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Due Process of law – that fundamental, constitutional guarantee that your court case will be handled fairly and that the judge will play by the rules laid down by the legislature – is often missing in CPS courts. Many trial judges don’t care, for example, that parents aren’t notified of hearings. Some judges don’t even bother with the hearing at all. A former client of mine dutifully showed up for an emergency hearing in Harris County’s 314th Court. She was there to defend against the illegal taking of her grandchildren by CPS. The hearing never came. We found out later that when the CPS agent showed up for the hearing, the court clerk handed her a pre-signed order giving custody of the children to the State.
It’s discouraging to parent and attorney alike when such blatant injustice is so casually doled out by a judge.
But take heart. Due process still matters – at least at the appellate court level. In the recent case of In Re C.L., Jr., the child’s mother objected to the termination of her parental rights to one of her children. CPS wanted both her kids but had not bothered to ask for both of them it in its written pleadings to the court. The law is clear that if you don’t ask for something, the court can’t grant it.
The trial court either didn’t catch it or didn’t care. But the appellate court did. The termination of parental rights was reversed. A clear victory for the rule of law!
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I have already been through the cps nightmare and for my daughter (as a newborn) taken and eventually lost legal custody and due to CPS lying to the judge about me; mainly claiming to have no record of my caseplan services being utilized at all any during the entire care when just the fact that they did allow me to enter a safety plan (which was just a joke to them because they kicked me out of it) which ended only for the same reason that I agreed to it in the first place, a bad drug test that I informed them would be bad. Had I not admitted to the fact, they would have just let me go on with my life that day and would have later (when the tests came back) entered me into that safety plan and not kicked me out because they would be getting the results prior to this. My state law says that cps is not allowed to remove a child from their parent for drug use unless they have provided them with 2 bad drug test results and I only had the 1 so that alone means they removed her illegally. They have it documented from the records in the beginning about me being on a medicine assisted rehab treatment program but then later deny me having that record at all during the case. Due to ineffective assistance of counsel and the counsel being bias in favor of cps at the time (public defender), I was not allowed to provide such evidence to the judge or speak out to argue any of the claims brought forth by cps during the entirety of my case. The drug test throughout my case were withheld from me and were not provided to me until after the court hearing which the agency had filed for legal custody to go to some woman who pretended to be my friend only to take my daughter and upon receiving the test results after the judge closed my case due to him granting the request for that woman to get legal custody, I became aware for the first time that CPS had been failing me for my drug test due to the results showing my prescription medication. My belief is that they lost the records or just to denied the records of my medicine assisted treatment due to the fact that if they had acknowledged that treatment they would have had to tell the judge that I did actually participate in their services and complete my case plan or at the very least that I was complying with that still to that day, and that was not what they wanted to be the case at that proceeding. There is a lot of false information about me and my husband within the whole entire case file and none of which we were ever allowed to prove to be false. Now that my case is closed and I only get 1 hour of supervised visits per week after having suffered through a full 6 month period of no contact at all due to COVID and the place who provided us with the supervision being closed. I am struggling to find any resources on what I can do now or next. Currently I am awaiting The appeal decision where my new public defender has filed his briefs of ineffective assistance of counsel (to the extent where I didn’t even know in advance of court hearings any sooner than 2 days prior when I found out without my attorney being the one who told me) and needing the appeal due to perjury‘s false information evidence that’s withheld and Covid as well. The current guardian is unsafe in her parenting and she has so much as sexually exploited my daughter; showing private images and video of her having her bubble baths and in the video/pictures my daughters private parts were fully exposed and the caseworker wouldn’t even look into my report because the police didn’t file charges or anything when I reported that violation of my daughters privacy, they instead gave her the benefit of the doubt and demanded that she remove them immediately because of the fact of it being illegal and assumed it to be an innocent mistake from a first time mother (however, she is not a first time mother so that should have been made clear to them) and cps said that that means that whatever were in the images must be fine and they didn’t need to check it because she would have been charged if otherwise. The cps caseworker had her block me on social media after that so that she could continue posting anything that she wants to of my daughter without fear of me having issues with the extent of what she wants to show the world of my little girl. Please help me figure out what I can possibly do while I wait for my appeal to come back as I need to figure out how to save my little girl and reunite my family.
Kimberly:
I offer consultation services and would be happy to speak with you.
Can a CPS worker give a judge an affidavit and that be enough to remove a child from a home? It’s based off of 1 phone call from a cousin who hasn’t son and no longer wanted him and then called and made a false report. 3 days later she showed up with a court order. Why wasn’t there a hearing so I could defend myself and if there was a hearing why wasn’t I informed. That part is still unclear as to if there was or wasn’t a hearing.
Unfortunately, yes. And some corrupt judges don’t even bother with a hearing. We recently “retired” a judge here in Harris County whose practice was to sign the order for the CPS caseworker to pick up at her convenience.