Simon Cambridge - Denied! Failing Cordelia: Parental Love and Parental-State Theft in Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court: Book One: The Cankered Rose and Esthers Revenge

Denied! Failing Cordelia

Parental Love and Parental-State Theft in Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court

Book One:
The Cankered Rose and Esthers Revenge

Simon Cambridge

Copyright 2014 by Simon Cambridge.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014912227

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4990-4692-2

Softcover 978-1-4990-4693-9

eBook 978-1-4990-4691-5

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Rev. date: 12/17/2014

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CONTENTS

DEDICATION

With Love and Hugs to Geraldine (Mu chie)

To my lovely daughter, Cordelia , who has replaced so many of my days and nights with feelings of loss, tears, resolve, and h opes.

* * *

To my wonderful Mother for so much emotional and financial support throughout my life, and for supporting me in my writing and many legal bat tles.

* * *

To my favorite actress, writer, and director, Sarah Polley , for her sensitive writing, directing, and portrayal of orphans and broken women on television or in film, and for bringing our attention so eloquently to the fact that many of us have lovingly dysfunctional stories we feel we must tell.

* * *

To Debra , for showing me that the best therapist in the world is the one who looks least like a therapist and more like a fr iend.

* * *

To the many mothers and fathers who have lost their children to misguided state theft or to parental alienation, and who are trying to bring them back to a shared place where each may heal as part of a forever family. Neither parent should be denied the chance of reunifying with his or her children where their love for them is obv ious.

To acclaimed best-selling novelist, Jodi Picoult , with many thanks for inspiring me to write my own story instead of providing her with the raw material to write it for me with a happier en ding!

The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure.

To live it you have to exp lode.

Bob Dylan, Where are you tonight
(Journey through dark heat)

Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be

nursed

For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out

ones an worse

An for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe

An we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flas hing.

Bob Dylan, Chimes of fre edom

Leonato

I pray thee, cease thy cou nsel,

Which falls into mine ears as profitless

As water in a sieve: give not me cou nsel;

Nor let no comforter delight mine ear

But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine.

Bring me a father that so loved his c hild,

Whose joy of her is overwhelmd like mine,

And bid him speak of pati ence;

Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine

And let it answer every strain for st rain,

As thus for thus and such a grief for such,

In every lineament, branch, shape, and form:

If such a one will smile and stroke his b eard,

Bid sorrow wag, cry hem! when he should g roan,

Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk

With candle-wasters; bring him yet t o me,

And I of him will gather pati ence.

But there is no such man: for, brother, men

Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief

Which they themselves not feel; but, tastin g it,

Their counsel turns to passion, which before

Would give preceptial medicine to rage,

Fetter strong madness in a silken th read,

Charm ache with air and agony with w ords:

No, no; tis all mens office to speak patience

To those that wring under the load of so rrow,

But no mans virtue nor sufficiency

To be so moral when he shall endure

The like himself. Therefore give me no cou nsel:

My griefs cry louder than advertise ment.

Antonio

Therein do men from children nothing di ffer.

William Shakesp eare,
Much ado about nothing, act V, sc. I

Im a survivor, not a set tler.

Cordelia in an e-mail to au thor,
March 3, 2014

Such humble talents as God has given to me I will endeavor to put to their greatest use;... and when I feel it my duty to speak an unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, though it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my readers immediate pleasure as well as my own.

Anne Bront, Preface to the Second Edition, The tenant of Wildfell Hall ( 1848)

I cant imagine a daughter going through this without me, I say. As a parent, its the worst thing to consideryou kids not letting us help you.... What was the point of me if he didnt use me? The purpose of me as a parent? Whats the point of everything parents do if the kids arent going to emplo y us?

Kaui Hart Hemmings, The possibilities ( 2014)

O VER THE COURSE of a planned three-volume series of works covering some six years, I will chiefly be following my daughters struggles and my own with how an unnecessary child dependency case happened, progressed, and ended in Childrens Dependency Court in Monterey Park, Los Angeles. However, since this case would not take place in a vacuum, it will also be just as painfully necessary to follow the mental-health struggles of both parent and child. By understanding these, it will become that much easier following how a story that started so happily and promisingly in beautiful Washington State, would end up with both father and daughter sitting miserably and triumphantly chairs-apart in a featureless Los Angeles court room.

The first of these volumes will be looking primarily at how my wife, Esther, and I first came to a decision to adopt a child, before then meeting and choosing to adopt the Cordelia of this story. Whilst joyous for me, and for my daughter at the time of her adoption, because of its almost-immediate painful aftermath, I have been forced to look for harbingers of what then lay in the future. Therefore, I am writing the present account more as a prelude to the deep and lasting wounds for both father and daughter of what would become our long and traumatic dependency-case nightmare in the sunny confines of Los Angeles. Knowing what has happened since my wife and I adopted our daughter at the age of thirteen from the Washington State foster care system, has sadly cast a dark pall over what should otherwise have been an exciting time for us all, and the happiest of my three b ooks.

* * *

Having now completed my first volume, and mostly in the therapeutic white heat of anger or frustration, my first important purpose must be to acknowledge those who have graciously helped me with financial, legal, and therapeutic support throug hout.

The following family members, friends, and colleagues have put up with a lot and, for the most part, have understood what has happened to both father and daughter. I now have more understanding as to why the Victorian English writer, George Eliot, was always so eager to take a vacation immediately after finishing each of her novels. The painful exhaustion and exhilaration of the creative process are equally obvious to both writer and re ader.

* * *

With this in mind, I would especiallyand most importantlylike to thank my mother who has listened throughout and daily to my tales of frustration, loss, pain, and emptiness. It would be hard to find someone more mystified by what has happened to her son, granddaughter, andnowgreat-grandson. From over three thousand miles, a continent and an oceans-width away in London, the workings of American justice have repeatedly seemed archaic and incomprehensible to her and at variance with what she had previously expected of the United States. My mother has listened to my disappointments, an almost constant sense of outrage, and an endless feeling of frustration from her only son. Whilst she has not understood all that I have tried to doand has been reluctant to step too much into the arenashe has certainly recognized enough to see the pain I have gone through, and I am grateful to her for financially supporting many of my legal needs in fighting back.