Denied! Failing Cordelia: Parental Love and Parental-State Theft in Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court: Book Two: Pride and Legal Prejudice

By Simon Cambridge

Pride and Legal Prejudice is the second part of a trilogy covering the author’s efforts to parent and advocate for his adopted child with severe attachment issues in both Seattle and Los Angeles. Readers will be able to see here how his tenacious efforts to help his daughter would end up being denied or invalidated by the child-welfare legal complex in Los Angeles. How the author fought with pride against the legal prejudice that he and his daughter endured during their traumatic three-year dependency court case in Los Angeles will become the focus of this second volume.

The author will conclude that reunifying successfully with one’s child in any dependency case needs to involve more than just being willing to complete an assigned case plan or keeping up with visitation demands. Beyond these worthy goals, Cambridge will be exploring the many ways in which a strong and motivated legal team that is just as intent on the goal of reunification as the parent, is of paramount importance.

Cambridge believes that while he was able to retain his parental rights at the end of their long case, he and his daughter could have forestalled much lasting trauma if their assigned social workers and therapists had been able to “see better” and if the presiding commissioner of his case had been less prejudiced.

The author was left still trying to reach his troubled daughter when their dependency case ended. Readers will be able to judge the extent to which he succeeded or made progress in his final volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514488935

Simon Cambridge

Simon Cambridge used to live in England and has both a bachelor’s degree from the University of London as well as a master’s degree from Loughborough University. The author currently lives in the beautiful Seattle area and looks forward to continuing to help his long-suffering daughter, Cordelia, heal from her traumatic childhood and adolescence. When he is not reading, writing, and photographing beautiful places in Seattle and Washington State, readers should be able to find the author watching one of the many Seattle Shakespeare Company performances held throughout the year. If not there, you may be able to find him traveling to see his daughter on the long Amtrak Coast Starlight train between Seattle and Los Angeles. Above all, though, the author has a passion for Seattle Sounders FC games. As a member of the Emerald City Supporters (ECS), he can be seen throughout the year proudly and passionately wearing the rave green colors of the best MLS football team in America.

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Copyright © 2016 by Simon Cambridge.

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Rev. date: 07/30/2020

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CONTENTS

Disclaimer

Dependency Case Hearings: A Quick Guide

Dramatis Personae

Acknowledgments

PART I    Pride and Legal Prejudice

Winter 2014

PART II    On the Road to Monterey Park

Prologue    Looking Back at The Cankered Rose and Esther’s Revenge

Arriving in Los Angeles with a Little Help from Mandatory Reporters

Cordelia’s Special Needs and Therapeutic Parenting

The Polygraphist

Free to Go

Restraining Orders, Commissioner No, and the End of the Author’s Relationship with Cordelia: Some Important Points of Clarification

Paternal Pride and Legal Prejudice or Legal Sense and Paternal Sensibility?

Unveiled Agendas

Book Two: Pride and Legal Prejudice

Writing a Memoir or a Diary?

Esther

Whose Dependency Case Was It?

Textual Considerations

Cordelia and Her Dad

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 1    Cordelia’s First Year in Los Angeles

Residential and Educational Chaos

Cordelia Enrolls in Birmingham Community Charter High School

Depending on the Kindness of Relatives and Inappropriate Friends

Esther’s Breast Cancer

PART III    Understanding Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court and Dependency Cases

Chapter 2    The Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS)

Cordelia Detained as an Emergency

The Initiation of Most Dependency Case Petitions

Concluding Remarks

Understanding the DCFS

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 3    The Welfare and Institutions Code of California, Section 300

The Founded Allegation

The DCFS/CPS-Assigned Parenting Test (Graded A through J)

Subsection A

Subsection B

Subsection C

Subsection D

Subsection E

Subsection F

Subsection G

Subsection H

Subsection I

Subsection J

Child Abuse in America

The Ill-Founded Allegation

Corrupting Due Process

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 4    The Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court, Monterey Park

The Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court (Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court)

The Hate Free Zone

Waiting for Cordelia

Outside Room 101: The Abused Parenting Section

The Frowns on the Jugglers and the Clowns in Room 101

Commissioner No Presiding

Commissioner No and the Fifteen-Minute Court Hearing

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 5    Representing Children: The Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles (CLC)

Helping Detained Children: An Attorney or a Guardian Ad Litem?

The Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles (CLC)

The Role of the Children’s Law Center on Hearing Days

Representing Cordelia: Comparing the Children’s Law Center and DCFS County Counsel

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 6    Representing Parents: Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers, Inc.

Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers, Inc. (LADL)

Jon Stein, Public Defender

Understanding the Role of the Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers: Mission Unaccomplished

Hermia’s Baby Steps

The Seventy-Two-Hour Initial Disposition/Detention Hearing: Failing the Author

The Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers, Inc.: Assessing the Positive and the Negative

Concluding Remarks

In a Perfect World . . .

In an Imperfect World . . .

PART IV    The Unfolding Nightmare

Chapter 7    Cordelia’s Detention Confirmed: The Seventy-Two-Hour Initial Disposition/Detention Hearing

The Initial Seventy-Two-Hour Detention/Disposition Hearing

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 8    The Scheduled Arrival of the D-Train

Preparing for the Pretrial Resolution Conference (PRC) Hearing

Nancy Meets with the Author

Nancy Meets with Cordelia

Doors Closing, the D-Train Prepares to Depart

Seattle DCFS: Versions I and II, July 2009

Los Angeles DCFS Welfare and Institutions Codes Applied to Cambridge Matter Dependency Case: Version I, Pretrial Resolution Conference (PRC) Hearing

Schedule Changes for the D-Train: Los Angeles DCFS Welfare and Institution Codes Applied to Cambridge Matter Dependency Case: Version II, Mediation Agreement Hearing for Father (Summer 2010) and Pretrial Resolution Conference Hearing for Mother (Summer 2011)

Author Case Plan, Mediation Agreement Hearing

Proposed Schedule Changes for the D-Train: Los Angeles DCFS Welfare and Institution Codes Applied to Cambridge Matter Dependency Case: Version III, June 2011

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 9    The Court Sustains a Mediated Agreement

The Mediator and the Mediation

Jon Stein Steps Forth, Falls Backward, and Fails

What Jon Stein Did Tell Me

What Jon Stein Did Not Tell Me

Concluding Remarks

The Mediation Agreement Hearing

Chapter 10    Losing Parental Educational Rights

Educating Cordelia: Subbing in the Professionals

Birmingham Community Charter High School

Educating Cordelia:

An Individualized Education Program?

