Blogs by Deborah K. Frontiera
Fighting CPS
9/5/2016 4:39:26 AM
Sep. 5, 2016
The purpose of this blog has been to provide updates on some of the cases I reported in my book (Fighting CPS: Guilty Until Proven Innocent of Child Protective Services Charges ISBN 9-780-9800061-6-2) that had not been resolved when the book went to press, and to report other cases where CPS is not working up to par. I’d also like to hear about cases in which Child Protective Services did the right thing so those cases can serve as examples of what should be done. Occasionally, I will report helpful tips and web sites with advice on fighting CPS. To comment on this blog, or to tell your story, email Deborah Frontiera at frontiera.fightingcps.deborah.gmail.com
Eddie Eskew, of Ravenswood, West Virginia, found me on Face Book, thanking me for writing Fighting CPS and said he and his family were in the middle of their own Child Protective Services nightmare. Around the middle of August, 2016, he sent me his story by email, with permission to use his name and their location. “I have nothing to hide,” he said. Now, I share his story with you, my blog readers. It’s a bit long, but I don’t want to cut it back, so I’m going to divide this into two posts. The second half will be posted later in Sep. 2016. This story serves as a reminder NOT to talk to police or CPS without a lawyer, even, and maybe especially, when you know you are innocent.
Hi Mrs. Frontiera:
I'll start off with a little bit of background information on my wife (Amber) and I.
We were married on November 1, 1998 after dating for 6 months. We had many things in common, one of which was that we wanted enough kids to have a "football team." Our first child, Caleb, was born on November 27, 2000. After that we had 2 miscarriages before our second child, Becca, came along on December 10, 2002. At that point we were both trying to work our way through college and couldn't afford to have any more and we were afraid of having another miscarriage and going through more counseling. Amber was extremely upset after the first two [miscarriages] and we couldn't stomach going through that again so Amber got her tubes tied in 2003.
Fast forward to February, 2007. Amber called me from work and said she thought she was pregnant. I told her she was crazy. Then later that day she called again and said she took a home pregnancy test and it said she was pregnant. Once again I told her she was crazy and that those tests weren't very accurate. Over the next week and a half her doctor sent her for labs to check her HCG levels. Shockingly enough, the labs indicated that she was in fact pregnant but as the HCG levels declined they told us that she was going to have another miscarriage. The doctor said that this had not happened to him for the 12 years that he had been practicing and sincerely apologized to us. He said she would have to go back into surgery to fix whatever had failed, which he didn't charge us for. However, we did have to pay hospital fees of around $4,000. He also convinced the anesthesiologist to waive his fee. We managed to avoid counseling after this by talking each other through our low points. Then in 2008 we decided I should get a vasectomy so this would never happen to us again.
After that, we talked about different ways we could build our family and we decided that fostering would be the most affordable for us. Amber finished college around the middle of 2010 and we were also certified as foster parents shortly after that. Our first placement was a sibling group of three, Nicholas (8), Trinity (6) and Aleigha (3) on my birthday, May 4 of 2011. I'll never forget that day because Amber and I were so happy to meet them. We officially adopted them on December 23, 2011.
Over the next couple of years we had five more placements. The last of which was a little six month old girl, Allison. Our next placement was another little girl, Eden, Allison's biological sister, whom we got straight out of the hospital on August 15, 2014. Our official adoption of Allison then happened on November 3, 2014. In early 2015, we were honored by our foster organization, KVC, as Foster Parents of Year for 2014, and soon after that in July 2015 their [Allison and Eden’s] older sister, Jessica, started coming to stay with us every other weekend until she was permanently placed with us in December of that same year. This put us up to eight children. We couldn't have been any happier at this point. I had finished my college degree a few years earlier and had started a career with a local accounting firm while Amber's RN career had led her to a management position in a local Home Health Organization. Our lives were near perfect. We were doing very well financially and were set to adopt Eden on July 15, 2016, until tragedy struck on May 24.
I arrived home from work that evening at 6:30pm. I had bought some chicken wire to put along the bottom of the fence because our dogs had been getting out and the kids had been getting pretty upset about it. Caleb and Nick helped me and we finished at about 8:30. We then went inside and watched an episode of the television show “Lost” on Netflix. After the 42 minute episode was over, Caleb went downstairs to play xBox while Nick and I went into the kitchen to get something to eat before bed. I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and started making some noodles and peas while Nick foraged around in the freezer for something to eat himself. Nick said he couldn't find anything, so I told him that I had bought the Salisbury steak TV dinners that he likes and they were in the freezer in the pool house. He said he looked and couldn't find any, so I took him out there and we searched until we found one and he was very happy. So we went back inside where Nick started microwaving his meal and I finished my noodles, peas and beer. I was thinking how Nick hated vegetables so I picked one pea out of the pot and told him to eat it. He said no, so I started chasing him with it. He didn't make it far as I caught him in the dining room. We wrestled to the ground as I pretended to make him eat it. After a minute of wrestling around on the floor I got up and ate the pea myself. Then Nick stood up and said, "Is that all you got?" So I chased him back into the kitchen where I grabbed him in a headlock from behind. Now this is considered a legal headlock in amateur wrestling which Nick is very good at. He was the number one seed in the state wrestling tournament in 2016 and I, currently the president of the youth wrestling club, coached young wrestlers and taught them moves like this that were designed to control your opponent and not actually hurt them. As I applied the headlock, Nick began to "tap" my arm, signaling that he gave up because this is how we often played around the house. I let go of him and he fell to the ground in a way that I could tell was fake but I bent down anyway to help him up and asked if he was ok. When he finally stood up he swatted my hand away, and told me to leave him alone, and ran out of the room through the other dining room into the foyer at the entrance to our house.
When I turned around, I saw Becca, her friend Brandilyn, and Jessica. They asked me why Nick was so mad and I told them he was mad because I had overpowered him. They asked me if I hurt him and I told them no, and then I demonstrated on Becca and Jessica what I had done to him. They said things like, "What a wimp," and, "He's a crybaby." At the same time I was talking to the girls we heard a commotion in the foyer. They asked me what was going on and I said I had no idea but it sounded like Nick was in trouble. The next think I knew, Amber was running into the kitchen and said Nick had tried to attack her. I asked her where he was and she said she pushed him out the front door and locked it. I immediately ran to the door, unlocked it and ran outside looking for him. I screamed his name and ran all around the house but to no avail. He wasn't responding. So I ran inside and grabbed my keys. I told everyone that I was going to go look for him and at the same time I was going to go pick Trinity up from softball practice.
WATCH IN TWO WEEKS FOR THE CONCLUSION OF THIS HORRIFIC TALE.
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