Conference quark::mennotes

254.0. "Single? (this could be you)" by JAMIN::GOBLE () Mon Feb 03 1997 16:30

The Boston Globe
   Wednesday, January 30, 1997
   Page B-1

"WHEN IS IT OK TO BE UPSET?"

Single father wants public hearing on son taken by DSS

By Judith Gaines
Globe Staff

  Greenfield -- Nearly four years have passed
since that awful spring day that seemed so eerily
quiet. No phone calls. No bird sounds. No children
playing in the street.

  Charlie Chandler, a single father, and his 5-
month-old son, Albert (not his real name), were visiting
Albert's paternal grandfather at his Cape-style home in
Buckland. In those days, Albert was a bouncy, bubby
little boy with an acute sense of small, curious about
everything. But when the moment came that would cut
away all anchors in his life, he was sound asleep.

  Wearing a blue-and-white jumper and a fluffy white hat,
Albert was dosing in Charlie's car when his father and
grandfather pulled out of the driveway on a routine trip
to a grocery store. Suddenly, five police cruisers
surrounded them.

  "Are you Charlie Chandler?" a police lieutenant bellowed.
  "Ya-yes," came the mumbled, anxious response.
  "Where's your son?"
  "In the car seat."
  "We're here to take him. Don't stand in our way or we'll
arrest you."

  With no explanation, they said, the lieutenant took the
child, who began squalling. He handed him to Paul Goulston,
a social worker with the Department of Social Services, who
drove off with the toddler in his blue van.

  Before they left, Charlie gave the baby a scarf scented
with his cologne. "If he had a safe, conforting smell he
associated with me, I knew he's stop crying," Charlie said.

  The baby's tears subsided. Charlie cried uncontrollably
for hours.

  That was April 8, 1993: the day Albert was taken from his
father and put in a foster family. Social workers contended
that Charlie's relationship with Albert's mother, Julie
Cary, was too turbulent for the baby to thrive in the care
of either; the two unwed parents were not living together at
the time.

  In the words of DSS spokeswoman Lorraine Carli, "The level
of domestic abuse made it a very unstable home."

  Nearly four years later, Albert has been in four foster
homes, and Charlie is barely able to contain his rage.

Closed sessions

  All he wants is a fair public hearing -- instead of the
administrative sessions that are always closed to the public
by DSS, which says it is protecting the parents' privacy
and the rights of their children.

  "In this state, criminals have more rights than parents,"
Charlie says. "At least a criminal can get a jury trial."

  He's a 39-year-old electrician from Ashfield, single,
handsome and talkative. To some, he's a devoted father,
considerate and loving, with an unusual ability to emphathize
with his son.  To others, he's a dangerous man, manipulative
and controlling, unable to separate the boy's needs from his
own.

  But everyone agrees that Charlie Chandler is combative, a
fighter who will not give in, whatever the costs. In his custody
battles, he has caused four judges to remove themselves from
the case -- because Charlie got under their skin, or because he
raised questions about their integrity or conflicts of interest.

  "When it comes to my family, I don't want to compromise," he
said outside the Greenfield counthouse, after one of many
sessions at which he petitioned unsuccessfully for expanded
visiting rights with his child.

  "They say I fight too much," he continued. "But what would the
average person do if they had their kids snatched away from
them? When is it OK to be upset?"

  Gregory Hession, a Northhampton lawyer, who has made a specialty
of parents' rights issues, sees Chandler, his client, as a symbol
of a central truth about the way DSS operates: If you buckle
under and agree with its assessments, you get what you want; if
you hold your ground and oppose them, DSS workers fight your every
move. And because most individual cases get no outside scrutiny,
DSS can decide who's right.

"At extremely high risk"

  "There's a rogue mentality in DSS, which leads to over-reacting,"
Hession said.

  What's clear in this case in that Albert, at least, is not
benefiting from the system. The boy "is at extremely high risk for
a major psychiatric and behavioral disorder," wrote Carolyn Newberger,
assistant professor of phychiatry at Harvard Medical School and
resource director of the Family Development Program at Boston's
Children's Hospital, in a Dec. 31, 1996, report.

