In late August of 2007 my attorney along with the assistant attorney managed to get DSS to agree to a face to face meeting between all of us. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the case, our situation, and to determine now to proceed foward. We were very surprised that DSS agreed.
The Meeting
We meet at the DSS offices on a weekday afternoon in August. My wife and I met our attorney’s out front first and then went into the DSS offices. We were taken to a small conference room and waiting for others to arrive. Our DSS case worker showed up, along with her supervisor, a few other DSS supervisors and the DSS attorney. The DSS director did not attend nor any of the other senior DSS management that had been involved in my case. I thought this was very odd, as we had specifically requested that either the director of the CPS (Child Protective Services) director attend. They had both declined.
My attornies started the meeting off by providing some history on the case to bring everyone up to the same level of knowledge. Everyone in the room was very relaxed and even friendly. Once the case history was discussed, my attornies basically stated that they wanted the case resolved in the interest of my wife and children. Resolution in their mind was either the case being dismissed or me being allowed to come home. DSS stated that the case would not be dismissed, but that they were willing to discuss options for allowing me home.
My attornies proposed an arrangement where a security device would be installed on our master bedroom door. If I were to try and leave the bedroom at night, the alarm would sound. My wife would be the only person with the combination to disable the device. I was more than open to this solution, as I didn’t have any plans to leave the bedroom at night anyway. I even agreed to pay for the device since DSS seemed hesitant about the cost.
DSS asks me to speak
DSS then did something that surprised me. One of the DSS managers asked me to talk about my situation. Specifically, she wanted to know why I wanted to come home. She also wanted me to discuss how I felt about the alarm system we had been discussing.
I talked for a good 10 minutes, providing them details about how difficult it was for me to watch my family going through this and how much it has negatively impacted our children and my wife. I truely spoke from the heart, and tried to forget that they were DSS employees. I talked to them like they were friends. In the end I told them I was 100% fine with the alarm device and that if they wanted to handcuff me to the bed at night, that in order to come home I would be perfectly fine with that as well.
They told us that they would discuss the case and situation that afternoon and follow-up with my attorney in a few days. I wasn’t sure if we had made any difference or not, but we did leave the DSS office knowing that the people who had been making decisions about our lives through paper and a social worker, now had met us and knew who we were. We were no longer a DSS case number, but real people. We hoped that would make a difference.
Needless to say we didn’t sleep well over the next couple of nights.
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I am tearful with each and every story I read pertaining to these false allegations. It ruins lives, it ruins families and it can destroy a life. Bless you and your family for this site and for continuing to help get the word out. I pray that someday we can all ban together to have our laws changed and have these false allegations changed in our system. We will never quit fighting and we pray you won’t either!
One more comment that crosses my mind. IF, you had a chance to do it all over and knowing that you can’t change what the child said, what would you do different that in your mind would have stopped this from getting to this point? Do you think if you would have had refused to talk with the detectives and insisted on an attorney from the very first inclination of a problem it might have prevented this situation? Or might it have still unfolded like it has? Because if you are sure it could have been prevented this is what the world needs to know.
Thanks
Uriah, excellent question. I wrote an article about this: http://www.falselyaccuseddad.com/falsely-accused-of-child-molestation/