Not Without My Daughter
Donation protected
Hello, my name is Dee-Dee and I am a 33 yr. old single mother of four beautiful children. My small family and I thank you for taking time out to read this. I'll try to keep it short and sweet, but as a writer I can sometimes be long-winded.
I was born in Merrilville/Gary, Indiana, but when I was five years old I was abandoned by my biological parents. I suffered every type of abuse you can imagine while being brought up in the Arizona Foster Care System. I often joke that I never was a child, I was born a tiny adult and grew up into a bigger adult. Due to my lack of childhood and my struggles, I wasn't sure if I ever wanted children of my own. I was sure I wanted to be the change I believed was needed in the world, and more importantly in the foster care system: I wanted to be a Social Worker.
Like most plans, I ended up becoming a mother young; at 16. I've always been fiercely independent so I relied on no one to help me. I took parenting classes, CPR/First aid classes, and worked to eventually save and bought my own car. I say this to say, I take the role of a mother very seriously. The lucky few of us are blessed with the joy of bringing life into the world and no matter how they were conceived, children are a blessing. It is a parents job to raise them up in the way they should go, and if you do your job well, they'll leave the metaphorical nest and become productive members of society. Abusing a child in any way is abborent to my very nature. I've worked for the government in an official manner as a child support enforcement officer, I worked in a shelter with abused and neglected kids who ranged from 0-8, and then work in a group home for abused and neglected teen girls. I didn't let having a child stop me from going to broadcasting/communication school or keep me from going to college for social work. Nothing has ever stopped me and I've worked my hind end off rain or shine, sick or well. It didn't matter, I took care of my responsibilities...
Until November 20, 2013. I couldn't get out of bed, my hands and feet were numb. I was in severe pain. I've suffered from Asthma my entire life and it became completely unmanageable. I couldn't catch my breath. I was unsteady on my feet, I was dizzy and assumed it must be pnemonia, but my 16yr. old was worried and called 9-1-1. Long story short, I was tested within an inch of my life, transfered hospitals and after weeks of being in the hospital I was diagnosed with the rare autoimmune syndrome called: Guillain-Barre Syndrome. I was kept in the ICU and was totally paralyzed.
I must add that my children's fathers for one reason or another are not involved in their lives or are very limited with what involvement they choose to have. Trust me, I didn't want it this way. I wanted the husband who drinks beer and yells at the T.V. during football season. I wanted a role model for my sons, wanted my girls to be daddy's girls, and I wanted to be treated well. However, the traditional family forever eluded me. Instead of crying over it, I did what I needed to do and took care of my kids and give them all the love I have inside me. I don't let a day pass where I don't tell them I love them, I hug them often and talk to them regularly about age appropriate topics. I take every opportunity to impart them with some form of a wisdom.
I mention the above to illustrate my shock when, while in the ICU doped up and still hurting my 9 and 1/2 yr. old daughters father and his mother stroll in. His mother has never liked me and even had me investigated while me and him were dating. I understand wanting to get to know someone, but that's what small talk, lunches, and years of getting to know each other are for. She proceeded to tell me I wasn't who she wanted for her son, which at the time I was newly 23 with a young daughter, but what she disliked the most.... the color of my skin. I'm black. But, I digress, he says to me he will be filing papers to take my daughter from me. A daughter that although I tried to help, he'd not spent much time with. Well, we argued about his insensitive timing, considering we'd had ten years for him to get more involved. So, perusual, he fades back into the background and disappears.
I had what I believed to be a trusted friend, at the time, watching my kids. However, my older daughter
climbs in my hospital bed with me and tells me that the friend that I trusted has been behaving erratically and has taken my 9 and half year old and 7 year old to her home to stay while she's left her, my 16 yr. old, and my 4 yr. old at my townhome alone. So, virtually my 16 yr. old became a struggling single mother overnight. This was not the discussed plan and I wanted to believe my friend had good reasons for going against what I'd asked. Plus, doctors kept telling me that this was one time in my life where focusing on myself was okay because I'd get better faster without the stress. As a single mom focusing on myself is a foreign concept. The only reason I tried to stay positive and do that is because I needed to get back to my babies. They needed me and I could tell, a storm was brewing.