  Having observed Albert since February 1995, she said he has become
preoccurpid with themes of damage and danger, believes he sees blood
on his toys, and thinks even his puppets are scared.

  Albert "is a seriously disturbed child whose loss of his father, the
only stable, nurturing figure in his life, is a major element in that
disturbance, as well as the trauma of multiple foster home placements
and physical violence directed toward him while in DSS custody," New-
berger wrote. "Until [Albert] has a more normal and sustained relation-
ship with his father, he is going to be comsumed with anger, confusion,
loss, and self-blame."

  Three weeks ago, a report from his foster mother shed light on New-
berger's concerns. What Carli described as "acting out" behavior and
statements by Albert suggested he may have been sexually abused in a
prior foster home. To date, DSS has not found sufficient evidence to
support this possibility.

  He's a slight boy with brown eyes and curly, strawberry-blond hair,
born to Chandler and Carey on Nov. 9, 1992. They had separated before
Albert's birth, and Charlie took custody of the baby, with Julie's
approval. Five months later, DSS removed Albert from Charlie's home.

  Citing allegations by Julie, internal DSS documents descrived Charlie
as "a very disturbed person" who had hit her and demonstrated a lack of
patience with his son, specifically by yeling at the baby to "shut up."

  Charlie had filed restraining orders against Julie, saying her drunken
behavior was disturbing Albert. She denied this.

  Julie later recanted some charges, telling State Police, in a letter
obtained by the Globe, "I was not very honest about my complaint about
Charles Chandler. Charlie never hit me. He did yell at me for getting
into a fistfight with a girl in a parking lot. ... I didn't think that
was fair because she started it."

  DSS agents said Charlie had pressured her to change her story. But a
phone message from Julie, recorded a few days after Albert was removed
from Charlie's home, suggests a different scenario.

  Referring to Goulston, the social worker, Julie told Charlie, "He wants
me to exaggerate and make up some things ... [Regarding her statements
about Charlie's violence] he said it sounded bad about you and he could
use it in court."

  But judges who heard the case believed they saw patterns in Chandler's
behavior -- patterns they traced back to a prior marriage in Vermont.

  In 1979, Charlie wed Lisa Marie Songer, a waitress from Athol, with
whom he had two children, Charles Jr. and Marie. It was a stormy marriage,
ending 13 years later.

  In the complicated and rancorous divorce, the children became part of
the battleground. Charlie, acting as his own lawyer, called his daughter
to testify in court. Having been through his own parents' divorce when he
was 6 years old, he thought the children's opinions should be heard. DSS
workers though he subjects his kids to unnecessary anguish.

  Lisa got custody of the children, and after visits with their father
caused them emotional distress, a judge in march 1991 ordered Charlie to
have no further contact with them. The ban continues to this day.

  About the time of the divorce, Charlie met Julie. A high school dropout
who had worked only as a baby sitter, Carey, then 19, already was divorced,
with one son. Julie initially viewed Charlie as a non-macho type who was
sensitive to her needs, unlike some of the other men in her life.

  They lived together from November 1991 until May 1992. But by the time
Julie discovered she was pregnant, Charlie knew he didn't want to marry
her. She wanted an abortion but he discouraged her, saying he would take
physical custody of the newborn. Julie agreed.

  Still the two parents cound not get along, and DSS believed Albert, like
Charlies Jr. and Marie, had become a pawn in the parents' personal conflicts.

  In a court hearing in 1993, Judge Robert F. Kumor Jr. concluded: "A child
is being used almost as an object of property. The parents are using [Albert]
to assuage their own emotional needs. In Mr. Chandler's case, this pattern
occurred both in ... Massachusetts and ... Vermont."

  So Albert became a foster child.

  Charlie doesn't deny having difficulties with Lisa and Julie. But he says
he knows better now. After years in therapy learning to deal with his limi-
tations, he says he deserves a chance to raise the boy with his fiancee,
Meighan Lapinske, 38 -- who Newberger describes as "a well-functioning,
stable, caring person."

