Confessing to the Colluding

Have you woken up before and already knew it wasn’t going to be a good day? This is how I felt on March 1st, as well as February 26, 27, and 28. Since Friday, February 24th, my stepson had been in a crisis mood that CHR had to visit him at school. For these few days, I slept downstairs and my husband slept upstairs to make sure my stepson didn’t try to do anything. And when I say anything, I mean him claiming he was now suicidal, and the triggers on the safety plan were only things that related to my husband’s side of the family.

We were already talking to DCF multiple times because we had the police investigation going because of the falsified child abuse they claimed happened at our church. DCF met with my stepson and had some very significant discoveries including a compulsive behavior that he had not shared with anyone. It seems to be significant germaphobia tied into OCD behaviors and that is one of the reasons he doesn’t want to be at our house. When DCF came to the house to do their investigation, they didn’t see anything wrong with the house. But we did find out from DCF that our house felt like a home and my husband’s ex-wife’s house felt like a hospital when she went there the other week.

Despite my stepson talking to CHR on that Friday, he continued to talk to Alison and claimed he was suicidal. Now is this true, or is he toying with us all? I say this because you will see, throughout this blog, the loyalty conflict he was a part of, but also every time his mom lost in court, they would escalate things even more. And a few months after this incident, he shares with a friend he is using suicidal as a tool and that they all have the upper hand in this situation.

After dealing with Monday and Tuesday night of my stepson being upset because we took his jackknife out of his room per the CHR recommendation, he seriously wanted to stab himself in the throat. This is what he told DCF. Yet, no one wanted to bring him to the hospital or Natchaug to get admitted. DCF told us that one reason was there were no rooms. However, there is a couple from our church that has to send their child there a few times and they never have a problem getting him a room to be admitted. So, all while this was happening, they kept claiming that he was safest at his moms after the March 1st incident.

What happened on March 1st?

Like I said, I didn’t feel good waking up that morning. Not that I was sick, I just didn’t feel good about the situation we were in and feeling like something bad was going to happen. I confronted my husband and told him I didn’t feel comfortable bringing his son to school like I normally did on Wednesday. He was able to make it work for him to take his son to school instead, but I still didn’t feel good about the situation.

Prior to this day, he stayed in his room, didn’t eat, didn’t talk to us, but we knew he was alive because Verizon message logs showed that he was texting his mom 24/7. He was even texting his mom that we were asking if he wanted anything to eat when in reality we were, and the motion cameras would show we did check in on him. He also, for once, had a t-shirt and sweatpants on.

However, it being a Wednesday and the day he would be at his mom’s, he decided to come down the stairs in shorts and a t-shirt even though there was snow, and it was cold outside. This is a topic I’ll be talking about at a different point of him trying to show people we can’t take care of him and that he doesn’t have any proper clothing. Prior to him coming down the stairs, he tampered with the thermostat in the hallway upstairs. This was something we shared with my husband’s lawyer and even DCF right away in case he shared it with his mom that it was cold in the house. Though the motion camera didn’t really get him tampering with it, the downstairs camera did get what time he ended up tampering with it. Seeing him come down the stairs and knowing how the past few days were, we were in for some drama.

My husband mentioned something briefly to his son about what he was wearing, but all he wanted to do was avoid the topic and just get to the car as quickly as possible. This wasn’t the end of the conversation though, only the beginning. My husband confronted his son about the blue notebook and how they are trying to make things appear like we’re trying to abuse him. Would you like to know what his response was? It was, “it’s worth a try”. It’s worth a try?? I know when I found out I couldn’t believe those words, but furthermore my stepson became so agitated with confessing to the colluding and it all being worth a try that he said that if my husband didn’t shut up, that he was going to crash the car. My husband asked how he would do that, and he said, “Oh, it wouldn’t be hard for me to jump up there and grab the wheel.”

When my husband called me as I got to work, I was expecting something to happen but not this for starters. It seemed my stepson was boiling up inside and it came to the point that he did just confess. My husband communicated all of this immediately to DCF and even tried to make a statement at the police station. The only problem was the police didn’t want to take a statement and just told him to work it out with the counselors from CHR and DCF.

Unfortunately, DCF and CHR seemed to believe that my stepson was safest at his mom’s house and that’s why they weren’t pushing him to be admitted to the hospital. And even though DCF agreed to this, they did find the amount of texts between my stepson and his mom that were deleted disturbing as well as the ones that we’ve shown her that his mom was coaching him or telling him how they’ll work on an issue with her lawyer.

With where my stepson was mentally, including claiming he was suicidal, we didn’t agree with the idea of him being safe at his mom’s when we had all the evidence in front of us. We believe that she coached him to being suicidal at this point, because if he says he’s suicidal and feels safer at his mom’s house, then he can stay there and won’t have to worry about us anymore. With that, she then would have finally won and wouldn’t need to escalate things anymore to gain FULL CUSTODY.

However, we considered allowing him to stay at his mom’s the upcoming week in order to settle things down a bit, but we did not want it to continue for an extended period of time. Why? Because we knew we would be further alienated from him, and he would never want to return to our house despite what DCF thought when they mentioned my stepson would want to start seeing us more.

It didn’t matter how much evidence we showed the Family Courts, DCF, or really anyone with what was going on to lead up to this point, they still claimed he was safer at his mom’s place. Even after sharing text messages and photos. This was all a nightmare and there's more to come with what we’ve been put through and what my stepson was put through to now be the way he is. You know now how the colluding ended, so let’s go back to the beginning to show how we got to this point, and then show what we’ve been dealing with since March 1st.