Wednesday, August 10, 2011

My CPS and WilCo story part 2

So.  Austin and I left the police station and got the travel permit for our Monday trip to Wisconsin from his probation officer.  Then returned home for a relaxing weekend in the pool.

Fast forward to Monday, June 17th.  Our trip to Wisconsin was put on hold while things unrelated to any of this got worked out.  So while Craig was at work the kids and I just hung out.  At 1pm there was a knock on the door.  It was that same "I'm hercules" knock I had heard Friday morning so I was not surprised to again see Detective "good ole boy" Pascoe and Vasquez standing on my porch.  They asked if Austin was there and as Austin stepped out onto the porch they handcuffed him and Vasquez led him to the police car.  Pascoe told me he was being charged with failure to register as an S.O.  His bond was $25,000 (which I later learned was  lie).  And said "Are your kids safe?"  "I replied to him that they were very much safe with a quizzical look on my face.  "Come down to the PD at 3:30, we'd like to talk to you".

In this interview were a few of the mistakes I made in my case.  Mistakes I learned from and know now not to ever make again.  I'm not perfect.

So I show up at 2:45.  If there's anything I like more than being prompt it's being just early enough so that people haven't fully prepared for my arrival.

Detective Vasquez greeted me and took me back to an interview room and shut the door.  Detective Vasquez asked me if my children had ever been harmed by my son.  "Absolutely not" I told him.  "We have talked with all of them about good touch, bad touch a few times, they have all denied anything".   Detective Vasquez asks me about Austin's contact with a girl he had met in school and asks that I show him the cell phone Austin had been using to communicate with her.  I hand him the cell phone and he reads the text messages.

"Well, given their age difference this wouldn't be a crime in Texas even if they had a sexual relationship so there's nothing there that pertains to me, however I would like to look at the photos on the phone since usually if they are texting they are sending pictures".  I inform him that mms messaging and data is blocked on that phone so there would have been no way for that to happen but he was welcome to look.  He looked through the pictures and said that our cat must be very popular, as there are about 80 pictures of the cat on the phone and that's about it.  He handed the phone back to me and I put it in my purse.

Then detective Vasquez asks me for the names and birthdates of everyone in the home.  This is where I probably should have shut up.  I gave the information to him and he told me that since Austin was living in the home and "as careful as we try to be things happen" he wanted to arrange forensic interviews of all of the children.  Just to be sure.  I informed him that my 8 year old is Autistic, and this may prove to be very stressfull for him and he told me he would gladly arrange a tour beforehand to acclimate our son to the environment.

As we were finishing up he asked me if any of the children had any "odd" behaviors.  "Define, odd" I said.  "Like bedwetting...." he said.  "I told him that my autistic son has occasional bedwetting accidents as most autistic kids do".  He informed me that "this is a very big red flag for us".

Then he said.  "Now I'm going to tell you something, and I don't want you to get upset because well, some people hear certain words and they freak out.  I'm going to have to make a report to CPS about this."

I asked him if we were finished and he said we were.  I got in my car, burst into tears and drove home.  Upon returning home I noticed that detective Vasquez had deleted all the text messages off the phone.

So the waiting began, and the cringing everytime the doorbell rang, and the not sleeping at night.  And the waiting, waiting, waiting.

I decided to take the children to their pediatrician to have them examined.  She did not notice any signs of abuse and I asked her to refer us to a therapist to speak with the kids.  I figured (wrongly) that if I could present this information to CPS this would all just be overwith.

15 days after speaking with detective V, with multiple calls and emails to him from my husband and I, I finally emailed him informing him that since there was no allegation we would be declining the forensic interviews and if he would like the children's pediatrician's report as to their physical state I would gladly provide that to him.  2 hours later Mandy Shaw from DFHS called me to set up to come talk with us.

She comes to the house on Thursday and of course we video tape the entire meeting.  The meeting took place on my front porch with the kids having a pizza picnic in the front yard.  She asks why we are refusing to have the kids interviewed and we tell her that we are not entirely, however putting our children, especially our autistic son through that was a big concern for us and that we had taken measures to secure an appointment with a therapist they could follow up with longterm and we would be happy to allow her to speak with that therapist.  She had us sign a release  (and tried a bunch of crap, see ideo below).  which we made a photocopy of and she went on her merry way.

Continued in next post....






No comments: