According to the report from the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) driver, whose name is being withheld, the four children screamed all the way to Atlantic County, especially the baby.
The four siblings, aged 11, 10, 8 and 16 months, had never been separated from each other or their parents. But on this pleasant summer evening, July 27, all that would change.
Jason Ciseck, of DYFS, went to the police station requesting an escort at 4:30 in the afternoon. He had been sent to investigate a complaint of “unattended children” made by the landlord of the West Wildwood property.
According to the tenants, their landlord, Joe Palombaro, was unable to gain access to the apartment, and Palombaro had to get ready for a visit from the building inspector whom he believed had been called by his tenants, an allegation which they deny.
Palombaro rented the multi-bedroom apartment to the couple “Marvin” and “Millie” (their real names are being withheld) and their four children. For several months, Millie claims she struggled with unrepaired conditions in the apartment which made it difficult to maintain, especially with four children underfoot and both she and her husband working and her husband going to school.
Attempts to reach Palombaro-which included leaving a business card at his home and phone calls to his home and place of business--were unsuccessful.
Marvin and Millie arranged their schedules so that one of them would be home with the children. They had no relatives in the area to provide relief or support, so they took break whenever they could squeeze one in. Sometimes that included a group nap; more recently, Millie had begun going to an exercise facility, leaving the 10-year-old (he is now 11) in charge.
Marvin, a Gulf War era veteran, had planned to be a teacher. But after the events of that day this past July, it would no longer be possible.
Ciseck, who declined comment, referred questions to state spokesmen in Trenton, as is DYFS policy. According to Marvin and Millie, Ciseck took all the information given by the landlord at face value and proceeded with the two police officers to the apartment.
They knocked but the young voice on the other side refused to open the door, according to the police report obtained by this newspaper from the West Wildwood Police Department.
The young boy told Ciseck and the two officers-Patrolman Steven Novsak and Sergeant Walter Belles--that he was baby-sitting and that his father was working and his mother had gone to the gym about an hour ago. He knew the name of the gym and where the father worked, and said he was not allowed to let them in, as instructed by his parents.
Outside the agents could hear a lot of commotion. There was a dog running around barking; things being knocked over and dragged around and the sound of frightened, muffled children’s voices.
According to the police report, “After several minutes (Marvin and Millie’s) son” age 10, came out onto the front steps to talk to us.” It then continues, “While we tried to determine where the parents were (his siblings) kept peeking out the window at us and there was a dog barking and running loose inside the house. During this time (the 10-year-old) would return inside the house to check on the other children.”
“My son is very mature and responsible. He is an honor student,” Marvin, in tears, told this newspaper. “That is why we felt he could baby-sit for short periods. He always knew where we were.”
Cisek insisted on entry into the house, in the meantime the second oldest sibling emerged and gave the police officer the numbers where his parents could be reached, according to the police report.
The police sergeant called the mother, who called her husband at work, who returned immediately home.
“We don’t prosecute people”
According to DYFS spokesman Andy Williams, DYFS is not a “criminal investigation agency. We don’t prosecute people.” But the next actions of DYFS agent Ciseck were those of a textbook criminal investigator or agent of the prosecutor’s office.
Once inside the house, the first thing he did, according to the police report, was not to check on the condition of the children but “Ciseck took pictures, about 25, of the condition of the inside of the home.”
Everyone agrees that the house was messy but they do not agree on the cause. According to Marvin, he and his wife had collected the trash and put it into several trash bags. During the day Millie had added soiled diapers to the bags.
Millie had been instructed to lose weight and that she should start exercising, which is why she had recently joined the gym. She said she had planned to take the trash out, along with her son, when she returned from the health club.
During the commotion caused by the appearance of three male strangers at the door, the dog reacted in a typically canine way and barked, and ran about in frenzy, at times tearing open the bags and strewing the contents through the house, according to statements made by the children.
According to the police report, one of the officers present called the county Health Department (but a call by this newspaper to that department revealed there is no adverse finding on the West Wildwood home).
Ciseck then proceeded to have a conversation with the children to which no other adult was privy. He used the information he gleaned from this conversation to file a criminal complaint against Marvin and Millie.
At no time, according to the police report, were the couple ever advised of their Miranda rights or that they were in any legal jeopardy.
Quite the contrary, according to Marvin, who said that Ciseck told him that there would be “no problem once the kids were checked out by a doctor.”
Marvin admitted to the paper that he had some misgivings when Ciseck pulled a paper from his file and demanded that the distraught father sign custody over to DYFS.
