parenting 101 – part 2

so the tentative agreement we had with Steven was that he would pick up Nona after school on fridays, then drop her off at school on monday mornings…

friday came and went, with no pick up or communication at all…

saturday came and almost went, with almost no communication…at about 1030pm, we are all in bed asleep (early i know, but shit happens and T was taking the kids fishing early on sunday)…when theres this pounding on the front door…T gets up to put clothes on to check it out, and makes it half way down the stairs when the pounding happens again…i hear it this time and wake up…Jen gets out of bed and starts looking outside…then we hear T say “its the cops”…Jen asks “its the cops? what do they want?”…T says “they are looking for Nona”…Jen wakes up Nona and gets dressed…i get dressed and go downstairs to see whats up…

there were 3 police at our door…apparently Steven called the cops earlier that day, and it took 6 hours for them to get here, after knocking on someone elses door and pissing off their dogs…apparently we werent such a great emergency…

anyway, the police asked if we had Nona, i told them that she was coming and asked what was going on…they said that Steven reported that i wouldnt give Nona to him…i then gave the basic story of how i found the house, that i am mandated reporter, that i talked with Steven and hoped to give him the benefit of the doubt to clean up the home, and that i removed Nona from the home since i had room for her and she was going to the local school, etc…the police stated that they didnt know what happened earlier that day, but they had to come out and investigate…i asked them what they were talking about…we werent home for 1.5 hours on saturday morning, but other than that, an adult and several children were home for the rest of the day…the police stated that Steven reported that he showed up at our door at approximately 4pm (we couldnt get an exact time) and we refused to let Nona out of the house…i informed the police that Jen and several children were home, and while Nona was not because she was with me at the store, they would have opened the door and invited him in and called us…but since that didnt happen, and he never knocked on the door, then i had no idea what they were talking about…they were not quite surprised at that…

he showed up while we were talking, and one of the officers went to meet him at his van…they talked for a few minutes then one of the officers took the papers to him to see if he would sign them…Steven stated that “with all of the shit that happened this week” he was refusing to sign the papers…i told the police that i didnt know what that meant, that we had tried to have contact with him but he had been unresponsive and “so busy”…the police talked to her about emancipation and that its something that she might want to look into to get away from Steven…

the police contacted the sheriff’s department to ask them to do a welfare check on the house today…but that is technically a low priority so it might not even happen or they might give it to cps instead…however, they are supposed to go by and do a welfare check to see if his house is livable and safe…if it is, then he is coming to get Nona…but he was willing to let Nona stay the night until that happened…if it is not, then i dont know what he is going to do, although its likely at that point for there to be further action with the authorities…if he does come here, Nona wants Jen, T and i to take her over there and to have a sheriff come to so that she stays safe…apparently Steven has put his hands on her before, and she is afraid for it to happen again…

*sigh*

so here we are…waiting for the other shoe to drop…

no contact from Steven at all…but i have talked to Nona’s mom, and Nona has talked to her uncle…i have talked to Nona about emancipation and what that means…i talked to her about legal guardianship…i talked to her mom about both and what that would mean for her/them…the uncle doesnt want her to do an emancipation because it would leave her with less options in this town…he says that if they end up with her mom, and her mom cant take care of her and the siblings, then they will live with him…

where these people have been before this, when they were in need of people who cared, i dont know…

but i am here, and she will not be abused by him anymore…and i will stand by her no matter what…
i just hate the waiting game…

peace…