*****UPDATED and EDITED AUG. 3, 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 was recently living at the home of her fiance’s grandparents, attending Wright State University http://www.wright.edu/, majoring in counseling, and talking about getting married to T., an architecture student at Notre Dame. Emma claims to have the TOXICOLOGY REPORT to prove that her mother poisoned her with DDT and that she had to move to get away from her mother. (My attorney has been waiting for over a year for that toxicology report! And the funny thing is that Emma’s dad knows she’s said this but refuses to address it.) Emma also claimed her future mother-in-law lives in fear that Emma’s mother will show up and kill her entire family, although I heard from this lady that she feared no such thing. While in Ohio, Emma began telling stories about T’s family, making herself the victim again, but since she didn’t have her mother to be the persecutor, Emma began saying hurtful things about T’s mother, sister, and grandparents. In Sept. of last year, T. broke up with Emma, deciding he had doubts about her. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me at: losingemma@gmail.com

Christmas 2006
Emma Roey

TPO

There are two dates that will live in infamy in my own little war. One is March 14, 2011, which I think of as Emma’s Emancipation Day, and the other is April 7, 2011, the day my loving husband took out a Temporary Protective Order against me, and two officers from the sheriff’s department showed up at my door and told me I had to leave my home. I am going to tell the story of these two dates and I will publish the TPO and go through it page by page. This will take a while, so bear with me.

March 14, 2011

After Emma pulled her little “abused child” stunt at Christmas to stop the law suit that her attorneys were about to file against the priest that Emma claimed molested her (as well as a suit against the church and the diocese), we were all about therapy. We were enmeshed in therapy. We were covered up in therapy. Therapy was our life. Last I heard, Emma was majoring in “counseling.” Ironic, isn’t it?

Just before Emma accused me of abuse, she’d stopped seeing Dr. Genie Burnett at Manna Treatment and Counseling http://www.mannatreatment.com and started seeing Suzie McGarvey at Lanier Counseling http://www.laniercounseling.com (now with North Gwinnett Counseling Associates http://www.ngcounselingassociates.com ). I had taken Emma to meet a few counselors, and Suzie was the one she liked best. Suzie was originally from Ohio, Catholic, married to a financial planner, and had two little girls. Suzie even brought her two girls, along with their Labradoodle, to a “Pet Photos with Santa” fundraiser that Emma and I worked at for the rescue. I still have photos of the girls with Santa and their dog.

Because of DFACS involvement, we were also seeing some therapists that contracted with DFACS, the Social Empowerment Center http://www.socialempowermentcenter.com (Lori McCarthy, Rachelle D. Hutchinson, Emily Kirby, Candace Whitman and Tamesha —sorry, Tamesha, I can’t remember your last name.) Emma was also talking with her high school counselor, Heather Thompson at Jefferson High School http://www.jeffcityschools.org. We had PLENTY of therapy going on. Emma got LOTS of attention, and was talking to therapists at least three times a week. She didn’t really make any friends at school, but she had plenty of therapists to talk to.

If I remember right, Emma was seeing Suzie McGarvey once a week, and then we were also doing family therapy at least every other week. The weekend before Emma’s March 14th appointment, she had asked me if just she and daddy could go to therapy. At first I said fine, but then said no because we were working on therapy as a family, and we all needed to go.

On March 14, I had a doctor’s appointment, so Phill took Emma to therapy, and I headed to Lanier Counseling after my doctor’s appointment to join them. When I walked into the waiting room, Phill was there, and Emma was in the office with Suzie McGarvey for her private therapy session. Phill and I sat and talked for a bit, and we’d each brought something to read while we waited.

When it was time for family therapy, Suzie came out and asked Phill to come in, but wanted me to stay in the waiting room. Ok, fine. After a few minutes, Phill came out and I asked him what was going on. He said Emma wanted to say something to him, but she didn’t want him to tell me, and he told her that he wouldn’t agree to that. He took my hand and held it, and said he wasn’t going to keep any secrets from me.

Suzie McGarvey came out again and asked Phill to come back in to her office. He went, and I sat there and waited and waited and waited. I remember at 35 minutes past our appointment time thinking we would not have much time for our family appointment, and then finally Suzie McGarvey called me in.
I walked in and sat on the sofa. Emma was at one end, Phill was in the middle, and I sat next to him on the other end. To be honest, I was so shocked and stunned by what I heard next, I know my memories of the details are a little fuzzy.

