RI Mother Fought DCYF for Months for Baby — Investigation Finds Newborn Wrongfully Removed
Monday, May 11, 2020
A Rhode Island mother who last fall alleged that the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families wrongfully took her three week old from her — for more than three months — received an administrative ruling this week that DCYF was found to be in the wrong.
“I feel ecstatic and vindicated and damn proud of myself,” Amanda LaValle said of the finding and fighting the system, without having been able to afford a lawyer.
In October, LaValle told GoLocalProv.com that she believed it might take six months to a year to regain custody in what she called a “sick and twisted system” after a series of events saw her newborn taken from her.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTLast week, Executive Office of Health and Human Services Hearing Officer Karen Walsh ruled that the findings of “lack of supervision/caretaker” levied by DCYF were “unfounded" -- and LaValle's appeal of the DCYF decision granted.
LaValle detailed how she had been accused of being “neglectful” towards her daughter at Kennedy Plaza last fall, when she was returning from a doctor’s visit and speaking with a woman at the transportation hub who had been accused of taking drugs.
How the State Took a Child — and Admitted Wrongdoing
When LaValle was brought in by police after talking with the woman at Kennedy Plaza and an outstanding warrant was found — for a legal issue LaValle was in the process of taking care of — her newborn was removed from her care.
Upon her release, Lavalle was subsequently unable to stay at the “Little Flower” home for pregnant women and new mothers, when she had been living at with her daughter, as she was then without her baby -- and DCYF required proof that she had housing to have her child with her.
Once LaValle said she was off the centralized family shelter waitlist in mid-January, she was reunited with her daughter.
LaValle, however, was determined to fight what the said was the wrongful removal of her daughter for over 100 days.
“It was a whole bunch of bureaucratic BS, and I got steamrolled,” said LaValle.
MORE BELOW
In a thirteen-page review, Walsh found that the DCYF record “failed to establish that Petitioner failed to care for Baby H., failed to establish that Petitioner was neglectful because she was at the Kennedy Plaza bus station, or that her presence there was unnecessary or place her child at risk, and failed to establish that Petitioner failed to oversee or manage the child.”
LaValle said what she took most issue with in the report by DCYF was the assertion she was “not emotionally stable” at the time Providence Police took her in, and DCYF took her baby.
“I was three-weeks postpartum and they were taking my baby from my arms. What did you expect?” said LaValle.
The report by Walsh references that LaValle at her initial hearing called DCYF’s questioning “corrupt” — a point that LaValle disputes.
“What I said was, you’re not looking at me for reasons why I should keep my baby, you’re looking at why I why I shouldn’t,” said LaValle. “They didn’t put I had previously raised a 20-year-old just fine — they just put the things in there that backed up what they did.”
“If you’re an investigator, I get that you’re looking for the thing I did wrong. I was exhausted, and you’re taking my child. Of course I’m emotional," she said.
LaValle said she has been enjoying spending time with her baby now back in her care.
“I’m grateful,” said LaValle. “I don’t think there’s some conspiracy [for the state to take children], but it’s a giant bureaucracy."
"Once those wheels start spinning, it’s very difficult to stop that process. Once that cop took me to DCYF, the ball was rolling. I got what I needed to get done as quickly as I could," she said, to get her daughter back.
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