After treatment basically stalled, I was moved to an inpatient physical rehabilitation hospital that would be helping me learn to use my arms and legs again, hopefully. I got to the rehabilitation facility at the end of December 2013, and by mid January 2014, I was able to feed myself again and, although, there was, and is, a lot of nerve pain I was happy to have use of my arms again. I'd never felt so helpless and vulnerable, those words just weren't in my vocabulary.
Then in late January 2014 my so-called trusted friend started talking about getting a procedure of some sort on my son's heart. I was floored because although my last three children had been born very early due to placental abruptions, my 7 yr. old was doing fine according to his yearly cardiologist visits. I told my friend that my son was fine, then she acted as if I should be able to just produce my sons medical record out of thin air to prove this to her. First, you should know she had a very limited power of attorney while caring for my kids and this was way out of the scope of what she'd been given permission to do. Secondly, because I didn't have his records on me while in the middle of my personal crisis, she accused me of neglecting his health, which was laughable because of how on top of my children's health I am. Then she went a step further and said this new doctor she took him to said he would be calling CPS and reporting me for medical neglegence if I didn't allow him to have this heart procedure ASAP.
Of course, I was worried for my childs health and second, worried because I'd lived in the CPS system. I did't want them anywhere near my life, especially, because it was unnecessary. I had documentation filed at home that would disprove this medical neglegence issue. I didn't address my friend acting outside the scope of her role, but I planned to once I figured out what was going on with my son. So, I said if he needed this procedure then I would be there. This seemed to anger my friend more than it should have. She became agitated and angry, as if I didn't trust her. I let her know trust had nothing to do with it, if something needed to happen, it'd be his mommy's face my son saw before they did anything to his heart.
She treated me as if my concern was irrational and even moved up the procedure date to about the first week in February. Naturally, upset because I knew I couldn't leave the rehabilitation center (I was supposed to be there a year or at least until my quality of life was very close to what it once was.) So, I began the steps to be able to leave in a wheelchair and have in home help, rather than be in the center, if things were going on with my family that needed to be attended to. This of course had my friend seeing red for some reason, but on February 14, 2014, I wheeled myself out of the rehabilitation center.
When I get home, I barely recognized it. There was a hospital bed in the middle of my living room. It'd really been setup for me. Although, it was not setup for my new handicap needs. Since I was still pretty sick and Guillain-Barre can take three years to recover from, I conducted a lot of business from that bed. I made sure to set up an appointment with this cardiologist that wasn't his primary cardiologist because I wantedto give him a piece of my mommy mind. Let's just say the wind was taken right out of my sails when the doctor says, he not only never made such a threat, but no one in his practice would say that about a heart issue that is very commonly seen in premature children. Until my son excibates any problems they can wait until he's about ten. Hearing this caused mix-emotiones within me because on one hand my son was fine, but on the other hand, my friend lied to me.
Turns out she done a lot of lying. One of the doctors at the hospital I was first at heard my story and heard my kids wouldn't have Christmas, so he and his family donated quite a bit of money to make sure my kids had the Christmas they deserved. My "friend" who'd previously discussed not having money enough to get her kids all they wanted, volunteered to get Christmas lists from my kids and she'd take the money and get them their gifts. Turns out she pocketed the money and got two of her kids i-Phone 6's and proceeded to get my kids not much and nothing over $10 or $20. Then while in the hospital my older daughter calls me and tells me that my "friend" also had been allowing my kids to miss school whenever she wanted. Her kids are homeschooled and she'd only wanted to experiment with trying school with her youngest, but whenever her youngest didn't want to go to school, she kept mine home so her 6 or 7yr. old daughter had someone to play with. All these things were enough to end the toxic "friendship" that had gone on too long, but it was one thing that she did that had the power to distroy mine and my children's lives irreparably.