Handcuffed: The Battle of Birmingham Community Charter High School

The Legacy of the Battle of Birmingham: Trying to Thin the Legal Smog of War

The Legacy of the Battle of Birmingham: Losing My Educational Rights

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 11    Parent-Child Reunification: Theory, Practice, and Despair

The DCFS, Children’s Court, and Reunification

Younger and Older Children

The DCFS, Mordecai, and Reunifying with Cordelia

Concluding Remarks: Father States He Wants to Reunify with His Daughter

Chapter 12    Nightmare on Penny Lane

Introducing Jane Y.

Meeting Cordelia: Nightmare on Penny Lane

Parenting Cordelia?

Chapter 13    The Santa Ana Winds of Change or a Simple Twist of Fate: The Abrupt Turn of Fortune’s Wheel

A Second Meeting at Penny Lane

Hermia and the Missing Section 388 Petition

Maureen Drags Her Feet

Mordecai Promises to Support Reunification as a Long-Term Goal

Therapeutic Progress

A Medical Update Hearing

Concluding Remarks

Following the Money Away from Parent-Child Reunification?

What of Cordelia?

Chapter 14    Cordelia Kidnapped to Oakland

The Disappointment of Penny Lane

Street Illegal in Oakland

Rescuing Cordelia from Oakland

Returning Cordelia to Los Angeles

Cordelia’s Weekend of Freedom with Dad and Esther

Shame on the DCFS

Adding Insult to Misery: Alhambra Psychiatric Hospital

Six-Month Status Review Hearing

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 15    Cordelia Escapes to Washington State

Aviva Group Home

Therapeutic Communication

Cordelia’s Sweet Sixteenth Birthday

Cordelia’s Great Escape to Seattle

Moving from State to State—Illegal Escape, Illegal Kidnapping, and a Legal Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) Agreement

Von Ryan’s Express:

The Amtrak Coast Starlight to Freedom

Cordelia in Washington State

Visiting Nana in S—

Failing Cordelia: Savannah’s

Telephone Won’t Ring or Dial

A Birthmother-Daughter Reunion of Sorts

Failing Cordelia: Return to Los Angeles and Concluding Remarks

Chapter 16    The DCFS Always Rises: "What Would Nicole Say and Javert Do?"

The Approach of a Narnian Winter: The Departure of Mordecai and Ms. Ireland

A Persistent Narnian Winter:

The Arrival of Nicole and Javert

Failing Cordelia: Nicole, Javert, and Mistaken Identities

Javert’s Friends List

Cordelia Places Herself with Esther

Esther’s Seventy-Two-Hour Initial Disposition/Detention Hearing (July, 2011)

Esther Terminates Her Reunification Services:

Pretrial Resolution Conference Hearing

(Late Summer, 2011)

Helping Cordelia: Seattle Bound?

Cordelia Sits with Dad

Cordelia Becomes a Star Resident and Star Bay High School Student

Monitored Meetings and a Monitored Lack of Progress with Cordelia

Cordelia’s Psycho-Educational Evaluation

Concluding Remarks

Preparing for the Winter of Our Discontent: The Kinsey Report and the Twelve- and Eighteen-Month Status Review Hearing

Ship of Fools

PART V    The Ending of Reunification Services and a Three-Year Restraining Order (The Winter of Our Discontent Hearings)

Chapter 17    Nothing Was Delivered: The Private Attorneys, Part I: The Twelve- and Eighteen-Month Status Review Hearing

Staying with Hermia or Hiring a Private Attorney: Question Time

The Extent of Dependency Court Prejudice?

Is Dependency Court a Cozy Club?

The Public Defenders Are Always in Court—Good or Bad?

Hiring Private Counsel: A Cost-Benefit Analysis?

Do Attorneys Care as Much as You, the Parent, Do?

Does Your Child Even Want to Come Home?

A Question of Timing?

The Attorney as White Knight?

Deciding That Hermia Was No Marc Antony or Atticus Finch

Channeling My Inner Marc Antony and Atticus Finch: The Speech Hermia Did Not Give

Introducing the Three Attorneys: Some General Observations

All Along the Watchtower . . .

Paying Mr. Watchtower

Hermia: A Postscript

The Contested Christmas Hearing

Nicole Cometh

Chapter 18    The Monkey Dances to the Tune of a Concertina: The First Winter of Our Discontent Hearing

Preparing for the First Winter of Our Discontent Hearing

The Worst Is Not When We Can Say ‘This Is The Worst’: The End of Reunification Services and the First Winter of Our Discontent Hearing

Witness for the Father: Myself

Deliberation?

I Would Vote for a Monkey as Her Opponent

Terminating Reunification Services and a Temporary Restraining Order

The Ramifications

Chapter 19    Permanently Restrained: The Second Winter of Our Discontent Hearing

Down the Road to a Three-Year Restraining Order

Restraining Orders: Legality and Illegality

Cordelia and Restraining Orders

Defending Myself?

The Second Winter of Our Discontent Hearing: The Permanency of Despair

Second Time Around: I Take to the Stand Again

Commissioner No Delivers Her Second Sentence

Concluding Remarks: The Reality and the Legacy

A New Toy

Postscript: —2015

PART VI    Living with No Reunification Services and a Permanent Restraining Order: The Private Attorneys Fight Back!

Chapter 20    Nothing Was Delivered: The Private Attorneys, Part II

Parting Ways with Andrew Watchtower

Raising Expectations: The Firm of Mr. Big Descends

Choosing and Paying Mr. Big

Sarah N. Cometh

Everything Must Get Billed: Losing Patience with Mr. Big and Sarah N.