“I didn’t want to and at first I said, ‘No,’ but Jason (Ciseck) told me I had to. He said, ‘If you don’t sign this I’ll go to a judge who’ll give us custody anyway and we’ll take everything that you have - every cent fighting us.’ So I signed,” said the still shaken father.
Ciseck also told them, according to Marvin, that it would only be for a couple of days. His statement was not accurate.
The children were taken by the police and Ciseck to Burdette Tomlin Memorial Hospital where they were examined for signs of abuse or neglect. None were found. The children were given a clean bill of health, according to the parents.
This newspaper spoke to a hospital aide who was present and witnessed the scene at the hospital when the children were brought in. The aide said that they were crying and begging to go home.
According to the aide, the DYFS worker peppered them with questions about what they ate, if they wore shorts in the winter, if they slept in beds, and if they were left alone at night.
Millie, who worked a night shift, and Marvin, who had a job that required him to be out of the house between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., according to the police report, had no idea where their children were for entire days.
“They had never been separated from us in their whole lives,” said Millie, who cried the entire time she recounted the incident.
Then three days after Jason Ciseck first visited their home, police returned to arrest them, handcuff them in front of their neighbors and take them to the police station “where they were processed and released without incident,” as stated in the police report.
In fact the couple have been nothing but cooperative with the authorities during these events.
“We didn’t know we were doing anything wrong,” says the mother as she tells how her school-age children were straight-A students. She offers their pictures to show how well nourished they are and shows little notes and cards they have written expressing their affection.
“If we knew what we were doing was wrong, we would have stopped whatever it was we shouldn’t have done. We thought we were being good parents. Our kids are doing good in school and the pediatrician says they are really fine,” Millie chattered on.
The parents, children have no contact for 4 months
The four children were placed in four different foster homes in four different towns in three different counties, with no contact with each other or their parents from whom they had never been separated.
Millie and Marvin had no contact whatsoever with them for five weeks. “It seemed like forever,” confessed their father.
During that time the parents did everything that was requested of them by DYFS. They submitted to psychological evaluations, attended parenting classes, and went to counseling and therapy all the while contemplating the thought of a criminal trial - without counsel.
“They told us we make too much money to have a lawyer appointed for us,” said Marvin.
And they do not really make enough money to afford a decent attorney. One of the DYFS workers told them they would be better off “going on welfare.”
Dr. David Straton is a world-renowned psychiatrist who presently teaches in Queensland, Australia. His major work is the rehabilitation and healing of individuals who have suffered major traumas in life especially as children.
He is an expert in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is the enduring consequences of traumatic experiences and has some knowledge of Reactive Attachment Disorder - RAD. He is the founder of the Phoenix Club, a treatment program that is experimental in nature and only in its infancy but whose initial results are promising. This newspaper contacted him for this article and was referred by him to some of his major works on the syndromes mentioned.
According to Straton, traumatized children often carry with them into adult the effects of serious trauma in the form of bonding with the traumatic event or traumatizer.
“It is the so-called Stockholm Effect or Trauma Bond. Even hijackers or kidnap victims sometimes bond onto their captors especially if the shift is prolonged to a point where the initial fear arousal has time to reduce while the victim is still in the vicinity of the persecutor of the action,” the doctor said.
This psychological injury may then become a disorder known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in older children and RAD for 2 year olds or younger.
Both these disorders may be caused by sudden and or violent removal from a familiar caregiver, especially the mother, familiar surroundings and familiar people, such as brothers and sisters.
The removal of the children of Marvin and Mille fits with this description, as do the children of Mildred Bartee and Jeannie Nailon.
The 9-year-old daughter of Bartee told this newspaper that as she and her 2-year-old brother were being driven away from their mother by the DYFS worker, her little brother was crying “Mommy” and the worker told him to “stop being such a baby” and to stop crying. “I told her, ‘He is a baby and he always had my mother.’ Then, I just held him closer” said the 9-year-old who is experienced beyond her years.
Unlike Millie’s four children Bartee’s daughter and baby son were kept together in a foster home in Bridgeton.
Bartee’s daughter told the newspaper that her brother was often punished for crying for his mother while in the foster home.
“They took me out of my school and sent me to one in Bridgeton and I always worried when I had to leave him alone,” the Bartee daughter said.
She also told the paper that her mother was a good mother and that she wanted to tell the judge that, but nobody would let her speak to him.
Their new judge is Vincent Siegel, recently assigned to hear DYFS cases and he has not permitted her children to speak to him despite their wishes to do so, according to Bartee. “Whatever the DYFS attorney says he just goes with,” said the despondent mother, who is worried about the long-term effect on her children of this involvement with the state agency.
