The Police At the Door
#####UPDATED and EDITED Feb. 23, 2014#####
Feb. 9, 2014
If you are new to this blog, you may want to read the posts “In a Nutshell” or go to July 2012 and read “Sending out a Letter.” Both of these posts give a brief description of what happened. As Emma’s mom, I am blogging my experiences with Emma and the things she did/does. This is a child who made up a story about rape, accused a priest of molesting her, and then as her attorney was about to file a lawsuit against the priest and the church, Emma accused her mother of physical abuse to stop the lawsuit because she knew her lies were about to be discovered. Emma claims to have the TOXICOLOGY REPORT to prove that her mother poisoned her with DDT and that she had to move to Ohio to get away from her mother. (My attorney has been waiting for months for that toxicology report.)

I’ve already written about the events of the day of Dec. 21, 2010, a Tuesday, but to sum it up, Emma had a morning appointment with Suzie McGarvey of Lanier Counseling in Buford, Ga. (Suzie now works for North Georgia Counseling Associates in Suwanee, Ga.), and then we went to Kohl’s so Emma could buy her dad a Christmas present, stopped at Starbucks for Frappes, and went home. It was a cold, rainy, nasty day. I did some things around the house, and Emma entertained herself on her new notebook computer, etc. We had a quiet dinner, and there wasn’t anything we wanted to watch on television that night, so Emma spent most of the evening in her room before coming in to hug and kiss me goodnight. I don’t remember what time she went to bed, but it was pretty early, probably around 8:30 – 9pm. Christmas was coming, and we were looking forward to that as well as to taking a trip to N.C. to visit a friend for a few days while Emma had some time off from school. I read for a while and went to bed at 11:00pm. Keep in mind that I am writing about something that happened over 3 years ago, and I was in total shock over what Emma did, so some of my details my be a little fuzzy.
I only thought Emma had gone to bed early. That day and night, she had made several calls to Sandra Brooks McCravy:
3:16 pm for 26 minutes
8:41 pm for 27 minutes
10:44 pm for 1 minute
10:45 pm for 4 minutes
11:02 pm for 2 minutes
12:54 pm for 1 minute
and the following day, on Dec. 22, 2010 Emma made another 14 or so calls to either Sandra Brooks McCravy or Johnathan McCravy

On the topic of phones, let me note that Emma was supposed to leave her phone in the kitchen when she went to bed at night. Several times, I caught her sneaking out to get her phone and she would make up some excuse as to what she was doing. After getting caught too many times, she started taking one of the portable land-line home phones to bed with her, so she could talk on the phone with Sandi, or perhaps Johnathan McCravy, whom Emma had a crush on. I don’t have access to the home phone records, but on more than one occasion, Phill or I discovered one of the home phones missing and located it in Emma’s bed. She claimed she wanted it in case of an emergency. I am sure if I could access the land-line home phone records, we would see many more examples of Emma breaking the family rules, and many more hours of conversations with Sandra Brooks McCravy at all hours of the night when Phill and I thought Emma was asleep. In any other child, this would be typical teenage behavior, but most kids would be calling their teenage friends, not a 45 or so year old woman.
Also, I will also mention that when DFACS had taken Emma from our home, she stayed with our pastor and his wife, Fr. George and Paulette Ivey (Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Flowery Branch, Ga.) Sandi called Fr. George and wanted to deliver a Christmas present to Emma. She took some gifts to Fr. George’s home, and stashed inside one of the gifts was a tracfone, so again, there were many more calls I have no record of. Interesting behavior from a woman who frequently called me her “best friend.” If you’ve read my earlier posts about Sandi (Sandra Brooks McCravy, you know that I was privy to many details in the Brooks/McCravy families such as stories of infidelities and wife-swapping, or what Sandi called “Swinging” in her family. I bring this up to reiterate that at one time we were very close friends. I don’t think you would share these shameful family secrets with just anyone. That was why I was surprised that Sandi was going behind my back, telephoning my daughter at all hours, having a relationship with Emma that Phill and I were not aware of, and that Sandi would again go behind our backs to sneak Emma a tracphone.

