Matt and I are a young couple with two beautiful little girls. Those two children are our lives. We do everything for them including buying them a house that DFACS will not allow them yet to live in.

Let me tell you how DFACS has turned our lives upside-down for the past four years.

In 1998 our second child was born. We were living with my parents at the time. We needed our own place for the four of us. So I started looking in the paper for something affordable, because Matt was the only one working at the time.

In November 1998 I found a double wide mobile home in Sugar Hill Georgia that was for sale. Payments were only $650 a month plus lot rent of $200. But our credit wasn't good enough for us to enter into a contract. So we got my father to cosign with us.

Kember was in Pre-K at the time. Everything was great! We moved in our new home and were doing the best we could on one income. The next school year my daughter was entering into Kindergarten at Sugar Hill Elementary School. She was so excited. But she was bored. She would do all her work then disrupt the class. I got note after note about her behavior. I asked the teacher to give her extra things to do to keep her occupied. This only worked for about a week. So I asked if they had a behavior program at the school.

They did!

I wish I would have never wanted her to go. She would meet with a school counselor for about 45 minutes a day.

Well, something new was starting to happen with Kember. She started wetting her clothes at school. I was called to come up to the school for a meeting with Kathy Bond the school counselor. She explained that she asked Kember some questions about her wetting her clothes at school. She asked Kember if her belly was hurting or if she was hurting anywhere. My child was five at the time. So she answered yes to everything. Ms. Bond told me she felt Kember had a urinary tract infection or a bladder infection. I told Ms. Bond that that was strange because Kember wasn't wetting her clothes at home. I told her I would make an appointment with her doctor. She started asking me who her doctor was. I told her his name was Dr. Ronald Ito with Emory Clinic in Snellville.

My cousin Sheila Reaves worked there and I can make Kember an appointment for the next morning. I also had to give her the phone number to the doctor. I made Kember an appointment and took her the next day. The doctor said their was no evidence of any infection. To ask the teacher to allow Kember more restroom breaks. So I took the note to school and gave it to Kember's teacher.

The next thing I know is DFACS is knocking on my door and wanting to investigate my home. They stated that Ms. Bond notified them that I was getting my cousin to write false doctors notes (on an Emory Letterhead). I ended up taking my daughter to five different doctors to prove she didn't have an infection. By that summer DFACS visited my home four times and found no signs of abuse or neglect. The case was dismissed.

On registration day at the school I took that letter of dismissal to the school and told Ms. Bond I did not want my child talking to her. I was providing her with counseling (for bipolar disorder). That in itself was the start of a bad year. Kember had come home with lice on a Wednesday. So I kept her home treating her hair the rest of that week. I sent her back to school the following Monday explaining that she had contracted lice and I have treated her hair. Well, that Tuesday she had it again. I had to buy another bottle of RID and rewash everything in the house again. She missed three more days of school. Totaling six days now. You can only have 10 unexcited absences in Gwinnett County. (meaning you need a doctor's note after 10). I took my child up to the school that Friday with the empty bottle of RID and showed them that I treated her hair but until the class room was treated my child was not going in there. I wanted to send my child to private school that year but could not afford to. The following Monday Kember was back in class. In October Kember missed three more days of school due to an ear infection. I had the medicine called in by her doctor because I had no automobile at the time to go see him. This was nine days missed now.

Early November Matt had had a seizure at 12am I had to call an ambulance to come get him and I had to meet them at the hospital in Cumming Georgia which meant waking the children up and taking them with me. We were there until 3am. We got home about 3:30am. I was not about to send my child to school on just a few hours of sleep.

About 10am I hear a knock on my door. It was Ms. Bond and another lady from the school. They were asking a lot of questions like why is Kember not at school, do we have power, food, so on and so forth. I was a little upset with her. Then she threatened me if I didn't have my child at school in 30 minutes she was going to call the authorities on me.

