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Mother’s Day 2014

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“Blaming Mother is just a negative way of clinging to her still.” Author Unknown.

Happy Mother’s Day to my readers and to my darling Emma who made me a mom!  I really wanted to spend some time sharing some thoughts today, but have not been home long enough to do this, so I guess it will have to wait for another post.  In any event, I was thinking of Emma all day.  Even with the horrible things she’s done, I still have hope for my baby girl.  I had so many fun times as Emma’s mom.  The early years were simply amazing, seeing this baby grow into a toddler, then a little girl, then a tween, and a teen.  So many times I thought, “This is all I ever wanted, to be Emma’s mom.”  People have asked me if I had the chance to do it over, would I have still had a child? I can’t answer this, and I don’t live in the land of woulda, shoulda, coulda. What’s done is done. I love Emma, and I worry for Emma. I fear that she will continue to ruin her life and hurt those around her, but what Emma does is out of my control  Through all this, I’ve gone on with my life, and through all this, I still find life pretty amazing. That doesn’t mean I don’t have some bad days. When you’ve been through such a horrible experience like this, you are never the same, and it never goes away. You can curl up and die or go on to make the best life you can. I’m still working on it, but I have chosen the latter.

I will get back to writing about Emma and therapy when I have a little more time.

Emma’s Descent into Therapy Part 2, Preface to Manna Treatment (Continued)

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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. Emma is a young woman who made up a story about a story about a cyber friend being raped and claimed it brought up her own “repressed memories” of a priest of molesting her. 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 suit because she knew her lies were about to be discovered. I am that mother. Emma claims to have toxicology reports showing that I poisoned her with DDT, essentially accusing me of ATTEMPTED MURDER, but refuses to turn over these reports to my attorney. She also claims that while living with her boyfriend’s family in Ohio, her boyfriend’s mother was afraid I would show up and kill her entire family. When I contacted the boyfriend’s mother, she told me that this was “ridiculous.” Emma’s boyfriend/fiance eventually broke up with her when he had his own doubts about Emma.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, contact me at: losingemma@gmail.com

Manna Treatment and Counseling and Dr. Genie Burnett

Emma, Nathan, Johnathan McCravy, and Derek McCravy on a homeschool fieldtrip to the William Harris Homestead.

Emma, Nathan, Johnathan McCravy, and Derek McCravy on a homeschool fieldtrip to the William Harris Homestead.

I’ll be the first to admit I had no clue in how to go about choosing a therapist. After claiming to be sexually abused by a priest at our church, I felt like Emma needed to talk to a “professional” who could help her deal with what happened. Earlier, I mentioned that when Emma went to speak to a therapist at the Tree House in Winder, Ga, Emma was uncooperative. Phill and I gave Emma a break for about a month, and then decided she would see a therapist after we returned from visiting family in early July.

The Deacon at our church, who had been instrumental in helping us file a complaint against the priest Emma accused, recommended a therapist, and my friend Sandi McCravy (Sandra Brooks McCravy) recommended her therapist, Dr. Genie Burnett. All I knew about Dr. Burnett was that Sandi had seen her off and on for about 11 years at that point. Sandi had had an eating disorder and had abused laxatives many years before. She told me that Dr. Genie Burnett primarily treated eating disorders but because a lot of eating disorders stemmed from sexual abuse, Dr. Burnett had a lot of experience with girls like Emma. Sandi had gone to private sessions with Dr. Burnett as well as group therapy along with other women. Sandi frequently confided in me about her sessions with Dr. Genie Burnett and told me what she talked to her about. I remember a lot of it was issues with her family, primarily her mother, but also Sandi had issues with her brother and his wife who were more affluent than Sandi and Greg, and issues with her sister, the former beauty queen.

