We had sincerally hoped that this would be it. That this nightmare would finnaly end. We were very VERY wrong. Little did we know our nightmare was only going to get worse from this point on. Once I arrived to the court house, I quickly discovered that what my case worker had told me about “no surprises” was most assuredly UNTRUE. Within minutes of my arrival a court processor found her way to me and served me with paper work. Despite our progress, despite our hard work and despite all of our best efforts the DA is filing for a Termination of our Parental Rights! My case worker is either a liar or stupid, if that is her idea of NO SURPRISES!!!!!!!

The injustice of it all is what really gets to me. In court the DA stated that the goal of our case being REUNIFICATION was a mistake on the part of DCFS, that TERMINATION had been the goal from the beggining. THAT IS NOT AN OOPS!!!!!!!! I am fighting my heart out for my precious little girl how can they tell me “oops….we made a mistake….you dont have a chance” ?!?!?!?!? SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE!!!!!!!! We have FULLY cooperated, we’ve done everything they asked of us. Why is this not good enough for them????

A life was lost, and I understand more than most about the need to punnish someone. It was after all MY little girl who is no longer with us. I wish there was someone I could burn at the stake. I am angry. It isnt fair that my Abby is gone. I long for her every day and I know without a doubt that I alays will; but, after a year and some therapy, I understand now that sometimes terrible accidents happen and there is no one to blame. However the State of Nevada doesnt seem to agree. They couldn’t find anyone to hold accountable so they decided to punnish my husband and I. This is a terrible abuse of power and a travesty to American Families everywhere. What is the message we are sending??? “Dont report accidents or we will come after you!” THAT is the message DCFS is sending and no one is hearing it louder than my Jessy who has been ripped away from her loving parents for NO GOOD REASON!!!!!!!

As I said before, our daughter was only in foster care for 3 weeks. My mother-in-law got custody of her then and Jessy was allowed to go and live with her and has ever since. So when we decided Las Vegas was not going to give us the time of day we decided to move to Elko NV a nearyby town where my in-laws lived with our daughter. We got lucky. A couple of weeks in Elko and we both landed jobs.  We now work and live at a storage facility as the on-site managers. We are very blessed. Our apartment here is much nicer than anywhere else we have lived. One of the first things we did was prepare a room for Jessy to come home to. We painted the walls lavender and decorated it with Tinker Bell wall appliques.  It sits empty waiting on the slim chance that she will some day live in it.

At first we were allowed to visit with Jessy whenever my in-laws were willing to supervise and they would frequently invite us over for dinner. Then for no apparent reason our case worker decided that we should have “scheduled” visitation with Jessica and limited us to 1 1/2 hours on Friday and 1 1/2 hours on Sunday. No explanation was given nor was there any just cause that I can see for this decree except to wieled their ultimate power over us to ake sure we knew who was in control. We resisted at first and saw that it was getting us no where so we resigned ourselves to the new arrangement.

We then attacked our case plan with wild abandon. We did everything asked of us and even more. While we remain adamant that we never neglected our children and most CERTAINLY never abused them we do understand that we have our issues that we need to work on. Nothing on our case plan really could HURT us. I mean who in this world today CAN’T use some counseling? And since there has never been a perfect parent on this earth we figured that the parenting classes wouldn’t be a waste of time. We are always looking to improve ourselves.

We were facing insurmountable odds, but my husband and I had each other and our love for our daughter and that was enough to keep fighting. And fight we have done. Our case worker has praised us on multiple occasions for our “amazing progress” as she calls it. We, in the 5 months we’ve been outof jail, have almost completedour 4 page case plan.  Which, trust me, has been no small feat. It has taken a near obsession-like commitment. But it is a challange we readilly accept beacuse, to us, there is nothing in this world more important than or daughter.

Never the less, at our one year case review do you think we got any credit at all for the “amazing progress” we’ve made? NOPE! In regards to our progress our case worker simply said “Dustin and Jill are case plan compliant” . That’s it! In regards to our supervised visits with Jessica our worker stated ” The visits are appropriate.” I would have thought that our case worker simply does not have a way with words except for that when remarking on her visits to our in-laws home with Jessy she went into great detail about what Jessica said and did and what was going on. Talk about bias. And then, to make matters worse, it was as if she could not be satisfied with having NOTHING bad to sayso she added ” on an unscheduled visit this worker stopped by the home of Dustin and Jill at 10 AM on Thursday as it was their day off. Jill was in her pajamas and looked unkempt and like she had not showered very recently.This case worker feels this may be a symptom of depression. ”  WOW, ok, first of all IT WAS MY DAY OFF! It was 10 AM on my day off and the door bell woke me up. I got out of bed and answered my door. I did not know that I was expected to wear a dress and my pearls at all times in case she was to stop by. If I had of delayed answering the door to get dressed she would have assumed that I was trying to quickly clean up a mess.  Second of all, being in my pjs at 10 am is not a symptom of depression it is a symptom of JUST WAKING UP!!! And no. I hadn’t showered in 24 hours because as I have previously stated , I HAD JUST WOKEN UP! Leave it to these people to paint the worst possible picture of a very innocent situation. They are trying to fit me into a mold of what they want me to be rather than presenting the facts. They minimized the good things and over emphasized the not-so-bad to make them seem like very bad things. Talk about an uphill battle!

We were making some real progress, and things were finally starting to look up. We started to get our hope back  and mayb e even a little happiness. Until July 1 2008. The SECOND worst day of my life. I had returned home after running a few errands and lo and behold who should appear but the detectives that had questioned me the night of my daughters death. I rolled my eyes inwardly and thought ” WHAT do they want to know NOW!?!? I have already told them EVERYTHING!” Little did I know they hadn’t come to question me. They had come to arrest me. No one knows the fear and panic that goes through your mind and such a time unless you have been falsely arrested too.

