Tag Archives: Dr. Elizabeth Genie Burnett

Emma Stories – Homecoming and other High School Stories

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PREFACE: 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 in Ohio at the home of her fiance’s grandparents, attending Wright State University http://www.wright.edu/, and talking about getting married. 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.) She also claims her future mother-in-law lives in fear that Emma’s mother will show up and kill her entire family. A while back I received an e-mail from this lady that said, “…. I am not afraid of you or fear that you are going to murder me or my family. That is ridiculous!!!”………… P.S.T., you are very welcome.

Emma Roey, Ready for High School at JCCHS.

Emma Roey, Ready for High School at JCCHS.

Emma could tell some great stories. Of course, whether they were true or not is another question. If you’ve been reading along, I mentioned a story about Emma going to the youth group of an acquaintance she knew from school in 9th grade at JCCHS (Jackson County Comprehensive High School, Jefferson, Ga.) and how Emma came home and reenacted the evening of some horrible things the youth leader said about his dog being run over and how his life was like a country song, making his two daughters, who were in the youth group cry. Emma had also claimed that his wife, who kept a home daycare, took off, leaving the children unsupervised, and how one of the children had had a bloody nose had had gotten blood all over the bedroom and all over the comforter of Emma’s school mate.
The most entertaining part of her story of that evening was when Emma told me about giving her “testimony” to the youth group of how she was “saved.” Emma gave me a long, drawn out story, and it was hilarious. Of course, later on, I got in touch with Emma’s schoolmate’s father who was also the youth leader of the church (Walnut Fork Baptist Church, Hoschton, Ga.) and discovered that pretty much most of what Emma told me was a lie. He assured me that the teenagers did not give testimonies during Youth Group. There were a few elements of truth, the family dog had been hit by a car, and Emma took them and went off spinning her own tale in a whole different direction. (At one time, Emma considered politics for a career. I think she could definitely work behind the scenes as a spin doctor! Just a different kind of doctor from being a pediatrician, which was something Emma talked about being from about 2nd grade until she got into high school. This saddens me because we all know with the Healthcare Crisis, that there is a shortage of doctors. Emma has the smarts that I think she could have been an excellent doctor, or anything else she wanted to be, but she has chosen to use her gifts in a much more destructive way.)
Back to my story…….. When Emma attended Jefferson High School, in Jefferson Ga., she was in 11th grade. It was fall, and Homecoming was approaching. There was a young man in a couple of Emma’s classes ,that she did not like for whatever reason, and his named Bryson Quinn, if I have the spelling right. I’m sure Bryson was a perfectly fine young man, but when Emma didn’t like someone, that was pretty much it, and there was no going back. According to Emma, she was standing outside of a classroom, waiting for the previous class to be dismissed so that her class could go in. Bryson went up to her and asked her to go to the Homecoming Dance with her. She panicked and said, “I can’t.”
Bryson asked, “Why not?”
Emma said, “Uh…………………..my boyfriend wouldn’t like that.”
and then she claimed that an older boy named Cody, who was in her drama class, came up behind her and said in a deep voice, “Yeah. I wouldn’t like that.” and Bryson walked off.
Then Cody looked at Emma and said, “You don’t really have a boyfriend do you?”
to which Emma replied,”Ummm, no.”
Of course, just telling the story is not near as funny as seeing Emma act it out. Was it true? Who knows? Emma had told Phill and I that she and a group of girls were not interested in going to homecoming, but they wanted to dress up and go out, so they were going to put on pretty dresses and go bowling. I thought this sounded like a great idea for a night of fun and I encouraged it, telling her I’d be happy to drive her (and anyone else that needed a ride) to the bowling alley. These plans never materialized, and except when Phill and I had Emma invite a group of girls to a cookout at our house, Emma never hung out socially with anyone from school.
I’ve more or less been writing Emma’s story as a series of essays because I don’t think I could sit down and write a book, and because I get one topic stuck in my craw for a while and decide that is what I want to write about. (“Squirrel!” for those of you that saw UP. Phill, Emma, and I went together to see that movie, and we all enjoyed it.)
I want to start writing about our experiences with having Emma in therapy, but later, I’ll be posting stories Emma told from both JCCHS (Jackson County Comprehensive High School) and Jefferson High School. It wasn’t until I started writing them down that I realized Phill and I should have been looking into Emma’s stories. While at JCCHS, Emma claimed one of the coaches, Coach Beaver, was also a policeman in Statham, Ga. Coach Beaver also taught Emma’s Freshman Focus class, and she claimed he was always telling them about all the drugs in Statham and what a problem drugs were there. Of course, Emma talked a lot about drugs and sex while she attended JCCHS. She claimed just about everyone she knew smoked, used drugs, had sex, went to drug parties, and that drugs were sold on the bus, that kids smoked on the bus, etc. I mentioned earlier how Emma talked about the drug parties where everyone took pills from their parent’s medicine cabinets and threw them into a bowl, and then took a handful of these mixed pills, and how Emma had gotten that story from the Reader’s Digest.
Also during Emma’s time at JCCHS, we saw a story on the news about a young man who preferred to dress as a girl, wear makeup, etc. I don’t even remember what the story was about, if it was a lawsuit or what, but I remember the video of the boy fixing his hair, applying makeup (I remember the eyeliner because that is a skill I never mastered!), and some time after that, Emma claimed there were a couple of boys at school who dressed as girls by wearing dresses, pantyhose, and makeup, and the school would do nothing about it, even though it violated the dress code. I remember being a little shocked that the school would allow this, but other than that, it didn’t affect me or my daughter, so I wasn’t too concerned. I will mention that in all my visits to JCCHS, I never saw any young men dressed as girls. I never called the school to see if this was allowed, and at this point, it doesn’t really matter.
We had two neighbor boys who went to JCCHS and were very active in school, and Emma talked about how they always looked stoned in the mornings, and how the younger boy, who later turned down an appointment to West Point to attend UGA, was known for his partying. To be honest, I think when these two boys went to school in the morning, they were typical teens and just not quite awake that early in the morning.
Emma also like talking about a feud between Coach Beaver and our neighbor, Dr. Cora Andrews, who is the head of the PE department at JCCHS. (When Emma claimed there were at least 10 pregnant freshman, it was Dr. Cora Andrews who assured me the high school had had two pregnancies that year.) According to Emma, during PE, Dr. Cora Andrews might walk through and ask Emma to have the class do something simple like leaving the volley ball nets out because she had the next class, but if Emma tried to do what Dr. Andrews asked, Coach Beaver would make sure the opposite was done. If Dr. Andrews asked them to leave something out, Coach Beaver made them put it away. Was there a feud between the two teachers or was this just another entertaining story? And, just how does a coach work a second job as a police officer? I’m kind of guessing Coach Beaver was a coach and a teacher, but the policeman part was Emma’s imagination.
I will get back to more of Emma’s High School stories later, but for now, I want to work on writing about our experiences with therapy, so that’s coming up next.

