Child Protective Services in need of improvement

Do not assume that just because people are not turning out in droves to protest abuse by the Department of Human Services that we do not exist. It isn’t job or family obligations that keep us home and keep us silent, it’s that DHS has the power to take our children away from us. Worse, the power of DHS is protected by a catch phrase that means its social workers can say or do anything they want with no fear of being held accountable. It’s called “In good faith.”

Late one September day last year, a DHS agent from Child Protection Services (CPS) knocked on my door, saying she was there to investigate an anonymous allegation stating simply that my 9-year-old was “supervising” my 3-year-old. This claim was both false and ludicrous.

Normally I would have let her inside but as it happened I was just recovering from a serious bout of strep throat. I hadn’t eaten in days, had barely been able to drink water and the pain medication I had been given was making me nauseated. The DHS agent had awakened my children and me up and I needed to lie back down and rest. I explained this to the agent and told her there was no reason to be concerned for my children; that under the circumstances she could not come in.

Legally, that should have been the end of it. No government agent has the right to enter a private home uninvited unless she has a warrant or it is an emergency. It is illegal for a caseworker to intimidate, harass, threaten or lie in order to gain entry to a home but that is exactly what this agent did. She not only had no respect for the fact that I was obviously ill, she also had no respect for the laws that are supposed to govern her conduct on the job.

She coerced entry into my home, conducted an illegal search and humiliated me in front of my daughter, demanding to search my bedroom because, as she said, “as far as we know you could have four men hiding in your closet.”

After she made that comment my daughter refused to speak to this so-called professional alone, but the agent insisted, saying she could not leave until my daughter talked to her alone. I forced my frightened unwilling child to speak with them because at that point only the “pro” knew what she had just told me was against agency policy and both state and federal law.

After this humiliating home invasion I did a little research and found a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Calabretta v. Jones. Jones was a CPS agent who had acted very much like the agent who came to my home, and the court unanimously agreed that the caseworker was liable to the tune of many thousands of dollars for her coerced entry into the Calabrettas’ home and that “her crime did not end when she illegally crossed the threshold but continued as she imposed her will over the residents of the home in which she had no right to be.”

Later, when I brought this to the attention of the DHS caseworker, she took several innocent statements I had made, added some fabricated “facts” and swore to them under penalty of perjury. She put them in a petition to take custody of my children and filed it with the court.

I called her immediate supervisor and offered to take a polygraph by DHS to prove the petition was nothing more than innocent things twisted insanely out of shape. The agent then called to say she had been mistaken and now recalled I had not said what she claimed but that that was OK and she didn’t have to correct the petition or retract her statements because they had been made in good faith. No one fabricates evidence and swears to it under penalty of perjury “in good faith.”

During this whole ordeal I kept asking people at DHS if their resources couldn’t be better spent investigating reports that at least implied that a child was being hurt. But no, they were too busy trying to cover and justify the actions of a professional social worker who acted as if she was so important that she was absolutely above the law.

I wonder how many other caseworkers were too busy fighting to avoid accountability to keep Sally Schofield from killing Logan Marr? Lack of manpower and heavy caseloads? Sounds more like an inability to competently manage resources, or find the right “resources” to begin with.

It is my opinion that every DHS worker who is incompetent or doesn’t demand competency and professionalism of their co-workers, and every lawyer and every judge who refuses to hold DHS workers accountable or abets them in circumventing the law is a child abuser. They are guilty not only of allowing the death of an innocent child who died at the hand of Schofield but guilty also of actively participating in every atrocity visited upon children and their families at the hands of DHS. It’s time for them to stop being so cozy in their roles and robes and do the jobs they are supposed to do.

Even though my case was dismissed in court with no judgment against me, DHS will call my case one of “confirmed” neglect. Confirmed simply because they say so. Now that’s power. Actually it is fraud and it’s your money they’re stealing.

I invite other families to write to me and share their experiences. It is my intention to see that our stories are part of the investigation into the workings of DHS. No more caseworkers that need a special catch phrase because so many mistakes need to be forgiven.

If DHS operated “in good faith,” I wouldn’t be this angry and maybe at least someone would know the real number of children who do need help in Maine. Families who wish to join me in demanding real change in Maine’s Child Protective Services division of DHS may write to me at: HC 65 Box 5721; Lincoln 04457. Maybe together we will be harder to intimidate and ignore.

Marcia Hatt lives in Lincoln.