Sandy Seely's Story

It's kind of long, but here is our "Horror Story".

We are in the midst of a fight with CPS to have our grandchildren returned to us.  Our daughter was convicted and sentenced to 12 yrs in prison after stupidly taking the rap for injuries her boyfriend caused to her son when he was 4 weeks old.  We have had custody of little Wesley since he was 6 weeks old, awarded to us by CPS.

Prior to her conviction she got pregnant again and gave birth to twin girls. They were born prematurely at 26 weeks gestation due to complications from twin-twin transfusion syndrome.  Shelby died after only 9 days, but little Lexi has miraculously survived, although she has severe heart and lung problems.  She is still on oxygen and multiple heart/lung monitors.  After having her home only two weeks we had to have her re-admitted to the hospital and placed back on the ventilator for several days.  The diagnosis was a respiratory virus.  On the 11th day after admission to PICU she was examined by her ophthalmologist for her regularly scheduled follow up exam for retinopathy of prematurity.  During this exam there were retinal hemorrhages discovered.  Within 2 days CPS was in total control of her and also removed little Wesley from our care.  They claim the ONLY thing that could have caused it was Shaken Baby.  This is a totally false accusation.

It is not known if these hemorrhages existed when she was admitted 11 days before they were discovered and all research indicates that they cannot be dated beyond a 1-4 day window, however, CPS insists that they occurred while she was in our home.  Two weeks later a heart catheterization revealed that she has excessively high systemic pressure that measured 100 vs.20, which it should be.  Her pulmonary arteries are not growing properly.  There is only a 50% chance of her surviving this condition.

Lexi has been diagnosed with the following conditions:

Neonatal Respiratory Distress Syndrome
Chronic Lung Disease
Patent Ductus Arteriosis
Cardiomyopathy
Peripheral Pulmonic Stenosis
Apnea
Anemia
Retinopathy
Oxygen dependency
Diuretic dependency

My husband and I know that she was not shaken and we cannot help but believe that with all of her difficulties that at least one or more of them caused the retinal hemorrhages.

CPS is taking what precious little time we have with her away from us and the emotional distress they are causing Wesley is beyond cruel.  He has been placed with my mother-in-law and we have unlimited supervised access to him but each time we are with him and have to leave him again and again, he suffers emotionally and cries inconsolably for hours after we leave.  

We have been allowed to see little Lexi only 2 times since November for 1 hour each time.  

The caseworker refuses to give us reports on her condition and gets angry with us if we call her and insist on finding out how she is doing.  It has gotten to the point that I check the obituaries everyday to reassure myself that she is at least still alive.  

We now have an attorney that is trying to get this mess turned around and get the children back in our custody.  It is our goal at our daughter's wish to adopt these precious little souls.  I know that God is on our side and we are relying heavily on our faith and pray daily.   I don't know if there is anything you can do to help us but any advice, support or help is welcomed.  CPS has torn our family apart unjustly and we are being treated unfairly but most of all they are hurting our babies.

The caseworker assigned to our case has stated that she does not have time to read the thousands of pages of medical records , nor does she have time to be trained on the multiple monitors Lexi is on so that she can supervise visits rather than relying on the graciousness of the Luther Social Services supervisor.  Her unwillingness to learn this is the reason we get only one visit per month.  That is all the LSS supervisor can do.  

These children need to be returned to us, back into the loving home they were torn from with absolutely NO PROOF that we did anything wrong or that anything inappropriate happened in our home.  

All research shows that retinal hemorrhages cannot be dated beyond a 1-4 day period and Lexi had been in the hospital's PICU for 11 days when they were found and there is no way to know or prove that she had them when she was admitted 11 days prior.  CPS refuses to admit that they made a mistake and separated our family without a complete investigation into all possibilities.  It was not until the  foster mother had to have her readmitted to the hospital after having her for only one week that CPS bothered to order her medical records and realize what we had been trying to them all along; that Lexi is a very sick baby and has been that way since birth.

We have been to court several times for "status hearings" only to be told that everything will stay the same and that we cannot have the children back.  We have jumped through all their hoops, psychological evaluations which came back perfect, parenting classes and anger management.  Nothing has made any difference.  They did a homestudy on my mother but we were told at the last hearing, last week, that she would not be considered for placement because she will not say that she thinks we did anything wrong or that anything happened in our home.  Two days after that, last Friday, the caseworker showed up at my mother-in-law's home with an investigator and told her that the woman that had done her homestudy did not do it properly. They took several pictures of her house, inside and out, and the caseworker told her that during her conversation with my mother my mother had nothing good to say about anyone in our family.  That she went on and on and trashed all of us.  This is a total lie and if that were the case, why was she turned down for placement.  

Now, today we get a call from our attorney; he received a call from the CPS attorney stating that they are now, after 8 months in her home, going to file a petition to remove Wesley from my mother-in-law. 

Wesley has been traumatized by this enough already and doing this will accomplish nothing but to hurt him more.  I guess because she will not say what they want to hear either.  No one in our family is going to say what they want to hear, because my husband and I did nothing wrong and nothing happened to Alexandra in our home. 

Also, the only thing they have to go on as far as shaken baby syndrome is the retinal hemorrhages, there were no fractured bones, no brain injuries, nothing else.  She weighed 4.5 lbs when this allegedly happened and was on heart monitors.  

Shaking to the degree it takes to cause retinal hemorrhaging would have killed her.  Also, as small as she was there would have to have a least been bruises where she was held tight enough to shake her and there was nothing!!!!!! 

The only thing they are basing this on is an ophthalmologist's three sentence statement that it is "most likely" SBS. They have never said that my husband or I did anything to hurt her, they say there is an unknown perpetrator, but it had to happened while she was in our home. 

When we try to say to them that they have no proof that anything happened in our home, their response is," We don't HAVE to prove anything".

That is so wrong.  How can they get away with destroying families like this?

Sandy Seely sandrab4@sbcglobal.net