MADD CHILD TAKEN

MADD child taken

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Date: 2001-08-08 05:21:15 PST

I've only read this far in this thread but I feel I have to comment. My son is now 22 but when he was six I had an incident that nearly took my sanity.

I was a single mom raising my son here in Canada. My son was having problems because he was still undiagnosed severe ADD (just having started school he had already been kicked out). I must stress that this is a "real" case of ADD not overly energetic or misdiagnosed. I had sought out the help of social services in trying to manage my son. He was taking dressers apart at 4 years of age. I knew there was a problem, but not what it could possibly be. He was verrry hard to manage.

One day my son told my mom to f--- off and I smacked him on the bottom. He couldn't have felt it much, more hurt his feelings than anything. This was more a spank and then I only smacked him once. Social services showed up a couple of hours later for an appointment I had made to help in learning to discipline this seemingly uncontrollable child. My son told them I had smacked him. The cops showed up a few minutes later (about 15) and took me to the cop station... social services insisted on taking my son to the doctor... their doctor. I refused saying that my doctor is perfectly fine. I'd had him for 10 years.

My doctor examined my son in the presence of the worker and said there wasn't a mark to be found and because of the many hospital stays my son went through (severe asthma required hospitalization at least once a week back then) that if there was any abuse on my part the hospital staff and himself would know.

They took my son anyways. Treated me like a criminal at the station and the cops (two of them) told me if they found any incident involving spanking or anything else that they would personally make sure I would never do it again. I definitely knew it was a threat.

I spent the next 6 months fighting for my son. Even my lawyer told me that it was a fight we couldn't win because CAS (children's aid services) was god in this country and you cannot fight them. Meanwhile (no this isn't all) my son goes to a foster home where the parents were alcoholics (I found that out later) and didn't know how to handle severe asthma. So he was sick all the time because of being given food he was allergic to even though I made lists and provided the foster parents with them. My son comes home for a weekend (about a month later) and informs me that the foster parents' son (21) lit his farts on fire and showed my son how to do it. A 21 year old? I had visions of my son getting molested of course.

Frantic at the time I even phoned a judge and asked him if he doesn't believe me to just please put my son somewhere else. And by the way... my son at 6 couldn't have possibly made that up. He was a problem but he didn't lie about such things. Sooooo.... it still took me a whole six months to get him back and yes, he stayed at that home. If I'd had any weapons at the time I hate to think what I might have done. This was with written affidavits from my doctor of 10 years... my parents' view of what had happened in writing... even a nurse from the hospital felt so bad that she wrote an affidavit on my behalf.... all for nothing.

CAS is god here and I would unfortunately never, Never, NEVER ask for their help again. If I hadn't gone to them for help none of that would have happened. Now at 22 my son is of the same opinion he said he went through hell at the home and nobody would believe him when he said he meant mommy only spanked him. When he didn't feel like eating apparently (my son says) that the foster parents made him eat until he threw up and then threatened to make him eat that. Can you imagine the poor kid's guilt cause he spoke up. He went through 10 years of therapy after that.

Acting on the side of caution??? No... we have to be careful that this kind of thing doesn't happen. An obvious case of abuse should be better investigated. If need be someone should stay at the scene as protection for the kid until a proper determination is made and taking the kid should be a last resort. Obviously in my extreme case (I'm sure there's more extreme) decisions and judgments were made without care, noone listened to my son, my doctor, the hospital and I. They decided what had happened.... not the truth. This is very much a sore subject so I'm sorry if I vented and ranted but acting on the side of caution (meaning find them guilty before proven) is and should NOT be an option.