Fatima's Story

April 4, 2004
    My name is Fatima Busaat Loeliger. I am fourteen years old and for as long as I can remember, I have been in the California court system. From about the age of four to the age of eight I was living with my mom. Previous to that, I had been living off and on with either parent. I was a happy, well cared for child. I did well in school and all my teachers liked me. I was a Spelling Bee Champion and I always had a lot of friends and toys. My mom was a single mom who supported two children on her own. She always made sure we had babysitters and whatever it takes to make us happy. The court decision then was that I would live and go to school with my mom and visit my dad two weekends a month.

In 1998 I went for a scheduled visit with my dad. He took me to CPS in Red Bluff, California and accused my mom of child abuse. The CPS worker asked me if my mom ever spanked me. Once in a while my mom gave me a swat on the butt as discipline so I answered "yes." Suddenly, my mom was accused of being a child abuser, which she wasn't. The next time I would receive contact from my mom would be in three years when I was entering the seventh grade. In the three years I was living with my dad, the only information I was given by him and his wife was that my mom abandoned me, she was a drug abuser, she didn't want me, she has a new family and forgot about me, and she was going to hurt me. I was sad and confused. I couldn't understand what I had done wrong to make her not love me anymore. My father and the people who helped him keep me from my mom brainwashed me so that I began to resent my mom.

At my school, I was the only child of color and the only one without a mother. At home I was ignored, with my dad barely taking anytime to talk to me or see how I was. His wife was mean to me and would lie about me to my dad who would ground me without even asking what happened. To this day she still calls my mother a whore, my siblings bastard children, and my step dad and ass-kisser. She would repeatedly say that I was not part of their family and that it was her house and she could do anything she wanted. She still says these things. I felt alone and like an outsider. Everyday of my life I missed my mom, my little sister, my life, everything. After I was taken away from my mom the only thing I got was an occasional picture of what I was missing in my past life.

Finally in seventh grade I got to visit my mom. At the beginning of eighth grade I decided I wanted to live with my mom. I was tired of being verbally, mentally, and emotionally abused by my father and his wife. My family went to court once again and this time it was much more painful. The reigning judge, Judge King the third, I had met a year earlier when he signed the adoption papers for my dad and his wife to adopt a son. After appealing to the judge to let me live with my mom and to be present at future court trials and being denied, I ran away from school and turned myself into the police. Jennifer Mitchell became my CPS worker when I was placed into foster care by my father. I pleaded to be able to see my mom. They enforced strict supervised visitations with my mom but let my dad come to the foster home as often as he liked even though I expressed my extreme discomfort about my dad visiting to Jennifer Mitchell, the foster mother Deborah Sheehan, and Judge King. I felt very vulnerable and overwhelmed. I felt ganged-up on. Every time I made a court appearance and I explained to the judge and Jennifer Mitchell that my dad and his wife verbally abused me and physically abused their adopted son I was told that I was lying and manipulative and that I had been in the system too long for my words to hold integrity. This is exactly what my father has said about me to the court. He told the court my mother was alienating me from him.

One of my father’s witnesses was a psychologist named Randy Robinson. This woman was a very close friend of my father. Her husband was a colleague of my father and on several occasions we had gone to her house. Most recently, we had gone on vacation with them white-water rafting and had shared a cabin for a week. My father’s attorney, Matthew McGlynn told the court that if I was allowed to be in the care of my mother I would become a juvenile delinquent and end up pregnant. These and other comments hurt me deeply. They made me experience feelings of worthlessness and made me sound like a prostitute walking the streets. I had always prized myself on being very modest and clean. The comments degraded me and my father seconded the opinion.

Jennifer Mitchell, my CPS worker, didn't help me either. She would always try to intimidate me and keep me from seeing my mom. On several occasions she promised me a visit with my mom in her office. I would drive down and wait for over three hours and when I would confront her about why she was making me sit here without seeing my mom she would send in her supervisor who would yell at me calling me manipulative, a liar, a good for nothing trying to control his office, and a "foster care throw back." He would continue to yell until I would cry and then he would leave without letting me explain my problem. Ms. Mitchell also instructed me to lie to my mom about visits I had with my father, because he was allowed to see me more than my mom was. It was later found at trial that Mrs. Mitchell had discarded a CPS report my concerned teacher had filed a few months previously, after I had complained to him about the treatment I received in my father’s house.

Finally last year I was able to live with my mom in Davis, and visit my dad on weekends. However, nothing has changed at my father's house. I am still being emotionally abused there, and because I complain about it, my dad is once against trying to get me taken away from my mom, even though I am happy here and doing great in school. My point is that my childhood was lost. I can never get back what I have lost but that is not why I am here. I am here because this abuse and disregard of the laws that should protect and nurture every child are not being upheld. It doesn't matter if this has happened to one or one million children. One is too many. I have little respect, trust, or regard for the California family court system and I will be emotionally scarred for life because my father was able to use the courts as he willed to retaliate against my mother and I. Children may be young, but we know what feels right and what doesn't. It is our lives, not yours, that you are playing with. Please help us help ourselves.

--- Fatima- Busaat Loeliger,
written at age 14

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