Dr. Burnett also treated Sandi’s son, Derek who suffered with Asperger’s, a mild form of Autisim. At one point, Sandi told me that Dr. Burnett was the one who had diagnosed Derek when he was about 8 years old, but some time before that, Sandi had been in denial about Derek’s problems and had told me all his problems were related to food allergies. She went to see various people about alternative medicine therapies and frequently had Derek on some kind of supplement that was supposed to keep him in check. She claimed that he couldn’t eat gluten or dairy, but if he wanted pizza she could just give him some supplements and he could eat what he wanted. Sandi frequently tried things that I thought were a little odd to me. One time, Sandi bought some sort of foot soak that was supposed to pull toxins out of your body if you just soaked your feet in it. I thought it sounded ridiculous, but Sandi claimed that her godmother, Wren, who had been battling cancer, used one of these things and had recommended it. I remember her telling me it cost something ridiculous, like $600, but Sandi got a deal on hers. I thought the whole thing was bizarre and a waste of money, but people will do what they will do.

Sandi raved about Dr. Genie Burnett when she was telling me how Dr. Burnett was the one to diagnose Derek, but on a previous occasion, Sandi had confided in me that when the boys were little and she was on government assistance, one of the doctors who saw the kids tried to tell her that Derek had autism, but she wouldn’t accept it. I don’t remember what government program the boys were on. Since we live in Georgia, it may have been PeachCare, but Sandi took the boys out of the program because she didn’t want that diagnosis on Derek’s record. She stayed in denial about his problems for many years, and I remember once when a woman named Ruth, who we worked with us gave, Sandi’s name and phone number to a lady who had a child with autism, and the woman called Sandi, Sandi was furious. She called me up, ranting and raving that Ruth had no right to give her phone number to this woman because Derek did not have autisim!

There were so many inconsistencies in what Sandi told me about Derek and autism, but I never questioned her. Sandi was always super sensitive on the issue, and knowing how we mamas are fiercely protective of our kids, I just let it go.

Derek’s senior year of high school, Sandi began falling apart, calling me frequently, crying, sometimes hysterically, over the thought of Derek going off to college. Derek is a very bright young man and received a scholarship to Mercer University in Macon, Ga. I frequently had to “talk Sandi down” as Phill liked to phrase it, and I reassured her that he would be fine, and that Macon was not that far away, and if she wanted, I would drive down there with her to see him.

Derek, on the other hand, seemed just fine about the thought of going off to college, but Sandi thought he needed to see Dr. Genie Burnett at Manna Treatment on a regular basis before he went off to live in the dorm. Because of Derek’s diagnosis, he was able to get a private room in the dorm, and he went off to college happy and excited about his new adventure. In the typical teenage fashion, Sandi complained that he did not call home enough.

Probably the deciding factor in choosing a counselor was that Dr. Genie Burnett was a Christian counselor, and Emma, being a conservative Christian, wanted to go to a Christian counselor. I didn’t really care who Emma went to as long as it was someone she felt comfortable with and someone she could talk to, so we made an appointment with Dr. Genie Burnett.

to be continued……………

Fish or Cut Bait

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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. Emma is a young woman who made up a story about a story about a cyber friend being raped and claimed it brought up her own “repressed memories” of a priest of molesting her. 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 suit because she knew her lies were about to be discovered. I am that mother. Emma claims to have toxicology reports showing that I poisoned her with DDT, essentially accusing me of ATTEMPTED MURDER, but refuses to turn over these reports to my attorney. She also claims that while living with her boyfriend’s family in Ohio, her boyfriend’s mother was afraid I would show up and kill her entire family. When I contacted the boyfriend’s mother, she told me that this was “ridiculous.” Emma’s boyfriend/fiance eventually broke up with her when he had his own doubts about Emma.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, contact me at: losingemma@gmail.com

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Emma was always a big reader, and often was reading when she was supposed to be doing other things, but I can understand that temptation. This is a picture of Emma and one of our foster dogs, Brillo, and as you can see, Emma was also a big Neal Boortz fan.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about some conversations Emma and I had in the past. One day, after doing some laundry, I asked Emma to put her clothes away. She walked into her room and right back out again, trying to quietly sneak out to the sun porch so she could get back to the book she was reading. I asked her if she had hung up and put her clothes away properly, and she replied that she had, but I knew she couldn’t have in the 30 seconds she was in her room and back out. Sure enough, I went in to find all the freshly washed clothes on the floor in her closet where she’d thrown them. This was a pretty frequent occurrence in our home. Emma didn’t have a lot of chores, and getting her to do them often seemed like more work than it was worth. For whatever reason, Emma was really bad about putting her clothes away and would throw them on the floor, under her bed, in her bed, cram them under her dresser, under shelves……….. anything to get them out of sight and then say she’d put them away. Sometimes it seemed like she went to more effort to hide her clothes than it would have taken her to put them away in the first place!

