Saving Annie

By Angela Woywod

This books shares the heartbreaks and struggles of a grandma and others who were involved in the rescue of a little girl from sexual abuse and neglect. Once the government agency "Child and Family Protective Services" (C&FPS) got involved, following the liberal laws of today to keep families together no matter what, the child was put through more misery and neglect, which dragged on for more than a year and a half before finally a decision on her future was made.This book will show how drug addiction destroys lives and how it can turn good people into useless, double-crossing, selfish and uncaring individuals.What made this tragedy even worse and frustrating was the fact that no one could help. Even the lawyers who were hired to get the child out of a bad environment, even though they tried when they first got involved, were hampered and restricted by the liberal laws that are on the books. They seemed to be more on Welfare's side than the client's who paid them for their services.It is hoped that the lawmakers of today will realize that some of our laws are too liberal and need to be changed to make this country safer for "everybody". These liberal laws were created shortly after WW II to protect people from discrimination that were different in culture, ethnicity, behaviorally or of physical or mental impairments, nowadays called the "Vulnerable". But these liberal laws do not help the "Vulnerable", on the contrary, they hamper their treatment, but they hurt the law-abiding, taxpaying citizens.This book may help people that find themselves in a similar situation where a child needs to be rescued from sexual abuse and neglect. Sexual abuse on children should be recognized as the big problem that it is, instead it is largely being ignored by the judicial system. An article in the New York Times on 10/5/2014 called "pedophilia" a disorder, not a crime, an opinion of one very liberal journalist. It may be a disorder, but it definitely is a crime as well and should be punished as such, to prevent pedophiles from acting out on their unnatural behaviors. 20% of American children, about 200,000 per year are victims of sexual molestation, many times perpetrated by family members or friends. These children may suffer for the rest of their lives. The American Psychiatric Association states that pedophiles have been shown to have lower IQs than the general population and are shorter in height. Many are left-handed and some have been sexually abused as children themselves. This automatically gets them included into the category of the "Vulnerable" and they enjoy special treatment by the judicial system and some of them go unpunished, to the detriment of the children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098035914

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Saving Annie

Angela Woywod

Copyright © 2020 by Angela Woywod

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Part 1

Chapter 1

The first time I saw Annie, my granddaughter, was in June 1989. She was already fourteen months old. Her mother, Sherry Cooper, brought her to my house and told me that she was my grandchild and asked if I could baby-sit her once in a while.

I could tell right away that she was my son’s daughter, the resemblance was amazing. But opposed to my son, who was very outgoing and self-confident, she was very shy and quiet. She looked at me with her big blue eyes, hiding behind her mother. Sherry told her to dance for me. She turned around several times lifting her skinny little arms above her head. When she was done, I praised her and told her that she was a beautiful dancer, then she finally gave me a shy smile. I noticed a bruise above her forehead. I asked Sherry to come in to find out what was going on in their lives.

I hadn’t seen Sherry for about a year since she and my son Ricky weren’t seeing each other anymore. After they had broken up, she stayed at my house for a while and then she moved to Mount Charleston sometime in the late summer of 1987. She had found a job at the Lodge. There she met Ricardo Cooper who was employed there, and the two got married shortly thereafter. When Annie was born in April 1988, it was believed that Ricardo was her father and his parents, John and Tanya Cooper, were very happy that they finally had a grandchild.

Sherry informed me that she and her husband had broken up and she had a new boyfriend, a policeman, whom she was living with now. His name was Ron Williams. She said they had a nice apartment together, she had a car and her life was turning around. I found out later that they did not have an apartment of their own, but were sharing a house with a guy that Ron worked with and he was letting her borrow his car sometimes.

Of course, I told Sherry that she could bring her little girl by whenever she needed a babysitter. I did not have an outside job at the time, thanks to a generous ex-husband, and was mainly taking care of my mother, who was 88 years old at the time and a five-bedroom house, a big yard and a bunch of animals that I had rescued over the years. It was my plan to eventually get back into the workforce again, but I was still busy fixing the house and yard, having just recently moved to Las Vegas from Los Angeles. The backyard was bare of any vegetation, so trees and bushes had to be planted which I did mostly myself. I also had a waterfall, creek and pond built. I had wanted one for a long time and finally had a big enough yard to fulfill my dream. It put all visitors into awe.

We had a squirrel monkey named Fritzi, a Margay named Pasha that I rescued in Nicaragua, two turtles, pigeons, a rabbit, a cat and three dogs. All my animals were rescued except for the fish, that my brother Paul, who was visiting from Los Angeles, secretly released into the pond. This added to extra chores, because to keep the water clean, I had to use the pool vacuum now instead of just putting chlorine into the water. But I enjoyed watching the fish swim up and down in the creek, disappearing into the pond and coming out again, so I decided to keep them. In the evening, after I fed all my responsibilities, I usually sat on the bench behind the creek for a while with Fritzi on my shoulder or lap, and relaxed with my mother next to me.

Injured pigeon in the kitchen.

I started out with one pigeon that was injured. He had a broken wing and was unable to fly. I kept him in the kitchen for several weeks and he became very tame, sitting on my shoulder while I was cooking or doing the dishes. But eventually I built a six by six foot large cage for him outside, because I really did not want him in the kitchen forever. I left the cage door open during the day, so he could get out and exercise, which he did. Towards evening, when I came outside to feed everybody, he learned he had to go into his cage to get his food and then I closed his gate.

