MIELKE CAS AGREEMENT

Final Agreement with CAS

Hi:

We signed a settlement agreement with the CAS yesterday, which means that our children are now, really, officially all home. It's not as good as we were hoping for, but, then, when you have to bargain rather than seek justice, you don't always get what you want. It's not too bad, though, and we are able to live with it. The alternative, i.e. seek justice, would involve lots of money and a long and bitter battle. While the result, strictly from a justice perspective, would certainly be more accurate, it would probably incur more misery, and last much longer, than the supervision conditions we've agreed to.

It was essentially a lawyers only event. No CAS people, other than their lawyer, were there. The children's lawyer and ours were also there. So were my wife and I. The lawyers met privately to discuss some final details, and then our lawyer, knowing what we could live with, signed the agreement for us. He then came to tell us about the result. We all then went into the courtroom where the whole thing, in front of a clerk rather than a judge, was formalized.

The agreement begins with a few statements (I can remember four right now) which are probably a legal requirement in order for the CAS to retain the right to request a supervision order, which sure make the CAS look justified in what they did, which I'm sure they were pleased to agree to, but which we, having no choice but to sign, consider to be a set of lies.

First: The children are in need of protection. Surely "were", rather than "are", would be a more accurate statement. Even that, though, is debatable. Even if one were to take the position (as they do) that our children's health was potentially at risk, surely our history shows that they weren't in any immediate danger. The CAS could have left them at home, therefore, and "protected" them by helping us resolve the real problem. The problem here appears to be that the CAS only knows one way to "protect" children, i.e. to abduct them, and then to make it nearly impossible for them to be returned.

Second: There've been several past incidents of CAS involvement with our family, this being the first one requiring protection. From their perspective, this is true. From ours, however, this one didn't require protection, most of the past ones were false, and the rest were isolated and were resolved. The only one which they could legitimately point to as being worrisome was our then 10-year-old daughter's black eye a couple of years ago.

Third: Our house was unhygienic and unsafe, and this state of affairs was unexplained. We agree that it was unhygienic. We did give an explanation, however, which the CAS refuses to accept. It was not unsafe, as our history clearly verifies, although, in a society wherein people only look at external appearances and don't take the time to thoroughly understand an issue, it's easy to understand why the claim of unsafeness would be made by most. The fact is that many who live in cleaner houses than ours was tend to be sicker than our children were. The reason for this, which there's now some medical research to validate, appears to be that a person's immune system gets less exercise, and, therefore, is less developed, when there's less work for it to do.

Fourth: The least intrusive means to deal with our problem was the method which the CAS used, and includes the conditions which have now been agreed to. This is simply not true. Our problem could have easily been resolved without inflicting all of that emotional, and perhaps physical, abuse on nine of our children. Furthermore, how can they call this agreement the least intrusive method when it includes lots of conditions which have absolutely nothing to do with the problem which it purports to be solving?

The supervision order is for nine months. This is excessive, but our lawyer feels that it'd be too hard to argue the CAS down any more than he already has (they were asking for twelve months). A hearing has been scheduled for October 26 at 9:30am to review our compliance with the order. If the CAS has no further complaints at that time, this case will be closed on that date.

Our lawyer, in order to make a point to the CAS (too bad more of them weren't there), had some fun with the court clerk (too bad she wasn't a judge who was willing to deviate a bit from procedure). Nine months from yesterday would clearly be October 31, but he started by generalizing it to "some time in October". She, looking at the court schedule, suggested October 29. He said that earlier would be better. She said "really?". He said "really!". She suggested October 26. He said that October 1 would be better yet. She asked him if he was serious. He said that he was. She said she couldn't do that.

Although I did let our lawyer know our position on the use of physical discipline, I, not wanting to jeopardize the rest of the agreement, made a conscious decision, in compliance with our lawyer's advice, to not pursue the issue.  I didn't even pursue it with him, deciding, rather, to leave the matter with God. God honoured that approach. Our lawyer was able, at the last minute, to have the word "inappropriate" added to the condition.  We're now whole-heartedly able to agree with the condition, i.e. that we won't exercise inappropriate physical discipline.

