5-Month-Old Baby Begins Visiting Next Week; ‘State Kidnaps Children with Impunity,’ Says Atty. Darling 

By Ed Oliver
May 8, 2001 

There is a light at the end of the tunnel for the Howard family in the trial to terminate their parental rights.

“We have a court order that anticipates the reunification of the Howard family,” Attorney Chester Darling told Massachusetts News.  

Custody of the Howard’s three children is presently in DSS which wants to put them up for adoption. The parents are fighting to get their children back. They say there is no proof they are unfit parents and the judge appears to agree.  

Atty. Darling said, “I’m very disappointed that we have an agency in the Commonwealth that can kidnap children almost with impunity.” 

The Howard children are Christopher 10, Ethan 5, and baby Jessica who was born last December.  

Judge Robert A. Belmonte ordered a temporary settlement in the matter last week by way of a six-month continuance of the trial in an attempt to reunite the family.  

If all goes well, the baby will begin scheduled overnight visits with the parents starting May 14, leading to weekend visits. The parents will also visit the two boys more often according to a new court schedule. The boys will most likely move to Vermont soon to live with their aunt and uncle, and the family and their lawyers hope they will later reunite with their parents.  

In the best case scenario, the baby would be home full time on June 18 and the boys would be back home in six months or sooner, say the Howards. But there is not a commitment that the two boys will be coming home. That would only occur upon review. The hope is that things go well after the baby is home and the boys are able to come home later on that basis.  

The order states the Howards must attend parenting classes and individual therapy. In addition, Neil Howard must attend the EMERGE batterer’s program for an evaluation. In an important and rarely seen stipulation related to that requirement, Neil does not have to sign anything that admits to culpability, which is normally demanded of those who are forced to attend batterers’ programs. 

There will be a case review on June 18 and another one in six months.  

DSS Still ‘Kicking and Screaming’ 

The current belated resemblance to justice could not have occurred if the Howards did not have two hard working pro-family attorneys on their side: Chester Darling and Gregory Hession. Publicity of the trial was also a factor. Most families caught in the oppressive web of DSS and the probate court system are not so fortunate.  

Attorney Greg Hession told Massachusetts News, “The Department of Social Services realized it would be in the best interest of the children to begin the process of reuniting them with the parents.” 

But another courtroom source was not as diplomatic. The source said that DSS was dragged kicking and screaming into the agreement by the judge. A DSS lawyer was even heard shouting in the courtroom from outside in the hallway, “There is no way I will agree with the recommendation to return the baby. I’m not giving the baby back!”  

Momentum shifted in the Howard family’s favor during the fourth day of the trial. DSS had been putting on its witnesses who merely read from their written reports; but upon cross-examination, they had to explain their bizarre and unsupported accusations about the parents. Trial observers say that Judge Belmonte had heard enough embarrassing testimony from social workers under cross-examination to be persuaded that DSS’ judgment was questionable. 

For example, DSS allegedly extracted an allegation from one of the boys last year that his parents “cut off his pee-pee.”  

Three social workers were questioned on the stand about the obviously false castration claim. They said it was an “emotional allegation,” rather than a factual or hearsay allegation. They explained their belief that when a child truly and honestly without a doubt in his mind believes that it happened, that means it happened. Although it was proven by a physician that the child’s genitals were not cut off, the social workers all agreed that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. 

Observers also say the judge was angered by DSS’ obnoxious behavior in the courtroom. Social workers tried to control the proceedings by asking questions from the stand. The judge had to tell them they could only answer questions from the stand. A social worker even tried to walk off the stand unexcused even though Attorney Hession had just said he was not finished questioning her. 

In addition, the DSS lawyer caused the judge to censure her after she asked her witness to skip over reading from her report and to just read her recommendations. The judge reportedly said, “You cannot read those recommendations here. I’m the one who makes the recommendations. I read the reports and the recommendations. It’s up to me. I can throw them all out, put them all in, but I’m the one making the recommendations, nobody else.” 

Besides DSS’ bumbling testimony, another important development in the parents’ favor was the appearance of a Guardian Ad Litem who was appointed by the court some months ago as a private investigator at the suggestion of the aunt and uncle’s lawyer. The Report recommended that baby Jessica be returned to the parents. It also recommended that the boys be taken from foster care and placed with the aunt and uncle in Vermont. The report states that the aunt and uncle are prepared to adopt the boys should the court terminate the Howard’s parental rights.  

Earlier GAL reports by another investigator were largely a cut-and-paste of DSS allegations with minimal investigation. That investigator had formerly worked for DSS for 12 years. She was grilled on the stand, point by point, and admitted she did very little investigating. She was also questioned about why she did not look into reports that Ethan had bruises covered with make-up and other signs of physical harm while living in a DSS -approved foster home. She said she did not think it was abuse. 

Seized Because of Messy House 

DSS seized the boys in November 1999 after a visiting nurse sent by the Spaulding Rehab Hospital reported the Howards for having a messy house. The Howards were remodeling at the time and were not prepared for a home inspection. 

That initial complaint, plus twisting of comments by Heidi and the children about Neil, later grew into wild allegations of sexual abuse and mutilation of the boys, but without any evidence. The Lowell District Attorney did not consider the allegations credible, but DSS relentlessly pursued the family and later seized their newborn baby Jessica in February this year.  

Critics of DSS say the original mission of the agency was to help preserve families, but instead DSS has been following the money by tearing families apart and trafficking in children to expand their bureaucratic empire.

How Did Howards Become Involved with DSS?

Spaulding Rehab Hospital Apparently Caused their Problems 

The Howards have lived at their home on an acre of land in Tyngsboro since they bought it in 1991. Neil works as a machinist and Heidi is a homemaker. 

They’ve always been just an ordinary family trying to get ahead – until they had a baby with terminal neurological problems and the feminists at DSS discovered that having a dying baby causes stress in a family and DSS could obtain more children to adopt in order to obtain more federal money. 

After the sick baby died at one year, the DSS was so entwined with the Howards that it demanded that a new baby born in December 2000 be given to them to be cared for by strangers. 

MassNews has reported how the maternity wards in Massachusetts hospitals monitor new mothers for DSS. (See the August 2000 edition.) The Spaulding Rehab Center in Boston is apparently the one that almost destroyed the Howard family. 

The hospitals of the state are also used as recruiters for the new “home visitor” programs which are run by the state and disguised as private agencies. As an example, we reported how Milford Hospital provides the names and addresses of new mothers to a state-run, home visitor program called “Healthy Families,” which enters information and observations about new parents gained from visits, into a computer database that is tied to the Department of Health. A home visitor must tell DSS if she thinks she sees a problem.  

A former worker for Healthy Families told MassNews that her supervisor would regularly call Milford Hospital to obtain a list of new mothers. The hospital coordinator would also give an indication about who on the list she thought was “high risk.” 

MassNews wrote in the August, 2000 edition about the vision of C. Henry Kempe, who is credited with helping to launch the modern child abuse industry. He believed that the government is a superior “parent,” and he envisioned compulsory home visitation to monitor parents and evaluate new mothers. As we showed at the time, that vision is well on its way in Massachusetts with the Healthy Families program already instituted although almost no parent has any knowledge of it.