My Sob Story
Mother and son victims of Pennsylvania GPV laws
My own ugly sob story...
UPDATE: December 2004. I am currently trying to relocate back to Ohio. Probably the best way to get back into media. I am in real danger of becoming homeless in PA and just cannot survive on the minimum wage jobs that seem to be my only employment options here. I would like to thank everyone who emailed their sentiments and advice over the past two years. I am trying to get my van back from the shop--that's $325 and will take my whole paycheck when I also make my van payment and my insurance but we'll be mobile again. Christmas will come in January but at least it will come. Again, any help anyone can offer through this website will be greatly appreciated. The visitation order is done and not even phone calls exist anymore but the whole process has laid waste to my finances and I just cannot recover in PA. Please check back here often to see information on GPVs as they exist in PA and other states, and new info as I find it on the web and other sources. Read on if you're a victim of these laws or if you may be able to offer assistance. Thank you.
Everybody has a sob story. Reduced to cyber-begging as it were. America, like other countries, is wall-to-wall with hard luck stories and people who just aren't making it. You will see Paypal "donate" buttons throughout this site. If you prefer not to use paypal, I can also accept donations by mail and my address appears on the page "Donate." This site has to do with Parents' Rights and governments trying to regulate families. In my case, the state government endangered my child. Fit parents MUST be afforded the right to protect their children against dangerous and corruptive people, especially when those people are other family members.
A lot of these cyberbegging sites sprang up, almost overnight, as a result of a website called savekaryn.com. That was a site started by a woman who had gotten herself into $20,000 worth of credit card debt. I have no credit cards and my current debt does not result from vice. It results from a GPV lawsuit filed against me by an unfit, disturbed mother who tried to take my son away from me. I was never accused of being unfit or incompetent. I do not drink or use drugs. Fighting this GPV has decimated my resources and now we are struggling bad.
If you are philanthropic by nature, I am hoping you will consider this a worthy cause. If you belong to a church that encourages members to tithe and allows you to fulfill that tithing requirement by giving to outside causes, I am hoping you will consider donating here.
Desperation rears its ugly head here. It's amazing how, in the blink of an eye, one unforeseen event can take one's life and metaphorically toss it straight up into a ceiling fan. My sob story began January 8th, 2002 in the form of a "conciliatory hearing," also known as a forced reconciliation hearing.
You will find a lot of information about GPVs, why I believe they're wrong, and a lot of details about the conflict in the case that threw my world into a frenzy at the link "About GPVs." There is a lot of information on that page and you can skim it or skip if you'd like.
GPV. This acronym stands for "Grandparent Visitation Law." They have been struck down or greatly revamped as a result of constitutional challenges in at least 5 states. The problem with a great many of these laws is that the way they are written, they have served to expose children to extremely dangerous or abusive people simply because those people were grandparents. Other states didn't wait for a constitutional challenge to crop up in their courts. After Troxel vs. Granville in Washington state, many other states rewrote their own statutes to comply with new standards laid out in this landmark Federal Supreme Court ruling. Pennsylvania is not one of those states.
That's what it sounds like, doesn't it? It's not. GPV petitions are filed only when either the parent or the grandparent is unfit or controlling (which I would also call unfit.) Where there exists a strong, loving, healthy relationship within families, no government intrusion is needed and grandchildren see their grandparents unabated. The problem is that GPV laws in most states do not require the parent be any kind of unfit--this empowers unfit and often dangerous grandparents.
Government intrusion when a parent is not unfit can only try to enforce what the fit parent considers a very dangerous association for their child. You do not knowingly allow your child contact with dangerous, abusive, or corruptive people. What do people think? That all pedophiles and murderers are orphans?? It's is extremely dangerous to not allow fit parents to protect their children from dangerous and unbalanced family members!
Fit parents do not take chances with their children's lives in order to maintain a relationship simply because that person is family. Every murderer, pedophile, and rapist in the world is somebody's mother, father, sister, brother, or yes, grandparent. As we see in the news nearly everyday, yes these people can and will prey on their own.