I told Emma that her sneaking around should have told her something about her actions. She knew she was doing something wrong, and that was why she was acting the way she did. I told her if she had put her clothes away properly, she should have been walking around like she was not trying to hide her actions. At some point we got into a conversation about how you should life your live as if your mother were looking over your shoulder, and then decided a better way to say it was “as if Jesus were looking over your shoulder.”

Emma is still sneaking around, figuratively that is. She can tell people she was an abused child, and she can tell people her mother poisoned her with DDT. Funny how she won’t bring any charges against this horrible mother of hers.

Well, after giving some serious thought to it, I am going to be taking the blog to some very public sites and message boards. Anywhere there’s discussions about kids, teens, schools, colleges, families, family problems, therapy, child molestation, child abuse, mental illness, etc. Anyplace I can think of, where I might get some opinions, response, comments. I have decided it is time for Emma to bring charges against me and let’s go to court, and if not, cut the crap, and let’s get on with our lives. As long as Emma is lying about me, I will continue to write the blog and tell her story and now I’m ready to make it very, VERY public. Emma can accuse me of abuse and of attempted murder, and then hide behind her daddy and play the victim. Well, if I’m going to be accused, I would like my day in court. If I’m not going to get that, then I will settle for the court of public opinion.

It is time to Fish or Cut Bait.

(I will get back to the story of Dr. Genie Burnett and Manna Treatment next.)

Emmaisms

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Emma grad

Emmaisms
“I have Google in my head.”
Emma always knew she was a smart kid. The first time I heard Emma say this was when she started high school at JCCHS. She came home from 9th grade and claimed somebody asked her how she knew so much, and this was her reply.

Emma’s Descent into Therapy Part 2, Preface to Manna Treatment

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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. Emma is a young woman who made up a story about a story about a cyber friend being raped and claimed it brought up her own “repressed memories” of a priest of molesting her. 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 suit because she knew her lies were about to be discovered. I am that mother. Emma claims to have toxicology reports showing that I poisoned her with DDT, essentially accusing me of ATTEMPTED MURDER, but refuses to turn over these reports to my attorney. She also claims that while living with her boyfriend’s family, her boyfriend’s mother was afraid I would show up and kill her entire family. When I contacted the boyfriend’s mother, she told me that this was “ridiculous.” Emma’s boyfriend/fiance eventually broke up with her when he had his own doubts about Emma.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, contact me at: losingemma@gmail.com

Emma played Sandy when the church youth group did a dance skit from Grease, while the boy she had a crush on played Danny. The kids did a great job and it was a lot of fun. The cheerleader outfit came from a friend who graduated from Sandy Springs High School, Sandy Springs, Ga

Emma played Sandy when the church youth group did a dance skit from Grease. The cheerleader outfit came from a friend who graduated from Sandy Springs High School, Sandy Springs, Ga

Manna Treatment – Preface
Before I start writing about our experience with Manna Treatment, I want to first mention my complaints I filed with the State Board about Manna Treatment and Dr. Genie Burnett.

We’ve pretty much established that Emma is a teller of tales. If you’ve read my blog this long, you’ve seen the stories and some of the documentation I’ve collected from others about lies that Emma has told. Emma has a long history of lying, and this is something I want to warn parents about. In our case, therapy was detrimental to Emma and our family. Emma was allowed to go into therapy and say who knows what, and the therapist did not let Phill and I know what kind of things she was saying.

