although as a neutral observer to this I would have some questions:
What exactly was wrong with the house? You say it was full of junk, do you mean dangerous junk? I mean, did you leave AK-47s or plastic explosive lying around?
Was it maybe parts of a car engine? boxes of clothes? old newspapers? what?
Do you have a history with CPS or are they able to just turn up out of the blue and remove people’s children in Michigan? If you have a history, if they’ve warned you before about tidying up your house then why haven’t you heeded their warning and taken steps to tidy up?
If they just turned up out of the blue then that seems a bit odd that they can do that. How tidy does a house have to be? How do they judge if a house has just one box of junk too many? What’s it got to do with them anyway if you like to keep junk around? It may be junk to them but to you it’s your possessions.
I don’t think the mice thing is relevant, everyone gets mice (I actually quite like them - cute little fellas). You should get yourself a cat maybe - nothing deals with mice like a cat.
I’m not being judgemental, I am the world’s most untidy person but then I don’t have kids so I can get away with it.
You know, I don’t know Persephone and I don’t know the back story behind this whole situation – and I don’t want to – but I do admit that I was enough startled by her original OP in MPSIMS, to read it through again very carefully to see if my first reaction, which was not entirely complimentary to her, was correct. A second reading showed that there was clearly a lot going on I did NOT know about, but that a bunch of folks on this board had come through to help her out in a really rough situation, and that was the whole point of her posting.
Who of us hasn’t been in a bad situation where we didn’t need a little help? Even if it was a situation of our own making? I certainly have. I still have warm thoughts about some folks who really came through for me when I was in college and did something really, really stupid and ended up somewhere really, really dangerous, and these lovely warm people took me in, saw that I was safe and fed, and saw to it that I was able to get home safely. I don’t even remember their names today, but they earned a place in my heart forever that day. Even if it was because I’d been a stupid idiot in the first place.
Persephone, I hope you can get things in your life straightened out so you don’t need this kind of help again. But in the meantime, you have every right in the world to be grateful for the tangible help offered by people from this community. And that’s what I saw your MPSIMS thread as being all about.
Dex is an administrator, but he’s also a poster on this board. If this were a random article that one of us grabbed from our local online news site, I bet most of us would already have our crayons out and sharpened, absolutely ready to draw whatever conclusion we feel inclined to. Having CPS involved in your household carries a definite stigma with it. I think that maybe the “STFU, you don’t know what you’re talking about Dex!” reactions are a bit strong. If this was a stranger, one or two people might still stick up for them, but most of us would do just what we always do… cast judgement based on our own experiences.
And ya know, I’m sure most of the “awful” news stories we come across are bathed in an equally bad lighting with skewed details and sensationalized “facts”
So if this had said “Estranged wife goes out partying with internet buddies in NYC while children are left in rat infested home in Flint, MI”, most of us would be screaming about the children by now.
I’m very glad that Persephone was able to receive the help she needed. I’ve been overwhelmed before and I know that sometimes its impossible to get on top of things without some outside assistance.
My house hasn’t always been a model home, but you bet your ass if CPS threatened me, I’d be a bawling mess as well.
Persephone, I’m sorry for jumping to the conclusion that you’d left your children alone for the weekend while you were out living it up in NYC.
We all jump to conclusions sometimes, and we all have a bit of an inner knee-jerk reactionary, just waiting to point fingers and ask questions later.
It’s not a BAD thing, without it we’d have no true social accountability, but it can be an inconvenience and it can land our feet squarely within our mouths from time to time.
FWIW, those who did what they could to help are true humanitarians and good people who reserved personal judgement to help their fellow man out of a bad situation.
So when a member is a jerk, he can get banned. Who bans administrators?
This was a low blow. Inappropriate for a member, Completely out of line for an administrator. Even a moderator has called him on this. I second that, Eutychus.
Plus, you even had to be reminded to provide a link?
First, I’m going to say that I really like both Persephone and Eutychus-they’re two of my favorite Dopers. While the situation described DOES sound scary, there’s obviously more to it than we know-I mean, houses get old, sometimes things get messed up, and the person doesn’t even REALIZE how bad a house is? And seph herself said that she’s been going through a rough patch, to put it mildly. And she’s thanking people for helping her get through it!
I can’t believe it’s an ADMIN who’s doing this. Dex, that’s really, really heartless. You are one cold-hearted SOB.
Dex, if you weren’t there, you didn’t see the house, and you don’t know the exact circumstances, you should have asked for e-mail clarification before shooting your mouth off in this fashion, which is beneath your dignity asn an administrator.
OTOH, Persephone needs to add some details PDQ to clear her name. CPS doesn’t act unless it has some cause. What’s the story?