Emma and SEFF (Southeast Electric Flight Festival)

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seff banner2
***UPDATED MARCH 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 was recently living in Ohio at the home of her fiance’s grandparents, attending Wright State University http://www.wright.edu/, and talking about getting married to T. 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.) She also claims her future mother-in-law lives in fear that Emma’s mother will show up and kill her entire family. A while back I received an e-mail from T’s mother that said, “…. I am not afraid of you or fear that you are going to murder me or my family. That is ridiculous!!!” P.S.T., you are very welcome.

380asm

As a child, Phill built and flew RC planes, but had quit them before I’d ever known him. Years ago, at my job, I met someone who flew, and told this gentleman, “Oh, my husband did that as a kid.” He made it sound like so much fun, I went home and talked to Phill about it and encouraged him to get back into it. (It didn’t take much encouragement.) He picked out a plane for his birthday, and his hobby grew and grew. It wasn’t long before our house was full of planes, plane parts, radio parts, materials for building, and odds and ends that I couldn’t have identified.

Phill got involved with some local groups like the Scenic RC Flyers in Winder/Statham, and the Electric Drones in Jackson County, near our home, but his favorite RC event was SEFF (Southeast Electric Flight Festival) which is held in Americus, Ga. http://www.seffweek.com/ This year, SEFF will be held April 7th-13th. Phill talked about SEFF all year long. Before SEFF, he spent months planning what planes he was going to build and take, and after the event, he talked about it for months and made plans for the next year. He volunteered with SEFF, which paid for his trip and hotel, and his main job was being in charge of the raffle. It is a big raffle where vendors donate lots of prizes, and Phill always bought a lot of tickets, so he came home with at least a few prizes. Because I was homeschooling Emma, and worked at an arts program where the end of the year program coincided with SEFF, plus the fact that we had 3 dogs and a foster dog at home, I never attended but finally planned on going in 2011, the year Emma’s really turned into a mess. Although her actions stopped me from attending, I don’t think it stopped Phill, and I believe he took Emma with him. Phill’s family could be falling apart, but he was not going to miss his big week of airplanes.

I don’t remember what year it was when Phill took Emma with him to Seff. I believe she was in 7th or 8th grade. Phill had volunteered the year before and thought it would be great if Emma could go and help. It sounded like a good opportunity for Emma to get to try something new, and as a homeschooling mom, it gave me a break as well.

Phill had tried to get Emma interested in RC planes, but she never was. She built a simple plane with his help when she was about 10-12, and she would take the controls if he took her out to the field, but she was never that interested. It just wasn’t her cup of tea. SEFF, however, would become an event that Emma looked forward to every year.

I’m not sure of his title, but SEFF was run by a man named Jeff Meyers of the Fayetteville Flyers. He may have started the event, I’m not really sure. From what Phill and Emma told me, it’s a week long RC event where there are vendors, “pilots” (the folks who fly RC planes) and lots of socializing with dinners, drinking, poker, entertainment, contests, etc. It became the largest electric RC plane event in the U.S. or maybe the world, and one year they broke the world record of the most planes in the air at one time. Phill was partiulcarly proud of being part of this event which can be seen here:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/meojwdw

Seff takes place in Americus Ga. at Mac Hodges field:

Hodges Hobbies‎
428 Neil Hodges Road
Andersonville, GA 31711
(866) 924-9505
hodgeshobbies.com‎

Phill liked to camp at SEFF so that he could be in the middle of the action all the time, but Emma was not a “roughing it” kind of girl and preferred to stay in a hotel. She was also afraid of staying in a tent, that the boogie man would get her. If Emma went to bed at night, from what Phill told me, he was close by, drinking beer with the guys or whatever, but never far away from Emma. Emma was the kind of kid who got nervous taking a walk in the neighborhood by herself, so it didn’t surprise me that Emma didn’t like going to bed by herself when Phill was still up. They always ended up compromising and spent a couple of nights in a tent, and then the rest of the time in a hotel.

The first year, Emma’s duties were fairly minimal. I remember her talking about things like labeling the beer bottles. (One of the RC members made an annual “SEFF Beer.”) Every year, her duties grew, and she loved being Jeff’s right hand and was given the title “Administrative Assistant.” Phill and I were both very proud of Emma and the job she did every year at SEFF. The child who, in typical kid fashion, couldn’t do her chores at home, or who lied about having done them until mom or dad went to check, worked her tail off at SEFF and did a great job. No one had to remind her what her jobs were and no one had to tell her over and over again to do them. Maybe she was growing up! One year after SEFF was over, I believe Emma was in about 9th grade, Jeff sent out a nice e-mail about SEFF and while I can’t remember word for word what he said, there was something in there about how he thought he was going to quit SEFF until Emma came along and made his job so much easier. Phill and I couldn’t have been more proud.

