This page has been visited times since it was written in the Summer of 1997.

Other Worrying Points

First and foremost, what needs to be remembered is that since my daughter did not hurt my grandson, SOMEBODY DID, and needs to be punished.

Secondly, when friends found out about Galina's arrest, they expressed no surprize. They said that my daughter-in-law had told people a couple of weeks before that she was going to get my daughter arrested.

Thirdly, my daughter-in-law bragged to friends that she had a friend in the States Attorneys Office who was covering her rear. We did not believe this to be true until they refused to stop my daughter-in-law's harassment of my daughter, and began pushing to prosecute on a charge our local sheriff's said had very flimsy evidence.

NOBODY ELSE WAS EVER INVESTIGATED FOR THIS - and the two other people present when I visited my daughter-in-law on the Thursday lunchtime claim not to have been there. Why? Because it points to the possibility of one of them possibly being the perpetrator?

WHY DID NEITHER MY DAUGHTER-IN-LAW, HER TEENAGE SON OR THE TEENAGE GIRL LIVING WITH THEM NOT SEE THESE BRUISES UNTIL 3.30PM OR SO?

COULD IT BE BECAUSE THE BRUISES WERE NOT THERE BEFORE THEN?

Why did the investigative team not get a forensic expert or trauma specialist to estimate the age of the bruise. A bruise which occurred prior to 10pm the night before would have different colourings than one caused within the previous couple of hours. This alone could have cleared my daughter from the beginning.

Why was my daughter-in-law not punished for filing a false affidavit with the bail bondsman claiming my daughter was fleeing the country?

Why would the States Attorney not grant a temporary restraining order against my daughter-in-law to stop her harassment of my daughter? Florida Statutes provide for this, but we were told we could not get one unless there had been 2 incidences of violence in the previous 6 months.

Why, again as provided for in the Florida Statutes, pertaining to the arrest or incarceration of a foreign national,was the British Consulate not contacted in neither the two arrests, nor the two incarcerations?

Why, at a time when she had NOT BEEN FORMALLY CHARGED with a crime, was my daughter forced to STRIP and allow inspection of her ANAL area, and to SLEEP ON A MAT ON THE FLOOR, in the jail?

Why did the police not check on the medical condition of the accuser? On her previous FALSE statements? On her unstable background? On her abusive relationship with her older child. On police records for all the addresses she had lived at, and in all the previous names she had used? Talked to neighbours of both her and my daughter?

SHE GOT OUT OF THIS SCOT-FREE. IN COURT, SHE WAS NOT THE ACCUSER - MY GRANDSON WAS. 3 YRS OLD, AND SUPPOSED TO GO TO COURT IN FEBRUARY 1998! WE WERE HORRIFIED THAT THE SYSTEM WOULD JUDGE A THREE YEAR OLD CAPABLE OF BEING SWORN IN AS A WITNESS, BUT APPARENTLY THAT IS WHAT THEY INTENDED TO DO. MY DAUGHTER TOOK THE PLEA BARGAIN - IT WAS THE ONLY WAY TO PROTECT MY GRANDSON, SINCE NOBODY ELSE CARED ENOUGH TO DO IT.

I've been asked if I think my grandson was lying - this was a child who thought he was Batman, or a Ninja Turtle, or who stated he was driving a car in a highly televised police chase when a car overturned at 100+ miles per hour after being chased by police vehicles and a helicopter. No, I don't think he was lying - HE WAS A SMALL CHILD!
PAINFUL AS ALL THIS IS, WHY DID THESE POWERS-THAT-BE NOT LOOK AT ALL THE STUDIES DONE BY VARIOUS LEADING CHILD PSYCHOLOGISTS WITH REGARD TO THE EASE WITH WHICH A SMALL CHILD'S MIND CAN BE MADE TO BELIEVE AN OCCURRENCE HAPPENED WHEN IT, IN FACT, HAS NOT? SUGGESTIBILITY STUDIES HAVE PROVEN OVER AND OVER THAT FALSE MEMORIES ARE EASY TO INSTIL INTO A CHILD. WE'RE JUST A REGULAR FAMILY, BUT WE KNOW THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED IN THIS CASE. IT IS OBVIOUS WHO PLANTED THEM THERE, AND WHY!
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What Would You Do?