I know enough about this situation to give a hearty fuck you to Dex. And personally, I think Persephone is taking more of the blame on herself than she really deserves.
For those who haven’t figured it out yet, Persephone left her children with their father. The same father that takes care of the house and the kids while Persephone works. Are we saying that a man is less capable than a woman of cleaning and telling when a house is in dire need of cleaning? That Persephone is never allowed to go anywhere because she can’t trust her husband to take adequate care of his children?
I don’t know how dirty the house was. I do know that CPS is not a hive mind - it is a group (actually 50 distinct groups - one per state) of individuals, and how the law is applied is going to be based on the group, the individual, and the circumstances. As Persephone points out, she was reported. It’s not like they go door to door checking the cleanliness of every house they enter.
C K Dexter Haven, you are out of line. You know neither the backstory nor the situation that led up to the intervention of CPS.
Speaking as someone who knows the circumstances surrounding the incident and has actually SEEN the home you jumped to conclusions about I can say that your characterization of the home in question is an inaccurate and just plain wrong.
Secondly, I have met and spent time with Persephone’s children on more than one occasion. I categorically and unequivocally state that her children are fine, normal, and healthy. Your insinuation that her children are neglected or mistreated is insulting and wrong. For that, if nothing else, you owe Persephone an apology.
Speaking as someone who actually knows what is going on and what has happened, you, sir, are arrogant, insulting, and a complete fucking asshole for casting aspersions on a person based on your knee-jerk response to a situation about which you were not completely apprised.
[[But at the same time, I have heard of so many incidents where CPS shot their big fat mouths off, and then had nothing to back it up.]]
And then there are all those incidents we always read about where they don’t shoot their mouths off enough and kids die. Talk about public outcry then. (I am NOT talking about Persephone here, but just had to say that.) CPS should only enforce their rules when it embarrasses people who aren’t our friends, dammit!
Can’t you people be friends of Persephone AND see this? Can’t you see how those of us who don’t know any of you in real life would read and interpret this shit?
A totally different situation, but still an analogy in a sense: an ex-colleague of mine was brought up on charges of pedophilia. There was fairly good evidence, I thought, that this guy had raped a couple of kids. Friends of his and other colleagues of mine - people who would be horrified and outraged, reading about this case if it were about a stranger - these friends and colleagues all took his side and gave him the benefit of the doubt. They were mad at the system, and some even blamed the kids. Gaa.
Persephone’s crime doesn’t sound like it was anywhere close to being as evil as the examples I’ve given here, so please don’t say I’ve accused her of that.
So we don’t know the “rest of the story.” So don’t post part of the story on a message board if you don’t want people to say how it makes em feel. And don’t blame those of us who don’t know you from Adam from calling it like we see it.
No I don’t. But if you’ll read everything I’ve posted to this point, you’ll note that I’ve never said CPS was wrong. It wasn’t like Dex said, and there’s other, non-dangerous things that CPS is activelyhelping with, but I will never say that my house was in fine shape, and that CPS was totally wrong.
God, the last thing I want to do is get involved in this.
I somehow can’t stop myself from saying this.
JillGat, from your previous posts in this thread, it seems obvious you did not read the original thread very closely. I suppose you saw my quoted response to your assumptions. I don’t hold this against you at all, but I think that at least part of the fragmentation of the story is not on Persephone’s part.
Agreed. However, I have seen members get banned for what I felt was less.
What Dex did was not just an overreaction. This is a person who has the power to ban people, who is violating board rules. An administrator should be held to a higher standard.
JillGat – your missing the point of what some of the people here are saying…which is that the board usually frowns upon pitting people when the facts aren’t there. They also frown upon twisting it and acting like a jerk about things.
None of us said we thought she was in the right, what we are defending is her situation and why and how it got there none of which Dex even bothered to ask. Dex jumped to conclusions, made horrible remarks about one of our own.
Would we clobber a news story about this? Sure because we don’t have the facts, we only see face value of the short story in the news. We tend to forget that behind the story are real, living and breathing people who have a whole set of issues in their lives we could never know.
Maybe this is a wake up to the people that Pit news stories about things that people do because we aren’t privy to the information that leads up to those things that do get posted on news sites, etc…
In addition, she gave enough information but wanted to thank people for the help. This is what her OP was about, thanking people here on the SD about what a great community this is. Then Dex comes along, ruins the intent of her thread and then pits her with horrible remarks.
Gee, I bet that makes any of the new kids on the block rethink the kind of community we really are when an Admin can’t control hisself or herself and do what they ask and take it to email before making Persephone look like some white trash.
Sure, she fucked up, she admits that but she simply wanted to thank her friends on the SDMB.
Is that too much to ask of an Admin to not be a jerk?