When you are considering severing familial contact with your child, where do you draw the line? Right in front of your child. I told lawyers and the court these people were dangerous and then my sister tried to run him over with her car. Was I correct in believing these people dangerous? I think I was. The state of Pennsylvania directly endangered my son's life. See why the anger and rage linger? This is not a case of grandma just wants to take your kid to the zoo.
Fit parents supposedly have constitutionally guaranteed rights to make certain decisions for their minor children. After six months of alarming stories coming to me slowly from my son about his grandmother, aunt, and uncle, I made the decision to terminate all contact between my son and three violent schizophrenics. The nightmare began....
Well as long as you ask, this is exactly what I think...
Except in cases where neither parent poses a threat or harm to a child, and where both parties in a custody conflict stand on EQUAL constitutional footing with regards to a child:
Administering people's families and regulating 3rd party associations is not now, nor has ever been, a legitimate function of a democratic government.
Legally enforcing and maintaining unwanted, damaging, abusive, or destructive familial relationships is not now, nor has ever been, a legitimate function of a democratic government.
So there's some law somewhere that says I cannot break ties with any member of my own family? Where is it? My own sister tried to kill my kid. Where's this law at anyway? What is the state's interest in this?
Loving, healthy relationships between family members maintain themselves. Damaging, destructive, abusive relationships between family members sever themselves and the government attempting to legally enforce those contacts causes additional and irrepairable damage to all parties involved, endangers the child, and is NEVER in the child's best interests.
As long as I'm giving my opinions here, here's one borne of the general pattern of things: The victim in every abusive relationship will generally be the party attempting to limit or sever the contact. The abusive or controlling person in every abusive relationship will generally be the party attempting to enforce the contact by whatever means are at their disposal. Ask any battered woman.
Why would anyone not let their kids see Grandma?!
You have to throw aside every stereotype you hold of grandmas and realize that no FIT, loving, safe grandmother since the dawn of time, property shares, or yogurt in a tube has EVER EVER EVER had to sue a FIT child to see their grandchildren. That is a fallacy. When you see the word "grandma," you see a picture in your mind's eye of your own loving grandma. Your grandmother is not suing people like me for visitation. These are other grandmas....believe me. Not all violent or disturbed but the reasons are there for fit parents caught in these nightmares.
Jefferey Daumer, to read his biography, killed and ate his first victim in his grandmother's home. Sound like a positive environment? Mental illness does not just happen. Grandmas kill. Grandmas rob. Grandmas run porno sites. Grandmas cheat on their taxes. What do unfit mothers become? Unfit grandmothers! There is no demographic of human being anywhere wherein there exists an absolute such as "all grandmas are loving and baking cookies and spoiling the grandchildren."
With present statutes in most states, grandparents who have physically or sexually abused their child or grandchild may file these petitions and it falls on the parent the burden of proof--not on paper or in theory but in actuality. When the parents are incurring all or most of the financial responsibilities resulting from these petitions, the parent is bearing that burden of proof. When enforceable orders are issued BEFORE cases go to court, as "evidence" creeps slowly in to the parent's attorney, then the parent is bearing that burden of proof. When the parent has their finances and material resources absolutely laid waste to in fighting such a petition, then the parent is bearing upon their very back that burden of proof.
They are bearing all the evidential and financial burdens of proving every single reason for the decision(s) they made to a state government body who--lacking any real or reasonable suspicion of the parent's unfitness or incompetence--has NO legitimate reason to doubt or question that parent's judgement.
My son's grandmother is diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. This issue is not about Grandparents' rights here. It is about other, far more important rights that must exist and be protected in a country where grandmothers have been known to kidnap their grandchild and throw them off a bridge. Did you see the news story? I did. What became of 2-year old Acacia Patience Bishop at the hands of her own cookie-baking grandmother? Read for yourself...