During SEFF week, Emma and I talked on the phone every day, although sometimes not for long as she was very busy. When she would get home from SEFF, she would talk to me for hours about everything that went on. One of the things Emma was responsible for, as she told me, was vendor placement, and she had to deal with vendors complaining about their spots. She got a little frustrated with some of the vendors giving her a hard time, but it sounded like, from what she told me, that she handled her responsibilities well, and I thought she was getting some great experience for what would be coming down the road for her in real life one day. To make things even better to Emma, Jeff started paying the volunteers. I believe Emma came home with something like $300-$350 after spending a week at SEFF. For a kid who’d never done more than babysat, that was a nice chunk of change! Even though this was supposed to be “volunteering,” I couldn’t object to Emma being paid because from what she and Phill told me, she put in some long hours for the week she was down there.

The only thing that concerned me was that Emma never seemed to get along with kids her own age. Not that there were a lot of kids at SEFF, but one year, a couple of girls who I believe were the granddaughters of one of the “Hodge Hounds” (some of the SEFF regulars) who wanted to volunteer. Emma, for whatever reason, didn’t get along with these girls and complained frequently about them. From what she told me, the drove the golf carts which were used as shuttles, and they were lazy and didn’t work as hard as Emma did. Emma always seemed to have trouble making friends her own age. I’ll get more into this topic later when I talk about Emma’s schools and schooling, but just like the church youth group, Emma loved running things, but didn’t seem to make friends if she was around anyone for any length of time. She could see them once or twice a year and leave messages on facebook, but she never had any close friends that she saw regularly. She got along well with adults, and younger kids, like the little girls of Mike and Wendy Timms, who also went to SEFF. Emma loved being “big sister” to younger kids like the Timms girls, who were also homeschooled. (Emma would later take advatage of the Timms family while claiming to be “abused” but more on that later.

Another interesting note is the year that Emma claimed to be “molested.” On March 21, 2010, her dad’s birthday, Emma confessed to her dad and me that she had been molested by the priest at our church a few years before when she was 12 years old. She made up a story about a cyber friend being raped and claimed that this friend called Emma from the hospital ER. Emma then claimed that this incident brought up her “repressed memories” of her own molestation. SEFF 2010 was held about a month later, April 22-25, 2010, and Phill was not going to miss it. We talked it over and decided it might good for Emma to go to get away from all we’d been through dealing with the police, detectives, the church, DFACS, the sheriff’s department, etc. in the wake of Emma’s accusation.

Phill took Emma to SEFF 2010, but he told me she mostly hid out in the tent. It sounded like she did not do much in the way of assisting Jeff like she had in previous years. I spoke to Emma on the phone every day, and she was very paranoid about the priest finding her and coming after her. I tried to reassure her that the priest would have no way of knowing that she was at this RC event down in Americus, Georgia, but Emma was adamant that he would find out and come after her. Phill finally had to tell Jeff what was going on because Emma wasn’t doing her job. Of course, Emma got lots of attention and sympathy for being the sexually abused child. I now suspect that her paranoia was her guilty conscience, although I have often wondered if Emma has a conscience. I’m not sure how Phill now justifies Emma’s behavior. He knows Emma made up the rape story, and he knows Emma wasn’t molested. I wasn’t there, in Americus, when Emma was acting so fearful and paranoid about the priest coming after her, but from what Phill told me, and from speaking to Emma, I can picture just how she behaved. Does Phill actually still believe this child was sexually molested by a priest?

As always, if you have any questions or comments, you can e-mail me: losingemma@gmail.com
Sorry, no time to proofread, so bear with me and I’ll work on it later.

The Police At the Door

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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.)

After a shopping trip to Kohl's, I made Emma a necklace and some earrings to go with this outfit she picked out.

After a shopping trip to Kohl’s, I made Emma a necklace and some earrings to go with this outfit she picked out.


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

Emma

Emma

Was it worth it?

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metamorphoses
Emma had the lead in the Jackson County Comprehensive High School’s performance of Metamorphosis under Bonnie Roberts. It was a great start for her future in drama.

I will get back to the story about the police report shortly. I just haven’t had a lot of time to write lately. I just found a document where Phill and I put together all the phone calls between Emma and Sandi McCravy (Sandra Brooks McCravy). On Dec. 21 and 22, Emma called Sandi 14 times. I will also show Emma’s earlier phone records where she was calling Sandi long after Phill and I thought she was in bed asleep. For example, on Dec. 8, Emma called Sandi at 10:22 in the evening and was on the phone for 89 minutes. On Dec. 10, she called Sandi at 11:57 pm, when she was supposed to have been asleep, and talked for 58 minutes. I will be publishing Emma’s phone records and you readers can decide for yourself if this grown woman was spending an inappropriate amount of time on the phone with a teenage girl without her parent’s knowledge.

BUT…tonight I was thinking about something else, and since I know Emma reads the blog, I am wondering if all this was worth it to her. I was thinking about how when Emma started college, I was planning on going back to work full time to help pay for it. Emma gained her freedom at 17 because of the things she did. She contributed greatly to her parents’ divorce and became the woman of the house, taking over her mom’s position in the house hold. I remember one morning, in Jan. of 2011, just after Emma had accused me for the 1st time of abusing her, hurrying Emma to get ready for school because we needed to leave, (I was driving her from our home in Hoschton, Ga. to Jefferson High School in Jefferson, Ga. http://jhs.jeffcityschools.org/) Emma was frustrated with me for rushing her, and screamed at me, “I’m tired of people telling me what to do!!” I even remember talking to Suzie McGarvey at Lanier Counseling (now with North Gwinnett Counseling Associates) about that particular morning.

Anyway…………….what I was wondering about was if it was worth it. Emma got to start college early and went to Georgia Gwinnett. Then, she had a scholarship to Piedmont College in Demorest Ga., which she gave up to move up to Ohio with Tyler Buchheim and attend Wright State. Being a rather practical person, I was doing the math. Well, if I was still married and working, Emma could easily have another $3000 a month for college between Phill and me. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to play the role of victim if she was just another kid in college. Maybe that role wouldn’t have enough drama for her. I just wonder if Emma ever thinks, “Well, darn. I messed this up. I could have had a lot more money for college!”

And, yes, I’m feeling a bit snarky this eveing.