Section 388 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code: The First of Six Author-Filed Petitions to the Court

Section 388 Petitions: Theory and Practice

Sarah N. and the 388 Petition

Esther Returns

Esther and the Half-Written JV-180/388 Petition

Sarah N. Builds Our Section 388 Response

Esther’s Section 388 Court Hearing

Nothing Was Delivered: Concluding Remarks

Sarah’s Last Stand

Mr. Big: A Postscript

Chapter 21    Nothing Was Delivered:

The Private Attorneys, Part III

Changing Attorneys and Cordelia AWOL

Sarah Departs, Landon Arrives

Landon

Private Attorneys: What Could Have Been Delivered and Concluding Remarks

Chapter 22    Marilyn’s Contempt of Court

Contempt of Court?

Cordelia AWOL-Hospitalized-AWOL

Landon and the Full Bundle Price

Landon Prepares Our Defense

The Summer of Our Discontent: Marilyn’s Contempt of Court Hearing

Concluding Remarks

Chapter 23    Marching On: Cordelia AWOL Still and Esther Returns Again

Cordelia’s Deferred Permanency Plan Hearing

Cordelia Returns to Home of Mother

An Ex-Parte Continuation of the Deferred Permanency Plan Hearing

Section 388 Petitions: Whether It Would Have Been Nobler in the Mind to Represent Oneself . . .

PART VII    Termination of Jurisdiction but the Legacy Lives on . . .

Chapter 24    Terminating Jurisdiction

Second Continuation of Deferred Permanency Plan Hearing

Sixth Time Around: Petitioning the Court in the Shadow of the End

The Spring of Our Discontent: Marilyn’s Second Motion for Citation of Contempt of Court

Termination of Jurisdiction

Chapter 25    The Aftermath

The Drifters’ Escape

The Furniture Stays the Same in the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court

Landon and Family Court

Cordelia Comes to Washington State

Chapter 26    Lessons Learned: Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court

Trying to Understand

If I Were a Journalist or Op-Ed Writer for the Los Angeles Times . . .

The Father or Parent in Me

Abusive Parents or Abusive Children?

Concluding Remarks

PART VIII    Climbing the Judicial Ladder: Looking Ahead to Book Three

Epilogue    Appeal and Denial

Climbing the Judicial Ladder

Reform

Therapeutic Intervention

A Final Word

With love to my long-suffering

and wonderful mother.

Every day is, and ought to be, Mother’s Day!

***

Cordelia,

you will always be my beloved forever daughter

***

To Sally Therapist for providing me with

a safe therapeutic environment

***

To Nancy Thomas for making such a difference in the

lives of children with reactive attachment disorder

***

To motivated parents that each will find the right balance of

pride, emotional, legal, and financial strength necessary to

reunify with their children in juvenile dependency cases

***

To social workers, attorneys, and judges, I would like

to express my hope that you will find the wherewithal

to see the uniqueness of children and parents better

and the true motivating value of parental pride

Kent

Royal Lear,

Whom I have ever honour’d as my king,

Loved as my father, as my master follow’d,

As my great patron thought on in my prayers,—

King Lear

The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft.

Kent

Let it fall rather, though the fork invade

The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly,

When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man?

Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,

When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour’s bound,

When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom;

And, in thy best consideration, cheque

This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgment,

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least;

Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound

Reverbs no hollowness.

King Lear

Kent, on thy life, no more.

Kent

My life I never held but as a pawn

To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it,

Thy safety being the motive.

King Lear

Out of my sight!

Kent

See better, Lear; and let me still remain

The true blank of thine eye.

—William Shakespeare, King Lear, act I, sc. i

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act II, sc. vii

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

—William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act V, sc. v

There were many layers in my relationship with her during the first years of her illness that I am only now beginning to understand. The first was love, that all-encompassing love for a child that will not let go and will not give up. Holding my firstborn, and then my second daughter, I knew without a doubt that I wouldn’t hesitate to do anything necessary to keep them safe. They were tiny and vulnerable, and my feelings of love were overwhelming. Although that fierce protective love settles down as children get older, it doesn’t go away and is always at the ready if needed. The next layer was the clinical professional layer, always trying to analyze and figure out what the hell was going on, because if I could figure it out then I would have a chance to fix it. After love and clinical/professional there was the paranoid alert layer, always questioning whether I was overreacting or being too protective, worrying that I was filtering everything through my own past. And finally there was terrifying fear. It was always there, lurking down deep, panicked that I could lose a child.

—Linea and Cinda Johnson, Perfect Chaos:

A Daughter’s Journey to Survive Bipolar,

a Mother’s Struggle to Save Her (2012)

DISCLAIMER

The names of the people I interacted with at the Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court and the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) have been changed for reasons of privacy and identity.

My daughter’s name is the same as the one I gave her in The Cankered Rose and Esther’s Revenge. "Cordelia" was chosen not only to imbue her struggle with a sense of artistry and meaning but also to protect her privacy and identity.

The names of the institutions and homes where my daughter went to school, where she was hospitalized, or where she stayed during her time in DCFS care in Los Angeles have not been changed.

I have used the place name of S— for both the town where Cordelia was born and raised in Washington State and for the city in the Los Angeles area where she and Esther lived periodically. This may sound confusing but it should be clear from the context when I am referring to Cordelia being in or from her hometown or when she is in one of the Los Angeles suburbs. Major cities are not disguised in the same way.

With respect to the legal proceedings, I have had to conceal the specific dates of the court hearings that pertained to my daughter’s case. As a general principle, child dependency records are sealed for the further privacy protection of the children involved. I do not think the resultant date-and-hearing vagueness will distract readers too much from the overall truth of the nightmarish nature of the following narrative.

