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We went to see a lawyer we've had dealings with before today.  Usually when he calls us up on Sunday he asks us to come over in the late morning.  This time he wants to see us first at 6, then at 6:30.

When we reach his office, there's a campaign sign in the front yard for the County Attorney who won't return our calls.

We tell him about yesterday's break-in and the rest of the story while he texts.  He doesn't want to get a subpoena to find out who called our house.  He says the answering machine tape isn't the sort of evidence that will stand up in court.  Only DNA evidence or pictures will.

(That's funny because when we were robbed two years ago the burglar cut himself on the glass of the window getting in and bled all over the floor.  The Sheriff's Department refused to take a blood sample when we asked them to.)

He offers to help us deal with DHS.  We take him up on it.

When we get home we find out that he was right.  The answering machine won't stand up in court.  Because while we were at his office someone broke into our front door and erased our answering machine, including the copy of the message that was on it.

Good thing there's more copies.
crabby_lioness: (Default)
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If you can and are willing to turn an answering machine message into an mp3, please pm me for my phone # and remote access code.
crabby_lioness: (Default)
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Part 1
Part 2

There's some middle details, but we'll skip to the juicy bits. I'll fill them in later if I have the time.

Friday October 8

2:00

DHS-2 comes to our house. We've had problems with finding both the front and back door locks hanging half out of the door over the past few weeks (as well as both damage and cigarette butts in the backyard) so I've taken to locking the double-locked deadbolt all the time. Friday it's cranky from everything the door's been through and won't unlock for me. I go out the back door and come round the front to talk to DHS-2.

I tell her we're looking at houses nearer to where dh works, but they all need alterations. (We have two dozen poultry and henhouses are no longer standard issue.) The best looking one turned out to have problems on closer inspection, and may take months of repairs to get into shape, so we might not be able to move until spring.

DHS-2 expresses the hope that we would have already moved "So we won't have to involve the judge." She won't explain what she meant by that.

Previously she had brought boxes from the dollar store's leftovers to help me pack. I ask for more. She's surprised I've actually used the ones she brought. (Well duh, I have to pack for five people!) She says she'll be over with more boxes Tuesday or Wednesday.

Saturday October 9

2:45 we leave on a picnic and to do our monthly canned goods run. When we get home there's a strange message on our answering machine. According to *69, the call came at 3:27 yesterday afternoon and was from "662(local area code)/000-0000".

I'll try to upload the message later, but here's what we've been able to make out.

Male 1-Let me know cause I'm saying all you can commit -- if you bring a petula(?) it's going to be, "Hey you." Because she can't go out and commit the people but she can write them up. And you know, everybody should be told to bring somebody. So you know, you're paying for it.

Male 2-So you want me to tell her that, that I talked to you about it already right?

1-Uh-huh

2-Who?

1-I don't have nothing.

2-Who?


2-Oh, okay

1- I told her that.

2-Okay.

Female-Not Medicaid.

Male 3-Man I know a beep came on, that's all I heard.

1-Might be a blue card.

3-I guess.


Coincidentally(!) a medical record from the baby's birth was laying out of its folder on the counter about two feet from the phone with my husband's state-run Blue Cross health insurance number on it. We haven't had that folder open in over a year.

According to one source who wishes to remain anonymous who's heard the message, the male voices sound like members of the Sheriff's Department and the County Attorney's office.

We've talked to lawyers. We haven't found one who wants to touch this case. They say you take cases against the Sheriff's Department to the Attorney General. They also say the Attorney General's office won't do anything.

I don't know what will happen next.
crabby_lioness: (Default)
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Sunday August 22

The three children and I arrive at a relative's house.

Monday August 23

Dh calls from Good Buddy's house.  He says the Sheriff's Department won't return his calls.  The police are asking questions at the telephone relay station.

Tuesday August 24.

Dh calls from Good Buddy's house.  The Sheriff's Department still won't return his calls, and won't return calls from the police about the incident.  The police tell them to come pick up the doorknob for evidence.  They refuse.  The telephone relay station refuses to talk to the police about our phone.

Wednesday August 25.

Dh calls from a cellphone.  Good Buddy's phone has gone dead in the same way ours did.  Good Buddy is a certified electrician.  He traces the problem back to the phone being switched off at the relay station.

The Sheriff's Department won't return our calls.  The relay station won't answer the cops' questions.  Dh calls the County Attorney.  He refuses to discuss the case.  The cops call the Sheriff's Department.  All they'll talk about is DHS-1 giving us 30 (not 25) days to clean the house.  They refuse to discuss the doorknob or come get it.

Thursday August 26.

