Attempted Theft By CPS

Attempted Theft By CPS

Greetings, I am appealing to the Community to help us get my Great Niece (Sarah Lee-Butts) back. Sarah was born on Dec 4, 2017, from the time of her birth, she was placed into foster care due to a previous (Very Serious) CPS case on her mother’s behalf.  At the initial time of Sarah’s birth, my nephew couldn’t get custody because his paternity had not been proven yet via a DNA/Paternity test and the State exploited that fact. After it was determined that my nephew was in-fact Sarah’s father, he started pursuing his paternal rights to seek custody for his daughter, but CPS immediately began giving him resistance because he had previously been diagnosed with some mental instabilities due to three previous brain injuries. This is where my sister stepped in (my Nephew’s mother).  Who had also been there since the beginning of Sarah’s birth & had spoken with CPS about Sarah being placed with her (something that both of Sarah’s biological parents agreed to). My sister was living and working in Florida at the time of learning of the resistance my nephew was receiving from CPS.  She then stopped her life in Florida, packed up everything and moved back to Milwaukee to assist my nephew in the process of gaining placement and custody of Sarah so that Sarah could be removed from the strangers in foster care and brought into the arms of her loving father, grandmother and family.  She was told by the CPS agency in Milwaukee that if she lived in Milwaukee, the placement/custody process would go significantly quicker, but as time went on, we all begin to learn that was far from the truth.

At first the process of placement and custody was going smoothly, my sister had passed every background check, home visit and interview that CPS conducted, the judge had even ordered to start the reunification process within 30 days, but after that order was made, everything begin to take a turn for the worse. The judge and Guardian Ad Litem for Sarah both were black and very much advocating/endorsing the process of Sarah being fully in the care of her grandmother and father, but after the judge made that decision, he and the Guardian Ad Litem were mysteriously replaced (for reasons that were very skeptical) with Caucasian cohorts that objected to the process of reunification of Sarah being with her family. 

The foster parents also contested the placement process of baby Sarah with my sister (Sarah’s grandmother). The foster parents began to make up lies about my sister, CPS begin to delay the process, making up story after story and eventually, the judge denied placement with my sister and Sarah was ordered to stay with her foster parents. The next item on the docket was my Nephew’s parental rights, while the case was still being litigated, my nephew was allowed to have supervised visits with Sarah twice a week and my Sister was being allotted un-supervised visits that started in Nov of 2018 twice a week.  In Jan of 2019, she began overnight visits, in March of 2019, her visits were from Fri until Mon but once the judge ruled to leave Sarah in foster care, my sister’s visits dropped from 3.5 days to 1.5 days due to the foster parents having lied to the court, CPS and every other case worker/attorney involved, alleging that Sarah would have nightmares and tremors every time she would return from my sister’s home (something that NEVER happens when Sarah sleeps at my sister’s house).  After learning of these lies, my sister requested a sleep study be conducted INDEPENDENT of the State’s Doctor’s, even if our family had to raise money and pay for it out of pocket but that request was denied by the case worker, she stated “We will get back to you” but never did. Based on these allegations, without ANY TYPE of MEDICAL PROOF, The courts and CPS sided with the foster parents to shorten my sister’s days with Sarah from 3.5 days to 1.5 days, which now meant that, outside of the two supervised visits her dad gets with her per week, she and the rest of our family would now only get to see Sarah for less than 24 hours per week.

To make matters worse, because of these “nightmare/tremor” allegations and my nephew’s mental instabilities, the foster parents are pressing to have Sarah, a perfectly fine, adorable 2-year-old baby with absolutely NO signs of cognitive impairments put on medication to “prevent" any future risks of “possible” mental illness. But the truth of the matter is that while all these court proceedings are being dragged out, they are also fighting/hoping to adopt Sarah and if she is on medication at the time of her adoption, they will get more money added to their adoption stipend. To them (Sarah’s Foster Parents), this has nothing to do with the wellbeing of Sarah, they don’t care that Sarah has a caring & loving family that is well capable of caring for her and loving on her, they are only looking at dollar signs and CPS is helping them every step of the way. Thankfully! they can’t proceed with having medicine prescribed to her right now because my nephew still holds Sarah’s parental rights and he would have to sign off on the notion, although the state has already manipulated/coerced him into signing previous forms that gave them various permissions, he will not give them rights to have his daughter medicated. However, at their last court date in November of 2019, it was determined by the judge that the next court date (May 27th,2020) will be the day that the final decision is made to give Sarah up for adoption to her foster parents or reunify her with her father/family. If Sarah is given up for adoption to her foster parents, my nephew would also lose his parental rights and the foster parents would have FULL legal control over what happens to Sarah from that day forward including if our family would ever see her again while she is with them.

This is an ATROCITY, our family is devastated and in shock of how the childcare system can systematically/underhandedly take a child  from a loving family and put them into the arms of professional foster parents who are in the business of breaking up families for financial gain. My nephew is a working man, lives on his own, has no criminal record and absolutely no history of child abuse. My sister owns her own business as a travel agent and also works as a correctional officer, she also has ABSOLUTELY no criminal record, no history of drug use and absolutely no child abuse cases on her record.  We are baffled at how this has all come about and the driving factors have all been based on the lies told by Sarah’s Foster parents. My nephew has even been ordered to pay child support while all this is going on, that makes absolutely no sense and is totally unfair to him in my opinion, especially when he WANTS to have his daughter in his care, but she is being held against his will.

Before all this happened, I had heard of many stories of how CPS likes to take children from families of color or families with low income and give them to caucasian families or families with high status and income, I never really knew if those stories had any validity to them but it now seems to be playing out right before our eyes. Thus far, CPS has been VERY bias towards my nephew & sister and have believed every lie told by Sarah’s foster parents (with zero investigation) and seems to side with whatever they request. These foster parents are not novices, they know the system and are systematically using it for their benefit. We can’t understand why these unrelated foster parents would fight a family THIS HARD for the family's own FLESH & BLOOD to be reunited with them. Based on some of the horrific foster care stories of how some foster parents adopt kids solely for devious/perverted purposes, we certainly hope & pray this is not the case.

We are PLEADING FOR YOUR HELP people of Wisconsin and around the nation. We need two CPS lawyers (my sister & nephew has to have separate attorneys) who’d be willing to look over our case and sit down with us for a free consultation and possibly take our case Pro-Bono or at a discounted rate (the lawyer my nephew currently has is a public defender and has not been real effective thus far). We also are looking to raise funds for an independent sleep study & an appellant lawyer in the event the judge rules against my nephew’s parental rights on May 27th, 2020.

If you know of any CPS lawyers that can help us,  please send us a message via this site or email us at [email redacted]

If you are looking to donate funds via this site, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

We are also looking to bring awareness to this situation, if you can’t afford to donate or don’t know of any attorneys, we would greatly appreciate you sharing this on your social media pages as well as in the groups you are apart of on social media. We would also appreciate it if you could share our fight with the community leaders/advocates & news outlets. Every share, prayer, advice and dollar helps tremendously!

Thank you for your time and help, we greatly appreciate it.

Signed: A Loving, Caring & Concerned Uncle

#BringSarahHome