I will get back to the Police Report in the next few days. As always, if you want to comment or share any of your own Emma stories, send them to: losingemma@gmail.com

Emma Police Report Part 2

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UPDATED ** Jan. 27, 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 is now living in Ohio at the home of her fiance’s grandparents, attending Wright State University http://www.wright.edu/, and talking about getting married. Emma claims her mother poisoned her with DDT and that she had to move to Ohio to get away from her mother. She also claims her future mother-in-law lives in fear that Emma’s mother will show up and kill her entire family.)

A Happier Birthday, 203

A Happier Birthday, 203


So, just what happened on the day Emma had Dr. Genie Burnett http://www.mannatreatment.com/ and Sandi McCravy call the police? Keep in mind that it is a little more than three years later as I write this. I did write it up at the time, but Phill has all the family computers that we had at that time.

Dec. 21, 2010

In Dec., we had just changed therapists from Dr. Genie Burnett http://www.mannatreatment.com/ to Suzie McGarvey http://www.ngcounselingassociates.com/ mostly at Phill’s insistence. Emma had been seeing Dr. Genie Burnett since July of 2010 and did not seem to be dealing with her molestation issue. She vomited frequently, missed school, and had to take a lot of Zofran. She was paranoid and very afraid the the priest who supposedly molested her was going to come after her. She was thinking about college and wanted to go to Pensacola Christian College because it was gated and she would feel safer there. She became very angry when Phill and I did not agree with her college choice because it was not an accredited school. Emma also had begun seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Chahin in Athens, Ga. Emma’s GI doctor had recommended that Emma see a psychiatrist to go on an antidepressant because she vomited so much. Emma was on one antidepressant and complained about it, so Dr. Chahim switched her to another. I don’t remember the order, but the two antidepressants she took were Lexapro and Celexa.

Phill had insisted that we change therapists. He had gone to an appointment with Emma, and when he came home he said that he felt like Dr. Genie Burnett http://www.mannatreatment.com/ really did not like me from some of the things she had said, and he felt like she was not helping Emma. I didn’t care much for Dr. Genie Burnett, but I felt like Emma needed someone to talk to, and if Emma had a good rapport with her, it was ok with me, but at Phill’s urging we looked for another therapist. Phill called someone who worked with abuse victims, and she gave us some names and numbers. Emma and I went to a couple of therapists, and we both liked Suzie McGarvey http://www.ngcounselingassociates who at the time worked at Lanier Counseling http://www.laniercounseling.com/index.html , so we made the switch. Later, when I took Emma to see Dr. Chahim for the last time, Emma was very rude and disrespectful, while we sat in Dr. Chahim’s office. She was working on an art homework assignment, and would not even look at her psychiatrist when Dr. Chahim spoke to Emma. I had to ask Emma to put away her art project and pay attention to the Dr. Emma continued with her rude behavior, acting disinterested and giving one word responses to the Dr. Any of you that know Emma know she is very verbal, and can talk up a storm. On the way home, I scolded Emma for her rude behavior to Dr. Chahim. Emma got very angry and screamed at me that I took her away from Dr. Genie Burnett just because I knew Emma liked her better than she liked me.

Emma’s birthday had been Sunday, Dec. 19th. She turned 17. At that time, Emma didn’t really have any friends except for Kayla Benifield Weaver, whom she saw once or twice a year, and “Lacey” her cyber friend. Emma had dropped the church youth group and we changed churches, so there wasn’t anyone to invite to a party. Even when Emma was in the church youth group, she loved going and being the secretary, and sort of running things as much as she could, but she did not hang out with the kids in the group outside of church much. Phill and I tried to encourage her to have friends over and were always willing to cook or take her and her friends somewhere, and Emma did have people over a few times, but not very often.

We got up Sunday morning, and Phill complained of feeling sick, so he decided to stay home and Emma and I went to church at Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Flowery Branch Ga. http://www.holytrinityflowerybranch.org We went to Sunday school, coffee hour, and then the worship service. Holy Trinity was a very small church, and there were probably about 10 people there for Sunday school that day and then maybe about 25 in church. Fr. George Ivey had gotten very involved with Emma’s abuse story and had talked to people on our behalf including Bishop Foley Beach http://adots.org/about/bishop-and-staff/ who was also interested in Emma’s story. Fr. George Ivey had also gone with us to talk to attorneys and was very helpful in answering the attorney’s questions about the church. He had met the man Emma accused of molesting her and was obviously not a fan. When we first told Father George about Emma’s accusation of being molested by a priest, he said that before Emma told him who it was, that particular priest was who he thought of as the possible “molester.”

Before Sunday School, being the proud mom, I told Fr. George it was Emma’s birthday, and everyone wished her a Happy Birthday, and then during the church announcements, Fr. George mentioned Emma’s birthday, and it was also the birthday of a young man, a year older than Emma, who was not at church that day. Emma enjoyed all the attention she received with folks wishing her a happy birthday, but later, after claiming I physically abused her, she told Phill that I embarrassed her by mention her birthday. Knowing Emma as I do, I have no idea why she said that. This is a child who loved attention.

We had planned on going out to dinner for Emma’s birthday, but when we came home from church, Phill still wasn’t feeling well, so he told Emma that we would take her out on Friday. Phill works for UPS, and he and his partner, Carl Lehmann, of Dacula Ga., would leave late Monday night, and get home either late Thursday night or early Friday morning. Emma seemed ok with this, although later, she told her therapist Suzie McGarvey http://www.ngcounselingassociates.com/ that her birthday was “not special enough.”

Emma opened her gifts. I don’t even remember now everything she got, but her big gift was a notebook computer, and we also got her some clothes. That evening, we had some premade cheese fondue which Emma loved, and we had gotten her usual request of a cheesecake instead of a birthday cake.
My sister had sent her an outfit and a very cute bracelet that I guess you would call “recycled jewelry” made out of piano wire. Because Emma played the piano, I thought this was such a clever and thoughtful gift for Emma. Later, when my sister called Emma, Emma told her that I’d taken her shopping for clothes earlier, and she claimed that we didn’t even get her a birthday cake. (Well, the cake part is true anyway.) Emma was thrilled with the computer, and didn’t even mention it to my sister whom Emma had been very close to up until I told my sister about the “molestation” and then Emma tended to avoid her. Emma was also pretty rude to my sister and brother-in-law, when we’d gone up for a visit that summer. She was furious with me for telling my sister about the “molestation” but that is for another post.

