I am a father of four and the husband of a beautiful and loving wife. My name is Shem Atwater, and my wife is Kathryn. We have been married for ten years. Our oldest, Chryshal, is ten years old and loves to draw. Our son, Shem, is eight and is into building and taking things apart. Our second daughter, Gwendolyn, is seven and can learn a song in a day. Our youngest is Robyn, who is only 17 months, yet is already a scientist who loves to study and experiment.
Two and a half years ago, before Robyn was born, we bought an old house that needed a lot of fixing up. Not long after the local social services (DCFS) came and took our three oldest from us, saying the environment was unsafe. Our public defenders did not want to fight the system, despite the dubious legality of the investigator’s actions. So, for a year and half we were forced to watch our children grow up without us.
My wife’s parents were granted custody, and we were able to visit fairly often, but it was stressful. Our children were scared and began to act out in protest. It took us almost a year to find a new residence, and Robyn was born only a month after we moved in. It still took six more months before we were again given physical custody of our children.
This last January our children finally came home. Things progressed well and, after eight months, the children had begun to recover from the trauma of the experience. Then, in early October, my wife and I fell ill. It wasn’t serious but it left us both with a lack of energy, with the end result that the house didn’t get cleaned for a week.
Because of this the DCFS has once again taken our children away. This time, however, they have taken Robyn as well. They have refused to let my wife’s parents have custody again, and will only let us see the kids once a week now. They are supposed to visit the house once a week, but we have had no contact with them in six weeks. We talked to a friend who works with another office of the DCFS, and he has said that they will likely try to keep them for at least another year, and may not give them back at all.
Just after the children were taken this time we found out that Kathryn is pregnant. As the last two children were born through C-section this pregnancy is high risk. That risk is made even greater due to the fact that it is twins, which is always high risk in itself. The stress of the situation only makes things that much worse; as does the fear that our new children will be taken before they leave the hospital.
As our lawyers don’t seem to be inclined to put up much of a fight we are trying to hire a private attorney to take the case. We have found an attorney, a Mr. Gruininger, who is willing to take the case. He has one many battles with the DCFS before and he is confident that we can win this one. However, the cost of doing so is far out our power to pay for. We have turned to friends and family, but they can only provide about 10% of the legal costs. So, we are setting up this page to try and raise the rest. We are not asking for single person or family to provide much. If we could get enough people to donate $10 each we could raise the money in time.