My ex and I had a very emotionally threatening and abusive relationship when I was 23. The only thing beautiful to come from the ashes of our destructive relationship, my 9 and a half year old daughter. Due to the nature of our relationship, I thought I'd have to fight him and his intrusive mother in court for years once my daughter was born. However, that didn't happen. Neither showed any overt desire to be in her life. Whatever decisions I made neither batted an eye at. They were in and out from time to time, but no meaningful interest was taken in her day to day life. I'd been liberal with when he could see her and he never took the many opportunties to be involved. Any questions he ever had were no more than passing curiosity that never amounted to anything, and he didn't ever care truthfully. Only when she was 8 did he show a bit more interest in her schooling. I took him to where she'd be going and that seemed to be as much interest as he wanted to take in her. My car broke down right before I got sick and I had to beg him to help me get her to school. Shockingly and not so shockingly, he helped for two days and then couldn't be bothered. I ended up having to walk my daughter and son nearly 8miles to school because he wouldn't help. I took it all instride and did what a single mother does, I got by. I made it work. My employer even allowed me to use the van to get my kids at times, and some women from worked heldped other times. Things were working, then I got sick.
Of course, being their sole everything, my kids missed some school while I was sick. I hated that happening, but these were extenuaiting circumstances that couldn't be helped.
This is where the story gets more convoluted. Behind my back while I was in the hospital and my ex saw our daughter sporadically. My so-called friend decided to plant seeds of discourse. She showed him my daughter’s birth certificate, which his name wasn’t on because my daughter was born unexpectedly at 31 weeks and he wasn’t there. He actually wasn’t there throughout her nearly two month long NICU stay at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. He never saw her once. Since my “friend” and I were on the outs more than on good terms during the time of my relationship with my ex and my pregnancy, she didn’t know the Hell he put me through during our relationship. So, she starts feeding him lines about how he needs to take my daughter from me and he’s being treated unfair, none of which were true, considering he chose not to be around. I didn’t push him away. Anyway, he bought into it and my friend was mad about me ending her free ride off my dime by coming out of the hospital, so she fed him information, and when I got out in February, he began his quest to fabricate evidence to make it look like I was an unfit parent.
He even went as far as to tell a judge that I’d left my daughter home alone several times, which never happened. He also made sure to include that my daughter had been out of school, but failed to mention the fact that I was in the ICU and couldn’t get her to school. He made up a story about me interfering in his parenting time when he didn’t have parenting time and had never been awarded any parenting time. During this time he also presented me with a Stipulation to sign that said if I went away peacefully, he’d give me $1200. This Stipulation gave him some pretty intrusive rights. I’m not a lawyer, so when I said I needed to have it looked at by a lawyer he took the Stipulation off the table. That was fine with me because my daughter isn’t, wasn’t, and never will be for sale. That’s when he became overbearingly involved in mine and my daughter’s life to the point he was scaring her, and I told him this several times, but he refused to believe it. My daughter’s personality changed to one of distance, and quiet and she regressed to sleeping with me and wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Yet she’d never explain what was going on.
It wasn’t until the court set up these conferences that more of the story began to unravel. He told the judge I was crazy and that I was in the hospital due to substance abuse issues. He even convinced the judge and a CAA that my daughter’s well-being was in jeopardy even though I’m in a wheelchair and still recovering from my illness. He presented the case as if my daughter was an only child, and didn’t mention my three other children. I depended on the judicial system to investigate his bogus claims, but instead they believed him without a shred of evidence. The only thing he could prove was that my daughter missed school last year. However, the judge wouldn’t allow me to state why that happened. On December 19, 2014, my world fell apart for two specific reasons.