I can say that the story and the twenty-four legal hearings covered in the pages following, predominantly took place over three years (2010–2013). However, my readers will be asked to follow a somewhat vaguer legal timetable than I would have liked to convey within that span of time. Nine hearings took place between June 2010 and June 2011. By the end of June 2012, we had had ten more, and then by the close of the case in spring 2013 we had had another five, making for twenty-four in total. Since most of the hearings have alternate recognizable names—such as a six-month status review hearing—I have made full use of these but without any specific dates attached to them to further obscure Cordelia’s real identity. I do explain the logical legal progression of these hearings along with any tangential side ones as they happened. Dependency cases are expected to begin, progress, and end over the course of twelve months, but they can take up to eighteen months in certain circumstances. They may take even longer to resolve if lower court rulings are appealed to upper level courts. If any child is made available for adoption, then the overall process of severing and terminating the parent-child bond within the family of origin and of building his or her legal connection to a new forever family can take even longer. I try to explain all this on the road ahead within the boundaries of the guidelines set by my publisher of not using personal identifying information.

Although I have written a legalistic tale, I am no more a lawyer than some may have felt I was trying to be a therapist in the first volume of this series. I must disclaim any presumption of legal or therapeutic advice in the following narrative but ask readers to be aware that I had considerable legal and therapeutic goals in trying to bring my daughter home. These necessitated navigating one’s way through information of an intense legal and therapeutic nature. In order to try to understand all that happened to my daughter and myself over the three years covered in this volume, I have had to teach myself about dependency law and try to learn what it means to be able to parent a child with severe attachment and other trauma.

Finally, I have not used the case number assigned to our case to further obscure the traceability of what happened and when, but dependency case numbers quickly become as branded in the memory of parents as do the numbers once used to identify Jews who were enslaved by the Nazis during the Holocaust. This linkage is established not to offend anyone but to convey the branding awfulness of the experience of a dependency case for both parents and children. Assuredly, these types of cases take parents to a very dark place and as we shall see, it is by no means clear that they take children to a brighter one.

DEPENDENCY CASE HEARINGS: A QUICK GUIDE

T O ASSIST READERS with being able to follow the flow of the hearings connected with this case, I am adding a table here that should make things easier. Most dependency cases typically follow the linear pathway of investigative and progress hearings staggered across a typical twelve- or eighteen-month timeline. These are indicated in the left-hand column of the table as they were used in my daughter’s case. However, there can also be hearings of a more tangential nature that interrupt the more natural flow of dependency proceedings. In the table below, these can take the form of Section 388 hearings on petitioner requests to change court orders based on new evidence or a change in circumstance. Serious matters such as the issuance of restraining orders and contempt of court allegations also require separate hearings. Neither of the latter is a normal part of the dependency-court process but participants can raise them as part of requested ad-hoc hearings. These are requested typically by legal and other advocates for the children involved in dependency cases.

Each hearing has a California Welfare and Institutions Code (WIC) numerical reference point—Section 366.21—that governs the responsibility of the DCFS to keep the court and parents informed in a hearing status-review report as to the efforts and progress made to reunify a family. Permanency plan hearings involving children who have been detained under Section 300 (and subdivisions) of the WIC are governed primarily by Section 366.26. Cordelia was adjudged to be governed by the rules and regulations of this section. For reasons of clarity, I have mainly referred to hearings by their purpose as opposed to the section of the code that governs their proceedings. We had twenty-four hearings in all, but as you can see from the table below, I have not included hearings 8 or 10 as they were not significant enough to add much to the following narrative or I was not involved at any substantial level.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Children’s Law Center (CLC) of Los Angeles

Department of Children and

Family Services (DCFS) (Los Angeles County)

Department of Children and

Family Services (DCFS) (Washington State)

Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court

(Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court)

Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers, Inc.

Private Attorneys

Therapists and Residential Treatment Facility Personnel

Miscellaneous

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

D UE TO WHAT I considered the urgency of the material, I decided to self-publish my earlier work, The Cankered Rose and Esther’s Revenge as the first installment of an eventual trilogy. Once I saw how Xlibris was able to help me capture my vision of publishing a story of an adoption that had been warmed by initial hope but later corrupted by misunderstandings and despair, I was confident of reaching a wider audience with my concerns as to how adoptions of children with special needs and child-welfare dependency cases are conducted in the United States.

As I wrote my trilogy, I began to notice how these legitimate concerns clearly needed to stretch beyond the loss of pride that I felt respecting how I had been treated as a parent. Trying to convey how the child-welfare legal complex had also failed to address my daughter’s many complex needs would clearly need to take on an increasingly important role if my readers as well as myself were ever to understand what happened. These manifest and serious failures of vision and management would need to be viewed separately from whatever parental and personal rights might have been denied to me. In other words, I could not simply offer a rebuttal of the prejudicial instincts and actions of others involved in Cordelia’s story if I were to process it coherently. Inevitably, the scope of my task and the issues that would end up arising from this complex case with respect to both my daughter and myself would become indivisible and hard to disentangle.

I was always hopeful that reviewers and readers would find the first part of my story both instructive and illuminating in equal measure. It was never written to be just an autobiographical memoir or diary, and I had no incentive to entertain. I wanted to construct a forum for talking to others and to myself about issues of deep concern, and in that regard, I needed to be reasonable in my suggestions. Sometimes, it felt as if Commissioner No herself would be reading them. However, it is not always a reasonable world, and along with so many other self-published authors, I was somewhat naive in my expectations for the book’s success in reaching a wider audience. Without the self-published author being able to understand this, the road to disappointment is paved less with gold but as much with the discarded hopes of those who have traveled before us as we in turn toss out our own to litter the road behind us.

Nevertheless, Xlibris allows us to remember that hopes will always be part of the elixir of life and I am still able to thank those at the company who have helped me realize my vision.

Chief among those I continue to work with would be Monique, my Xlibris publishing consultant and a huge champion of my efforts to publish my trilogy as separate easier-to-digest volumes. I should also acknowledge the tireless efforts of my marketing consultant Joseph, who gave up so much of his time to try to get me to buy marketing packages that he thought would lead to The Cankered Rose finding that elusive wider audience. Unfortunately, I have found marketing a book to be far more expensive and frustrating than simply publishing one and hoping for the best in a narrow but competitive marketplace.