A surprising turn

  Last week, the case took a surprising turn when Carli, speaking for DSS,
concluded, "We've done a grave disservice to this child. We failed ... in
not moving him into a permanent home much sooner -- whether it be with his
father or an adoptive family. He has spent far too much time in limbo.

  In the past, Carli said, DSS "did not have enough information about this
father." Now new evaluations are causing the agency to rethink its position.
They have not yet made a final decision about what that will be.

  Thinking about Albert's future, Charlie worries: "he's not the happy,
bubbly litle boy he was. Now he eats until he throws up. He scratches himself
until he bleeds. Or he'll sit in a corner and say, 'Don't talk to me.'

  "I'm afraid that for the rest of his life there'll be this doubt about
why we were separated: He'll think either he wasn't good enough or his Dad
was a bad person. I try to explain, but he doesn't seem to understand."

  The case comes before a judge tomorrow, and again on Feb. 25, in Greenfield
District Court.

The Boston Globe
    Friday, Jan 31, 1997
    Page B3 

Father makes little progress in expanding visits with son

   by Tzivia Gower
   Globe Correspondent


GREENFIELD -- In the midst of a drawn-out custody
battle with the state Department of Social Services,
Charlie Chandler hoped that his appearance in court
yesterday might gain him substantially more access
to his 4 1/2-year-old son. But emerging from the
courtroom after a nearly hour-long closed-door hearing,
Chardler said nothing much had changed.

  "Unfortunately I have no good news to tell my son,"
said Chandler, who still hopes to regain custody of the
child who wa taken from him by the Department of Social
Services when the boy was 5 months old. He is now permit-
ted visits with his son only at the DSS offices in
Northhampton.

  As a result of the hearing in Greenfield District
Court, Chandler, 39, of South Newfane, Vt., was granted
an additional hour each week to be with his son, increasing
to two hours his weekly visit. Judge David Fuller also
took under advisement a request to appoint a guardian ad
litem, who would represent the child's interests, said
Northhampton attorney Gregory A. Hession, who represents
Chandler.

  Ellen Cain, the attorney representing the DSS, declined
to comment.

  In April 1993, Chandler's son was placed in foster care
by the DSS because of reports of domestic abuse between
Chandler and the child's mother, and the lack of stability
of either parent. The couple never married, and the mother
granted Chandler physical custody of the child at birth.

  Chandler also has two children from a marriage that ended
in divorce. He has been prohibited by his ex-wife from
visiting those children.

  Still, Chandler says there is no reason for him to be
kept from his youngest son, who has lived in four foster
homes since he was taken from his father. "Never once have
I been found to have abused my son, not by any judge, never,"
Chandler said outside the courtroom yesterday. If anyone is
abusing the child, it is a system that won't allow a father
to raise his own son, Chandler said. "In my opinion DSS has
abused my son more than any child molester."

  Chandler's fiancee, Meighan Lapinski stood by his side,
choking back tears after the hearing. "No matter how I'm
suffering, my son is about to have a nervous breakdown,"
Chandler said.

  According to Chandler, the boy eats until he throws up and
scratches himself until he bleeds. That the boy is disturbed
was confirmed by a 1996 report from the research director at
the Family Development Program at Boston's Children's Hospital
in which the child was described as being at high risk for
psychiatric and behavioral disorders.

  "We told the judge that this child is hurting...but no one
cares about the child. That's what we learned today," said
Hession.

    
    Horrible, sad story. The way I see it:
    
    The father, Charlie, and his first wife had problems.
    
    Charlie and his second wife had problems, most likely due to her
    alcoholism. She didn't want their son; Charlie agreed to take care and
    custody of him. But DSS stepped in.
    
    The son has experienced possible sexual abuse, and most definitely
    emotional abuse from being placed in foster homes.
    
    Charlie still fights for custody of his son. He has no financial stake
    in this, only a father's love for his son keeps him going.
    
    But DSS, in their infinite pattern of screwing up, fights Charlies'
    motion for custody.
    
    The worst loser is the little boy, who will probably never know real
    happiness whatever the outcome, because of the ordeal he has endured.
    
    DSS should be throw in jail for their actions.
    
    Poor kid. I wish there were more I could do.
    
    -john