On December 19th, I read in a confidential interview between the CAA (court appointed advisor) and my daughter that her father had been inappropriate with her in ways that made her feel afraid and “gross”. I also listened while the judge took all my rights; all decision-making, primary residence and all, away from me and gave them to a man who had hurt our daughter. I was allowed to give my daughter a brief hug and in a conference not a hearing (we’ve never had a hearing) the judge had the daughter I nurtured from the womb alone, to premature infant alone, and to prepubescent little girl alone, taken from my arms, handed off to him and rushed out of the courtroom. I sat there completely in shock and defeat. My ex had a lawyer, I was self-represented due to not having money for a lawyer and due to still being in a wheelchair with no use of my legs at all. My ex stated in his papers that if I didn’t contest what was happening he wouldn’t have the judge order me to pay his lawyer’s fees. My daughter didn’t have clothes, her favorite blankets she sleeps with, her nebulizer for her asthma or allergy medicine and my ex knows nothing of her medical history. Like that, she was gone.
My other children have been devastated by the loss of their sister. They are depressed, don’t eat as much and are generally confused, as am I. I did slip my daughter her cellphone and she texts me regularly about the further abuses she’s suffered and it breaks my heart. I don’t even know where my ex lives. I’ve never been to jail, never committed a crime, never used any form of illegal drugs and never even thought to abuse a child, yet I’m being treated as a criminal.
This is the most unconventional way to seek help, but I don’t have family and am on disability until I can get better. My funds are limited, but my children and I have been making it. However, I need help. I’ve found a lawyer who I believe can turn things around and get my daughter back where she belongs and help get my ex investigated, but I can’t afford to pay her, which is why I’m here. If I don’t raise the money, I’ll live on and so will my other children, but it won’t be what our lives could be and I don’t know what the future fallout from this will be for my children. I don’t want to spend their entire childhood fighting in court, they deserve better than that. However, I can’t see myself rolling away from this now, at least… Not Without My Daughter.
Any help you can give will be a blessing. Thank you for hearing me out. Thank you in advance for all your support.
-Dee-Dee (Piper)
I was born in Merrilville/Gary, Indiana, but when I was five years old I was abandoned by my biological parents. I suffered every type of abuse you can imagine while being brought up in the Arizona Foster Care System. I often joke that I never was a child, I was born a tiny adult and grew up into a bigger adult. Due to my lack of childhood and my struggles, I wasn't sure if I ever wanted children of my own. I was sure I wanted to be the change I believed was needed in the world, and more importantly in the foster care system: I wanted to be a Social Worker.
Like most plans, I ended up becoming a mother young; at 16. I've always been fiercely independent so I relied on no one to help me. I took parenting classes, CPR/First aid classes, and worked to eventually save and bought my own car. I say this to say, I take the role of a mother very seriously. The lucky few of us are blessed with the joy of bringing life into the world and no matter how they were conceived, children are a blessing. It is a parents job to raise them up in the way they should go, and if you do your job well, they'll leave the metaphorical nest and become productive members of society. Abusing a child in any way is abborent to my very nature. I've worked for the government in an official manner as a child support enforcement officer, I worked in a shelter with abused and neglected kids who ranged from 0-8, and then work in a group home for abused and neglected teen girls. I didn't let having a child stop me from going to broadcasting/communication school or keep me from going to college for social work. Nothing has ever stopped me and I've worked my hind end off rain or shine, sick or well. It didn't matter, I took care of my responsibilities...
Until November 20, 2013. I couldn't get out of bed, my hands and feet were numb. I was in severe pain. I've suffered from Asthma my entire life and it became completely unmanageable. I couldn't catch my breath. I was unsteady on my feet, I was dizzy and assumed it must be pnemonia, but my 16yr. old was worried and called 9-1-1. Long story short, I was tested within an inch of my life, transfered hospitals and after weeks of being in the hospital I was diagnosed with the rare autoimmune syndrome called: Guillain-Barre Syndrome. I was kept in the ICU and was totally paralyzed.
