Monday, September 21, 2009

Parents lost toddlers for bathtub picture

Some readers have sent this Arizona story:
A Peoria couple accused of sexual abuse after taking photographs of their young children in the bathtub is fighting back.

Kids pulled from home over bath time photos - A Peoria couple is suing after Wal-Mart reported them to authorities over some bath-time photos of their three young daughters. azfamily.com's Javier Soto explains.

A.J. and Lisa Demaree held a news conference Friday to make a statement about their suit. Lisa tearfully expressed the pain of the ordeal they have gone through.

It all started when A.J. Demaree took a memory stick to Wal-Mart have some photos printed. Among the 144 photos were eight pictures of the couple's three daughters taken during bath time. A Wal-Mart supervisor turned those nude photos over to Peoria police, reporting them as possible child abuse.

Child Protective Services was notified and removed the girls -- who were 5, 4 and 1 1/2 at the time -- from their home on Aug. 30, 2008. Rather than placing them with other family members, CPS sent the girls to two separate foster homes for nearly three days. The girls were also subjected to invasive medical examinations to determine if they had been sexually abused.
You can view the actual photo here. It looks completely innocent to me.

The most amazing part of this story is that it took the parents two months to get a court hearing where the judge ruled completely in favor of the parents, but it took another seven months for them to get their kids back!

I don't describe incidents like this as mistakes. These things only happen because there is an evil system in place. The system needs to be reformed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This exact thing is happening to my brother in Peoria. He had a video of his 2 twin girls that were runnning in and out of his room and bathroom where they decided to take a shower. Mind you these kids have their own bathroom. My brother had his ex wife living there because he felt bad and she was threatning to kill herself if he didn't let her move in. She had just left the state with her sister, got a job and just left her kids. After 2-3 months it did not work out so that is why she came back. In the time that she stayed there, he noticed money missing from his closet, set his camera to video to see if it was the ex or his 14 year old troubled daughter. Next thing she did was take the video, the kids and took them to the police station where they were asked horrible questions to where they didn't even understand the questions. This has been 3 months ago, he hasn't seen the kids. They took all his computers and did not find anything that they were looking for. CPS is not allowing him to contact his children and the DA keeps offering plea bargains so they can justify what they did and how they took these childrens lives away!!! My brother doesn't have the money to get a lawyer, but he is innocent. The kids have had to change schools. They have spent their whole lives with their dad while their mother comes and goes as she pleases. The state is fully responsible for jumping on these kinds of cases and seizing children from their homes where they feel comfortable. This is a nightmare to my whole family and the kids are the innocent ones that don't understand why they cant see their father. Why they are being asked if their father touched them in a bad way. The video was not supposed to happen, and the video is totally innocent. Both the DA and CPS of Peoria need some investigation and need to know that they are hurting families and taking precious moments away that can never be returned while there are many children out there that can really use their assistance!

George said...

The story is about a Peoria case. Are you saying that there are two cases of this in Peoria? If so, someone is way out of control.