He did learn to fly again eventually and one day he disappeared. I thought he was gone forever, but after two weeks or so he came back and brought a companion along, a beautiful white one. Soon other pigeons moved in. It amazed me how word got around among them, that there was a safe place for them to nest and also lots of food. I didn’t mind keeping them, I had a huge yard and their cage was in the very back.

They added to the tranquility that I planned to create in my garden. I enjoyed watching them and discovered that they actually were very intelligent. The eggs that they laid, I brought to Fritzi, who devoured them. A perfect way to control their birthrate.

Pasha in his run.

Pasha, the Margay, had a 10 yard long run along the back wall and an adjacent shed with a high cat poste next to a window. A water cooler and a heater kept him comfortable when it was too cold or too hot outside. Then he would sit on the poste and look out into his run. Paul and I had hung a big branch, about 8' long in his run, which became his favorite place to rest on during the day, plus there where bushes where he could hide under. I don’t agree to keep wild animals in captivity, but I was satisfied with the environment that we had provided for him. It was a big improvement from where I had rescued him.

Fritzi’s run was next to Pasha’s but was separated with strong fencing that was covered with bamboo shading, so he and Pasha would not be able to see each other since they are natural enemies in the wild. His run also was 10 yards long. He had a little house about two yards off the ground with a heater. It had a heavy curtain for a door to keep the heat in.

Angela with Fritzi on her shoulder.

Fritzi playing outside.

It was funny when someone came to visit him in the evening and he was already inside his house, he pushed the curtain aside and stuck his head out to see who was there and if someone had brought him a treat. He liked to eat mashed potatoes, cooked vegetables, mealworms and all kinds of bugs. Sometimes I would let him out so he could find his own bugs. He was smart enough not to jump on top of Pasha’s cage.

On Wednesdays, I volunteered at the Animal Foundation, pulling stitches from the bellies of dogs and cats that had been spayed or neutered. I was busy, but I was doing stuff that I liked. My life was good and peaceful. That was about to change soon.

Annie with Great Grandma Atta, fall 1989.

Babysitting became a full-time job in a very short time. Sherry brought the baby by often and left her overnight many times, sometimes several nights in a row. I had a spare room next to my bedroom that I fixed up for her and eventually replaced the single bed that I had with a crib.

Sometime in October of 1989, Sherry and Ron split up and she asked Rick if she could stay at his place for a while. She moved into his living room with bags and boxes and prepared a place on the floor for the baby. Rick had a live-in girlfriend at the time and one evening after midnight, she called me and said that she and Sherry had gotten into an argument, that Sherry had too much to drink and she (the girlfriend) even had to flee into the bathroom. She asked me to pick Annie up, because she wouldn’t stop crying. Annie was still crying when I got there and clung to me when I picked her up, obviously happy to get out of there. On the way out, I saw that the bathroom door had a hole on the bottom, so the fight must have been pretty violent. Surprisingly Annie slept all night without waking up. From then on, I had her practically on a full-time basis. The Coopers usually picked her up on Saturdays in the late morning and brought her back to my house on Sundays. They always stayed a while to shat, we became friends.

Sherry was seeing both Ricky and Ron on and off. Ricky was trying to stay on good terms with her now that he knew for sure that he was Annie’s father. I was not very excited about the prospect of them getting back together again, but then I thought, maybe it would be good for Annie to be with her real parents. Plus I would be there to help raise her.

Annie’s first Christmas with us, 12.24.89 with Uncle Bert.

It was Christmas Eve and Annie’s first Christmas with us. Sherry left with her in the early afternoon and we expected her back for our Christmas Eve celebration. We already had our dinner and had settled down in the living room waiting for Sherry and Annie. Tanya and John Cooper were here, Hans, my ex-husband, Ricky and his new girlfriend Theresa, my brother Bert and his wife Andrea with their two kids Nicole and Jason and Andrea’s parents. Christmas music was playing, the guys had their beer and the women sipped on eggnog.

At around 6:00 p.m., Sherry called and said that she had a car accident and she wanted Ricky and me to come and pick Annie up. We rushed over there, it took us less than ten minutes to get to the accident scene. Ron was already there with his partner and wrote up the accident report. Annie was in the front seat, not buckled up. She had fallen forward and hit her head, Sherry said. Once back home, I changed her into her Christmas outfit and joined the party with her. We were lucky that she wasn’t hurt more having been in the front seat with no seatbelt on. She was in a good mood, happy to see Nicole and Jason and everybody else and, of course, the Christmas tree. When she saw Uncle Hans, she flew into his arms happy to see him again. He hadn’t been here for several weeks.

Eventually Sherry and Ron made up again, but one evening Ron’s landlord called me. He wanted me to tell Sherry that he did not want her back in his house. He didn’t tell me the reason and I didn’t want to pry, but he said that he was fearing for his job. He sounded very upset. Sherry explained to me later, that he was mad about a phone call that he had received about her. I should have asked her what the phone call was all about. She sometimes told me things, that she should have kept a secret for her own sake. Now she was homeless again so I offered her a place to stay. It was January 6th, 1990 when she moved into my guest room.

Monday 1/08/90

Today around noon, Sherry went to Ricky’s apartment to do some cleaning. She came back a little later and got Annie. She called around 8:00 p.m. to let me know that they were putting Annie to bed over there and she would come home with her at around midnight. I did not like the idea that Annie’s sleep would be interrupted so I told them to bring Annie home. They did and both, she and Rick left again. She came home at 5:00 a.m. Ron was here already at 6:00 a.m. and honked his horn outside, but she did not respond. A while later he phoned. I answered the phone for her and told him that she was sleeping. She stayed home the next day and took care of Annie, so I went shopping in the