Back to my story…………. Since Hoschton Ga. does not have a police department, the officers who came were from the Jackson County County Sheriff’s Office. I will say they were all courteous and professional, and I understand that their job was to make sure Emma was safe, not really to investigate into whether or not she was telling the truth.
Around 11:30, I was awakened by the sound of a car door slamming. My heart was pounding, and for a moment, I thought it was a dream. I got up and looked out the bedroom window and saw a police car in the driveway, and an officer walking up the sidewalk towards the front door. All I could think of was that Phill had been in an accident with his job at UPS. He had left Mon. evening and was on the road with his partner, Carl Lehmann, and would return home sometime late Thurs. night or early Fri. morning. I always worried over any late night phone calls when Phill was on the road.

I opened the door to the police, and if I remember right, there were two officers and a moment later, a 2nd car showed up, so there ended up being a total of 3. One of the officers told me that they’d received a call concerned with the safety of Emma, and I told him that she was asleep, although Emma wasn’t asleep, but at the door to her room, listening. When the officer asked to speak to Emma to make sure she was alright, Emma immediately appeared wearing her pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers. The officer took Emma out on the front porch and spoke to her privately. This went on a few times during the nearly 4 hours they were they were there. Emma would go out and talk to the officers and then come back in and tell me she told them everything was fine. One of the officers stayed inside the house the entire time. I’m sure, as the officer stated, Emma was terrified. She had crossed a line, and she knew she was in trouble. The only way out was to continue with her lying.

According to the police report, Emma told the officers that her mother suffered from “Paranoid Borderline Personality Disorder.” Phill and I did not find out about this until later when we talked to Suzie McGarvey of Lanier Counseling (Now with North Gwinnett Counseling Associates in Suwanee, Ga.). Suzie told us that she had spoken with Emma’s former therapist Dr. Elizabeth Genie Burnett (Dr. Genie Burnett, Psy.D., Manna Treatment, Duluth, Ga.) and Dr. Burnett had gone through a checklist with Emma and had diagnosed me. I find this interesting as I was never Dr. Genie Burnett’s patient, and only sat in on a few sessions with Emma, or with Phill and Emma. Suzie McGarvey seemed as shocked both Phill and I did over the unprofessional conduct by Dr. Genie Burnett in diagnosing me when I was not even her patient. Suzie was also shocked when Sandi (Sandra Brooks McCravy) called her, crying, trying to get her to let Emma come stay with her at the Sandi and Greg McCravy’s home in Lawrenceville, Ga. Dr. Genie Burnett (Manna Treatment, Duluth, Ga.) also called Suzie and tried to get her to let Emma go to Sandi’s home. I know, when Suzie told Phill and I of these phone calls, she found them quite disturbing.
Another interesting point that Suzie McGarvey told Phill and I after speaking to Dr. Genie Burnett was that Dr. Genie Burnett told her that whenever she tried to get Emma to discuss the molestation, Emma would turn on her mother. Ok, I’m not a psychologist, but as a lay person, I think I would start to question the whole molestation story at that point.

I don’t remember how one of the officers brought up DFACS, but I explained to him that Emma had been involved with DFACS back in March when she told us about being molested by a priest. The officer told me he would need to contact DFACS since they had been involved with Emma in the past. I later realized this was a ruse and he wasn’t going to out and out say that he was calling DFACS because Emma was accusing me of abusing her. (Who knows what might have happened? Since we didn’t own any guns, I might have gone postal and pulled out a water pistol and shot everyone. But that’s ok because I would then “block it out” and wouldn’t have remembered it later anyway……………………..Sorry, sometimes my sarcasm gets the best of me.)

In the police report, Emma claimed to have been abused over the past couple of weeks. Soooooo, after being a mom for almost 17 years, all of a sudden I began physically abusing my daughter. Yeah, right. Hmmmmm, I’ll bet if we could check the calendar, Emma’s story of abuse started right after she found out the big Atlanta law firm who had taken her case, had e-mailed me to tell me they’d be filing the lawsuit at the end of Dec. or beginning of Jan. Emma was in pure panic mode. She had to stop the lawsuit, and didn’t care how she did it or who she hurt in the process. What’s one more lie when there were already so many?