A humourous note: The wording in the agreement, if taken verbatim, only applies the "no inappropriate physical discipline" condition to six of the nine children. It doesn't apply at all to the other three, including our 2-year-old son, since they've been treated as special cases. If this agreement sets a legal precedent, then I guess the CAS thinks it's okay to spank babies!

The one final point which the lawyers resolved just before the hearing was to remove all of the Children's Hospital's Child Protection Team's demands from the agreement. Our lawyer thinks we should pursue them separately (finances may not permit this) regarding their highly incriminating, false allegations, but they're not being permitted to use the CAS to force their hand. We're still agreeing to have the assessments done that they've asked for, but by the psychologist who did our assessment rather than by them.  Even though this means the spending of yet more money, I believe that it's wise to be open and to show good faith in matters of this nature.

My wife is to have a monthly psychological checkup, for the duration of the supervision order, to insure that she isn't slipping back into any form of depression. Our 10- and 4-year-old daughters are to have a psychological assessment to investigate the causes of the odd behaviours reported by their foster parents. Our 2-year-old son is to have a language development assessment for an as yet unknown reason (probably because he didn't talk while they had him). In addition, our 2-year-old son is to have a couple of monthly checkups by our family physician for an unstated reason (so that the CAS can be assured that he's adequately recovering from the abuse which they themselves inflicted on him).

I've agreed to not care for children 6 or under unless I'm in the company of an adult or a child 12 or over. The condition, in order to remove any doubt as to why it's there, specifically states that this is because of the limitations which my blindness imposes. While I disagree with the need for this condition, it's still probably better that they're targeting me, rather than my wife, with the only nasty requirement. If that's what it takes to keep her a little more distant from their impositional tendencies, then so be it.

The conditions regarding the proper care of our 6-year-old son are still in. While I don't like the implications they carry, our lawyer insists that no one would read those implications into them since it's consistent with the way the CAS routinely does business once they get their hooks into someone. I didn't ask, and he didn't say, but it might be that he agreed to leave them in in order to get the word "inappropriate" added to the physical discipline condition. Whatever the case, we'll certainly have no trouble meeting this obligation.

Finally ... the boring stuff. We agreed to continue with the biweekly parenting course (which includes an hour and a half weekly visit by the instructor) until it finishes in June, that my wife will continue to take our younger children to a specific play group, to sign all sorts of consent forms so that the CAS can snoop into records and harass professionals, and to let the CAS privately harass our children.

Another humourous note: The agreement actually says that we'll continue to attend the "bimonthly" (not "biweekly") parenting course. I, wanting to sign a rigorously accurate document, pointed out this error to our lawyer. His answer was to leave it the way it is since there's nothing wrong with letting the CAS's incompetence be on full display in a legal document.

It's really easy for the likes of me, i.e. the legally naive, to get the wrong impression when listening to courtroom discussions. I heard the phrase "no access", and immediately began to wonder if they were discussing some sort of restriction regarding contact between us and our children. Our lawyer, after the hearing, explained to me that they were simply filling out fields on a form, and that that phrase meant that there was no need to arrange for access since our children were at home. I joked with him that that was about as confusing as when a doctor tells you that you're healthy by announcing that your diagnosis is negative.

When we got back home, we found out just how easy it is to violate a condition. My wife asked me if she could go get something or other from the store before our 5-year-old daughter came home at lunch. I, thoughtless person that I am, said "sure". After she left, I suddenly realized that I was now caring alone for our 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son. Although I wasn't expecting the CAS to drop by (since our social worker had already scheduled a 3:30pm visit), I still felt rather uneasy since I don't like to be dishonest.

Our lawyer will be coming by on Friday evening to discuss the agreement at greater length, and to discuss what we want to do regarding the Children's Hospital's Child Protection Team, and our presence on the Alert List and the Abuse Registry.