***

Since the publishing of The Cankered Rose, I have had to change therapists as Debra moved to Utah. My current therapist, Sally, jumped into the role with nary a heartbeat and she has been a huge help to me by providing me with a safe and nonjudgmental therapeutic place to work through past and present trauma. It has not been easy processing Commissioner No’s legacy from the Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court. Sally and I have tried our best to understand the motivations and machinations of the DSHS/DCFS and we discuss weekly how I can help Cordelia moving forward. Most think that can only be done by my absence from Cordelia’s life since she expends so much energy on not wanting me to help or be involved. Sally sees clearly how my having a therapeutic approach to Cordelia continues to run counter to the willingness of so many others to see my daughter in strictly personal and unflattering terms. My attempts to understand her are viewed more in terms of a loss to me than as a gain to Cordelia. Seeing myself as her father who has only wanted to help her leads me to step forward into the arena of her struggles, just as being aware of how much it has hurt me urges me to step back.

The situation remains unresolved, but Sally has been there with me to see what happens. There are positive and negative ramifications both to remaining loyal to Cordelia and to moving on with my life. Sally has helped me to be both loving and wise toward Cordelia and she deserves acknowledgement for helping me to restore or to put together a difficult parent-child puzzle from the extensive debris of our recent dependency case. This was always likely to be a complexe family jigsaw of a thousand pieces with no guiding final picture, and it is likely that it will remain so. As a result, I have always connected best with those therapists on this journey who have recognized these key facts. Sally does and Debra did.

***

Meanwhile, I should thank my current attorney, Landon, who has been with me since April 2012 in one capacity or another—as a friend, as an attorney, and as a fellow MLS soccer fan, albeit for one of the Seattle Sounders’ least-liked rivals, the Los Angeles Galaxy. Although in the narrative ahead I have been critical at times of his approach toward Commissioner No and the issues raised by the dependency case, I must acknowledge that Landon has stood by me through legal struggles I would not wish on any child or parent. I still believe that he could have stopped much of the following madness if I had known of his tempering skills earlier. It should be acknowledged that he is also one of the top legal advocates in family and dependency law as per the agreement of his legal peers. He is also currently representing Cordelia’s legal needs but more on this interesting development in my final book.

Maternal Love

However, nothing could have been achieved without the endless help of my loving mother in England. She not only financed Cordelia’s earlier legal adoption process in 2008 but also the mounting cost of my legal fight in Los Angeles—once I had made a decision to hire a series of private attorneys—and the publishing of my series of books in the aftermath. Everything that has happened in my life since my wife Esther and I first met our Cordelia in late June 2007 has been a huge gamble in which both commitment and adversity have locked arms in an uncertain embrace. My mother supported me when I decided unconditionally to adopt a severely traumatized twelve-year-old girl. My mother understood when I decided to fight to save Cordelia from an incompetent child-welfare legal system in two states. My mother was there with her checkbook when I decided to ditch the public defender system and go with the eventual services of a series of private attorneys, who subsequently proved largely ineffectual. My mother was also receptive when I then decided to publish a series of books that I hoped would be illuminating and instructive to others embroiled in similar struggles. In each of these struggles, my mother has been willing to throw the dice of hope with me and gamble on a positive outcome. At best, I would have to say that the dice is still rolling. It is still possible, though, not to lose so badly that the house can plausibly argue that it has taken more from you as a parent than it really has.

Yet my loving mother has continued to gamble with me, and her willingness to undertake the role of a financial Sherpa has enabled me to climb this challenging father-daughter mountain. Just as she sees that as her role, so too do I see continuing to support and love Cordelia in any way that I can to be mine.

Cordelia

As I look back and forward at my complex father-daughter relationship, I have the comforting knowledge that I remain as Cordelia’s father and the grandfather to her growing family of two boys. However, I also have the more fearful knowledge that there remain communication problems between us. Many issues remain unresolved, the real healing has yet to begin, Cordelia struggles with empathy, and it will be obvious to everyone that getting to this fragile point has been hugely costly in terms of time, financial resources, and emotional health. Some of these problems were always there, and others would not have been but for the chaos and failure of the dependency case that will be covered here and in my final book.

Yet, Cordelia has always been, and will continue to be, my beloved daughter and should be acknowledged as such. I will always be willing to thank those who decide to follow along in my difficult journey and all who have been, or are, supportive of my persistent efforts to undertake it.

BOOK TWO

Pride and Legal Prejudice

When I came out at the last possible minute, Gay had begun to place the napkins herself. You know I heard what you said on the phone. I crossed my arms and waited for a lecture. Ash, I am not the mother who abandoned you. Her voice took on a tone I had never heard before. It was deeper and it commanded that I listen. I am not Mrs. Moss. I am not the ten others who sent you away for one reason or another. I tried to block her voice by humming inside my head, but her words penetrated anyway. "I am the mother who will be here for the rest of my life. She started tossing lettuce aggressively. You can blame me for anything that is my fault, but you can’t hate me for what the others did to you."

—Ashley Rhodes-Courter, Three Little Words (2008)

Once Phil recovered from his initial outrage, he was the same as ever—gentle, understanding, and always offering to help me with homework, drive me somewhere, make me a snack, or play a game of pool or basketball. I finally noticed that they were always there: waking me up, tucking me in, ready to listen, checking whether I needed anything.

—Ashley Rhodes-Courter, Three Little Words (2008)

The time misorder’d doth, in common sense,

Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form,

To hold our safety up. I sent your grace

The parcels and particulars of our grief,

The which hath been with scorn shoved from the court,

Whereon this Hydra son of war is born;

—William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II, act IV, sc. ii

WINTER 2014

T ODAY MARKS THE second anniversary of a restraining order that our presiding judicial officer Commissioner No permanently authorized at a second winter of our discontent court hearing in early 2012, some twenty-eight days after the first such hearing had issued a temporary order. It was one of several decisions in the same month that would mark the nadir of our long dependency case and my many legal struggles on Cordelia’s behalf.