Morning

We don't actually find out what happened in the morning until days later.  Mean Sister called the Sheriff's Department.  She reported hearing me yelling at the children inside the house we hadn't been in since Sunday morning.  She said the children screamed, she heard thumps, then silence. 

What we heard was that the Sheriff's Deputy-2 (not Bozo), DHS-1, and DHS-3 come out to our house.  Of course the house is locked and they can't get in.  DHS-1 later said that DHS-3 said she saw a face at the window that looked like my younger daughter.  They don't break in to investigate.

They call dh at work and demand he come home and open the door for them.  "Home" is 90 minutes away.  Dh calls and tells us what he knows.  He gets home, tracks down Sheriff's Deputy-2, and unlocks the door and demands the Deputy search the house for the intruder the Deputy said was there earlier.  The Deputy complies with a sick grin.  Of course there's no one there.

DHS-1 demands that the children be seen by a Sheriff.  Our relative calls the Sheriff of the county we're in at the time.  He's a proper Sheriff (not like Bozo and company) and immediately comes out to investigate.  I tell him this story and show him the baby's unburned feet, as well as the girls.  He says he'll call.

Friday Morning.

The Proper Sheriff calls back to tell us DHS-1 is on her way.  Seems she forgot to interview the girls.  She says "of course" our safety has to come first.  (That's the first -- and last -- time this idea is expressed.)  She interviews the girls.  According to our older daughter she asks about what TV shows they like (they hardly watch any) and their favorite movie.  (DD-1 is annoyed she doesn't ask about favorite books.)  Then she asked how we punished the girls and what their homeschool day was like.  She leaves.

Friday afternoon we go home.

Then there's a frenzy of house-cleaning and home repairs.  We fix everything they told us to fix.  DHS doesn't acknowledge this fact.  For the next two weeks their questions revolve around when we can move out of the house, the girls' homeschooling, and my mental health.  They want me to give them my records and be evaluated by their counselor.  I demur.

Then three weeks of silence.

Then last Friday things kick up again bigtime.

Part 3
crabby_lioness: (Default)
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Hi folks.  We've had a pretty horrible school year so far.  DHS showed up at our door, in a story that gets scarier and more bizarre the further along it goes.  Here's how it started:

Introduction

14 years ago we moved to where we live now.  Dh started teaching high school, and I started having babies.  It's just outside town limits, and there's not many neighbors.  At that time we had one good neighbor on one side of us.  She was an older woman caring for her elderly mother who lived in the trailer between us, a "Granny cottage" to use the Australian term.  We got along well, and I had many pleasant visits to her house -- except for one visit.  Her grown nephew came over while I was there.  I greeted him politely, and was abruptly told that as a female I was unworthy to be breathing the same air as he was, let alone talking to him -- only in shorter and ruder terms.  I chose not to embarrass my Good Neighbor by asking about Bozo after he left.

Years pass, my Good Neighbor's mother dies, and my Good Neighbor moves to another town leaving the two houses beside me to her Mean Sister, who is Bozo's mother.  Mean Sister is dogmatic and close-minded.  She can't stand any woman who doesn't work and put her children in day care, or anyone who disagrees with her own far-right conservative views.  My children and I are no longer welcome at her house.  Still, we stay on amiable terms by never exchanging more than a dozen words
at a time.

Over the years the trailer between us that was her mother's retirement home gets used as a crash pad by various relatives down on their luck until they either find another place to live or simply can't stand Mean Sister any longer.  We're used to having people pull up to it, stay for a while, and leave.

Last year the public high school where my husband works has a meltdown and gets taken over by the state.  He scrambles and finds a job at a community college 90 minutes away.  All this is widely talked about in the town where we live, as he's a popular teacher and the parents didn't want to see him leave.  It's a very stressful time for us.  Maybe people expected us to pack up and leave immediately, but we were too busy to even start looking for a place to move.

The school year starts.  I'm busier than ever, what with two dogs, four ducks, two dozen chickens, two homeschooled children, a toddler, and getting dh off every morning.  I sorta notice people moving in and out of the trailer next door, but I don't think much of it -- except to notice that when they gather together to talk at the door, as people are inclined to do before leaving, they don't gather at the front door.  They gather at the back door, which can only be seen from our fenced-in back yard.  One Thursday evening shortly after school starts the toddler comes with me when I go out to water the birds.  He stands at the fence and stares at the group gathered round the back door.  I scoop him up when I go back inside, but otherwise pay them no attention.  I'm more concerned about the fact that they've taken out the old refrigerator and left it behind the trailer with the door standing open, and glad our children stay inside our fence.

The next Saturday all hell breaks loose.

