Dear Huntingdon County,
We have had the displeasure of dealing with you for a number of years now. We have watched you drop the ball on numerous occasions. The first time being during our emergency custody order. You would think when a mother admits to driving drunk with children in the car that it deserves more than a thought. Rather than address the mothers drinking habits, which to any normal person is obvious she has a drinking problem when she is secretly drinking several airline bottles of Vodka. By secretly we mean while her child is at a sports practice she sneaks off to the liquor store, purchases the bottles, drinks them straight from the bottle, and then throws the bottles away at the local Sheetz. No one is none the wiser. That is until an hour later when she picks up her teenage daughter from practice. According to her daughter she was unable to keep the vehicle on the road. All of this was said during hours upon hours of testimony. Not only by the mother but also by the live in boyfriend and the CYS case worker. Instead you were more concerned with the mothers claims of the father skipping weekend visits with the father. Which may we add the mother claimed all these missed visits were documented on a yearly calender that she never provided to the court.
The second time you dropped the ball was when you were in charge of deciding what was in the best interest of the children. Based only on the work schedule of the mother, you decided she was the better parent due to the fact that she was able to get them on and off the bus along with having a seasonal job that she was laid off from during fall and winter. So while the kids were in school she was home and while the kids were home for the summer she was at work. Seems to me that that is not the most convenient schedule when raising children. You did not take in to account the numerous times she had moved from her boyfriends home to sleep on a friends couch with both kids in tow. You ignored the fact that she at one point in the recent past was thinking of leaving her current boyfriend for a known heroin addict. She was willing to subject both children to that lifestyle. Thankfully that man went to jail or she may have just went thru with that plan.
The third time you have dropped the ball happened just this week. We presented you with proof that the mother had moved just 15 miles from our home. She not only moved there but had taken a job there and enrolled the children into a new school. She left her boyfriend of seven years. The only thing we were told as to why was that "Things had been bad for awhile". This was more than a lovers spat. This was a major event in not only her life but also her children's. It took us five weeks to get in front of you to tell you why we thought it would be a great idea to share custody. Twelve hours before court the mother moved back in to her boyfriends home and said that all is well they have reconciled. Again any normal person can see that this was an obvious calculated move. She sucked up her pride and crawled back to the man that things were so BAD with that she moved out and started a new life for no other reason than to WIN! Because of this you dismissed anything we wrote in our petition. All of what happened over the previous five weeks became null and void. I still am not sure how you came to this conclusion. If anything it should show even more how unstable she is. Both her and her boyfriend testified that this was not the first time that she moved out for a number of weeks. Not to mention the weekends spent on couches at friends and relatives houses. She was and is clearly unstable. Yet procedurally, the word you used several times, there is nothing you can do. Unless we have five grand to dish out to some psychologist that is.
Children's lives are not a money maker. That is exactly how we feel at this point. We either have to keep dumping money into this or wait until she wrecks and kills one of the children in a drunk driving crash or wait for her to get a new boyfriend who lives closer to us. None of those options seem fair to any of the parties involved and sadly the ones who will suffer the most is the children.
This is our last ditch effort to get some closure on this entire ordeal. Please open your eyes and see that this mother is playing not only you but the rest of the world. She will go off the deep end maybe not today and maybe not next week but someday. Ask yourself this...When one of these children get hurt because of your lack of intervention can you still sleep soundly at night? If your answer is no then step up and intervene before its to late.
Sincerely,
ONE PISSED OFF FAMILY