I wrote about Emma’s bathroom kicking incident earlier, but since it it tied in with the police report, I will mention it again.

Our home on Buck Trail in Hoschton had split bedrooms. Our bedroom was on one side of the house, and Emma’s and a 3rd bedroom were on the other. Emma’s bathroom was between the two bedrooms.
That Sunday afternoon, on Emma’s birthday, Phill and I were in separate rooms when we heard a SLAM and then heard Emma scream. We both ran through the living room, towards her bathroom, just as she came out of her bathroom. We asked what happened, and Emma claimed to have accidently kicked the cabinet in her bathroom. I did not understand how she could have done this as she had a very small bathroom composed of a toilet, a sink with a cabinet below, and a tub. There was enough room to turn around in it, but not much more.

I was more concerned about Emma’s foot than I was about how she managed to kick her cabinet, so I examined the foot and checked to see if she could wiggle her toes. Emma asked me if she broke her toes, and I said I didn’t think so because she could wiggle them. The next day, Emma did not complain about her foot, and I had no idea about Emma using popsicle sticks as splints, and actually find this kind of amusing.

Monday was a quiet day, and Phill left for work Mon. night. Every other week, it would be his turn to drive out, so he would take a nap in the evening before work. He usually slept in the bed in the spare bedroom, and if Emma and I watched television or anything, we usually watched in my bedroom since that would be the television furthest away from where Phill was sleeping. Phill had hooked up a computer to the tv in the bedroom in addition to the computer in the breakfast nook, and the laptop he kept on the sunporch. Emma and I had gotten into watching Criminal Minds (Kind of ironic, I know.) and she found some websites where we could watch from the beginning. We wanted to catch up to the current 2010-2011 season.

Emma had tried to get Criminal Minds from a website, but it wasn’t working right. Phill had warned me that some of these sites could be dangerous for your computer. I don’t remember if he said they could put a virus on or what, but I felt like if they did not work right, I did not want to mess around with them.
I told Emma that we should just skip it and wait until Daddy was home to help us. If I remember right, there wasn’t anything else we wanted to watch, so I picked up a book and was reading in bed, and Emma went to her room.

On Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010, Emma had an appointment with Suzie McGarvey http://www.ngcounselingassociates.com/ at Lanier Counseling in Buford, Ga. http://www.laniercounseling.com This may have been Emma’s second appointment alone with Suzie McGarvey. Emma had been acting kind of off, as I mentioned earlier, giving me hateful looks (as a friend of mine describes as “eat shit and die” looks) and when I would catch her at it, I asked her what was wrong, and she would say, “nothing” and quickly turn away. I should have known she was up to something, and I think deep down, I did.

It was a nasty, cold, rainy day, and we were going home, but Emma needed to get something for her dad for Christmas, so we stopped at the Hamilton Mill Kohl’s. I had one of our dogs with us, so I dropped Emma off at the door, parked the car and walked the dog in the rainy drizzle, and then put him back in the car and went in the store to meet Emma. Emma, being always the bargain shopper, found two shirts on sale that she got for her dad. We left Kohl’s and Emma wanted to stop at Starbuck’s for a frappe, which was something we did occasionally, but it had gotten to whenever we got in the car, Emma was asking to stop and eat at Chik-Fil-A or Starbucks or a few other places, but these two were probably her favorites. I had gotten tired of Emma expecting to go out to eat every time we got in the car, and I said somewhat sarcastically, “What, are you buying?” and Emma said yes, so I agreed. We stopped at Starbucks, and I sat in the parking lot while she went inside. I may have called Phill while I waited on her, but I really don’t remember now.

We came home, and with the nasty weather, we didn’t go out again. That night, we had a simple dinner.

I went to bed about 11:00 and was awakened at about 11:30 by the sound of a car door slamming.

Coming up next, The Police at the Door…

Emma and Johnathan McCravy after singing at a Gwinnett Young Singers concert in Lilburn, Ga.

Emma and Johnathan McCravy after singing at a Gwinnett Young Singers concert in Lilburn, Ga.

Emma’s Police Report

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Edited Jan 19 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 is now engaged to Tyler Buchheim, an architecture student at Notre Dame,  living in Liberty Township Ohio at the home of her fiance’s grandparents, Merrie and Albert Knopp, and attending Wright State University .http://www.wright.edu/. Emma claims her mother poisoned her with DDT and that she had to move to Ohio to get away from her mother. She also claims her future mother-in-law, Sherry Knopp Buchheim, lives in fear that Emma’s mother will show up and kill her entire family.)
Emma 001

At least once a week, I run into someone or hear from someone who asks me about Emma. Where is she? What is she doing? What is wrong with her?

The other day, I went to the Jackson County, Ga. Sheriff’s office to pick up a copy of Emma’s police report. Or, I should say ONE of Emma’s police reports. This has been on my mind for quite some time, but I never seemed to get out there. I forgot to ask for the report on her molestation accusation, and the report where a car turned around in the driveway, so she thought her mother was stalking her, so I will be going back to get those.

After I picked up the report, I e-mailed Emma and told her that I had the report and asked her if she would like to discuss it before I published it on the blog. Today, I got an e-mail from a Katherine Smith, but it was signed by Emma Katherine Roey. (Maybe Emma has changed her name?) It was basically the same e-mail Emma sent me over a year ago telling me not to contact her by phone, text, e-mail, etc., and written just exactly as her attorney told her to. At the end of the e-mail, she threatened to take legal action against me if I contact her again. I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath on a facebook friend request from Emma.

