Bill Irwin

I am a Christian family counselor and professional motivational speaker.  I am also involved in a couple of ministries including being a life coach to many.  My wife, Debra, and I have no children of our own together; however I have three grown children and four grandchildren.  We are very busy especially considering my age of 66 years. Our average work day is long consisting of at least fourteen hours.  This gives us limited time to do the things in life that most people our ages do, like spend time doing hobbies, playing golf, hiking, cycling, and other fun activities. It would never cross my conscious mind to consider being a parent to a child who is about to embark on their teenage years!  But God had another plan for our lives as Debra and I decided to adopt a precious little eleven year old, intense, high energy child over a year ago.  I want to share about the child we are adopting and the motivation behind our decision.

Two years ago we were at a church social at one of the member’s home and had not met some of the people who were present.  One of them had her newly placed foster child with her and she rapidly became enamored with me and my Seeing-Eye Dog, Colby, (yes, I am a blind man who finds it fascinating to live in a sighted world). She was so precious! The child was small for her age and she asked me at least one hundred questions that night.  To make a long story short that was the beginning of a love affair that eventually took Debra and me to the question, what will become of this precious child if she is left in the environment that she is now in?  You see, by the end of the school year she had been removed from her foster home due to her extremely intense behavior.  She was placed in a residential treatment facility about two hours from our home.   The answer was not a good one and we prayed for guidance and felt led by God to begin the process to get a license to adopt her.  This was certainly a stretch for me; but we did it anyway and during the process saw God’s hand in every turn during the several months the process took.

By the summer of 2005 we were visiting her at least twice per week at the treatment facility.  We developed a good working relationship with the child’s DHHS case worker.  In the fall of that year this child was switched from the foster to the adoption unit and a change in case workers was necessary.  After a rough beginning with the new case worker we thought we had developed a great working relationship and trust was mutual and well established.  Apparently this was erroneous and that brings me to what this story is all about.

Our lifestyle has been an issue ever since we entered the process of adopting this child.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and certainly has the prerogative to make their own lifestyle choices. We are raw vegans.  This means that we don’t eat anything of animal origin and eighty-five percent of what we eat is entirely raw.  As a result of this lifestyle I am enjoying perfect health at my age and am on no medications at all.  Debra is also optimally well as a direct result of this lifestyle.  We get an hour of rigorous exercise daily and work many hours each day and still have excess energy to do all the things that we want and need to do in life to serve our fellow man and God.  So we don’t think it is extreme at all; just a wise and Godly choice.

After many struggles with the treatment facility and DHHS over our lifestyle and spiritual practices she was finally placed as a foster child   in our care on March 24, 2006.  In order to facilitate this transition we temporarily moved our residence from where our home is to very close to the treatment facility.

At the beginning of the year at a meeting I told the team that we used Graced Based Parenting as a philosophy and style of parenting and since it was derived from Christian principles and was biblically based it raised a few eyebrows among some of the team members.

I made it a point to send our caseworker a email report each week as to what we were doing and how our child’s behavioral issues were progressing.  During the months she was with us she grew several inches and gained about twenty pounds and was almost at her appropriate size for her age by the middle of May. She adopted our life-style on her own and by the time we took her into our home permanently she was allowed by the medical department to discontinue all seven of her psychotropic medications. Everyone who knew her was telling us how much improved her behavior was and how healthy she was looking.  

We developed a very good relationship with the teachers at her school.  Her teachers were amazed at her behavioral progress; so was her DHHS caseworker.  Each day when we picked her up someone would stop us in the halls or come up to our automobile and thank us for being such vigilant parents to her.  They all told us it was unbelievable that her progress was so dramatic since she had been placed in our care.

On May 16th when we picked our child up at school she told us that she had talked with the caseworker and she had asked her a bunch of questions about how living with us was for her.  She said that she told her that she was happy and doing well.  We were not told about her going to school to talk with our daughter but did not think much more about this, at least that day.

On the morning of the 17th of May when we got back home from taking our daughter to school we had a phone message that the Pupil Evaluation Team meeting that was scheduled for noon that day had been canceled and a meeting had been set up at the DHHS office to replace it.  The message from our caseworker said we were required to attend this meeting.

The meeting was taken up with complaints they all had about Debra and me.  It was obvious that they did not appreciate our life-style or spiritual practices; especially the way we prayed with our child when she was having a temper tantrum. Debra said that while I was explaining about the praying practices they were looking at each other rolling their eyes in apparent disbelief at what they were hearing.    

In addition, an inordinate amount of time was spent talking about our life-style.  Little attention was given to any solutions for how we could make adjustments in our program to suit their standards.  I made three attempts to let them know that we were willing to do what they told us to do if they would just tell us what it was; this never got an ear! After two hours of drilling us they announced that they had made the decision to take our precious little girl, whom we promised that we would never, never, abandon her, from our home and we didn’t even have the opportunity to tell her goodbye!  This is the case, we took our child to school on May 17th and told her that we would see her at 3 PM that afternoon, and she has not heard from or seen us since.  It is now the first week in October and we still have not been allowed to have any contact with our child.  We have no idea what damage has been done to her as a result of this abuse!

During the meeting they made a big deal of her attachment issues and said that they were filing a complaint with the licensing section of DHHS.  The complaint charged us with abusing her and even using undue force when restraining her, which is not true.  Needless to say we were further devastated.  We had given up our lives for this child and promised her that we would keep her safe and never let anything come between us and now she had been suddenly taken from our care.  It was like a nightmare that we hoped was just that and would soon be over.  With her attachment issues there is no telling what the child has been told or is thinking about what happened to us.  One thing for certain she is just as hurt about this as we are; we are a very close and loving family.  Within a month we had been exonerated from all the charges they had filed against us by the DHHS Department.

On, or about March 12th, 2006, before she left the residential treatment program she was restrained as she became violent with some of the staff there.  When we picked her up the next day she showed us an abrasion and some contusions on her upper arm and said it was from the staff dragging her across the room and slamming her down on the floor.  Debra immediately reported this to the caseworker in an email and said it was an official complaint against their Program and wanted to know what she was going to do about it.  The next day we got a cc: of a short note to the Program Manager, asking her what they did in regard to restraints.  This is the last we have heard about this.  Knowing that the caseworker is a mandatory reporter of any abuse or neglect we knew that it should have been reported right away. Instead they used this as one of their incidences in the charges they filed against us.

The abuse perpetrated by the caseworker took abuse far beyond what this child should ever be subjected to.  It will take a long time for her to heal from this separation.  As you know as adults we have the life experience to know that terrible things are bound to happen in the course of living our lives. And that as adults we have developed skills to help us cope with all these bumps and disappointments, but a child has no such coping mechanisms or skills.

In addition, the children who remain institutionalized in a place like this treatment facility are put on the streets after they become eighteen years old with virtually no living skills.  Experts say that most of them end up using drugs, perpetrating misdeeds on innocent citizens, having elicit sexual contact resulting in unwanted pregnancies; ending up on welfare  for the rest of their lives, and thereby  ruining their potential for having the kind of life we all want our children to  have.

We are now in the process of appeal and have gone up the ladder all the way to Governor Baldacci to no avail.  Our attorney, Steve Whiting, says, “This is a case of religious and lifestyle persecution.”  We are going to appeal it as far up in the government as necessary to be reunited with our precious little girl whom we love more than anything in the world.  God did not put this family together to be separated like this and we are prepared to do what ever it takes to get our family back together!

Bill Irwin
62 Moulton Hill Road
Sebec, Maine 04481
207-564-6922
bill@billirwin.com

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