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Howard Children Are Being
Reunited With Parents 5-Month-Old
Baby Begins Visiting Next Week; ‘State Kidnaps Children with Impunity,’
Says Atty. Darling
By Ed Oliver There is a light at the end
of the tunnel for the Howard family in the trial
to terminate their parental rights. “We have a court order
that anticipates the reunification of the Howard
family,” Attorney Chester Darling told
Massachusetts News. Custody of the Howard’s
three children is presently in DSS which wants to
put them up for adoption. The parents are
fighting to get their children back. They say
there is no proof they are unfit parents and the
judge appears to agree. Atty. Darling said,
“I’m very disappointed that we have an
agency in the Commonwealth that can kidnap
children almost with impunity.” The Howard children are
Cristopher 10, Ethan 5, and baby Jessica who was
born last December. Judge Robert A. Belmonte
ordered a temporary settlement in the matter last
week by way of a six-month continuance of the
trial in an attempt to reunite the family. If all goes well, the baby
will begin scheduled overnight visits with the
parents starting May 14, leading to weekend
visits. The parents will also visit the two boys
more often according to a new court schedule. The
boys will most likely move to Vermont soon to
live with their aunt and uncle, and the family
and their lawyers hope they will later reunite
with their parents. In the best case scenario,
the baby would be home full time on June 18 and
the boys would be back home in six months or
sooner, say the Howards. But there is not a
commitment that the two boys will be coming home.
That would only occur upon review. The hope is
that things go well after the baby is home and
the boys are able to come home later on that
basis. The order states the Howards
must attend parenting classes and individual
therapy. In addition, Neil Howard must attend the
EMERGE batterer’s program for an evaluation.
In an important and rarely seen stipulation
related to that requirement, Neil does not have
to sign anything that admits to culpability,
which is normally demanded of those who are
forced to attend batterers’ programs. There will be a case review
on June 18 and another one in six months. DSS
Still ‘Kicking and Screaming’ The current belated
resemblance to justice could not have occurred if
the Howards did not have two hard working
pro-family attorneys on their side: Chester
Darling and Gregory Hession. Publicity of the
trial was also a factor. Most families caught in
the oppressive web of DSS and the probate court
system are not so fortunate. Attorney Greg Hession told
Massachusetts News, “The Department of
Social Services realized it would be in the best
interest of the children to begin the process of
reuniting them with the parents.” But another courtroom source
was not as diplomatic. The source said that DSS
was dragged kicking and screaming into the
agreement by the judge. A DSS lawyer was even
heard shouting in the courtroom from outside in
the hallway, “There is no way I will agree
with the recommendation to return the baby.
I’m not giving the baby back!” Momentum shifted in the
Howard family’s favor during the fourth day
of the trial. DSS had been putting on its
witnesses who merely read from their written
reports; but upon cross-examination, they had to
explain their bizarre and unsupported accusations
about the parents. Trial observers say that Judge
Belmonte had heard enough embarrassing testimony
from social workers under cross-examination to be
persuaded that DSS’ judgment was
questionable. For example, DSS allegedly
extracted an allegation from one of the boys last
year that his parents “cut off his
pee-pee.” Three social workers were questioned on the stand about the obviously false castration claim. They said it was an “emotional allegation,” rather than a factual or hearsay allegation. They explained their belief that when a child truly and honestly without a doubt in his mind believes that it happened, that means it happened. Although it was proven by a physician that the child’s genitals were not cut off, the social workers all agreed that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Observers also say the judge
was angered by DSS’ obnoxious behavior in
the courtroom. Social workers tried to control
the proceedings by asking questions from the
stand. The judge had to tell them they could only
answer questions from the stand. A social worker
even tried to walk off the stand unexcused even
though Attorney Hession had just said he was not
finished questioning her. In addition, the DSS lawyer
caused the judge to censure her after she asked
her witness to skip over reading from her report
and to just read her recommendations. The judge
reportedly said, “You cannot read those
recommendations here. I’m the one who makes
the recommendations. I read the reports and the
recommendations. It’s up to me. I can throw
them all out, put them all in, but I’m the
one making the recommendations, nobody
else.” Besides DSS’ bumbling
testimony, another important development in the
parents’ favor was the appearance of a
Guardian Ad Litem who was appointed by the court
some months ago as a private investigator at the
suggestion of the aunt and uncle’s lawyer.
The Report recommended that baby Jessica be
returned to the parents. It also recommended that
the boys be taken from foster care and placed
with the aunt and uncle in Vermont. The report
states that the aunt and uncle are prepared to
adopt the boys should the court terminate the
Howard’s parental rights. Earlier GAL reports by
another investigator were largely a cut-and-paste
of DSS allegations with minimal investigation.
That investigator had formerly worked for DSS for
12 years. She was grilled on the stand, point by
point, and admitted she did very little
investigating. She was also questioned about why
she did not look into reports that Ethan had
bruises covered with make-up and other signs of
physical harm while living in a DSS -approved
foster home. She said she did not think it was
abuse. Seized
Because of Messy House DSS seized the boys in
November 1999 after a visiting nurse sent by the
Spaulding Rehab Hospital reported the Howards for
having a messy house. The Howards were remodeling
at the time and were not prepared for a home
inspection. That initial complaint, plus
twisting of comments by Heidi and the children
about Neil, later grew into wild allegations of
sexual abuse and mutilation of the boys, but
without any evidence. The Lowell District
Attorney did not consider the allegations
credible, but DSS relentlessly pursued the family
and later seized their newborn baby Jessica in
February this year. Critics of DSS say the original mission of the agency was to help preserve families, but instead DSS has been following the money by tearing families apart and trafficking in children to expand their bureaucratic empire.
Spaulding
Rehab Hospital Apparently Caused their Problems The Howards have lived at
their home on an acre of land in Tyngsboro since
they bought it in 1991. Neil works as a machinist
and Heidi is a homemaker. They’ve always been
just an ordinary family trying to get ahead
– until they had a baby with terminal
neurological problems and the feminists at DSS
discovered that having a dying baby causes stress
in a family and DSS could obtain more children to
adopt in order to obtain more federal
money. After the sick baby died at
one year, the DSS was so entwined with the
Howards that it demanded that a new baby born in
December 2000 be given to them to be cared for by
strangers. MassNews has reported how
the maternity wards in Massachusetts hospitals
monitor new mothers for DSS. (See the August 2000
edition.) The Spaulding Rehab Center in Boston is
apparently the one that almost destroyed the
Howard family. The hospitals of the state
are also used as recruiters for the new
“home visitor” programs which are run
by the state and disguised as private agencies.
As an example, we reported how Milford Hospital
provides the names and addresses of new mothers
to a state-run, home visitor program called
“Healthy Families,” which enters
information and observations about new parents
gained from visits, into a computer database that
is tied to the Department of Health. A home
visitor must tell DSS if she thinks she sees a
problem. A former worker for Healthy
Families told MassNews that her supervisor would
regularly call Milford Hospital to obtain a list
of new mothers. The hospital coordinator would
also give an indication about who on the list she
thought was “high risk.” MassNews wrote in the August, 2000 edition about the vision of C. Henry Kempe, who is credited with helping to launch the modern child abuse industry. He believed that the government is a superior “parent,” and he envisioned compulsory home visitation to monitor parents and evaluate new mothers. As we showed at the time, that vision is well on its way in Massachusetts with the Healthy Families program already instituted although almost no parent has any knowledge of it.
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