The CT Department of Children and Families Charges Mother and Grandfather With Child Abuse For Yelling and Cursing at Child

May 18, 2004 -- The Connecticut Department of Children and Families Norwalk CT office confirmed a charge of emotional neglect against a CT mother for using curse words against her 7 and a half year old daughter. The child attends Prospects, a program for behaviorally disturbed children. The child who lives with her mother and maternal grandparents terrorized the household by screaming, destroying property and assaulting both her mother and grandfather the morning of the incident. The grandparents cared for the child when the mother went off to work and the grandfather's yelling and cursing took place apart from the mother.

The child reported the yelling and cursing to her treating social workers and stated that it scared her. The Prospects program director Tom Faye decided to make the call based on the grandfather's threat to return the child back to her father. Social workers suspect the child's father perpetrated the abuse which causes the child to suffer from severe posttraumatic stress disorder. While the social workers choose to report the mother's yelling and cursing no one reported the child's disclosure of her father repeatedly suffocating her because he is temporarily in supervised visitation.

DCF has within its files a family therapist's written report on the father's emotional abuse of the child. DCF is also aware of the child's frequent disclosures of her father suffocating her. DCF has not taken any action against the father whose abuse of the child led to the child's severe emotional state. Despite the child's enrollment in both the Prospect program which treats her daily and ICAPS a Yale sponsored program for severely behaviorally disturbed children which comes to her home, the child entered a children's psychiatric hospital this week.

This is not the first time DCF questioned the grandfather for yelling at the child. During the summer the child's father placed calls to DCF who came out and looked into the grandfather for yelling at the child which the child reported to her father.

The mother of the child and her 73-year old father expressed outrage at both DCF's infringement on their constitutional rights to free speech within their home and DCF's failure to take action against the child's father. They've contacted the CT ACLU.

For More Information telephone 203-761-8809 or 203-246-9166





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