Another interesting point to bring up about Emma claiming the abuse had started a couple of weeks before, is that at this time, I was completely comfortable with the progression of things. In Oct., we’d gone with Fr. George Ivey of Holy Trinity Anglican church, to meet with the attorney’s who’d taken over Emma’s case. Earlier, I’d felt the church had tried to sweep Emma’s complaint under the rug, and later, when the church sent an attorney to investigate Emma’s accusation, this woman was supposed to be objective, but it was clear she was an adversary when she questioned Emma. The church paid her salary, so I’m not sure how she could have been objective. That December, I felt we were in good hands with the attorneys who were looking out for Emma. I just wanted to let them do their job. Emma and I had talked about how the attorneys would have to talk to her friend “Lacey” who’d been raped since that was what stirred up Emma’s memories of being molested. Emma had told me that was fine and “Lacey” would be ok with talking to them. Secretly, Emma was in a panic. The whole rape story was a lie, and if the attorneys talked to “Lacey” Emma’s big lie would be discovered!

Emma stated that I became violent when I was unable to view a pay-per-view television program without paying for it and struck her right shoulder with a cooking pot. Well, for starters, we didn’t have cable or dish and did not have pay-per-view. Later when I spoke to DFACs, I was told I struck her with the handle of a pot. I looked at our caseworker and said, “How would you even do that?”

I won’t repeat Emma’s story of kicking the bathroom cabinet and then claiming I kicked her foot into the dishwasher, as this story is already posted in the blog elsewhere. I do think the cherry popsicle sticks added a nice touch, don’t you?

One of the officer’s called the Department of Family and Children’s Services for Jackson, County, Ga., and it took a while for the social worker to arrive, as I believe they told me the social worker on call had to come from Athens, Ga. to our home in Hoschton, quite a distance away. Caseworker Tamara Hardy was a short, obese, black woman who seemed to have a chip on her shoulder. I don’t take it personally that she seemed to dislike me. After all, her job was to protect children, or as one psychologist told me, “DFACS job is to keep its name out of the paper.” I have known enough former and current DFACS employees to know what a horrible job it is with low pay, horrible hours, understaffing, under-appreciation, stress, high turnover, etc.

Just like the police, Tamara Hardy spoke to me privately and to Emma privately. Emma, meanwhile, was hugging me, putting her arms around me, holding on to me, when we were together, and telling me that she didn’t know who would have called the police. I wondered outloud if someone from the church, who knew we were about to sue the church, made the call in retaliation for our upcoming law suit. Emma jumped on this idea and kept bringing up the name of. B., a woman who had been through a trial against her ex-husband who was accused of molesting their daughter. Before and during the trial, Emma often babysat for B.’s daughter, the alleged victim. She would come home after babysitting and tell me stories about B. preparing for the trial, about the child’s behavior, about special things Emma had to do and how she had to treat the little girl because of the abuse. I’m not going to repeat the things Emma said, and now I doubt any of it was true. Emma probably said these things to make it look like she was in the know of the situation.

I had no idea who it was that was supposed to be abusing Emma. I thought back to when Emma accused the priest of molesting her, and a Jackson County DFACS social worker, Cecelia Dove (mentioned in the police report of Dec. 21, 2010) and an officer from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, who is now the sheriff of Jackson County, Janis G. Mangum came to our home unannounced. Emma cried and held on to me, afraid she was going to be taken away, but the social worker and officer Mangum assured us that they were just there to make sure Emma was safe and that this man no longer had access to Emma. I was thinking of this earlier visit and wondering if they thought Phill and I did not keep Emma safe and someone was reporting that she’d suffered some other kind of abuse.

Tamara Hardy was insistent that I find a place for Emma to go away from home. I understand now that had Emma been placed in foster care, it would have cost the state (or county), so Ms. Hardy was pressuring me to find a place for Emma to save money. At this point, it was after 1am, and I was reluctant to start calling people to see if Emma could go to their homes. Emma kept telling me she could go stay with “Aunt Sandi” (Sandra Brooks McCravy) , that “Aunt Sandi” would come get her, etc. For whatever reason, my gut instinct was that there was something not right about that. I had no idea that Emma had been on the phone several times that day, calling Aunt Sandi and planning her little event out. I called my friend Janice, and she would have taken Emma, but she does not see well enough to drive at night. The police or the social worker could not drive Emma to another county, and I said I could take her to Janice’s, and Ms. Hardy made it clear that I could not take Emma anywhere. At some point Tamara Hardy made a slip to indicate that I was the one accused of abusing Emma.