I am sort of wondering about this. Emma can send me a “drop dead” e-mail, and then some time later Emma can contact me, but then if I e-mail Emma, she can send me another “drop dead” e-mail and threaten me with legal action if I contact her again? I know I was just a dumb housewife and mother (Emma described her dad, a truck driver for UPS, as someone who “Just sits on his butt all day.”), but I don’t think this argument would hold with a judge. I don’t think you can tell someone not to contact you, threaten them with legal action, and then contact them whenever the mood strikes you. Hmmmmm, maybe this is a question for Handel on the Law. No worries though, I have no intention of contacting Emma, however my door is always open should she wish to contact me again.

After going to the sheriff’s office, I went by DFACS and had an interesting conversation with one of the social workers. Apparently, having your child accuse of you abusing her is not all that uncommon.

I’m attaching Emma’s police report below. I did insert the link to Dr. Genie Burnett http://www.mannatreatment.com/our_staff into the report. In the next post, we will take this police report apart, line by line, and I will tell you exactly what happened.

I had to type in the police report because I couldn’t get the scanned copy to load, but if anyone would like a copy of the police report, just e-mail me at: losingemma@gmail.com and I will send it to you.

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.

 

What’s Coming in 2014

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(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 is now living in Liberty Township, Ohio at the home of her fiance’s grandparents, Merrie and Albert Knopp, attending Wright State University http://www.wright.edu/, and talking about getting married to Tyler Buchheim, an architecture student at Notre Dame. Emma claims her mother poisoned her with DDT and that she had to move to Ohio to get away from her mother. She also claims her future mother-in-law, Sherry Buchheim lives in fear that Emma’s mother will show up and kill her entire family.

Jan 1, 2014

I have had some topics rolling around in  my head, just things I want to work on, but I haven’t sat down to do it.  I think it is both painful and therapeutic to write, and I just need to get a little more organized in setting aside some specified writing time.  I want to tell Emma’s story, and if my experience helps even one other family, it will be worth it.

To those of you who’ve asked if I’ve heard any more from Emma, no, I haven’t.  I received a rather hateful e-mail from her in Sept., and that is it for the past 2 1/2 years.   I remember in the past meeting people who were estranged from a child, and I wondered how in the world they survived it.  Well, now I know.  You just do.  I thank God for friends and family because I’m not sure I would have survived this without the help of some very special people in my life.

I think from my  previous posts, we can pretty much establish that Emma has a lying problem.  She lies about people she knows, people she doesn’t know, people she likes, people she doesn’t like.  She lied about friends, neighbors, teachers, kids at school, people from church etc.  She lied about her best friends “Lacey” (cyber friend) and Kayla Benifield Weaver.  She lied about Kayla’s husband’s family, Kayla’s parents and grandparents who were all so generous to have Emma as a guest in their homes many times.  I had no idea how much Emma lied until I stated investigating.  Sadly, this is something Phill and I should have done much sooner, but we had no idea that Emma had such a problem with making up stories about other people.

I want to share more of Emma’s lies, and I may work on more of her stories, but if you’ve been reading the blog, I don’t think I need to share much more to convince anyone that Emma has a problem.  Some of the lies get more interesting when Emma started high school both at Jackson County Comprehensive High School and Jefferson High School, so I’m going to be working on these and will get to posting them eventually.  Some of Emma’s stories were downright entertaining even if they weren’t true.  I keep thinking back to when Emma was in about 2nd grade, the kids all voted on what they thought each other would be when the grew up, and Emma was voted most likely to be an author.  I guess she was good at telling stories even back then.

Emma also takes stories that happened to other people and makes them hers. She heard a story about her priest and his wife calling 911 on their child, and made the story about herself. She became the babysitter who had to call 911 on the priest’s child. She heard about someone else’s molestation and made the story about herself. She heard about someone else’s alcoholism and told the same stories to DFACS only changing them to her mother so that she could be the victim. I don’t know enough about what kind of diagnosis this would be. What do you call someone who steals other people’s experiences and then claims them for her own?

There are other topics that have been weighing heavily on my mind though, and I think these are what I want to work on now.  Sometimes, the thought of writing it out is pretty overwhelming for me, one who is so NOT a writer, and I appreciate you readers who bear with me and read through anyway. 

I would like to get a copy of the police report where Emma accused me of  physically abusing her, and I want to share that here as well as the events of that night.  I hope to get over to the Jackson County’s sheriff’s office in the next couple of weeks to obtain that.

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Emma’s 17th birthday, Dec. 19th, 2010.  She got a notebook computer which she nicknamed Mark.  This photo was taken a couple of days before Emma called (or had someone else call) the police to say she was being abused.  This was also the day she went in her bathroom and kicked her cabinet so hard that she screamed and Phill and I ran in to see what happened.  She asked me to look at her foot to see if her toes were broken.  Later, she showed DFACSs and the police her foot and claimed that her mother kicked her foot.

Someone commented to me that Emma seemed to have an obsession with sex.  I’d never really thought that much about it until they pointed out to me how Emma used rape, molestation, abuse, and some of the other things she said about kids at school, how so many young girls were pregnant, how everyone she knew was sexually active, but Emma bought herself a “purity ring” and wore it.  Why did Emma accuse the priest who baptized her dad of molesting her? I think partly because Emma was upset with a boy who liked her and then dropped her, but Emma had been annoyed with the church for it’s liberal leanings.  Could that have contributed to her turning on her own church?

Another topic I’ve wanted to write about it therapy.  I’ve talked to numerous social workers, counselors, etc, and I’ve heard so many negative stories from other people about their own experiences with therapy.  Personally, I think therapy has it’s good points, and sometimes people need an outside opinion to help work through things, but after our experience, I definitely want to warn parents about therapy.  I’m not opposed to therapy or therapists, but one therapist told me they felt like 4 out of 5 therapists weren’t worth their salt.  That’s kind of scary, isn’t it?  I think in our case, we had a young lady who was too smart for her therapists.  I want to write about our each therapist and our experience with each. 