Suzie, Emma’s counselor who’d told Phill and I that we were only the 2nd couple she felt she could trust with her own children, and who’d told me that she wanted to have all Emma’s therapists “circle the wagons” to sort of call Emma out on her B.S., told me that Emma wanted to live in a group home to get away from me, and we needed to separate. After that is where it gets fuzzy. I couldn’t belive what I was hearing. Emma was accusing me of abuse, claiming I would shove or shake her and then block it out. The whole story was so bizarre. Later, I said over and over that I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. I was completely blindsided by what Emma did and what was to come. I think I was in shock at the ridiculousness of it all for a long time.

Part of what shocked me was that I was also Suzie McGarvey’s client, and I felt very betrayed by her blindsiding me like this. After Emma had accused me of “physical abuse” just before Christmas, she spent a week at Peachford Hospital (a mental health facility, or mental hospital), and then she finally came home. We met with Suzie to discuss therapy, family therapy, Phill and I meeting privately with Suzie, and me meeting privately with Suzie. I’ve been told this is a conflict of interest, that Suzie should not have been my therapist and Emma’s therapist, but I don’t know. I did send a letter to the Georgia Board of Examiners of Psychologists and Therapists, but never got to speak to an actual person and got the standard letter back saying they weren’t going to do anything…

I was ready to let Emma live in a group home, but Phill wasn’t. I thought this child needed to see how other people lived and then maybe it would sink in that she had it pretty darned good! I don’t remember a lot of what else that was said. I was shocked and cried and asked Emma why she was doing this. Mostly , she would not look me in the eye, but at one point she said in such a cold, hateful tone, “Mother, I love you, but you have a problem.” Well, for Emma to call me “Mother” meant something right there. Emma NEVER called me mother unless she was being sarcastic. She called me “Mom” or “Mommy” or “Maise.” She did not call me “Mother.”

Sometime before this session, I met privately with Suzie McGarvey, and I remember telling her about one morning when I told Emma to hurry because we needed to leave for school, and she screamed at me, “I’M TIRED OF PEOPLE TELLING ME WHAT TO DO!!!” Well, Emma took control and made sure that no one was going to be telling her what to do anymore.

I didn’t know what to do. Here was our therapist telling me I could not live in my home with my daughter. Being Emma’s mom, her interests came first. I knew she had to go to school, so I said I would go stay with a friend for a few days while we got this straightened out. It was more important to me that Emma stay in the home so that she could go to school and continue with all the things she needed to do. Emma had missed a lot of school in 9th grade due to her vomiting issues (when I was supposedly poisoning her with DDT) and I knew we needed to keep her in school.

I went home and packed a suitcase and went to the home of my friend, Janice for a few days. Poor Janice. Emma stayed with her for a few days at Christmas when she was in DFACS custody, and now I was staying with her. Unfortunately, Emma acted horribly at Janice’s, and I felt bad that Janice was dragged into our family problems yet again, but she is a true friend and was there for me once again. I was pretty much a wreck the whole time I was there. I did a lot of crying. I was in total shock by what my child had done.

I don’t remember when I came home. It may have been on the weekend. I do remember that it was another friend’s birthday on March 16th, and Phill and I went to her home to take her a bottle of wine, but I don’t remember what day we went, and I don’t know where Emma was staying then. She ended up staying with neighbors like old friends Ann and Jack Verner, our neighbors John and Judy Hall (Phill did a lot of computer work for the Halls, erasing hard drives, when their daughter was going through a divorce. Their story is almost as interesting as mine, and I’ll share it after I get the TPO posted.) and Cora and Randall Andrews, and some RC friends of Phill’s, Mike and Wendy Timms.

Recently, my friend’s husband brought up that day Phill and I took the bottle of wine over for my friend’s birthday. Phill talked to them about how we needed to get Emma home and straighten her out. My friend’s husband brought up how he never understood how Phill was so supportive of me when we stopped by, and then a few days later he would turn against me.

Sometime, while I was staying with Janice, Phill completely changed his tone. I have no idea what Emma said or what Suzie McGarvey may have said, but all of a sudden, my husband and best friend of nearly 30 years decided I was a child abuser.

I came home from Janice’s, and Emma was staying at John and Judy Hall’s, and she was to be off the next week for Spring Break. Phill wanted me gone so Emma could be home with Emma. Emma and I had planned on visiting a friend in N.C. over Spring Break, so I decided to go alone, and that way we wouldn’t have to find places to for Emma to stay. Of course, at this point, I thought we were still going to work on things as a family, but Phill had already decided what he was going to do, and while I was in N.C. crying my heart out every day, Phill and Emma went to see a divorce attorney named Seth Eisenberg at Bovis, Kyle, and Birch LLC in Atlanta. I remember looking up the website at some point, and it advertised divorce for dads. I recently looked it up again, and it appears Mr. Eisenberg may not work for Bovis, Kyle, and Birch anymore. I didn’t see his name anyway.

