Emily's story, how this pertains to YOU and my Euclid story.

Friends,
This is a long read but its vitally important you do read it in its entirety. This is from my friend Emily in California. You may ask yourself how does this pertain to me and how can this even remotely have anything to do with Euclid? Read it and I will tie up the loose ends.
CKM
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Dear Carey,
In September 2005 a cps worker came but found everything in order at my sister's house. But what was happening was my 8 year old neice at the time did not like using the bathrooms at school, so when she needed to go really bad, she would hold herself to keep from wetting herself. Now the teacher should have understood this, but instead she thought my neice was masturbating and assumed there was sexual abuse going on in the household. Without even trying to find out what was really going on, she submitted a report of child abuse to Riverside County Child Protective Services. As CPS was building their case, the school began allowing a worker named Pamela Acra (who wasn't even fully licensed yet) come to my neice's and nephew's school to interview all 3 of them. The kids finally told my sister that the principal was calling them out of class to talk to some lady that was asking them questions.

My sister was served a notice to appear in court (she lived in Perris, Ca and the courthouse was in Riverside, CA) about 30 miles away when she had no car. Personally, I think she should have bummed a ride from someone but anyways, someone at the CPS office told her on the phone that the hearing wasn't mandatory. Well she didn't go, and the judge decided to have the Adrian, Maya, and Brenna taken out of the home. The sheriff and a CPS worker came to their house, cuffed my mother and sister, and took the kids just as all of them were about to go trick-or-treating. My 3 year old neice was cry and screaming, and Maya and Adrian were crying too. My sister had prescription Vicodin from a doctor for an injury but when the worker saw the bottle on the counter she thought my sister was a druggie or something.

While the kids were gone from the house, CPS began trying to add bogus charges to the case to stack the deck against us. They started inventing interview dates with the kids that never took place because the kids had been gone from school that day sick. The judge Padilla, who could see all of this was crap but did nothing about it magically lost his job in the 2 months the kids were gone. In the mean time I was calling every state, county, and city authority I could think of but somehow they were all on vacation.

A supposed court reporter showed up at the house to interview my mom and sister about their side of the case, well because my mom and sister believed her, they also gave her all of the records they had been keeping to mount a case against CPS. The court recorder turned out to be a CPS employee and so the documents and their side of the story magically disappeared. Eventually the attorney that had been representing the kids began representing my sister when he started to realize just how brutally wrong everything was that was going on. All I have to say is THANK GOD FOR FREE JEWISH LAWYERS.

The kids were placed into "temporary custody" with my sister and mom on December 23, 2005. We were fortunate because we saw a lot of other parents coming out of court from their cases crying because for the first time in their lives, their children wouldn't be with them for Christmas. In March of 2006, the case was closed and the CPS file "deleted." What angered us was that when the judge did this, he included a statement that said: "The conditions in the Lopez home have improved considerably since October of 2005, therefore this court finds that full custody will be granted back to the birth mother." The conditions in the house never warranted the kids being taken in the first place, but they refused to admit they had ever been wrong. So to justify taking them in the first place, they said, the conditions have since changed. But unfortunately, we also don't have the protections of double-jeopardy since it only reached hearing status and not trial status and since the CPS file was purged, there's nothing to show it had ever happened in the first place. Needless to say, my sister moved out of Riverside County a.s.a.p.