the usual suspect

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When I first met my lawyer I was not impressed. Greg Perez-Selsky’s office was teeny tiny in a rundown building right behind my work that I thought was abandoned or condemned or something. He sure looked like an overworked public defender.

I waited out in the hall while he discussed a D.U.I. case with another client who sounded like a serious conspiracy theorist. He was rambling on about how the D.A. had it out for him for seven years. If my own business hadn’t been so grim I may have cracked a smile listening to him.

Greg’s first order of business was to either include or exclude Michael as part of my defense. Will we be blaming this on your boyfriend? No, we will not. I knew all the way through me that Michael had not abused my daughter. He had about 50% more patience per square inch of his person that me. When Hazel woke up some nights, I would cry because I was so exhausted. Without him I would be freaked out. He was always there to take her when I needed him to. He was the most involved and attentive daddy I knew. So, that out of the way, we needed to find a doctor who would agree that Hazel could have been hurt during the panic stop we had the day before we went to the emergency room. Greg said he would get started on that and call me next week. It was a short meeting, and not very gratifying.

The next contact we had with D.H.S. was their request that we both go to the hospital to take u.a.’s. We both had been smoking pot and were terrified to go. I called a couple people, to try to hunt down a clean sample, but was not able to find one. We called our lawyers, who told us that it was up to us to go or not at this point, and we did have the right to wait for them to get a court order for the tests. But we were so worried about looking guilty that we went the next day.

So after that, we were marijuana addicted child beaters. There was no other answer for Mary Moller and her holier-than-thou bureaucratic henchmen. They tried so hard to trick us into saying things that they could twist around. I can completely understand the instances of false, coerced confessions. They made us feel like even if we didn’t beat her it was never going to stop until we confessed. It was torture.

We went to the first court hearing. It was a hearing where the State of Oregon was requesting that Hazel be made a ward of the state and that our legal parental rights be suspended. It was like being in a car with no brakes. We went before the judge that I Hadn’t Voted For in the last election, and weren’t even given the opportunity to speak. It was just a done deal. A formality was what our attorneys called it. It made me want to puke. While Hazel would still be coming home with us, it meant that they could come and take her anytime they pleased. They had all the power in the world. My parents were devastated. They wanted to protect me, and were powerless. Through it all they believed me, though. When I said that I knew that Michael hadn’t hurt her, they believed me one hundred percent, which is more than I can say for Michael’s mother.