(Mr. Eisenberg was the attorney who later told my attorney that he thought Emma was crazy, that she ran the show, and that Phill didn’t come see him without bringing Emma. My attorney also confided in me that Mr. Eisenberg told him that every time they came in, Emma brought up the subject of a restraining order, really wanting to get a restraining order against me. At some point, Mr. Eisenberg told my attorney that he would handle Phill’s divorce, but he wanted nothing to do with “that kid.”)
While I was in N.C., Phill and Emma were having plenty of quality daddy/daughter time and doing things like going out to eat (something Emma loved to do because I tried to cook fairly healthy) and on little adventures like to the Atlanta Aquarium. I was very disappointed when I found out they went without me as that had been something we talked about doing as a family. We had been, a few years before, to the TN Aquarium and had a wonderful visit there. I still haven’t been to the Atlanta Aquarium. Maybe that’s something I should plan on doing soon.
While I was in N.C., I decided I was not going to be run out of my home. I had been attending a Bible Study group with Emma at the church we had recently changed to, Holy Trinity Anglican Church http://www.holytrinityflowerybranch.org/ in Flowery Springs, Ga. I enjoyed the study and the group of ladies and decided I was not going to miss our Wed. night session on the count of my lying daughter. It was my home, and I belonged at home. If Emma had a problem living in our home, she could go somewhere else.
Phill was furious with me for ruining his week. He had taken vacation time to take the week off and be with Emma, just like he had taken his vacation time when Emma pulled her DFACS stunt at Christmas.
I don’t remember if I came home that Tues. or Wed., but I had wanted to be home Wednesday evening to go to church. As it ended up, our Bible study was canceled, so I didn’t go after all, but Phill was furious with me for coming home. I think Emma stayed with Judy and John Hall that night, but I don’t really remember. I was still in shock over what was going on, but I was determined to stand up for myself.
The next morning, Thursday, April 7th, 2011, after barely speaking to me for the past couple of weeks, Phill was all interested in what I was doing that day. I later figured he needed to know my schedule so he could have the Temporary Protective order served. He wanted to know exactly where I was going and how long I’d be gone and if I was coming home after that…
When Emma was vomiting frequently, I had thought of trying a Yoga class, thinking it might help Emma relax. We only had gone a few times, and I really enjoyed it, but Emma not so much. Emma was very critical of things that were not Christian, and as much as I hate to say it, she was pretty closed minded about a lot of things. “Namaste” did not sound Christian enough for her, and Emma was pretty judgmental about Yoga although she knew very little about it. I found that I really liked how I felt after a class after all the stretching and then the relaxing at the end of class. Emma was also very competitive, and although I was 50 and not in particularly good shape, I could do the poses and stretches better, and the teacher was frequently helping or correcting Emma. When Emma got home from the psych hospital and started back to school, I continued to go to Yoga about once a week without her. Had she wanted to stick with it, I’d have made an effort to take her to an evening class, but she was not interested.
That Thursday, I decided to go to Yoga. Phill asked what time the class was and if I was coming home after that. It turned out that he took Emma to the court house with him to take out the TPO and then drove Emma to Chamblee, Ga, to the home of some old friends, Ann and Jack Verner. I had been friends with Ann’s daughter, Kathy, since high school, and she was Emma’s Godmother, but we’d lost touch over the past few years after Kathy left her husband who told Phill and I that Kathy had been having some affairs. Emma really couldn’t stand to have anything to do with Kathy, and when Kathy was living with her girl/boyfriend Andrea/Jason (It gets very confusing, but Andrea was going through a sex change to become Jason.) Kathy had a little birthday party/open house at their new home. Emma absolutely refused to go, and Phill was working, so since it was on the way, I dropped Emma off at Sandra Brooks McCravy’s house in Lawrenceville, Ga. on my way to Kathy’s. Sandi said Emma could stay with her while I went to Kathy’s. I stayed for a short visit at Kathy’s new home, and then went back to pick up Emma. Emma would not have anything to do with Kathy and refused to accept Kathy as a friend on her facebook up until she pulled the abused child act and then all of a sudden, Kathy was fine to have as a friend again.
Emma once again got to play the victim and was treated as the house guest at the Verner’s home. I don’t remember what all they did, but even with the trauma of being an abused child, Emma put pictures on her facebook of her visit. I have a cute one of her and one of Ann and Jack’s granddaughters