After my children were taken from me by CPS in Sacramento County, my two daughters and I became victims of “the system.” As a single parent of over twelve years I had no resources to hire a good lawyer and like most people I didn’t know how to tell a good lawyer from a bad one until it was too late. I went through two court appointed attorneys before becoming my own lawyer and fought for the return of my two daughters for 14 and 21 months respectively.
I was never alone. During the toughest fight of my life, my faith in GOD drove me to do the right thing. The Lord put people in my life to help me learn what I needed to do and teach me how to represent myself. I read thousands of pages of law to prepare but found that it was overwhelming. The more I learned, the more I realized that I did not know.
When the juvenile court case came to an end, the last report said that I had benefited from their services so that the second daughter could now return home safely. What the report did not say was that I had finished a parenting class, an anger management class, and a counseling referral in the first six months but had received no other services for fifteen months. There was no mention of how the fifteen months of separation with no services had benefited my family. Merely saying that I benefited from their “help” was the justification for returning the girls.