I know DHS case workers are protected by law to a certain extent, but how far does that go?

Most cases I find on the web have to deal with case workers failing to protect a child from abuse, but what if the case worker was the one causing harm to the child? Essentially the caseworker is using threats and intimidation to get the child to testify and say certain things, and this can all be proven with audio and video records.

What would you have to prove or establish to go after the case worker directly?

I have a lot of questions regarding this post. If these records are available, why hasn't this been dealt with, already? Who taped these sessions? If someone is being charged with a crime and the child's testimony is being used to convict, why isn't the defense counsel getting this information?

Normally, you'd have to show the caseworker acted outside of his/her position to go after them, directly. If it is a judgment call, I'd be surprised if that case could be made. If the caseworker is acting maliciously, that would be different. Why is the case worker doing this?

In my line of work, it is very difficult to get kids to testify against their parents or abusers. Doesn't matter if the parent or abuser was horrible, the kids don't want to testify. It's very frustrating for the workers to know that a child is not being treated well. Frequently, the child tells them all about it - but when it comes times to prove the case, the child changes the story. From a practical standpoint, it places the case worker in a difficult position. He/she is convinced the child is in a bad situation and has a duty to protect that child. At the same time, the only evidence is the child's testimony so if the child won't talk, the child gets left in a bad situation. I can see a case worker getting frustrated with a child who says one thing in private but refuses to testify to make the case. I can also see them being heavy handed - not defending it, but I can see it happening and understand why it would happen.

If a child is attacked by a stranger, that is one thing. They still don't want to testify because it is embarassing and scary. If a child is harmed by a family member (either through abuse or neglect), they not only are scared, they stand to lose their family. I am amazed at how many grandparents torment their grandkids to get them to change their testimony KNOWING that the child is telling the truth. In their hearts, the grandparents are convinced that the matter can be handled "in family" so they make a deal with the devil to coerce the child to change their story. Their intentions are good but the results are nearly always ghastly.

The only motivation I can see for a caseworker to try to get a child to testify a certain way would be if they actually believe that is the truth and because they are worried that the child will be in harm's way if they don't testify. Of course, the case worker could be dead wrong. The child could have lied to the caseworker, originally. I personally don't recall ever seeing a caseworker making up something out of whole cloth although I have seen them put a certain spin on facts that could have been interpreted differently. There are usually different versions of a story and rarely does anyone have a perfect right version - perception problems, memory problems, etc., result in witnesses seeing the same event in vastly different ways. An angry parent, a scared child, a disgusted socialworker and a concerned therapist may see the same thing and come away from it with a different take. Probably none of them have the perfect version.

Anyway you look at it, the child is screwed. The only kids who get much out of testifying are those that are angry at their abuser and feel empowered to look them in the eye and put them away.

For this reason, among others, the criminal charges were dropped. The case is in a "reunification stage" now where the child is going through supervised visitation with her father and hopefully getting to unsupervised in the near future.

Simply put, the caseworker is crazy. Some bad things happened to her as a child and she became a social worker to "right the wrongs" in the world. She truly believes the father is a bad person and ultimately wants to terminate the fathers rights. To do that she needs to put him on a treatment plan that the father can not complete, and prove that there is no bond between the father and the child.

The only record of contact between the father and child right now is in the caseworker's visitation reports.. and they read pretty bad. If you read them you would think there is no love between the father and the child.

If the child tells people that she wants to see her father on a weekend, the caseworker will be unavailable to do the visit and someone else will have to supervise. If that happens that person may write a visitation report that shows love between the parent and child, and that would prevent her from terminating the parents rights later. This is why the caseworker scolded the child in the bathroom and made her change her mind about wanting to see her father on Saturday.

Make sense?

In the case of a bitterly contested custody case, where many people have motivation to manipulate the child, I hope you would be objective and consider that the allegation may not be true, and not go all ends justify the means when you can't tell for a fact what even happened.

The father might have abused the child, he might not have, there is no way to really tell based off the evidence.

Which is why the caseworker needs to act in an ethical manner and allow due process to play out. When you go to college they teach you why the ends do not justify the means. No one judges you on your intentions because they don't matter in the real world. Consider this: She didn't do any investigation, she tainted only piece of evidence, and if the father really had abused the child no one will be able to do anything about it because she messed the case up that badly. No one will ever know what happened, because of the caseworkers "good intentions".