I must add that my children's fathers for one reason or another are not involved in their lives or are very limited with what involvement they choose to have. Trust me, I didn't want it this way. I wanted the husband who drinks beer and yells at the T.V. during football season. I wanted a role model for my sons, wanted my girls to be daddy's girls, and I wanted to be treated well. However, the traditional family forever eluded me. Instead of crying over it, I did what I needed to do and took care of my kids and give them all the love I have inside me. I don't let a day pass where I don't tell them I love them, I hug them often and talk to them regularly about age appropriate topics. I take every opportunity to impart them with some form of a wisdom.
I mention the above to illustrate my shock when, while in the ICU doped up and still hurting my 9 and 1/2 yr. old daughters father and his mother stroll in. His mother has never liked me and even had me investigated while me and him were dating. I understand wanting to get to know someone, but that's what small talk, lunches, and years of getting to know each other are for. She proceeded to tell me I wasn't who she wanted for her son, which at the time I was newly 23 with a young daughter, but what she disliked the most.... the color of my skin. I'm black. But, I digress, he says to me he will be filing papers to take my daughter from me. A daughter that although I tried to help, he'd not spent much time with. Well, we argued about his insensitive timing, considering we'd had ten years for him to get more involved. So, perusual, he fades back into the background and disappears.
I had what I believed to be a trusted friend, at the time, watching my kids. However, my older daughter
climbs in my hospital bed with me and tells me that the friend that I trusted has been behaving erratically and has taken my 9 and half year old and 7 year old to her home to stay while she's left her, my 16 yr. old, and my 4 yr. old at my townhome alone. So, virtually my 16 yr. old became a struggling single mother overnight. This was not the discussed plan and I wanted to believe my friend had good reasons for going against what I'd asked. Plus, doctors kept telling me that this was one time in my life where focusing on myself was okay because I'd get better faster without the stress. As a single mom focusing on myself is a foreign concept. The only reason I tried to stay positive and do that is because I needed to get back to my babies. They needed me and I could tell, a storm was brewing.
After treatment basically stalled, I was moved to an inpatient physical rehabilitation hospital that would be helping me learn to use my arms and legs again, hopefully. I got to the rehabilitation facility at the end of December 2013, and by mid January 2014, I was able to feed myself again and, although, there was, and is, a lot of nerve pain I was happy to have use of my arms again. I'd never felt so helpless and vulnerable, those words just weren't in my vocabulary.
Then in late January 2014 my so-called trusted friend started talking about getting a procedure of some sort on my son's heart. I was floored because although my last three children had been born very early due to placental abruptions, my 7 yr. old was doing fine according to his yearly cardiologist visits. I told my friend that my son was fine, then she acted as if I should be able to just produce my sons medical record out of thin air to prove this to her. First, you should know she had a very limited power of attorney while caring for my kids and this was way out of the scope of what she'd been given permission to do. Secondly, because I didn't have his records on me while in the middle of my personal crisis, she accused me of neglecting his health, which was laughable because of how on top of my children's health I am. Then she went a step further and said this new doctor she took him to said he would be calling CPS and reporting me for medical neglegence if I didn't allow him to have this heart procedure ASAP.
Of course, I was worried for my childs health and second, worried because I'd lived in the CPS system. I did't want them anywhere near my life, especially, because it was unnecessary. I had documentation filed at home that would disprove this medical neglegence issue. I didn't address my friend acting outside the scope of her role, but I planned to once I figured out what was going on with my son. So, I said if he needed this procedure then I would be there. This seemed to anger my friend more than it should have. She became agitated and angry, as if I didn't trust her. I let her know trust had nothing to do with it, if something needed to happen, it'd be his mommy's face my son saw before they did anything to his heart.
