaked away from the temporary shelter and ran 5 miles back home, looking for their dad, and when they didn't find them, they too were frantic and spent the rest of the night huddled together, crying and shaking, not knowing who to call or what to do.
When they were found it was assumed that were mentally and emotionally unstable and they were put on medication. They were finally taken in by a couple in Murray Kentucky and their mother was called and told that everything possible would be done to return them to her care. David was made out to be the ogre and she was told that he had been abusing them and that was the reason they were taken.

Becky had moved to Arkansas and was living with her boyfriend who was an alcaholic and the situation was not good. She immediately left him and started seeking counceling on the advice of the social workers. She had just started attending a local church and it was through them that she had made the call when the certified letter had come telling her the kids were safe and with good foster parents. She wasn't sure what to believe and after having dealt a rude hand by social workers in the past, she was very leery of them.

The lady seemed nice though and kept assuring her that she would soon be seeing her children again, and that everything would be ok.

So Becky started doing what they said she needed to do and called the workers in Arkansas and asked if arrangements could be made to have them do a home study to speed things up on getting the kids sent to her. They said it would be no problem at all. And that if the state of Kentucky would arrange it they would have no trouble with seeing that everything was done right and that the kids were safe with her and they would help her to get them back as soon as possible.

So she started to be happy again. It had been a dreadful time for her, worrying about her children and not hearing from them or knowing for sure where they were. Her oldest daughter had told her they were with her dad and that they were ok, but other than that she hadn't known anything for sure. She had called several times and cried and pleaded for her oldest daughter to tell her more about where they were, but she refused and said that they didn't want anyone to know in case they were being watched and they were afraid that Becky would tell and they'd come and take them away.

Before all this happened, the seperation and Becky leaving with another man had come about because she had felt there was nothing left. She and the kids had run away before and they had gotten stuck in Texas. David came down there to help and the van broke down. They had tried staying together and had done pretty well considering the circumstances but it had gotten to be too expensive trying to live without a car in a place where they didn't know anyone. So they had gone back to Kentucky.

This story may seem like it's going nowhere but there is so much to tell that it's hard to put a time sequence to everything. So try to just bear with me.

It started when their second daughter was born. They had just moved and the baby was sick. She was born with a cleft palate and they had been given the support of home health nurses a good doctor and all the needed supplies to take care of her. They were sleeping in shifts, feeding her around the clock every two hours. It wasn't easy, but they were determined and dedicated to their children and each other. They had just moved into their new home when a social worker knocked on the door and said that a neighbor from the housing project where they had lived had said that she thought it was "kind of funny" that they should be moving when they had a sick newborn and she had to investigate all calls, no matter how silly they seemed.

How Do Things Like This Happen in America?

It was summertime, 2001 and David had just moved with his two kids to Alabama where his family was. They had just left Kentucky because he and his wife, Becky had seperated and he couldn't find work, the kids wanted to be with him for the summer and planned to go with their mother when school started. They had been staying with relatives until they found a place and he had just lucked up on a 3 bedroom trailer, and had furnished it and got the kids new bikes. He went to the store, giving them the usual warning, stay here, don't answer the phone and don't
open the door unless you know who it is.

He pulled up in the driveway and saw a yellow piece of paper on the door.

It said: If you ever want to see your kids again, call this number.

His heart almost left his body when he read it. He thought OH MY GOD THEY'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED! He rushed to the phone to make the call. He wasn't thinking of his own safety or anything else, he just had to know where his babies were.

A female voice said, "Are You David Beasley?" he said yes, and she said, "Stay there. Someone is picking you up.".

A few minutes later, the police pulled up in the driveway with a warrent for his arrest. He was taken to jail, charged with a felony. He didn't know where the kids were and had no idea what had just happened. All he knew was he was on his way back to Kentucky to stand trial.....for what?