For all we know it could be the mothers significant other that was abusing the child the whole time, we will never know because no one looked in to it.

No one is going to prison, the father and child are going to be reunited but the custody dispute itself has been going on over 2000 days and has quite awhile to go.

Those are tough cases. I'm used to parents accusing the other of being abusive and although there is a lot of debate regarding whether one parent can actually alienate the other parent, I think the question is sort of silly - because I see it happen all the time. It is disgusting.

As a Guardian ad litem, you learn to have a filter whenever you listen to anything, be it the child, the mom, the dad, etc. You really can't take much at face value and unless you are an egomaniac, it doesn't take long to figure out that you don't read people nearly as well as you once thought you did. Oh sure, some people are just lousy liars but others are amazing, down to the body language. So you end up not trusting anyone. When in doubt, you assume they are evil. Slight exaggeration, certainly.

I am still a bit confused as to what the underlying circumstances are.

Sounds like someone abused the child. Since you suggested that it could have been someone else besides the father, does that mean the child is too young to remember? It SOUNDS like they dropped the criminal case as being too weak (child a poor witness?), which means that DSS (which has a lower burden of proof) is frantically trying to figure out a way to avoid allowing the child to be alone with the dad because they think he did it. So at this point, I'm guessing that they have either a protective order in place (child living with mom) or they have taken the child into custody and are restricting visits with the father unless they are supervised by DSS.

DSS rarely supervises visits on the weekend so that doesn't surprise me. IN fact, they NEVER do where I live. There are agencies in some jurisdictions that provide supervised visitation for what is usually a substantial fee. The good part is that they write a pretty thorough report on what they observe. Unfortunately, in addition to the cost, a lot of places don't have this type of service, at all.

How do you know the social worker had something happen to her that has her trying to right the wrongs of the world? Did she tell this to the father? If it was a similar situation it might be grounds to have her removed (though they rarely do that). The fact that she shared personal information would be troubling.

What sort of requirements were placed on the father that are too burdensome? I am a little confused about the prior relationship with the father and child. Wasn't there anyone prior to the case who could describe how they interacted?

I don't know about this particular case, but I can tell you that ALL THE TIME I have kids tell me that they don't want to visit mom or dad but, "PLEASE DON'T TELL THEM I SAID THAT!" Normally, that is older children - the little kids just cry.

The truth is, kids make stuff up all the time. You really have to key in on their body language to have any hope of knowing what is going on. The little kids are easier to read than the older ones, for obvious reasons.

I can't say too much without spilling details that could be identified back to the case.

Needless to say, no one is sure if the child was abused at all. You're 100% right about not taking things at face value. Sometimes the problem isn't that the person is lying, they just don't have the critical thinking skills to be able to recognize their own bias and know how it impacted what they think or observe in a situation.

In OKC they have supervised visitation services offered by the bailiff's department downtown and it is very affordable. They get used frequently because they have no vested interest in the cases and they typically do their visitations on weekends.

If the child expressed a desire to see the parent on a weekend, a bailiff would do the visit and write a report. That would ruin the case worker's plan to paint the father in a bad light. The reason the prior relationship with the child would be mostly irrelevant is because the child went over 1000 days without seeing his/her father, mainly because the courts here are so slow and bogged down it took that long to get a hearing.

The only reason I point that out, is so it doesn't seem odd why the caseworker would want to manipulate the child into changing his/her mind when the child stated a desire to see the parent on a weekend. The child did not like weekday visits because the child always had to miss school because of it.

You are right that DHS, which has a incredibly low burden of proof is franticly trying to figure out a way to avoid the child to be alone with the father. They don't have to prove that abuse occurred(nor does a juvenile judge have the authority to determine if abuse occurred, only a jury can do that) they just have to be able to say that the allegation is supported by evidence and the standard there is preponderance of evidence. Basically, if they can get the child to say that abuse occurred they get an enormous amount of power. The power is not to PUNISH the parents, but to try to keep the family together and try to solve any problems they may be going through. If the case can not be resolved after awhile, the courts move to terminate the parents rights and to do so they have to show that the problem that caused the state to get involved has not been corrected and that there is no bond between the parent and child. For the caseworker to use her power to alienate the child for purpose of successful termination later is a huge abuse of process. We can not prove that is her intention, but all signs point to that direction.