If that May story is archived by the time you see this and click the link, just go to any news site and search under the keywords "Acacia Patience Bishop" and that news source will draw the article from their archives. This recent story is especially chilling for me because the mental illness diagnosed of the grandmother here is exactly the same as my mother's diagnosis. Do all paranoid schizophrenics pose such a threat to their family members? No. My mother does and so did Acacia's grandmother.
Special consideration is given to grandparents, and parents are laid open to vulnerabilities that do not require they be unfit or abusive or anything else that should cause them to suffer such a challenge. This means that fit parents can be sued. Fit parents can lose custodial rights. Fit parents can lose parental rights. In my case, the basis for this challenge by a schizophrenic grandmother was a Pennsylvania statute allowing such a challenge if the parent is single. Any manner of single. That includes divorced, widowed, separated. See copies of this section of Pennsylvania's domestic code Title 23 in the section "About GPVs." My great sin is being single.
If grandma is so bad, why did you let your kid visit to begin with?
Therein lies a great lapse in judgement, commonly made where family is concerned. Even when we know the facts, once we look into the faces of family members we are fitted with blinders. In a case where some may consider my decision harsh, would it not also have been harsh to make that same decision long ago?
The things my son was only beginning to tell me were happening at the grandmother's house amounted to new information for me. Police hadn't been showing up at the house. My sister was seeing a doctor and her "extended" stays at the hospital mental wards hadn't started yet--that was years down the road yet. My mother hadn't been hospitalized in many years and wasn't taking any medication that I was aware of. My brother's three children hadn't yet been seized by the state of New Jersey and adopted out to total strangers--that as well was years down the road.
My defense, whether justified or inadequate, is that I knew these people were disturbed but have seen them function normally, and hadn't seen dangerous or questionable behavior in a very long time. Since they are my family, I attempted to allow my son to have a relationship with them and I gave them every chance in the world to have a relationship with my son. When it no longer seemed safe, it was not the previous association that I was punished for--it was when I finally tried to terminate it for my son's safety that I was punished.
I was initially in the army, stationed at Fort Ord in California, and working long hours. After the army, I was working at a movie theater in Wayne New Jersey managing the concession stands...again, working long hours. What can I say. You are your child's sole support and you will work whatever hours you need to in order to insure that your child knows they aren't fed with food stamps. I came home to a smiling child and absolutely no indication that anything bizarre was going on.
Was grandma babysitting the child? Yes. Grandmas do this for their children. I will do this for my son's children when he needs this. You do not do this as one who punches in and out on a time clock. I was not out partying. I do not drink. I have never used a drug. My social life begins and ends with work relations and do not extend beyond that. I wasn't even dating. If grandma is babysitting for their own child so that that person can go to work to earn the money that pays that grandma's rent, utilities, and grocery bill, then who is benefitting here? If you want to turn it into contractual services, who owes who here? Just as this is not the stereotypical grandmother, I am not the stereotypical single mother. There is no trailer. There is no dirty barefoot child running amok. There are no food stamps lying on a counter next to a fridge full of beer. I have always worked and provided for my child.
So why was grandma ever allowed to see the child if she's so unbalanced and dangerous? You do not arrive at such a permanent, harsh decision lightly when it involves family. People have turned a blind eye to far graver transgressions where family was concerned. This was a lapse in judgement afforded a parent making decisions about other family members--this is NOT a lapse in judgement afforded states or courts. Maturity requires the realization that sometimes the harsh decision is the right decision. Ironically, once I screwed up the courage to make the right decision, I was punished for it.
Herein lies the basis for my request. The damage is measured...
I am educated. I was gainfully employed. I was never accused nor proven of being unfit, abusive, incompetent, impaired, corruptive, or anything else you might think would lay a parent vulnerable to any custody challenge. The original petition stated I was single and that I and the grandmother had once shared a residence. These two things in the state of Pennsylvania, known forever in my heart as the anti-family state, confer automatic standing to grandparents. Constitutional? Where is the misconduct here? My mother hasn't worked since the original Star Wars was a new movie--of course she lived with me. Geez, if I'm harsh for severing contact here, I would have really been harsh to let her live in the park, wouldn't you think?