“When young children have a serious break with their primary care giver, even if that person is not perfect…in this case the child is left with a patch of cold skin, a gaping emotional hole,” said Straton.
Children under 2 years old are at high risk for RAD when taken suddenly from their usual caregiver and placed in foster care, such as Millie’s baby.
Removing a baby from “parents and siblings is absolutely damaging”
Carlyn Graham runs Focused Solutions Counseling Center located in Rio Grande and is an expert in the healing of the disorder. While not speaking of any particular case she told this newspaper, “To remove a baby from both the parents and the siblings is absolutely damaging.” She further described the condition as “the inability to be able to attach to another human being. And it is caused by a severe break of some kind. The kids I’m working with have the fear that at any minute someone could come and take them out of here. Whatever the cause of the break the child feels isolated and surrounded by strangers and if not in their own home they feel surrounded by strangers no matter how kind the strangers may be. The little one’s entire world has been destroyed. Our goal is to re-establish trust.”
Graham, who said she had great sympathy for the difficult job of social workers who had to make these judgment calls, expressed the hope that removal, especially of very young children, would be a last resort because the psychological damage is so severe.
She also spoke of the work of Nancy Thomas, of Glenwood Springs, Colo., and offered extensive information to anyone interested in learning about the disorder at 889-2946.
According to Thomas, “Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Edgar Allen Poe, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy are some famous people with RAD who did not get help in time. One famous person with Attachment Disorder who did get help in time and became one of our greatest humanitarians is Helen Keller. The sooner therapy begins the better.”
The same may be said for children with PTSD. “One of the things that these people need is re-tribalization,” said Straton.
“Margaret Mead once said that for 99 percent of human history, mankind has lived in tribes. Our culture has been progressively dismantling them, first to the extended family, dismantled that, then the nuclear family, dismantling that and then singling out to lone individuals,” Straton said. “People separated as children from their ‘tribe’ are more likely to become panicky, depressed, ashamed adults who are more likely to have relationships break down, be unemployed and commit crimes. These people need to be 're-tribalized'.”
One of the older children taken from his mother after living with her as his sole caregiver is Nailon’s son, Curt. He is now an adolescent and is receiving regular psychiatric care and medication after being abruptly taken from her by DYFS agents one day after the discovery of a messy house.
She showed the paper a recent letter from him begging her to do whatever she had to do so that he could come home, “Please Mommy, please,” he wrote in immature handwriting, “I miss you.”
His 3-year-old sister has had a series of caregivers after being removed from the only home she ever knew and was finally placed with her “blood father,” according to Curt’s stepmother.
Sudden separation and maternal ambivalence both put a young child at high risk for RAD, according to Thomas, the RAD therapy advocate.
“I haven’t seen her for over a year,” said Naillon, who has been denied access even though she still has legal visitation rights.
DYFS “has gotten out of hand. No one is watching them”
A psychotherapist who works with DYFS and who has requested anonymity because he fears retribution if his identity were revealed, agreed to speak with this newspaper about the state agency.
“There has to be a DYFS because there are abused kids. But DYFS as it is now has gotten out of hand. There is no one watching them.”
He told of specific instances when he complained about the decision to remove of a child or the way the child was removed.
“How much damage do you think that does to a young child to have uniformed men with guns grab you away from your daddy and mommy, no matter how bad they might be from the standpoint of a middle class yuppie social worker?” he said.
“When I complained I was told to stay out of it or I would be considered to be interfering into their investigation. The attitude is ‘We know best,’ ” he added.
He said that the problems cut both ways.
“In some instances they don’t adequately supervise the perpetrators of child abuse and in others they open cases where they shouldn’t be opened,” he alleged. “They are too closed an agency and the politicians are either in bed with them or scared to death of them.”
He was not optimistic that the politicians would work to make any real changes or institute real reforms. When told of Senate bill 1910 calling for oversight, he just said, “Yeah, we’ll see.”
In the meantime Marvin is thinking about a new career since he can no longer become a teacher (his name, because of his involvement with DYFS, is on a list of child abusers, as per Megan’s Law). He and his wife do get to see their children one hour a week and have noticed a dramatic decline in their school grades.
Jeannie Nailon waits for the postman to bring another letter from her son and Mildred Bartee looks forward to having her children with her again some day.
“I know Marvin,” said a friend of the couple, “and it seems a shame that a guy who served his country and is working hard to make it has this kind of thing happen to him. I can’t think of anything worse.”
|