You mind your own business, try to live your life in peace, and out of the blue one day, you are questioned and arrested for something you didn't do. You are sure that the mistake will be found out. After all, once they look at all the evidence and check everything out, they'll see it couldn't possibly be you - right? WRONG! It happened to my daughter in July of 1997, and the nightmare is still not finished.

The case may be over, and the court may think it has another "solved/closed"case, but all they did was put my family through hell for a few months, and leave us with repercussions and bad memories years later.

It is not enough that ultimately, the prosecutor (when he - after the case) was shown the statements made to both the police and the Department of children and Families) said that he had had doubts as to my daughter's guilt. To him it was a job, to my daughter, my granddaughters and our family, it was a living HELL that should not have been allowed to happen.

It is always easier to see things in hindsight; things we should have seen, said or done. I can look back now and see where both the police investigator and myself failed to catch on to things. I was more focused on the accuser at that time, than to realize that I had in fact been a witness to an uninjured child, the day after the injury was purported to have occurred.

Without slandering the accuser, I can honestly say that, at the time, she was a very troubled woman. She was on Prozac for mental problems, was on her fourth marriage, was verbally abusive to both her husband and her three year old son (the one abused) and claims to have been sexually and physically abused by her father. She is obsessed about sexual abuse, going so far as to state that her husband was sexually molested when he was a child, and previously, falsely telling HRS that the girl she accused of harming her son, my daughter,was sexually molesting her two daughters.

All of these things can be verified..

In fact, the HRS investigator investigated two other false reports by her against my daughter. Does this make you a little uneasy? Would you be a little careful about accepting anything this woman said? In fact, this same HRS lady, warned her colleagues at the beginning of the investigation, that there was a history of this in the family. Yes, the accuser was another member of my family, my (at the time) daughter-in-law.




The Events

I had begun babysitting my grandson after my daughter-in-law complained to me about the girl who currently filled the position. He wasn't being fed properly, bathed and put to bed on time, was constantly running out in the street ALONE (3 yrs old)and (VERY disturbing)only a week or so before, two male visitors of the babysitter had put a rope around his neck and pretended to hang him. I told her to start bringing him to mine.

Unfortunately, about a week later, I was called to start a job I'd applied for months before. Galina said she'd just keep my grandson, along with her two girls. She and my daughter do not always get along, as my daughter has vocally decried her many times for her promiscuity since marriage into our family. She even tried to sleep with Galina's daughter's father, and one of the false HRS reports came because she told Galina of it and stated that if she did not terminate the relationship, she would turn her into HRS! And she did. Galina was pregnant and supposed to be on bed rest, when she had to walk about a mile to the hospital, carrying her older toddler, to get a drug test (which was negative!). Had she been prosecuted, or even warned, with regard to this, maybe she would not have continued to play the same game. She got away with it, and made other false reports at different times; all fully investigated by HRS and no indications found.

Only a couple of weeks or so before the incident that my daughter was arrested for, my daughter-in-law wanted to move into my house; I was going to go "on the road" with my ironworker husband. None of us felt it was a good idea, because they did not get along. I joked that I wouldn't want to come home, find three kids running around and that they had killed each other! The last day that my daughter babysat my grandson, my daughter-in-law got angry as she said she would not be available to babysit that weekend (July 4th). Apparently, my daughter-in-law was pretty mad about that and implied a threat. I told Galina not to worry as she was probably just going to show up on the weekend and put Galina on a guilt trip, so's she'd take care of him anyway. I did not know the lengths she would go to to get even with my daughter.



On Thursday, I stopped by to see my daughter-in-law on my way to work. My son and husband were out of state, working in Chicago, and she asked me if I could get the number where they were at. I'd had it on my pager, but had erased it, and hoped to be able to call the computer storing pager messages and retrieve it. My grandson came running to me for his usual hug, dressed in tee-shirt and shorts, and was telling me about how he'd got his new room. I visited for about thirty minutes, and then left for work. Late that night, I stopped back by with the phone number she had asked me to get, and at that time, she mentioned to me that there was a bruise on my grandson and she'd had to have someone look at it so that they wouldn't think she did it. I must admit, I blew it off as her trying to cause trouble between me and my daughter. When I got home that night, I told my daughter what she had said. Galina said she wasn't worried, that my daughter-in-law had changed my grandson's clothes as she was leaving, because he spilled a drink on himself, and that there were no bruises on him when she'd done this.