Day 1:  Saturday August 21, 2010

9:00 - The Natchez Trace Visitor's Center hosts a nature photography program in the morning.  My husband and the girls go to see it and do some shopping afterward, leaving the toddler and I behind to catch up on our rest.  We're in the middle of a heat wave, with the temperature over 100F every day, and the photographers hope the program doesn't get cut short due to the heat.  It's going to be another scorcher.

12:00 - I check email.  After a few moments, the (land-based) internet connection goes down.  I think nothing of it, as this has happened before.

1:15 - I finish the scarf I'm knitting for one daughter and take it up front with the toddler following me.  I go to the back of the house for the yarn for my other daughter's scarf.  The toddler doesn't follow me.  Perhaps he got distracted looking out the front window to see if the car is back yet.  He does that a lot.

I hear a strange man's voice in my house.

The doors and windows are locked.  How is there a strange man in my house?  And more important -- where's my baby?

The man says that my toddler was found playing outside, in spite of the fact that the doors and windows are locked and the baby can't open them.  I run out the open door and there's my baby in Mean Sister's arms.  She yells at me that the baby was found playing in the road, she's called DHS, and I'm in "a world of trouble young woman!"  There's something wrong with that statement but I can't put my finger on it at the moment.

I take my child and say that I'm going home to deadbolt my door.  Mean Sister yells, "Don't deadbolt the door!  Get another lock, but don't deadbolt it!"  Weird.

I take the baby home and look him over.  He's fine.  That's weird for some reason too, but I'm more concerned about the door right then.

Obviously the regular lock failed.  Because the door has a window in it that can't be secured, we have a double-sided deadbolt in it.  Otherwise a thief would reach through the window and throw the lock.  I get my keys to lock it.

While I'm trying to find the right key (I'd forgotten dh had borrowed it a while back) who should come up to my door but Mean Sister's son Bozo, whom I haven't spoken to in years.  He says he's a Sheriff's Deputy now, although he's not in uniform and he shows me no ID.  (I later found out he was hired on when the regular Deputies were shipped off to Iraq with their Reserve units.)  He tells me that DHS is coming, but I tell him I'm more concerned about getting the door locked.  I
notice that the regular doorknob has been pulled almost completely out of the door frame, the door frame is cracked even with the regular lock, the bottom of the door is kicked inward, and the frame of the door window has been yanked almost apart.  I point all this out to him.  He yells, "Don't lock the deadbolt!"

1:45  Dh and the older children come home, wet, muddy, and grinning from their nature photography walk.  I tell dh what happened.  He drops the groceries he's carrying on the floor and goes to check the baby.

1:55 A woman who identifies herself as DHS arrives (henceforth to be known as DHS-1), although she shows no identification.  Coincidentally, her last name is the same as Mean Sister's mother who used to live in that trailer.  It's not a common last name in our area.

DHS-1 says she heard the baby was playing in the middle of the road on the yellow line and wants to see the baby.  That's when it hits me -- it's over 100F outside (102F we later learn.)  My tender-footed baby is barefoot, as he usually is at home.  <span style="font-weight:bold;">There are no burns on his feet.</span>  There are no marks of any kind on his feet.  How could he have made it to the middle of an asphalt highway?

I point this out to DHS-1.  She ignores it.  I point out the door being damaged.  She ignores that as well.

Meanwhile, dh has taken the doorknob off the door and replaced it.  The knob shows clear signs of tampering.  He shows it around.  The Sheriff's Deputy isn't interested.  DHS-1 isn't interested.  Since we live right outside the city limits, he calls the cops.  The phone isn't working.  He leaves to show it to the cops.

DHS-1 complains that there are canned goods in the floor from the groceries my husband brought in, that the girls are dirty from their nature walk, that not all the power outlets have baby blockers on them, and that there are a couple of soft spots in the floor.  She wants to take pictures.  I refuse.

DHS-1 wants to know if I have ever been treated for depression.  Yes.  She wants the records.  I refuse.

Dh returns.  The police are concerned about the doorknob.  DHS-1 still is not.  DHS-1 leaves, telling us we have 25 days to get the house cleaned and the floor fixed.

What with all the upset, it's nightfall before I get around to mentioning to dh that the internet went down right before this started.  Dh teaches computer building and maintenance classes.  He gets out his kit and checks the line.  He reports back that there's 1/10th volt on the line, and the only thing that could have caused that would be if it were deliberately switched off at the relay station.

Dh goes over to Good Buddy's house to make phone calls.  He calls the cops.  They say, "Get out.  Get out now.  It's not safe."  He calls a relative in another county for shelter.

Sunday Morning.

We throw everything in the car and leave for the relative's house.

Then things start getting scary.

Part 2

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