I am currently sitting in my Seattle apartment feeling as much like an experienced observer of my own nightmare as I have always done since Cordelia was first moved down to Los Angeles to be with her mother in July 2009. I outlined the miserable circumstances surrounding that occasion in The Cankered Rose and Esther’s Revenge, the first of my published series of three books on my daughter’s trauma, as well as my own.

***

My now eighteen-year-old daughter is currently with her husband of seven months and her four-month-old son at Esther’s apartment in the city of S— outside of Los Angeles. To all extents and purposes, my daughter and grandson are currently safe, clothed, and fed—all survival necessities that Cordelia has often had to fight for or feel insecure about throughout her life. She did briefly have a job, but seems content to spend most of her time learning how best to be the mother she has probably never had and the wife she has seemingly wanted to be since she was at least fourteen. I fear for her in both these roles as each seems escapist and too akin to the stereotypical pattern for how teenagers like to act who have been through foster care or who have damaged attachments. Nevertheless, because of the restraining order preventing me from seeing my daughter or my grandson, I continue to feel frustrated, paralyzed, and powerless in all that I say or do. Commissioner No and her court wanted things to be this way, and when our long dependency case finally ended after almost three years some nine months ago, the court left us with no direction or advice as to how best to heal. I am not sure that the commissioner even wanted us to heal when she walked out of her courtroom. I am not certain either that I am still a father, since most of the rights and responsibilities associated with those roles seem to have been stolen from me, but nothing was ever ordered or signed to this effect. Unlike my daughter’s birthmother Cindy J., I have not had to sign any document to the effect that my rights have been severed and terminated. Nevertheless, Cordelia was legally just an adult as we all packed up and left the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court on the day that Commissioner No officially terminated her case, which essentially meant that nothing was deemed necessary with respect to either my rights as a parent or Cordelia’s responsibilities as my daughter. It is also true that my parental rights were not given to anyone else held as being capable of fulfilling the role of Cordelia’s father. Similarly, Esther is still an adoptive mother but she is not sure why or how. She is generally far less bothered by these questions and worries than I am. Our friends and family support our respective viewpoints in all this.

Cordelia appears to have only the most fragmentary of loose rocks to hang on to as she navigates the first years of her adulthood. Much as I blame the dysfunction of the three-year dependency case and the legacy of its crazy orders for what has happened to her in the months since the case ended around the time of her eighteenth birthday, legally my daughter is now an adult and can make her own mistakes and decisions. This fact alone has obvious constraints on me as a parent, even if there was not any restraining order to think about. However, in my mind, Cordelia is still my special-needs adoptive daughter with needs that have little to do with her legal status as an adult and more to do with her developmental age.

***

Esther has just lost her job and is talking as she so often does when she is feeling at her most depressed about the possibility of returning to be with me in Seattle. If serious, it would prove to be yet another twist of the Emerald-City-vs.-City-of-Angels debate I described in The Cankered Rose. Without also bringing Cordelia and family with her, I am not sure how, or even if, this could work. How are Esther and I supposed to pull ourselves together after so many years of being ripped apart by the courts, by our location fights, by my wife’s impulsive and ill-considered decisions, and by our daughter’s inconsistent loyalties and attachments? Cordelia finds attaching to both her adoptive parents almost impossible and this seems unlikely to change.

While the restraining order remains in place, I can no more see my family here in Seattle than I ever could on my visits to Los Angeles for court hearings, etc. I have not in fact seen Cordelia since she disappeared at lunchtime at the infamous winter of our discontent hearing in early 2012. My last direct memory of Cordelia is of her shaking her head dismissively when my then private attorney Andrew Watchtower advocated for her return to Seattle via a safe and transitional residential treatment home in Washington State that we had identified. This is a poor recollection to build any healing hopes on. Cordelia probably does not think she needs to heal anyway.

***

Although our dependency case ended almost ten months ago, the nightmare I have been living for most of the last five-plus years since Esther abruptly left Seattle in December 2008 continues. Since the restraining order exists for yet another year, I have continued to deploy my last attorney, Landon, to work on finding ways of moving this harmful vestige of our case over to another court in the Los Angeles area. The natural target court would seem to be one of the family courtrooms at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in central downtown Los Angeles, but thus far, his efforts have been in vain and sadly ineffectual.⁸ Maybe he cares, but he cannot convey it very well without more money. He employs someone who barely even knows he still has my case on his books and can never provide me with useful updates. His files and calendar are with him, as she often puts it.

Another option that I am currently exploring is that of filing with the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court in Los Angeles, yet another one of the change-of-order Section 388 petitions that the reader will hear an unfortunate lot of in the pages ahead.⁹ I have my petition and supporting declaration already drafted and ready to go, along with a second request based on Section 170.1 of the California Code of Civil Procedure for Commissioner No to recuse herself from hearing the matter.¹⁰ I have written my petition to ask the court to review the original reasons for and continued applicability of the restraining order. Because of what I would see as our former presiding commissioner’s overfamiliarity to the point of contempt with our prior dependency case, I considered that she would not be willing to see Cordelia or me again. Therefore, filing an affidavit of prejudice is possibly the best and only chance I have of moving my case out of her courtroom and to a more reasonable one elsewhere in the same building. Maybe I could move all this before a higher-ranking judge. I have never stopped believing that Commissioner No was unnaturally prejudiced and hostile in her handling of our dependency case, but this could also be naive on my part. Both arguments would be equally valid.

As I write this, I am under no illusions that the court will eagerly accept my petition, whether Commissioner No decides to recuse herself or not. As she alone has the authority to decide her own level of prejudice or bias in the case, it seems odd to reflect that in her likely refusal of both petition and affidavit she would really only be adding to the level of prejudice and bias that is prompting my affidavit request in the first place. It was never explained to me at the outset of our dependency case that I had a one-time right to request a different commissioner for our forthcoming hearings. It seems unbelievable to me that judges and commissioners cannot police one another in this regard but rely on their own integrity and sense of ethics. I feel beaten back.