I was taken to jail and charged with Child Abuse with Substantial Bodily Harm Resulting in death and 1 count of neglect : A 20 YEAR PRISON SENTENCE! I was charged with this DESPITE the fact that a coroner examined Abby and a county sponsored Dr examined Jessy and both concluded that neither had any sign of abuse, both were a healthy weight and size and both very well nourished. STILL I get charged with Abuse and Neglect. What a system we live in! So again I complied, hoping that the truth would be known. It wasn’t. I spent 5 long months in Clark County Detention Center on a 23 lock-down. For those of you not familiar with the jail systems let me explain what that means. I was in a 5×10 cell ALONE for 23 hours a day. I got ONE hour out of my day to be with other humans. During that hour, I had to shower, call home, try to get some exercise and try to socialize with others to keep from going completely crazy. The guards would call us “baby killers” or other such horrible names and sometimes “forgot” to let us out for our hour out of our cell. Prisoners in DEATH ROW get more humane treatment than I did during those 5 months.

I tried to have faith that the truth would prevail. In keeping with the theme of our situation, the truth did NOT prevail. We never saw a jury. Fortunately the over-zealous DA prosecuting us couldn’t get a murder charge to stick, but that didn’t stop her from trying. No grand jury would indict us. Obviously, because no such thing occurred. However one day I received a visit from my lawyer, he came with news that the DA had offered a plea bargain and my lawyer recommended I take it. Not because he thought I was guilty. He knew the truth, but he also knew my DA. She played dirty. Tugged at heart strings, spun the worst possible case stories and sensationalized everything.  He told me that she would show the jury photos of my daughter at autopsy. After a jury saw that, they would be so disturbed and upset by the images that they wouldn’t care if I was innocent or not. They would convict. So I took the deal. I hated doing it. This is our criminal justice system at work. No one cares if you really did it or not, as long as they get their conviction. That ladies and gentleman is NOT justice.

Some might criticize me for taking a deal when I knew that I was innocent. Some have said it proves my guilt. These critics say that a truly innocent person would keep fighting no matter what. To these critics I say “You obviously do not have children”. I took the deal because I needed to be out of jail to fight for Jessica. I was playing Russian Roulette. Do I spin the barrel and hope there is no bullet or do I refuse to pick up the gun? I was going to put my life in the hands of 12 strangers that did not know me and did not care to know me. I made the most logical decision and refused to play. Cooperation hadn’t done justice by me thus far and I had little hope that it would in this instance. Also I took the deal for Abby. For her dignity. I could not bear the thought of 12 strangers looking at her little body on an autopsy table. That is something no one should see. She deserved better. So I took the deal. 2 months later I was released on a 5 year term of probation.

Now the REAL fight was beginning.

We were a military family. My husband served proudly in the Air Force and we lived in base housing and as such basically lived in whichever house they told us too. I had been arguing with the housing office for some time because AF regulations say that they are to provide one bedroom per child and the home we lived in had only 2 bedrooms so my  girls had to share.  They put us on a 6  month long waiting list for a three bedroom house and we impatiently for our name to come up. It never did. We never got our three bedroom house because on April 10th 2008 when I put my girls down for their naps one of them never woke up. 

After I put the girls down to sleep ( each in their own bed, NOT together) I left to run some errands, leaving my husband to watch the girls. When I returned, an hour or so later  I got a funny feeling in my stomache. One of those “mommy things”, so I went to check on the girls and wake them up from their nap. I found my oldest Jessy playing on the floor and as I walked over to the crib to get my youngest, Abby , up my heart stopped. There was a mountain of stuffed animals in the crib with Abby.  Jessy had tried to share her toys with Abby by throwing them into her crib. I ran to Abby and frantically threw the off of her only to find I was too late. My sweet precious little Abby was gone from us forever.

I picked her up and tried CPR and called 911 for help. Little did I know that I would not get help but harassment. I held Abby in my arms until a fire truck pulled up at our house and I ran her out to them hoping they could save her. A neighbor saw the commotion and took Jessy to her house to play with her children so that My husband and I could go to the hospital to be with Abby. Once we got to the hospital the Dr confirmed our worst fears. Nothing could be done. Our little Abby was gone.

There is no pain in this world than the pain of losing a child. We went in to see Abby and hold her one last time. I remember I was kissing her goodbye on the forehead when I was informed the police were there to speak to us. Naturally I spoke to them. I had done nothing wrong and in my mind by speaking to them and telling the the truth, they would understand this and we could go back to our grieving. We were interrogated for 3 hours  each. It was gruelling. The kind of thing you see on tv but dont really think anyone actually has to go through.

Then the other shoe dropped. A woman came in and introduced herself as a CPS case worker and told me she would be removing Jessica from our custody. I tried to reason with her, tried explaining the situation to her but she was resolute in her decision and I was powerless to stop it. She took my 2 year old from the neighbors home and wouldnt even let me say goodbye. I asked the case worker to give Jessy a hug from her mommy and daddy and she said that she would but I’m sure she didn’t. That night my daughter spent the first night of what would be 3 weeks in foster care.

My husband and I were in shock. We didnt know what to do or who to talk to or not talk to, so we answered any questions anyone had for us. We even signed away our right to a search warrant and refused to ask for a lawyer because we were told if we did, it would look like we were guilty of something. We spent that night in a hotel on the Air Force base because we were denied access to our home while they were “collecting evidence”.  Evidence of WHAT I still do not know.

We were honest, forthright and upfront about everything. We had nothing to hide. However that did not stop CPS and the police from launching an investigation against us. CPS turned the greatest tragedy of my life into the TWO greatest tragedies of my life, all in one day. God took one of my babies, but CPS stole the other.