After Emma was in the custody of DFACS, Phill and I found a letter she’d written to “Lacey” the cyber friend, mentioning that her attorneys were ready to file the lawsuit and that her mother had Paranoid Borderline Personality Disorder. Or, it may have been Borderline Paranoid Personality Disorder. I will have to dig out the letter and see. It doesn’t really matter. Phill and I couldn’t understand how Dr. Genie Burnett could have diagnosed me with anything as I was not her patient. I sat in on a few partial or full sessions with Emma, but that was all. How in the world does a professional psychologist diagnose someone they are not treating? To me, this certainly seems like unprofessional conduct!
Suzie McGarvey at Lanier Counseling (who is now with North Gwinnett Counseling Associates) later told Phill and I that Dr. Genie Burnett went through a checklist with Emma and said, “Does your mother do this, this, and this?” and that was how I got the professional diagnosis of Paranoid Borderline Personality Disorder from Dr. Genie Burnett. Wow. All those years of college and earning a Ph.D. and that’s all there is to it? I think I could do that job without a college degree, and I wouldn’t charge $135/hour to do it! Phill and I were stunned. I would love to see Dr. Genie Burnett’s notes to see exactly what Emma said about me. With her ability to embellish the simplest story, I’m sure she came up with quite an entertaining tale for Dr. Burnett!
I can understand a “professional” psychologist forming an opinion about a person. When Emma was taking AP Psychology on line (which is where I’m sure she got some of her abuse stories from) she would try to tell me I was this or that. Being a teenager with one Psychology course under her belt of course made her an expert, so in addition to being a “control freak” and “micromanaging” her life, if I put something away I was anal, if I checked to make sure I locked the door, I was OCD. I can’t even remember all the labels Emma gave me. Sometimes it was funny, other times annoying, but there was no doubt Emma was into her Psych class.
When Emma’s GI doctor (Emma had a long history of vomiting issues which she now claims is because I poisoned her for years with DDT.) recommended taking Emma to a psychiatrist to put her on an antidepressant, and he wanted me to check with her psychologist (Dr. Genie Burnett, Manna Treatment) to see if she felt like this was appropriate, I asked around for some names, including asking Dr. Genie Burnett. I was kind of surprised at her enthusiasm about Emma going on an antidepressant. She told me she thought it was a good idea and then said, “I’ve been on and off antidepressants for years!” This comment made me very uncomfortable, and the way she was so glib about it, and I told Phill that it bothered me. I thought to myself, “Hmmmm, even if you were on and off antidepressants for years, would you really want to tell people that?”
I don’t remember the name of the doctor that Dr. Burnett gave us, but we lived in Hoschton, and he was in Roswell, about an hour away. Later on I asked Dr. Burnett if she could recommend anyone closer and she told me that the reason she gave us the name of that psychiatrist was that he was going to be joining her office sometime in the next year.
We were having a difficult time getting Emma to get her school work done because she wanted to sleep all the time. She was vomiting a lot and taking Zofran up to three times a day, but I would also guess that Emma was tired because when we thought she was in bed, she was pretending to be asleep, but she was up at all hours of the night with her other “mommy” Sandi McCravy (Sandra Brooks McCravy) chit chatting on the phone. If I tried to discuss anything with Dr. Burnett, there would be hell to pay. Emma always looked at it like I was “telling” on her, rather than I was trying to work on our family life. Emma cared how Dr. Genie Burnett saw her, and wanted to present herself a certain way, but her mom always wrecked things by revealing that Emma was not this perfect little mature, well-spoken young woman she wanted people to think she was. If I said anything that Emma took as criticizing of her, she would be furious with me once we left Dr. Burnett’s office, so I didn’t say too much on the few sessions I sat in on.
I sent Dr. Burnett and e-mail about some of the problems we were having with Emma and how we were having trouble getting Emma to do her school work. When I took Emma to her next session, Dr. Burnett wanted me to come in with Emma for the first few minutes, and then I was MORTIFIED when Dr. Genie Burnett read my e-mail in front of Emma. I should have stopped Dr. Burnett immediately, but I was so shocked that she did that, I just didn’t think. You want to see one angry child! Once again, the story of my teenage daughter’s life, she was livid with her mother!
The comment about being on and off antidepressants for years, diagnosing me with Paranoid Borderline Personality Disorder, and reading my e-mail in front of Emma were all listed in my complaint with the board about Dr. Genie Burnett at Manna Treatment.

Later, I’ll get into how we chose Manna Treatment and Dr. Genie Burnett and while I have no idea what Emma said during her sessions, I can tell you how Emma acted before and after sessions, and things that she talked about to me after her sessions.