One more thing that has been weighing heavily on my mind is all the rewards Emma received for being a victim.   Emma really took advantages of friends of neighbors who wanted to help this poor, abused child.  She stayed with friends, neighbors, friend’s of Phill’s from his RC airplane group.  She was fed, treated like a beloved guest, taken out to eat, taken to plays, given clothes, taken to the beauty shop, etc.  The whole victim thing really worked out well for Emma.  She got a lot of attention.  I definitely want to share more about this.

Anyway, these are the topics that have been on my mind and probably what I will be working on next.

As always, if you have any questions or comments and don’t want to send them through the blog, you can contact me at:  losingemma@gmail.com

 

Emma and Kayla —–With Friends Like This…

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Updated Nov. 22, 2013

(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 claimed she had to move in with her boyfriend’s family in Ohio to get away from her mother, and later claimed her boyfriend’s mother was afraid that her mother would show up and kill the entire family. (I have confirmed with the boyfriend’s mother that she never feared any such thing.)

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Emma Kate Roey and Kayla Benifield Weaver at church camp in 2003. (Kayla is now a computer science student at Armstrong University in Savannah, Ga.)

Emma met Kayla Benifield at church camp in 2003 when Emma was 9 years old. Kayla was a couple years older. The two girls were in the same cabin and became friends. On the last day of camp, the parents come to see a performance, pick up their kids, and have dinner in the dining hall. Phill and I sat at a table with Kayla’s parents and grandparents. At one point, I told Kayla’s mom and dad that we’d love to have Kayla over to visit, and I got sort of a noncommittal response and sensed something odd. Later, I was to find out that Kayla’s parents were divorced, and Kayla was actually being raised by her grandparents who lived in Martin, Ga., but Kayla’s mom Sheree Benifield (later Barwise) lived not far from us in Buford. Later, she moved even closer to us in Hoschton. I never found out why Kayla’s grandparents were the ones who raised her, and I never asked. When I met Sheree, she was working for a vet and going to school. She seemed like a nice lady, and she was probably a good bit younger than I, so I always assumed maybe she’d married young and wasn’t equipped to be a single mom after the divorce.

Kayla came down to visit her mother now and then, and Emma and Kayla would get together a couple of times a year. Emma said Kayla only visited her mother twice a year because her grandparents had custody and that was all the time Sheree was allowed to have Kayla. Sometimes Kayla would come to our home and spend the night, but probably a little more often, Emma went to Kayla’s because Kayla was never down for very long, and we didn’t want to take away from time with her mom.

Kayla was always the perfect guest in our home. She was kind of quiet, shy, well behaved, and never a bother. She loved butterflies and had almost platinum blonde hair, and when she got a little older, she started dying some of her hair bright pink. It sounded odd when Emma told me about it until the first time I saw it, but it was cute and seemed to fit her personality. Anytime she was down visiting her mom, we were always happy to have her over, although that “we” usually meant me because when Kayla first started coming over, Phill was working out of town on the weekends. Of course, I was relegated to cook and maid, but at that time, we were homeschooling Emma, so it was always nice for me to get a break from her. As well as mom and teacher, and even though Emma was in many extracurricular activities, I was usually her playmate, breakfast, lunch, and dinner companion, the one she wanted to play a game with, sit and watch a movie with, and the one who read to her in the evenings before bed. During the 5 years that we homeschooled, I never got much of a break, so in addition to not having Emma constantly at my side, it was fun to be more of an observer and get to see Emma and Kayla having fun together.

I think Emma was in 10th grade when Kayla graduated and went off to Marist College in New York. Recently, I heard that Kayla married her longtime boyfriend, Blair Weaver. I wish Kayla and Blair a long and happy marriage.

Now that I’ve introduced you to Emma’s childhood friend, next post I will share some of the lies and stories Emma told about Kayla and her family over the years. I haven’t verified all these stories, but I will let the reader decide what sounds plausible and what doesn’t.

Emma’s stories about Kayla and her family may have started innocently enough. One of the first “stories” I remember would have been in about 2004, when Dan Rather, with CBS, attacked President George W. Bush’s service with the National Guard. Since Phill and I were fans of WSB talk radio, a radio was usually on in our home or our cars all the time, so Emma heard a lot about this story, and she learned a lot about politics.

Kayla had been down visiting her mom, and we’d taken Emma over to Sheree’s home to spend time with Kayla. After Emma got home, she said, “Mom! You are not going to believe this!! Kayla’s mom got married?”

She was right, I didn’t believe it because I’d have thought we would have heard about it when we either dropped off or picked up Emma, so I said, “She did? Who did she marry?”
“Dan Rather!”
I said, “Ha. Ha. Very funny, Emma.” And thought to myself that this was Emma’s funny sense of humor.

When Emma was little, maybe about 3 or 4, she got into “Knock Knock” jokes. It was always when we were riding in the car, and whatever she happened to see would become part of her joke.
“Knock, Knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Tree.”
“Tree, who?”
“Tree, Lampost!” and then she would burst out into a fit of laughter.

“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Cloud.”
“Cloud who?”
“Cloud, Stop Sign!” and again with all the laughter. It was so precious. This could go on and on and on, but I never got tired of it because each time, Emma laughed like she’d just told the funniest joke in the world.

But, the Dan Rather story didn’t seem to be a joke. Emma tried to convince me that Sheree had married Dan Rather, and that he was Kayla’s new stepfather. At first I went along with it and said things like, “Oh, really?” and “Hmmm.” And Emma went on and on until I finally said, “Emma, I know Kayla’s mom really didn’t marry Dan Rather.”

This just seemed to make Emma angry, and she tried harder and harder to convince me until I just let the subject drop and ignored anything else Emma said about Kayla’s mom and Dan rather.

I remember later telling Phill about it, and how I thought it was a joke, but how Emma got so upset when I didn’t believe her. It was just really odd behavior. You Psych people will have to tell me what you think, because to this day, I wonder if they way Emma was acting should have been an early warning sign of a potential problem.