Even if Commissioner No were to agree to hear my petition and dismiss the restraining order or refer it to another commissioner who might be prevailed upon to do the same, I am also under few illusions that Cordelia would instantly feel the need to contact me. As I have been for so much of my time over the last three years, I am on the bottom rung of a broken ladder that is standing straight and leading nowhere. I struggle to be heard and struggle to try to prevail in my goals and objectives. Reaching out to my daughter seems to be every bit as difficult as finding suitable words and actions at the end of everything. Even if I could prevail, it is clear that Cordelia just does not want to see or hear from me at present. I move through this sad and swampy reality each time I think of where I am and where she is. Not that a swamp cannot be drained, of course, or that certain circumstances cannot flip a given situation for the better. Fortune’s wheel is always moving; sometimes crushing those beneath it, other times letting them bathe in the sun, drink from the rain, and stretch their roots in the deep nourishing soil.

I have also been corresponding with Judge Michael Nash, the presiding supervising judge of the Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court in Monterey Park. Thus far, I have been unable to persuade him to lend a helping hand or to take some interest in how the afterlife of some of the cases before his commissioners can be every bit as bad as their former existence once was. I know he is concerned with how dependency cases first arrive at his Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court.¹¹ Perhaps, he is also concerned with how some of them subsequently evolve, but my contention is that he needs to be equally troubled by what happens to them afterward. Dependency cases do not really end so much as merge into the rest of life for parents and children alike and their legacy casts a pall over family relationships for years to come. I need to convince him to care.

Thus far, though, it seems as if his commissioners must be protected from complaint by some mythological Cerberus, shut off from all criticism and inquiry.

As I look at my previous and current legal and parenting experiences holistically, it is more than clear to me that there is room for substantial reform and adjustment at all points and markers. I need to be a better parent, a better father, and a better strategic advocate for my daughter. Cordelia needs to accept therapy and be more willing to acknowledge my efforts on her behalf, but why she should is worth asking and I have never been able to provide a good answer. The entirety of the child-welfare legal complex that I identified in my earlier book needs to be more responsive to the needs of parents and children, and the dependency courts need to change. At least, the one in Los Angeles does.

The Melancholy Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It noted man’s propensity on the world’s stage for his exits and his entrances and for one man in his time [to play] many parts in the interim.¹² Sounds like an argument for the multiple personality disorder of each man who struts that pitted stage. Sadly, it is also an argument for what he has to do in order to survive what Shakespeare would refer to in Hamlet as the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.¹³ I was a witness to Cordelia auditioning for many parts during her time in DCFS care and arguably, she would end up being hired to play nearly all of them. Only the role of auteur of her own misfortune would be elusive, but in her role as victim, she would end up being praised by most of her handlers who would know her in no other capacity. Nor looking back, had any of them wanted to. They were the hiring rescuers and I was the perpetrator, the stage carpenter, and the architect of everyone else having to be there. Parent and professional alike had been the spellbound audience to my beloved daughter’s virtuoso performances. Yet, God had made my daughter out of broken glass and I felt as if I were the only one who could see how truly vulnerable she really was and how best to walk across the shards. Naive, but always hopeful.

***

Overall, I remain on edge and often angry without reasonable cause—at least as others would see things. It is too easy for me to feel frustrated and angry beyond measure by everything from crowded and/or late buses to our stalled tunnel-boring machine, Bertha.¹⁴ Even Amanda Knox’s reconviction yesterday in Italy fills me with renewed horror about seeming injustice.¹⁵ All of these happenings—insignificant to others—elicit letters, e-mails, angst, anxiety, and railing rhetoric on my part. Like some manic King Lear, I have a tendency to howl with fruitless anguish and futile rage. That said, I do try to contain myself within the bounds of reflective writing and reasonableness. I use such skills whenever I can, but the anger hits me in waves, rearranging the loose rocks on the ever-changing shoreline of my anxieties. The rugged and storm-tossed Olympic Peninsula coastline bears only the faintest of comparisons to the sharp edges and borders of my life. The restless tides of pain and winter storms rarely seem to ebb or provide me with much of a sense of peace. The hope of spring, the lethargy of summer, and the colorful and animated exhaustion of fall seem too far away to bring any harbinger of future contrast to the wintery Seattle rains. Few understand the nuances of hope in my small circle of friends and family.

I spoke in The Cankered Rose of my ambiguous loss with respect to Cordelia and to the effect of her rejection on me as a parent and as a father. Even after all I have tried to do for her in terms of advocating for better therapeutic and educational opportunities, I still feel bitter that Commissioner No and her court refused to listen to these arguments or act on them if they did. The court went through the motions and well-defined benchmarks of our dependency case with such relentlessness and false sense of purpose. There seemed to have been such misplaced urgency, so little actual thinking. All that has recently happened to Cordelia and myself feels akin to the massive transcontinental railroad building of the nineteenth century. That had been a time of ambition, ruthlessness, and surveyors acting on unaccountable pioneering whims in crossing barren and rocky terrain. It had been a time when probably oppressed but eager workers had been willing to sacrifice all to someone else’s sense of where power lay, paying tribute to that person’s overriding sense of progress in all matters. Sure, there had been progress by the end of our dependency case. After all, it is not exactly insignificant that its legal path concluded some nine months ago, that Cordelia is still alive, and that I was not forced to sign any order severing and terminating my bond with my daughter. Yet, I cannot escape thinking that all the blasting-through-urgency that I witnessed, the constant adherence to my daughter’s whims, and the concentration of unaccountable power in the hands of a few seemingly prejudiced titans of dependency law have left me trying to fight with a ragged sail during a violent storm. Maybe it was more the case that the titans were right but only within the context of poorly defined dependency law. In either event and within the context of working toward improved parent-child dynamics and finding the courage to heal, I can all too easily reflect on the fact that both Cordelia and I were left exposed to the zealotry, misinterpretation, and prejudices of others in their external legal management of internal family bonds and dynamics.