The next day, July 4th, I had to go by on my daughter-in-law as my son called and asked me to tell her to call (she'd have double-time on her calling card). When I went over, at that time (Friday morning) I saw bruises encompassing the whole of the upper arm area, as if somebody had grabbed the child severely. I was horrified. On my return home, I spoke to Galina, and she was adamant that he had not got them while he was with her. In fact, she said, he'd been really good all night, and was in my bed watching a children's movie when his mother had picked him up. Later that day, my daughter-in-law came over. She took great pains to tell us that in having the bruises checked out, she'd given no names, and nobody was going to come out to us. I asked her then, why had she not told me about this on the Thursday lunchtime, to which she replied she'd "forgot". What we didn't know was that, at that point, my grandson had already been videotaped, and statements taken, accusing my daughter of causing these bruises.

The following Tuesday, the nightmare as we know it, began. While I was at work, a sheriff spoke to my daughter. As she was alone with her two children, he asked her to come to the sub-station the next morning at 10am. After talking to her, he arrested her for "probable cause". My daughter became very upset and started crying that she was not going to jail for something she didn't do. I told the officer to check the previous false accusations, to which he said that he already had copies. I also told him about my daughter-in-law "forgetting" to mention it at the lunchtime visit the day after the incident supposedly happened. WHAT NEITHER HE NOR I CONSIDERED AT THAT TIME, WAS THAT SINCE I HAD BEEN THERE THE DAY AFTER, WHY HAD I NOT SEEN THESE BRUISES THAT DAY? SHE HAD NOT ACCUSED MY DAUGHTER AT THAT TIME, SO IF I'D SEEN THEM, I WOULD HAVE MENTIONED IT. I HADN'T SEEN THEM BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT THERE!



Links

Galina's Story. Part 2
Continuation of Galina's story
For The Love Of The Children
A site with links to various child abuse agencies and The Polly Klaas Foundation
back to my HOME PAGE
Including resources for those falsely accused of child abuse
Falsely Accused - The True Stories
Links to TRUE stories by people who have been falsely accused, prosecuted and in some cases, incarcerated, for crimes they did not commit. For many, the FIGHT FOR JUSTICE, continues!
The Galina English Support Campaign

It is now November of 1999. Letters that I write, requesting answers, go unheeded; likewise, although I contact protective agencies with regard to my grandson, nobody ever gets back in touch and says "yes, we're keeping an eye on him, just in case you're telling the truth." He started school in August and has now attended three schools - Florida, New York and now New Hampshire. 5 yrs old and in one semester. What a stable education this beautiful littlle boy will have. NOBODY CARES. It breaks my heart. soometimes I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall - am I the only person who sees something wrong with this - clearly? Or are the "normal" parents, those whose concern is uppermost for their children, and who provide a stable environment, doing it wrong? Is caring a crime, and neglect ok as long as it's done by a parent who is American and can blame it on a foreigner? Only WE can change all this, and that's by ACTIVELY harrassing all concerned, in whatever states or towns you live in, any disrepancies in the care you see, or know of, a child receiving. Children like my grandson cannot care for themselves, we have to protect them, and when the system continually CHOOSES to fail these children, it is up to us to stand and be counted, and to voice our dissatisfaction with its' workings, and to INSIST on its' accountability! If a child is injured after the protective services have been warned of danger, then whoever did not act for the childs' protection originally, should be held equally as guilty as the perpetrator. I have been very vocal since my daughters' case, and have stated many times that if my grandson is seriously injured again in the future, or is fatally injured the next time, I WILL sue each and every person who allowed my daughter-in-law to get away with it this time, and who persecuted my daughter although a PROPER investigation of ALL the active participants, and the paper trail that was there for the looking, as ACCESSORIES before and after the fact. Their failure to protect him in this case, their ignorance of the truth and denial of protections guaranteed by the Constitution and the Florida Statutes, would justify this. They have been warned!

APRIL 2002 - Yet more problems within the Department of Families and Children in Florida. Obviously, despite the intervention of Ed Feaver and Lawton Chiles 4 years ago, nothing has changed.

Our children deserve BETTER than this! WE DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS.


But don't blame Jeb Bush, he inherited this whole mess!

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