The most damaging effects of this custody dispute were emotional. Knowing as I did the possibilities and what my family was capable of, I spent most of the required visits and forced time away from my son bawling uncontrollably. I experienced every emotional extreme through the course of a day, from anger to fear to hysteria to terror to depression.
My son was taken from me by this dangerous, deranged woman on Easter. She took him from me on Mother's day. That's unnatural. That's cruel.
The case was all but thrown out last April and the only remnants of any order remaining are one phone call I am required to permit the grandmother, and my son by this new order is permitted to refuse the call or hang up during the course of the phone call. Not one has lasted longer than five minutes. The anger remains. The rage remains. Mentally, I am trying day to day to survive the rape. If I would be so bold as to self-diagnose, I would call this post traumatic stress disorder, and if that's what it is then this whole act by the state was unconscionable. To inflict this on someone was vulgar and unscrupulous.
With regards to the court-ordered visitations, my son was most often returned to me sullen and despondent. Uneventful visits were rare. His mindset and demeanor had noticeably changed. Then that first horrible event. In March, he was returned to me absolutely hysterical. His eyes were bloodshot and his face stained with tears. He was screaming incoherently at my sister and grandmother as they drove off. Nearly an hour later when he had calmed down enough that I could understand him, he told me that they had verbally laid into him from the time I dropped him off until he had been returned to me. He told me he had been sworn at, screamed at, insulted, and had his character and loyalty questioned. Seeing my son this way scared the daylights out of me. Never had I been so full of terror and panic in my life. He looked like he had been beaten.
In September, my sister tried to run my son over with her car. Yes I called the police. My son told them they were having an argument and the police told him that he as well could be charged. What???? In a case of a verbal argument between a child and an adult, who is expected to be the adult? Where in this country is it legal to use or threaten to use your vehicle as a deadly weapon? See what I've been dealing with?
This is what happens when courts with no prior knowledge of parties involved attempt to make decisions for fit parents. If a parent is UNfit, then you question their judgement. Question a fit parent's decision and you end up with an incompetent decision that is more about the judge and lawyers egos than about the child's best interest. You can end up with a disturbed child, an injured child, a dead child. This is why responsible laws require "cause of action." Not marital status. Not prior living arrangements, particularly ones that benefitted the grandparent rather than the parent. You have three people: two not working at all, and one working one minimum wage job after another. I was feeding and housing these people and working my butt off to do it!
Financial damage? I had nearly six thousand dollars to come up with FAST. Six thousand dollars I did not have. That was only the initial amount I needed. On top of that, I still owe my attorny $2,800 and change. To pay for the court ordered psychological evaluations on me, my sister, my brother, and half of my son's evaluation, I "refinanced" my van. A local used car dealer agreed to enter into a quite unconventional arrangement with me wherein he "bought" my used vehicle for $2,000 with the promise that I immediately "buy" back the vehicle for $4,000. That's a material loss of another $2,000. I paid off the loan at $500 a month. Akin to refinancing a mortgage.
Why did I have to pay for everyone but my mother's evaluation? BECAUSE THE BURDEN OF PROOF LIES WITH THE PARENT. Not to yell at you but rather to drive a point home. Getting these evaluations constituted establishing the grandparent's home as a safe environment for my son to be in for any period of time. My brother and sister were merely supposed to get a "pass." On paper, the burden lies with the grandparent--the petitioning party. In theory, the burden lies with the grandparent. In practice, the burden lies with the parent. More punishment for making a reasonable decision or was it supposed to make the whole process impossible for me? Was it supposed to discourage a challenge to this petition and cause me to just fold? I paid for them all. The grandmother's evaluation came back as expected. The sister's evaluation came back as expected. The brother's (as well as police reports) came back as very bad. In other words, as expected. Mine came back clean. If you were looking for the negative in this little story, sorry to disappoint. Mine came back clean.