***

At midnight, I will ceremoniously burn two copies of my restraining order to symbolize the passing of the second of three years of this order. One year of this pitiful situation remains, but Cordelia could potentially renew it for a further five years or even, and I write this with dread, permanently. At some point in the closing three months of the existing order, she could decide to extend it and I am not even sure if I have the right to know of it if she does.

However, there is some hope that she might not find it as easy to achieve as she first did with Commissioner No, and she would not have the backing of the attorneys allied with the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles. However, she will have herself and her natural charming guile. This knowledge scares me more than anything else does at this time.

PART I

On the Road to Monterey Park

. . . Children are hardwired to receive information that is presented in a narrative format (with characters and a plot that has a beginning, middle, and end). Narratives help children integrate disparate events, actions, and feelings into a single structure, a coherent whole that helps them make sense of the world. Once the outline of the story has been established, new information is incorporated in a way that is consistent with the original narrative. If the alienating parent is able to package the alienation as a story in which he is the hero, the child is the victim, and the other parent is the villain, the child will be primed to see unfolding events according to that storyline.

—Amy J. L. Baker, Surviving Parental Alienation: A Journey of Hope and Healing (2014)

*** THE BOOK THIEF—LAST LINE ***

I have hated the words and

I have loved them,

and I hope I have made them right.

Outside, the world whistled. The rain was stained.

—Markus Zusak, The Book Thief (2005)

PROLOGUE

Looking Back at The Cankered

Rose and Esther’s Revenge

A S I SAID in my earlier book, I can pretty much date my parenting trauma at the hands of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in two states—Washington State and California—to the hasty actions of one social worker from Bellevue, Washington. My daughter’s trauma, on the other hand—both as a child raised for nine years by a dysfunctional birthmother and then as a foster child for the next three—predates my own by many years. The nightmarish events outlined in chapter 8 of the first edition of that book constituted the first of several key confluent points in the lives of both father and daughter when powerful emotions could be seen to collide and break apart on the rocks of divergent parent-child goals. The adoptive landscape that I had been trying to navigate for several years at that point would never be the same again, and the number of unseen mines would increase exponentially. The knowledge I had been suppressing of what Cordelia’s birthmother might have felt when she had to sign her own termination of parental rights was then about to drift and seep across this landscape like a menacing fog without boundaries or hindrance. Where once I had been determined to adopt Cordelia, in July 2009—the point at which The Cankered Rose ended—I was just as determined to fight the very real prospect of someone trying to re-adopt her through a legal process that I feared would begin eventually in either Seattle or Los Angeles.

As I informed my readers in my earlier book, I decided to break down my story into three more easily digestible volumes. My hope was that my readers might be more inclined to read the entirety of my narrative in three works of four to five hundred pages each. If I had decided to present my daughter’s story and my struggles to manage it in one complete volume, it would have rivaled War and Peace in length if nothing else. Life’s dramas seem to have no recognizable beginning or defined end but only a middle sitting at the confluence of many roads. The future at any one moment can be filled with plans that anyone can act on or destroy, which fills those of us involved in them with a mixture of hope and fear. My Asperger’s and my daughter’s reactive attachment disorder, bipolar disorder, and inordinate sense of loss and cumulative adoption and other trauma had marched into battle on July 8, 2009. Although the timing could have been any day months before or later, it was obvious to me that summer that the spoils of the war and the likely names of the victor and the vanquished would become far too easy to identify if no one was then willing to contain the outcome or impeach the process.

The background to each of these issues for both father and daughter belong to my earlier book. The consequences of what I have increasingly come to view as a struggle between competing manifestations of mental-health trauma will be the study of the present work and its successor.

Arriving in Los Angeles with a Little

Help from Mandatory Reporters

One of the more dramatic events depicted in The Cankered Rose happened on July 9, 2009—less than twenty-four hours after her hasty removal from my care—as Cordelia ended up placed on a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 flight to Los Angeles via Salt Lake City. There was every appearance of collusion between Esther and our new hasty social worker from the Washington State DCFS. It had some of the same drama as Americans leaving the Saigon embassy at the close of the Vietnam War.

Esther had agreed to pay for the flight from Seattle and to meet our daughter at the other end. She was then living at a Motel 6 near Los Angeles International Airport. It all seemed odd and duplicitous since one month earlier she had told me on the balcony of our then rented home in Issaquah, Washington State, that she wanted nothing more to do with our daughter. She had even agreed that I could have full custody of her. That same month, Cordelia had accepted this outcome with some aplomb. Less than a month later, she was planning an elaborate trip to London to meet her grandparents. This would include returning with them later that same summer as part of their annual visit to Seattle.

Just as how nearly everyone in the United States felt differently on September 10, 2001, than how most would feel in the anxious days following the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York a day later, so too, on July 7, 2009, would my daughter still have her adolescent dreams intact. Moreover, I had every reason to hope that I could become—sooner rather than later—a good parent to my special-needs child. Without Esther agitating for moving to Los Angeles all the time and contradicting my efforts with her own barbs, I felt I could have brought my daughter to a much safer therapeutic place. High school semesters were to be spent with her existing friends for the next four years, vacation time was to be spent with Esther. This would allow my wife to apply for jobs anywhere in Los Angeles or Ventura counties without having to worry about whether Cordelia would mind having to move school all the time throughout the remainder of her high school years. Everything would doubtless center around the mercurial personalities of all involved, but I could still see myself just shy of the events that would follow and for the near future as a single parent of a rebellious but just manageable adolescent daughter. She had her friends and grandparents to look forward to and I could continue to believe that somehow Cordelia would acquire a reasonable education. It was a time of fragile possibilities and the hope of receding trauma for my daughter.

Unfortunately, she had also—unbeknownst to me—hidden the very Risperdal medication that could have helped to keep this fragile set of hopes from breaking.

***

One day later, I would be robbed of all my plans and hopes. It now seemed as if gossamer could have been marketed successfully as some stronger binding material, so quickly would everything collapse. My daughter’s former