She treated me as if my concern was irrational and even moved up the procedure date to about the first week in February. Naturally, upset because I knew I couldn't leave the rehabilitation center (I was supposed to be there a year or at least until my quality of life was very close to what it once was.) So, I began the steps to be able to leave in a wheelchair and have in home help, rather than be in the center, if things were going on with my family that needed to be attended to. This of course had my friend seeing red for some reason, but on February 14, 2014, I wheeled myself out of the rehabilitation center.
When I get home, I barely recognized it. There was a hospital bed in the middle of my living room. It'd really been setup for me. Although, it was not setup for my new handicap needs. Since I was still pretty sick and Guillain-Barre can take three years to recover from, I conducted a lot of business from that bed. I made sure to set up an appointment with this cardiologist that wasn't his primary cardiologist because I wantedto give him a piece of my mommy mind. Let's just say the wind was taken right out of my sails when the doctor says, he not only never made such a threat, but no one in his practice would say that about a heart issue that is very commonly seen in premature children. Until my son excibates any problems they can wait until he's about ten. Hearing this caused mix-emotiones within me because on one hand my son was fine, but on the other hand, my friend lied to me.
Turns out she done a lot of lying. One of the doctors at the hospital I was first at heard my story and heard my kids wouldn't have Christmas, so he and his family donated quite a bit of money to make sure my kids had the Christmas they deserved. My "friend" who'd previously discussed not having money enough to get her kids all they wanted, volunteered to get Christmas lists from my kids and she'd take the money and get them their gifts. Turns out she pocketed the money and got two of her kids i-Phone 6's and proceeded to get my kids not much and nothing over $10 or $20. Then while in the hospital my older daughter calls me and tells me that my "friend" also had been allowing my kids to miss school whenever she wanted. Her kids are homeschooled and she'd only wanted to experiment with trying school with her youngest, but whenever her youngest didn't want to go to school, she kept mine home so her 6 or 7yr. old daughter had someone to play with. All these things were enough to end the toxic "friendship" that had gone on too long, but it was one thing that she did that had the power to distroy mine and my children's lives irreparably.
My ex and I had a very emotionally threatening and abusive relationship when I was 23. The only thing beautiful to come from the ashes of our destructive relationship, my 9 and a half year old daughter. Due to the nature of our relationship, I thought I'd have to fight him and his intrusive mother in court for years once my daughter was born. However, that didn't happen. Neither showed any overt desire to be in her life. Whatever decisions I made neither batted an eye at. They were in and out from time to time, but no meaningful interest was taken in her day to day life. I'd been liberal with when he could see her and he never took the many opportunties to be involved. Any questions he ever had were no more than passing curiosity that never amounted to anything, and he didn't ever care truthfully. Only when she was 8 did he show a bit more interest in her schooling. I took him to where she'd be going and that seemed to be as much interest as he wanted to take in her. My car broke down right before I got sick and I had to beg him to help me get her to school. Shockingly and not so shockingly, he helped for two days and then couldn't be bothered. I ended up having to walk my daughter and son nearly 8miles to school because he wouldn't help. I took it all instride and did what a single mother does, I got by. I made it work. My employer even allowed me to use the van to get my kids at times, and some women from worked heldped other times. Things were working, then I got sick.
Of course, being their sole everything, my kids missed some school while I was sick. I hated that happening, but these were extenuaiting circumstances that couldn't be helped.
This is where the story gets more convoluted. Behind my back while I was in the hospital and my ex saw our daughter sporadically. My so-called friend decided to plant seeds of discourse. She showed him my daughter’s birth certificate, which his name wasn’t on because my daughter was born unexpectedly at 31 weeks and he wasn’t there. He actually wasn’t there throughout her nearly two month long NICU stay at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. He never saw her once. Since my “friend” and I were on the outs more than on good terms during the time of my relationship with my ex and my pregnancy, she didn’t know the Hell he put me through during our relationship. So, she starts feeding him lines about how he needs to take my daughter from me and he’s being treated unfair, none of which were true, considering he chose not to be around. I didn’t push him away. Anyway, he bought into it and my friend was mad about me ending her free ride off my dime by coming out of the hospital, so she fed him information, and when I got out in February, he began his quest to fabricate evidence to make it look like I was an unfit parent.