Ironically, my mother, sister, and brother opted, after all this, TO GET NEW EVALUATIONS FROM ANOTHER PSYCHOLOGIST WHO SUBMITTED HIS FINDINGS TO THE COURT HAND-WRITTEN ON NOTEBOOK PAPER. Oh my God. I stared at these papers in amazement, offering only the occasion vacant glance at my lawyer. She only smiled and nodded. I had to ask her: "This guy's really a psychologist?!" She said yes.
My son's evaluation took place at the same time mine did. Afterward, the psychologist, having evaluated my son, seen my mother, brother, and sister, and after hearing my side of events, looked at me and said, verbatim, "Yes, I know what you mean. I already see damage." I already see damage. Have someone like a psychologist look at you and tell you this about your own child and then feel all the blood just drain from your face. First it didn't sink in. Then I felt the impact. Then I looked up to see if I could make out the plate number of the bus that had just hit me.
More financial ruin. My employer loaned me $4,000. I paid it back. $2,100 of this amount I paid back at $700 a month for three months. Huge mistake. I was uncomfortable borrowing the money in the first place and rushed to pay it back--everything else went critical. That's when I started losing utilities like cable and phone and trash pickup. Paying back all these loans put every single utility in critical delinquency.
I had a part time job earning another $700 a month and was told by my attorney that this would look bad in court and to give the job up. It was cleaning after hours at the same place my desk job is and it was very convenient because I could bring my son with me. No. It had to go. The sad thing is that after the judge talked to my son for an hour, court didn't even happen--the judge called it a waste of time. I gave up the job for nothing and my income went down another $700 a month. The sewer bill is going on $400. The phone--which doesn't have long distance on it, it's basic service only--is over $200. The water bill is over $100. (I got the water bill paid off, but sewer now approaches $500) These are basic bills I am drowning in. I fight off one shut off and all the others go another month delinquent. I have another electric shutoff (the 6th one this year) for November 18th.
I fought to beat the deadline on 5 shutoff notices this past year and a half and the nightmare isn't over. I have another one August 12th. (update: I got that one paid...now there's another one for November 18th.) That's why I'm in here typing today. The final nail in my coffin was to go to one of those cash advance/payday loan places. That's where I sit today.
This company was a God-send when I needed it but you can't get off them until you can afford to go without your paycheck for one pay period. I cannot. You have to pay the loan back and then not need to reborrow. I haven't even succeeded in trying to "wean" myself off. The money is just too tight and every dollar spent on a non-critical item is a day without food or gas to get to work. (update: I finally got off cash advance! I got a loan through this site from a local woman for $1,800.)
We haven't had TV in all this time--it's a luxury and the first to go. I still can't afford to turn it back on yet and though it's luxury item, it merely reminds of how much I can no longer do for my son. We didn't have the phone back on until 3 months ago and had relied on a trac phone for over a year. I let everything go that I possibly could in order to keep the essentials: lights, roof over our heads, food. A neighbor lets me pay her a dollar per bag to put my trash with hers. A minor infraction so I even let garbage removal go. Expenses are trimmed to their limit and I still cannot get this one last rock off of my pile of troubles. This payday loan place costs $254 every single month just in the interest payment. If you've ever had to use these kinds of loans, you know the interest rates are loan shark league--110%. Short term and extremely expensive.
You pay it all back and then immediately have to reborrow to get your paycheck back. That small amount is the cable bill, the phone bill, the electric bill, and a week's worth of groceries for me and my son. I have to reclaim it in order to have any hope at all of finally surviving the financial hardship I am still trying to come out of. (see update above--I finally got off cash advance) This is my last recourse. I've run out of ideas and with my present income, comfortable before this nightmare began, I can't recover with absolutely every financial concern in my life right now at the critical, breaking point. My only income now is unemployment. I'm emailing five resumes a day and getting rejected by some pretty impressive places!
