By Nev Moore

In our own experience our daughter was forced to attend "Children’s Charter" in Waltham. DSS told us that this would be their last demand upon us. If we cooperated, they would send her home immediately. They told us they wanted her to have a "trauma evaluation," so she would not be "re-traumatized" by returning home (as she was begging of everyone she spoke with). All I kept saying was: "What trauma?" Our daughter is a little drama queen, as are many little girls. When I was a child and behaved in this fashion (as I often did if I didn’t get my way) it was called: "being a brat." (And I can still do it!)

Anyway, with the promise that she would be returned home if we did this one more thing, we agreed after questioning the DSS worker and the supervisor, Larry Vadeboncoeur, about any contractual relationship between Children’s Charter and DSS. We also questioned Dr. William Burcell of Children’s Charter, asking outright if they had a contract with DSS.

All parties adamantly assured us that there was no contract between DSS and the agency whatsoever. The DSS supervisor, Vadeboncoeur, acted like he had never heard of Children’s Charter and knew nothing about them. He just said he had heard that they were "very good," and he assured me that this would be a "clean" evaluation. (Not that there was any reason for any evaluation in the first place.) He told me, as did the social worker, that the staff at Children’s Charter would be given no background information on the child or the case. Just her name, age, etc. would be told. I was later to learn that DSS and Children’s Charter have a long standing contract and Dr. Burcell and Supervisor Larry Vadeboncoeur have an even longer standing personal relationship.

They blatantly lied. I also found in our case file the "referral" sheet from Vadeboncoeur to Burcell telling them just what DSS wanted from them and what they needed to be "documented" in the evaluation. I then learned that DSS supervisor Vadeboncoeur, who signs his letters and documents with "LICSW" following his name, has been operating on a license that expired in 1992. According to the Division of Registration, representing oneself as a licensed social worker on an invalid license is criminal fraud.

During our daughter’s evaluation, she was given the "house-tree-person" test in which the child is asked to draw those objects. She drew an apple tree, as I had taught her since she was 3 or so, by making a trunk with brown crayon, then swirling the green one around for the top and adding some red apples. "Dr." Burcell wrote: "The drawing of the apple tree by the child indicates that she feels safe and comfortable in a foster care environment." (!)  I asked them about the hundreds of apple trees she’d drawn at home over her eight-year life.
The next object was the person. She’s very attached to her dad, so she drew him. She had just progressed from stick people to sausage people, so she made a  round body with sausage legs and arms. The sausage arms didn’t quite connect to the body and the crayon lines didn’t quite touch. That was reported as, "Because arms are not attached to father’s body indicates that child fears those objects."

The last object was the house. I’d taught her to draw the standard square box with two square windows and the pitched roof and a door. Usually we added a chimney and a curl of smoke. Children’s Charters interpretation was: "The door to the house was drawn slightly off-center which represents that the child has been subjected to ongoing domestic violence that has traumatized her." Go figure. What if the child lived in a house where the door was off-center (as we do)?  They added: "The fact that the drawing lacks detail indicates that the child’s emotional exchange with others has resulted in pain."  How much detail do you expect of an eight-year-old? Where is there any logic to this? The way we drew houses was very typically representative of the way millions of children draw houses.

Others Had Same Experience

We talked to another Children’s Charter victim who was told that her drawing had too much detail, so that means that you are "suspicious by nature." Clue: there is no "right" way to draw the house, no matter what is drawn. You can’t be normal and you have been abused by your parents! Oddly enough, the above reported interpretations ended up being a verbatim copy of what unlicensed supervisor Vadeboncoeur had requested in the referral sheet (that he denied existed).

As far as I’m concerned these characters are madmen who shouldn’t even be allowed near children, let alone have anything to do with fracturing families. I have shown these reports to many highly educated and qualified psychiatrists and psychologists who stated, bar none, that they are garbage. I am in the process of tracing exactly how much Medi-caid was billed for this insanity. I want to know what it is costing the state to keep these disturbed people in business and thriving on the pain and destruction they inflict on innocent children and their families. I know what the emotional costs are, because we are still paying them.

The solution to this is to put law enforcement in charge. I do not mean have police officers submit to the whims of some inexperienced, untrained social worker with a God complex. Police officers are highly trained in assessment, investigation, and writing reports objectively. They are themselves assessed psychologically for sound judgment. They are unlikely to fabricate reports and they know that they must follow procedure meticulously. They also know that they must perform their duties within the parameters of the law and the Constitution.

As social worker Joanne Claussen of the South Yarmouth office said to a client: "Constitution? Oh, we don’t have to go by that."
 

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