I was stunned. Someone was accusing me of abusing my own daughter? I can’t even describe what was going through my head. This was crazy. Later, my attorney who handled the divorce would say, “How do you go from stay-at-home-mom, homeschooling mom, to abusing your daughter when she turns 17? This doesn’t even make sense.”

I out and out asked Tamara Hardy, “You mean someone accused ME of abusing my daughter?” and she looked very sheepish, embarrassed that she’d let that slip out. Now, at least I understood why Ms. Hardy was giving me such attitude.

This whole evening, on and off, I called Phill and kept him updated on what was going on. When I told him that Emma wanted to go to Sandi’s, he did not feel right about it either. I don’t remember if it was his idea or mine, but I called our priest, Fr. George Ivey (Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Flowery Branch, Ga.) Emma got an overnight bag together, and I think Fr. George and Paulette picked up Emma sometime after 3:00 AM, and took her to their home in Buford, Ga., about 20 minutes from our home in Hoschton.
In Case you missed it in an earlier post, again here is Emma’s police report for the night of Dec. 21, 2010:
Emma’s Police Report
Case Number 2010-76730
Jackson County S.O. Incident report
Narrative
Reporting officer: T. Burke
Statement Date 12/22/2010
284 Buck Trail,
Hochton, GA
Narrative:
On Cec. 21 2010, I was dispatched to the above location regarding a welfare check. I was informed by dispatch via telephone that they had received requests from two separate persons to check on the wefare of a seventeen year old female who resides at the location. Dispatch stated that one of the requester was a doctor (Jeannie Brunette 770-289-xxxx http://www.mannatreatment.com/our_staff) who provides care to the person, and the other was a friend (Sandra McCravy 404-547-8xxx) of the person and both were concerned for her well being. Dispatch also stated there may have been physical abuse of the person (Daughter, Emma Roey), by the mother, over the past two weeks with one incident possibly occurring on this date. Upon arrival to the residence, I made contact with the mother, who stated everything was okay, and that her daughter was asleep. I then asked to speak to the daughter to ensure everything was alright. The daughter immediately came to the door, apparently she was standing behind the door when I arrived. I asked the daughter, Emma, if she would come outside so I could speak with her in private. When Emma came outside, she appeared to be terrified, and stated she was afraid of her mother who she stated suffered from “Paranoid Borderline Personality Disorder” and would become violent with little or no provocation then not remember the incident. Emma said that earlier in the evening while watching television her mother became irate when she was unable to view a pay-per-view television show without paying for it and ultimately struck her on the right shoulder with a cooking pot from the kitchen. I asked Emma if the assault resulted in any visible injury and she stated no but it could possibly produce a bruise in the near future. Emma did show me the area and I saw no sign of injury. Emma continued her account of the abuse she had suffered over the past couple of weeks saying that at one point in time her mother had kicked her right foot into the dishwasher which resulted in what she initially thought was three broken toes however the pain had subsided and she did not believe they were actually broken, but that she did apply a splint made from a popsicle stick to them for several days. Emma said the red discoloration to the toes was due to the fact the popsicle stick obtained from a cherry flavored popsicle. Emma stated her mother’s disorder stemmed from an incident where she (Emma) had been sexually assaulted by an assistant pastor at a local church which came to light this past May. Emma continued to relay that she would be assaulted by her mother when I left if I did not remove her from the residence, and was in fear for her own safety. I then spoke with her mother, who stated she had spent the day with Emma and there had been no problems or incidents. After a consultation with Sgt. S. H. I attempted to contact a representative of the Department of Family and Children’s services, and was able to do so after numerous attempts. I spoke with Cecilia Dove and advised her of the situation, and she contacted her caseworker Tamara Hardy who responded to the scene. I remained on scene until Ms. Hardy was able to complete her investigation and establish a plan of action to resolve the issue.

Coming up next:
Emma and SEFF (Southeast Electric Flight Festival, Americus, Ga.) http://www.seffweek.com/ hosted by the Fayette Flyers of Georgiahttp://www.fayetteflyers.com/ April 7-13,, 2014, SEFF is held at: Hodges Hobbies Field, 428 Neil Hodges Road, Andersonville, GA 31711 https://www.facebook.com/HodgesHobbies