Complaint Review: Macomb County Friend Of The Court

I have been divorced from my ex (Kristin Ray Oswlad 12-20-73) since 2001. We have one daughter together. Since being divorced, my ex has fallen off the wagon. He has lost several jobs, been evicted from his apartments, gotten involved in drugs, now has a felony on his record for larceny and stealing in Oakland County, and DOES NOT pay any child support in Macomb County.

The Macomb County FOC has done nothing to protect my daughter. They are NOT for the protection of the children. I have been filing complaints after complaints for several years. The last time I was in front of Judge Yokich for a complaint against my ex after what my daughter had seen and drew pictures at school, she told me "you should not always believe everything the child tells you".

I was shocked when I was told that. Why wouldn't I believe what she is telling me? He was going to do drugs with my daugher in the car. "Little white powdery stuff with a plastic pipe" my daughter tells me. I also received calls from the school because she was drawing pictures and turning them into her teacher as to what her daddy was doing with her.

I fought for years and told the Macomb County FOC "I am not going to wait until something happens to my daughter and I have to read about her in the paper before you will do something." And sure enough...it happened, when my ex came to pick up my daughter last April 2008 he crashed his car with my daughter in it and he refused medical treatment for her.

I had to come and get her from the scene. Her face was smashed up and bloody and she was scared to death. He did not call me. His mother did. He had the decency to call his mother to get his car away from the scene but not to call me. When I got to the scene, I asked the Shelby Township Police to run a drug screen on him but since they didn't smell alcohol...they did nothing. Thank god there were two witnesses that stayed and made reports on what they saw and how my ex was driving.

Since then, I finally got supervised visitation for my ex but he did not exercise his rights until this past January 2009 because he was too busy getting high, overdosing, and suicidal attempts. Once the supervised visitation ended at the CARE program, we have had a review with the FOC investigator (the second one in the last year)and his drug screens and psych eval are still not perfect but they still give him more time instead of less. Why is that?

I keep hearing from the Macmob Co. FOC "we are only her to incourage a relationship with the child and parent". But wouldn't you want to do that if it was a "positive" relationship? When are they going to see that the best interest of the child is not always to have a relationship with the other parent? Why don't they protect our children? As parents, we only want what's best and safe for our children so why don't they court systems and Protective Services? What will it take for the laws to change and someone to listen to us as parents?

Andrea
ShelbyTownship, Michigan
U.S.A.