Therapy

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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 claims to have toxicology reports showing that her mother poisoned her with DDT. She also claims that while living with her boyfriend’s family, her boyfriend’s mother was afraid Emma’s mother would show up and kill her entire family. When I contacted the boyfriend’s mother, she told me that this was “ridiculous.”
As always, if you have any questions or comments, contact me at: losingemma@gmail.com

I’m going to be working on writing about our experiences with Emma and therapy when I have a a little more time, but I wanted to share some thoughts on kids and therapy. Not long after Emma pulled her “I want to live in a group home.” stunt and told Suzie McGarvey at Lanier Counseling that she was being abused at home, someone I know started therapy with her family (husband and two kids). Her two children were fighting so much, they were making the family miserable.
The therapist wanted to meet with the parents first, and then said she would be working with them as a group. The mother asked if the therapist would see the children privately, without the parents and was told, “Oh, no. That gives the children too much power.” When the mother mentioned this to a mutual friend, this friend called me and had to tell me about what the therapist said. She pointed out that that was what happened in our case, Emma had all the power.
Just as a warning to parents, I want to mention that a child can go to a therapist and say any ol’ thing she/he wants, and if the child is a big fat liar who lies about, well, pretty much everybody, and claims to be abused, by law of course, the therapist has to report it. Also, in our experiences, Emma’s therapists were not going to call BS on Emma. Both Suzie McGarvey (Lanier Counseling, and now with North Gwinnett Counseling Associates) and Dr. Genie Burnett (Manna Treatment) claimed that when they tried to get Emma talk about being molested by a priest, she would turn on her mother. I have to wonder, did neither Suzie McGarvey nor Dr. Genie Burnett not question that Emma might be lying? Did they not feel like there was something odd going on. And yes, I realize that Emma’s story changed and suddenly she was abused by (shock and horror!) her own mother! Omigoodness, Emma’s mother how gave up her career to stay home with her, who home schooled Emma for 5 years, who put Emma in any activity she ever wanted to try (within reason—that her parents could afford) was a child abuser!

Emma As a church Acolyte in 2002

Emma As a church Acolyte in 2002


I have wondered why Suzie McGarvey (since we were not seeing Dr. Genie Burnett at that time) did not question Emma about the timing of her accusation against her mother. Let’s see………. Emma’s attorneys were about to file a lawsuit against the church, the diocese, AND the priest that Emma accused of sexual molestation and they were going to need to talk to Emma’s cyber friend who had been RAPED, and Emma would have to go to court and testify, so what does Emma do to bring everything to a screeching halt? Emma accuses her mother of physical abuse. Why did Suzie McGarvey not get to the bottom of Emma’s story? This is the therapist who told Phill and I that she felt very comfortable with us and we were only the 2nd couple that she felt she would trust with her own children. (Suzie McGravey and her husband, a financial planner, have two daughters whom Suzie brought to PetsMart when Emma and I were doing fundraising pet pictures with Santa. I still have the photos.)
Ok, so Suzie McGarvey felt like she could trust Phill and I with her own children, and she let Emma spew her lies during her sessions and never called her on it? I guess if you make your clients angry by calling BS, they stop going to you, and it affects your income. I don’t know. Maybe Suzie just isn’t a very good therapist.
I have more to say about therapy and I’ll be writing about our experiences with each of Emma’s therapists from the Treehouse in Winder, Ga. to Manna Treatment, Lanier Counseling, Social Empowerment Center, and Dr. Richard Born at Applied Psychological Health in Athens, Ga.

More to come………..

DDT again………..

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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.</em

Emma accused her mother of poisoning her with DDT, and I just can't figure out if I was trying to kill her or was it that I enjoyed all the attention Emma received from all the dr. visits because of her vomiting? (I'll write more about Emma's GI issues somewhere down the road and give my readers the full story.) Was it attempted murder or Van Munchausen by Proxy?

My attorney has been waiting for months for Emma to turn over the toxicology report she claims to have, proving that her mother poisoned her, and yet, she won't do it. I wonder why? I would like to move on with my life, but if I'm going to be accused of yet another crime, I would like to go ahead and deal with it. Emma, since you said these things, I wonder wny you won't own up to them?

I've been really busy with work, but thank you to my followers who have written. I hope to have time this weekend to start working on our experiences with Emma and therapy.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, you may contact me at: losingemma@gmail.com

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