Falsely Accused

I have never posted about this in detail before, but I thought today I might. The kids are napping and I was flipping through the channels while checking my email, and came across Dr. Phil. The topic is about being falsely accused of abusing a child. The first guest on was a woman that pulled up to a Walmart about 30 feet from a Salvation Army bucket, took her 3 daughters out and left her sleeping two year old as they went to put money in the bucket. She could see the car and when she returned an officer who had been in the parking lot approached her, screaming that she should not have done that and then arrested her, claiming child abuse! She was taken to jail and later the charges were dropped. She uses the examples that when she returns carts, runs into a friends home to drop something off, etc. -she has never been arrested for that! Dr. Phil had a woman call in that stated she has never left her child in the car alone and he asked her even if she is going to put a letter in a mailbox 6 feet away and she said yes! Even Dr. Phil saw that this logic was insane when he said "maybe we need to follow you around to prove that!"

Why am I bringing up this random show...well for those of you who know us, this very thing happened to us. We were given the blessing of a beautiful 5 month old African American girl from the state that we were told we were going to adopt. We named her Olivia. A few weeks after she came home, I made this same judgement call as the woman on Dr. Phil. On a beautiful 80 degree day in September, she had just fallen asleep and I ran into a Subway to put my order in while my mom stayed in the place to pay and get our sandwiches to go. I left the baby in the car with all windows cracked. I could see the car the entire time I was in the store which was about 15 seconds and I saw someone approach my car. SO I ran out and the woman walked away. The baby had woken and I took her in with me. I later called our agency to tell them about the incident because I did not want to be reported to the police and accused of neglect. Well, long story short- they ended up removing the baby suddenly three days later, because of my testimony, and we never saw her again. We were investigated for neglect, threatened that Isaac would be removed, and hired a lawyer. The longest month of my life ended with me being cleared of all charges of neglect by CPS. We were then given the clearance to adopt Isaac. Our agency never apologized for the role they played in this, and even went so far as to call a mandatory training for all foster parents to go over this policy, a policy that was not in existence on paper, previous to our incident. We chose to close our foster home two months later.

I was forever changed by this incident and still have moments of intense guilt and grief. The anniversary of the day she was taken two years ago was Sept. 12th, the day before Billy's birthday and it was not a good day for me. To this day I cannot look at pictures of her welcome home party or the announcement we sent out to all our friends and family. I think I have suffered post traumatic stress symptoms and still do. I hope no one has to go through what we went through. To be the kind of parents we are and to be put in the same category as an abuser had a deep long-lasting effect on me. I have even had mini panic attacks when I have been out with the kids, afraid something is going to happen to them and very aware that it seems people are watching my every move.

I chose to post this today because the show inspired me to. I also know that I have a lot of readers whom I have never met. I don't want you to think that from our children's beaming faces and our fun events that I post often about, that our journey has been a field of daisies. Far from it. I am thankful that the Lord brought me through this and cleared my name, so that I can go on to parent. But I will never forget that time in my life. And I hope that I can use my experience to have a greater compassion for people and the choices and regrets they have in their life. I also hold my kids a little tighter knowing that your life can change forever in an instant, no one is immune to tragedy.