So I got everyone up in the house and we went up to the school. We were ushered into a conference room and told that we were bad parents and that we should not be allowed to have our children if we couldn't get them to school. This in itself upset my husband so he told Ms. Bond that she needed to stay off his back and he left the conference. I sent my child to class and went home.

Here's were things get tricky my father co-signed on our home. We got to the point we were tired of being told what to do in our own house by my parents. So we wanted my dad to sell it. He would not. So what choice did that give us? We either stay and keep going the way we were going or just move. We chose the latter. Bad decision.

On November 28, 2000 my mother got a call from the finance company that they were about to foreclose on the house. So my mom and DOD come over but we were not home. The next day the same. So on the 30th she called my daughters school. Kember was there that day. My Mom proceeds to tell what is happening to the front office. Well, in Gwinnett if your child is in a Gwinnett County school and you need assistance, you can call the CARE program. They transferred my mother to who else- Ms. Kathy Bond. She tells Ms. Bond what she told the front office. Ms. Bond tells her that she will do what she can to help. They hang up and Ms. Bond calls my cousin at work. She asked Sheila if our home was being foreclosed on because she/the school's CARE program wanted to help.

Sheila confirmed what Ms. Bond wanted to hear. She hung up with my cousin then called DFACS and reported that two of my family members called HER and reported that our home was being foreclosed. And that under the circumstances they feared that the stress would cause Matt and me to fight and possibly harm our children.

DFACS picked my child up from school and was looking for the other one. At about 4:30pm (an hour after my child was supposed to get off the bus) I called the school to ask where my child was. She wasn't at the baby-sitter's like she was supposed to be. I had to go through four people before Ms. Bond got on the phone and told me that DFACS picked up my child. I was angry and very upset. This is my baby and they took her from me without an explanation. That was a Thursday. They placed Kember in foster care and the court date was going to be December 5, 2000.

I went to DFACS on Friday, December 1, 2000, to find out what they had. I saw the notes taken at the time of Ms. Bond's report. I/my husband was accused of abusing my child because she had a bruise on the (BACK SIDE) of her leg. I told my husband and he was upset. (He too suffers from bipolar disorder/manic depression). His mother and I made the decision of him going to Missouri and letting me deal with the courts. Little did I know I couldn't testify for him.

I was court ordered to move in with my parents, get a job, daycare, and get Matt to come to court. I did all except get Matt in court. Our so-called friends had him believing he was going to go to jail. That I was trying to get him locked up for something he didn't do. Their evidence was that I was living with my parents. Matt didn't know who to believe anymore.

You send your child to school for an education and they are supposed to provide protection for your child while they are there. But they turn around and report false accusations against you. Who do you trust? I went back to court and the juvenile judge said if you cannot get him into court then you have to divorce him if you want custody of your children. I tell him but put yourself in his shoes.

Does that even sound like what a judge can order? Isn't that like imprisoning a spouse from a spouse? (TORT Law) So he left me no choice but to have to do it. He signed the papers and went up north again. After seven months I called him and asked him if he wanted to straighten this out. Get the No Contact Bond lifted and see his children. He said yes. He was here two days later.

Now the next 2 1/2 years have been total you know what. All we ever wanted was our own place where we made our own decisions. They pulled our criminal backgrounds and I have nothing on mine but Matt had a rocky few years there (before our youngest was born). They used his background against him. They used his seizures against him, and that he used marijuana against him. He has been drug free for two years now and we're still fighting DFACS.

The last time we went to court all doctors, case workers, and so on were in agreement to send the children home. All the judge had to do was make a decision. Instead, he transferred the case to the county in which we moved to four months prior. We never heard anything from that county and now we are back in Gwinnett County and stuck. No one has permanent custody of my children. My parents have temporary custody but can't hand it over to us until the court decides. My children are lost in the system that claims they help children. My children want to come home.

Is there anyone I can call other than DFACS to help me?

Sincerely,
Parentsthatlove