Neil and Heidi Howard had their three children taken away by DSS in November of 1999, and rarely get to see them. Yet, they still have not had an opportunity to tell their story to a court - a story that started with a kitchen renovation, a desperately ill child, and a cruel visiting nurse sent by the Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS) to entrap the family.

A year and a half later, the Howards have endured unbelievable misconduct by DSS: Falsified child abuse reports, coercive interviews with their children to obtain provably false disclosures of abuse, forced interment of the mother in a mental hospital, deception, forcing the mother to commit perjury with the threat of removing her children, lawyers who sold them out, judges who won't reign in DSS despite proof of fraud, and numerous other indignities.

Neil and Heidi live in a modest, clean ranch style home in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts. This family has no history of drugs, alcohol, abuse, or domestic violence, period.

In late 1999, Heidi gave birth to a child with severe birth defects, who was only expected to live a year. Though devastated and heartbroken, the family tried to cope, and determined to show extra care and love for their daughter, who they had named Faith.

In preparation for sending the child home from Spalding Hospital in Boston, it colluded with DSS to send a visiting nurse to inspect the Howard's house. At that time, Mr. Howard was in the middle of renovating his kitchen, so the cabinets and appliances were in the living room, and the old vinyl floor was torn up to put in new vinyl flooring. The nurse, ignoring the obvious, called the place "the messiest I've ever seen". That's all it took - DSS swooped in like a buzzard - and the nightmare began.

Once there, the DSS used their famous divide-and-conquer tactics to good advantage. Getting the emotionally stressed wife by herself and the children by themselves, they managed to get minor ‘disclosures' about Daddy hitting a child over the head with a "book" when he didn't do a chore. Heidi, suffering from the stress of the pregnancy and birth, griped about her life with Neil, not realizing that any little complaint would show up as abuse or neglect.

The DSS required Heidi to get a restraining order against Neil, or lose her children. She did, but regretted it. When the couple finally figured out they were being manipulated apart by the DSS dirty trick machine, Heidi tried to drop the restraining order, moved back in to her house, and started to pick up the pieces. DSS, however, had other plans. They laid in wait for Mr. Howard to come home from work, arrested and criminally charged him with violating the restraining order, even though Heidi had thought she had dropped it. They shipped Heidi off to Emerson Hospital psych ward, and kidnapped the two children still at home, all without a court order. A fun day's work, if you are a DSS jack-booted thug!

Heidi, kept in the psych ward, depressed and drugged, talked about her sorrows. The hospital social(ist) worker, whom the records show was colluding with DSS, reported her every word to her DSS masters, which were twisted and used against her. At their first court hearing, both of their lawyers sold them out, and told them to waive their right to object to the DSS kidnapping of their children.

As the weeks and months went on, the DSS sent the Howard's kids to therapy. (All DSS kids go to therapy, in order to obtain disclosures.) As is common, the therapist for the younger boy was an unlicenced hack from South Bay Mental Health, whose office is in the same building as DSS. She immediately decided that the careful long-standing diagnosis of the child's pediatric neurologist was incorrect, and that the child had some new ‘designer' mental illness that implicated the parents.

After months of coercion and emotional abuse at ‘therapy', the unlicenced ‘therapist' also decided the child was sexually abused. Now, they really had a case, which was what the ‘therapy' was designed for. Never mind that the children's disclosures were proved false again and again. The therapists continued to press for more disclosures until their suggestions were finally accepted by the children. They did not do medical testing, so the allegations could not be disproved. The District Attorney would not prosecute because there was no credible evidence. The children were then coerced to claim that their parents visited them illicitly, and threatened to push them off a cliff. However, clear proof that the father was at work and the mother was home without a car did not suffice. All disclosures are true, all recantations are false.

All the while, the youngest child was being abused, and is continuing to be abused, in captivity, by his foster mother. The DSS has had several reports of abuse, which they will not look into. For example, the child came to day care, after an eleven day absence, with make-up covering bruises. At each monthly visit, the parents have been heartbroken to see their boy with new wounds - a broken arm, cuts, bruises, etc, often covered up by extra clothing.

To cover their tracks, DSS falsified almost all of their reports of abuse, and covered up and withheld the existence of important documents and information that tended to show the Howard's innocence, and how the youngest child was being abused

Now, DSS has a case against the parents, based on coerced disclosures obtained by unlicenced therapists at a biased and favored provider, with no medical evidence. Without a trial, they have told the children they will never go home again.

Their young daughter died, around her first birthday, without her loving mother able to hold her or be near her. The DSS even tried to keep her brothers from going to her funeral.

Over the last year that their children have been in captivity, the Howards have been in court about ten times, where they have hardly been allowed to say a word. Their attorney has proved to the judge that the records were falsified, that the child was being abused, and that their therapists were unlicenced. It doesn't matter. The only opportunity they will get to make their case will be at the very end, at a trial, which has not been scheduled. This is a dreadful destruction of traditional due process, (meaning all of our legally protected rights in court) and the judges go right along with it.

This case illustrates what happens when a family goes through a bad time, and the DSS swoops in like vultures to exploit it. We will update you on this case, as there are developments.

The Robbins family ( a pseudonym) went through a family crisis mostly of their own making, and then DSS made it far, far worse. Mr. Robbins twice let his five year old daughter inappropriately touch him sexually, and was convicted and sentenced to 12-15 years in prison. There was no violence, or rape. (Contrast that with the 3-4 year sentence a received by a homosexual who pled guilty to five counts of raping five boys.)

Mr. Robbins voluntarily confessed his crime to the police and to DSS, and that got DSS involved in the case. Once Mr. Robbins was incarcerated, they dropped the case, stating there was no further danger of abuse.

The mother, with no criminal record of her own, and no drug, alcohol, or domestic abuse issues whatsoever, took the advice of therapists, and tried to make sure her daughter restored her relationship with her daddy. She prayed with her daughter for her daddy, taught her to forgive him, and visited him in prison a few times.

Then the DSS swooped in. They said that visiting the daughter in prison was ‘abuse'. Despite the fact that the prison decided to not let Mrs. Robbins come back with her daughter, DSS came and removed the little girl on an emergency basis. Three people, including a policeman with a gun, came to the Robbins' home, and ripped the little girl from her mother's arms, screaming and wailing, and stuck her in a car. There was no emergency, since neither mother or daughter could go back to the prison. DSS presented a petition to the court alleging the need for an emergency removal, which cited praying, forgiveness, and that mother had the child help her with housework, as more evidence of abuse.

The judge, naturally, went along with the DSS. The mother will get to see her daughter once a month for an hour, like the parents of all DSS kidnapped children.

The ‘Service Plan' presented to the mother by DSS only requires her to change her thinking, not her behavior. No abuse is cited. None ever existed. She committed a thought crime by praying with her daughter. Now, in the hands of DSS, the child is now being genuinely traumatized, but that does not matter to the abusers at DSS. Not only has she lost her father, but now they have taken her from a good, loving mother, as well.