I really don't want to discuss the entire case because I am afraid I might upset someone if they figured out who I was writing here about this. Both the parents are very concerned about the child's privacy and for the most part do not discuss the case with anyone.

My question is simple, what line can case workers cross before they can become sued? I know there has to be one. I'm sure if a case worker went out and slashed a parent's car, the parent could get some compensation out of it. I know they have certain levels of protection which allows them to do their job, but I know there has to be something a caseworker can do that would cause them to face a consequence.

The way I'd approach this if I were the lawyer (and I'm not, I lack 2 semesters and a [passed] Bar Exam before I get to be called that) is that I'd have to know what the DHS worker did, then I'd try to figure out if there was a way I could describe that as crossing the line.

With seemingly gray situations like that, there's a lot of room for argument and good research. From what you're saying, in my mind, it all depends on what the case worker actually did.

For what it's worth, I don't think even the most seasoned attorney would even be able to hazard a guess on this without knowing all of the facts.

Dad needs to get a lawyer, pronto.

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I've found that calls to the licensing agency sometimes are the best way to address "malpractice" in a regulated profession. The nursing board in Oklahoma used to take their duties very seriously for certain types of professional incompetence. I don't know much about social worker regulation.

Sounds like a really painful situation.

Surely dad already has an attorney? Tell me he has an attorney!

Father has an attorney for Juvenile court down at DHS, but that attorney isn't really interested in taking this to a real court so the father is looking for someone to represent him downtown.

The attorneys father has spoken to seem to think he would get the most relief in family court, but we don't know anyone that has experience with trying to get relief from an external entity(DHS) in family court and he is actively looking for someone to take this case asap. If you guys know anyone that would be good for it, we would love a referral or else we are just going to go with whoever.

His juvenile attorney is really good, but he can only do so much. The juvenile court doesn't have due process and is not well designed for contested matters, it only works when everyone is on the same side.

Perfect example of how messed up juvenile is.

The father's criminal charges were dropped February of 2006. The child's court ordered psychologist recommended visitation for the father in April of 2006. DHS had already decided it wasn't going to try to terminate and was going to go for reunification, but DHS and the guardian ad litem on the case wanted to wait until AFTER the adjudication hearing on the matter before the father would have visitation.

The father was willing to stipulate that the child did indeed say the abuse occurred, which would have made the adjudication hearing unnecessary, in return for visitation.

The only offer the father received, was that he could have visitation if he agreed to sign over custody of the child to the mother in family court. (Father had sole custody when the case started, and still has sole custody since that issue can't be decided as long as the state has custody).

At the time I thought that was abuse of process... The father was asking for what he was guaranteed, regardless of what happened at the adjudication hearing. The hearing went on, the child was forced to testify, and when it was over the father was granted visitation. The problem is that the hearing didn't happen until July of 2007.

Only in juvenile court would a trial take 17 months to schedule, that could have been avoided had the party pushing the issue been willing to let the father have what he was going to get no matter what. The reality is that DHS needed those 17 months to further alienate the father from the child for the purpose of ultimately trying to terminate the father's rights.

You can't I am sorry when it comes down to your word against theirs you lose sorry but that is the way it is. The workers are always protected no matter what these workers that you see cases on most of them are transferred to different counties so they are not seen. In the new county nobody knows why they got transferred kinda like the military on gays. "Don't ask don't tell" when a worker is accused of something it goes before the RISK management team and they decide what to do with them.

Ok good luck finding an attorney most of them won't go near a DHS case that is why it takes outside agencys to do it. Oklahoma DHS can't take the children of an outside lawyer and that is why it takes an outside attorney to get justice in dealing with DHS. There have been cases where lawyers tried to help people and the workers got mad and had the lawyers children picked up just to be mean because they can.

WHAT EVER YOU DO DON'T LET HIM SIGN OVER FULL CUSTODY HE WILL BE SCREWED FOR SURE.

Toadrax,

Has "Dad" consulted/talked with Tamra Spradlin at Quick, McCown & Spardlin?

4117 N.W. 122nd, Suite B, Tel: 752-6000

East Coast Okie,

"I'm used to parents accusing the other of being abusive and although there is a lot of debate regarding whether one parent can actually alienate the other parent, I think the question is sort of silly - because I see it happen all the time. It is disgusting."

Dr. Phil is having a program on this subject this Friday (Oct 03).