He even went as far as to tell a judge that I’d left my daughter home alone several times, which never happened. He also made sure to include that my daughter had been out of school, but failed to mention the fact that I was in the ICU and couldn’t get her to school. He made up a story about me interfering in his parenting time when he didn’t have parenting time and had never been awarded any parenting time. During this time he also presented me with a Stipulation to sign that said if I went away peacefully, he’d give me $1200. This Stipulation gave him some pretty intrusive rights. I’m not a lawyer, so when I said I needed to have it looked at by a lawyer he took the Stipulation off the table. That was fine with me because my daughter isn’t, wasn’t, and never will be for sale. That’s when he became overbearingly involved in mine and my daughter’s life to the point he was scaring her, and I told him this several times, but he refused to believe it. My daughter’s personality changed to one of distance, and quiet and she regressed to sleeping with me and wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Yet she’d never explain what was going on.
It wasn’t until the court set up these conferences that more of the story began to unravel. He told the judge I was crazy and that I was in the hospital due to substance abuse issues. He even convinced the judge and a CAA that my daughter’s well-being was in jeopardy even though I’m in a wheelchair and still recovering from my illness. He presented the case as if my daughter was an only child, and didn’t mention my three other children. I depended on the judicial system to investigate his bogus claims, but instead they believed him without a shred of evidence. The only thing he could prove was that my daughter missed school last year. However, the judge wouldn’t allow me to state why that happened. On December 19, 2014, my world fell apart for two specific reasons.
On December 19th, I read in a confidential interview between the CAA (court appointed advisor) and my daughter that her father had been inappropriate with her in ways that made her feel afraid and “gross”. I also listened while the judge took all my rights; all decision-making, primary residence and all, away from me and gave them to a man who had hurt our daughter. I was allowed to give my daughter a brief hug and in a conference not a hearing (we’ve never had a hearing) the judge had the daughter I nurtured from the womb alone, to premature infant alone, and to prepubescent little girl alone, taken from my arms, handed off to him and rushed out of the courtroom. I sat there completely in shock and defeat. My ex had a lawyer, I was self-represented due to not having money for a lawyer and due to still being in a wheelchair with no use of my legs at all. My ex stated in his papers that if I didn’t contest what was happening he wouldn’t have the judge order me to pay his lawyer’s fees. My daughter didn’t have clothes, her favorite blankets she sleeps with, her nebulizer for her asthma or allergy medicine and my ex knows nothing of her medical history. Like that, she was gone.
My other children have been devastated by the loss of their sister. They are depressed, don’t eat as much and are generally confused, as am I. I did slip my daughter her cellphone and she texts me regularly about the further abuses she’s suffered and it breaks my heart. I don’t even know where my ex lives. I’ve never been to jail, never committed a crime, never used any form of illegal drugs and never even thought to abuse a child, yet I’m being treated as a criminal.
This is the most unconventional way to seek help, but I don’t have family and am on disability until I can get better. My funds are limited, but my children and I have been making it. However, I need help. I’ve found a lawyer who I believe can turn things around and get my daughter back where she belongs and help get my ex investigated, but I can’t afford to pay her, which is why I’m here. If I don’t raise the money, I’ll live on and so will my other children, but it won’t be what our lives could be and I don’t know what the future fallout from this will be for my children. I don’t want to spend their entire childhood fighting in court, they deserve better than that. However, I can’t see myself rolling away from this now, at least… Not Without My Daughter.
Any help you can give will be a blessing. Thank you for hearing me out. Thank you in advance for all your support.
-Dee-Dee (Piper)
Organizer
Piper Anderson
Organizer
Phoenix, AZ