Another early story was about Sheree’s boyfriend (now husband), Jeff. Emma might have been about 10 or 11 when we found out Sheree had a boyfriend. He wasn’t usually around when Phill and I dropped off or picked up Emma at Sheree’s house, so I can’t remember how we found out about him, but fine, whatever.

One day, after being over at Kayla’s, Emma and I were home, and she was talking about her visit. She mentioned Jeff, and I asked if he had any children, and Emma told me he had a three year old boy, but the boy lived with his mother. Oh, ok. Sounds plausible, right?

It had to be a year or so later when Emma had been over at Sheree’s home to see Kayla, and she was telling me about what they did that weekend, etc. and I asked if Jeff’s little boy had been over that weekend. Emma told me that Jeff didn’t have a little boy. I reminded her that she had told me some time back that he had a son. Emma denied it, and I figured it wasn’t worth arguing about, and thought perhaps she’d been confused. Maybe it was a neighbor who had a three year old or whatever and Emma didn’t have the story straight. I let it go, but it bothered me for quite some time because it just seemed odd. Later, when I found out about many of the lies Emma had told, I wondered if this was one of those times where she didn’t know the answer when I asked if Jeff had any kids, so she just made it up.

As Emma got older, her lies got more interesting and a little more vicious. More to come……….

 

 

A Worried Mother…..

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Worried

Thank you to the person who sent this to me. Very cute, and oh, so true!

Strange Behavior from an “Abused” Child

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Oct. 3, 2013

(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 is now living in Ohio at the home of her fiance’s grandparents, attending Wright State University http://www.wright.edu/, and talking about getting married. Emma claims her mother poisoned her with DDT and that she had to move to Ohio to get away from her mother. She also claims her future mother-in-law lives in fear that Emma’s mother will show up and kill her entire family.

Emma loved having very finely tweezed eyebrows.

Emma loved having very finely tweezed eyebrows.

I’ve been thinking about a few things that I thought about some time ago, and for some reason, they popped back into my thoughts.

How do abused children act? Emma told her therapist Suzie McGarvey of Lanier Counseling (Now with North Gwinnett Counseling Associates, Suwanee, Ga.) during our March 14th, 2010 visit, that she wanted to go to a group home because she didn’t want to be in the same home with her mother.

Let me tell you how Emma was acting up until a couple of days before March 14th when she hatched this little idea.

Emma had pretty much quit going to PetsMart for Adoptions on Saturdays, and I usually went alone. She begged off saying she had too much school work, but I think the real reason was that she could not face our friend Janice, at whose home she stayed during her first accusation of abuse. Emma had adored Janice, and Janice loved Emma. That Christmas, since Emma had taken up sewing, and Janice was an excellent seamstress, Janice bought Emma a sewing basket and all kinds of notions she needed for sewing, and at my suggestion was going to give Emma a sewing day, where she could come over with whatever she wanted to make, and Janice would be there with her expertise to help her. I thought Emma would love this. She thought the world of Janice and spending the day with her, sewing, sounded like a great gift.

After all the lies Emma told to Janice’s face (You can read them in another part of the blog.), I think Emma couldn’t face Janice. Janice knew the truth about Emma and knew that Emma could look right at her and lie. Once someone caught on to Emma, she no longer had any use for them.

So………….getting back to my topic about the abused child. A couple of weeks before Emma wanted to be removed from our home, I came home from Adoptions, tired out, and Emma was jumping around, acting all silly, begging me to take her shopping. It was the last thing I felt like doing, having had been out most of the day, but I wonder how many abused children beg their abuser to take them out. Don’t abused kids typically avoid their abuser?

If I had been paying attention, I would have caught on to Emma’s actions. Up until a couple of days before March 14th, when Emma hatched her little plan to get out of the house, Emma was always very affectionate. Before she went to bed, she would hug me and kiss me when she said good night. If I were in bed, reading, she would lie on the bed next to me and want to cuddle and talk for a while before she went to bed. I remember how a couple of nights before March 14th, this stopped. I just let it go, figuring she was being a moody teenager, but it was much more than that. Emma was a cold, calculating young woman, and had I been paying attention, I’d have realized she had something up her sleeve, having seen her act this way before.

Another thing Emma did has to do with her eyebrows. In 9th grade, when Emma was going to Jackson County Comprehensive High School, she rode the bus and sat with 4 other girls from our neighborhood. At first, Emma was crazy about riding the bus with them, and said she would never go back to being homeschooled. After a month or so, I’m not sure what went on, but maybe she just wasn’t fitting in. Emma complained to me about school and told me she wanted to be homeschooled again. She accused me of giving up on her. One of the girls on the bus later told me that Emma complained about the school and exaggerated the drug problems of the high school. Emma complained about there being too many lesbians in the drama department, and she complained about the black kids getting special treatment at school.

One of the girls Emma rode the bus with, was the daughter of a beautician. One day, this young lady plucked Emma’s eyebrows into a very thin line. It looked fine, but being somewhat lazy about my own make-up, it was not something I would have attempted on me, but if Emma wanted to do it, that was up to her. She liked the look, but when her eyebrows started growing back in, she realized that this look took a little maintenance. Emma did it herself for a while, and she went a little too far and took out the middle of her eyebrows so it looked like she had two half brows over each eye. It looked pretty odd, and I got on to her about not over-plucking her brows.

Emma didn’t like plucking her eyebrows herself, so she would come to me with a pair of tweezers and put her head in my lap, wanting me to pluck her eyebrows. I didn’t really mind, as it seemed like another time we would have some “girl talk” as I plucked her brows for her. I am wondering though, does this sound like the behavior of an abused child? Later on, when I mentioned to Phill how Emma hugged and kissed me every night (while often “forgetting” to say goodnight to her dad), Phill tried to claim that Emma only did this because she would have to face my wrath if she didn’t say goodnight to me. Uh, yeah. Right. I guess he thought I went into a wrath if I didn’t get to pluck her eyebrows too. Yep, I lived to pluck those eyebrows. My day just wouldn’t have been complete otherwise.

Coming up Next, the movie that influenced Emma’s decision to accuse a priest of sexually abusing her.