observermedia

Observer Media - The Home of the Wareham and Tri-Town Observer	Welcome Visitor Tue, Sep 7, 2010 24 people currently online.
	Get Your Online Subscription Today!!

Back

Chat Rooms

February Daily Chit-Chat Read More ...
80 opinions posted

FrontPage News

Sisters Kaykeigh and Kaylah Ormsbee could soon be separated from each other by the Department of Social Services

Fighting to keep a family together

Tara Ormsbee never wanted to be in the news again. She never wanted to be the focus of another Department of Social Services battle. She never wanted to see her family torn apart as it was 13 years ago.

“History is repeating itself,” Tara said, cradling her 19-day-old daughter in her arms.

It was 1997 when Tara and her 12-year-old twin sister sat in the middle of a heartbreaking battle between her parents and the state. Tara and her sister Sheena had been separated - Tara sent to live with their father, Sheena with their mother – when they were 10. Then, two years later in 1997, the court ruled that neither parent was fit for custody. The girls were taken away from a Brockton courtroom in tears and whisked away to a waiting van to be taken to an undisclosed location.

The photographic image of Tara, sobbing and screaming for her father as she was forced into the van, will forever remain burned in the memory of those who have seen it.

Tara and her husband Kennan sat nervously in their modest home just over the Wareham town line in Plymouth on Tuesday afternoon. Little Kaylah sneezed a few times, as newborn babies often do. Tara pulled her daughter a little closer, rubbed Kaylah’s nose a few times and watched her baby fall back to sleep.

It was a moment that could have been captured in a Hallmark Card, but abject fear bubbled right beneath the surface. In a few weeks Tara will learn whether DSS will take her children away from their parents the way she and her sister were taken away from theirs.

Eleven months ago Tara, who has two other daughters, voluntarily checked herself into a drug rehabilitation center in Manomet. She and her husband had become addicted to OxyContin, a slow-releasing narcotic usually prescribed for pain associated with cancer. When bought on the street, the pill is crushed and snorted, giving the user a high some say is more powerful than heroin, and every bit as addictive.

Keenan voluntarily began out-patient treatments for his own addiction to the drug.

“We’re no angels,” he said. “But we’ve tried hard to keep our family together. There is a roof over our head and food on the table. The girls go to school. They have toys and decent clothes. We’ve passed every drug test they have given us since April. We don’t neglect our children. We voluntarily went for help for a problem, and then all hell broke loose.”

DSS won’t comment on the matter, citing confidentiality issues. But according to Tara and her husband, after DSS learned that Tara had checked herself into drug rehabilitation her life has been turned upside down. She said DSS has repeatedly threatened to take their children away if they don’t follow a rigid program of drug testing and counseling. Tara said she has followed each demand the DSS has made of her. Keenan admitted to missing a few counseling sessions recently.

“I don’t know what they want,” he said. “I can’t go to work and provide a better life for my family because they make me go to all these sessions. We have no life. We have to live on their schedule. They completely run our lives. We’ve been totally clean since April. We have drug test results to prove it.”

In a few weeks Tara and Keenan will be back in court, fighting to keep their family together. According to Tara, DSS wants to take her children away because little Kaylah was born with traces of a drug known as Subutex in her blood. Subutex is used to treat narcotic addiction.

“That’s what is so crazy about this,” said Tara, who grew up in Wareham. “I fought and fought with DSS because after I learned I was pregnant I didn’t want to take this stuff. I worried what it might do to the baby. But they threatened to take my other kids away if I didn’t. Now because they made me take this stuff they are using that as a reason to try to take my children away. They are punishing me because I did what they told me to do.”

Tara’s father, Dana Raymond, told the Observer by phone that his daughter is being targeted by DSS because of him. He said his public outspokenness against DSS when his daughters were taken by the state has now put Tara in DSS’s crosshairs.

“Look, if these people are angry with me, deal with me,” Raymond said. “Don’t take it out on my daughter.”

Raymond said Tara’s two years in state custody, beginning when she was 12, put her on a bad path.

“My daughter has made mistakes,” he said. “We all have. But something else is going on here. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Tara said she tries not to think about her life as a teenager. She said she isn’t bitter about what happened to her and her sister.

“If none of that happened, I might not have meet Keenan,” she said of her husband, whom she married in 2006.

Keenan began staring at a large cross hanging on a wall in the living room. For a moment he seemed lost in thought.

“It doesn’t seem right to me,” he said. “We tried to get help for our problem and now we have to go through all this.”

Five-year-old Kayleigh emerged from her bedroom, a shy smile etched across her face. She wanted to hold her new baby sister. She sat back on the couch after Tara placed a pillow near Kayleigh’s lap.

Tara smiled as she kept a protective eye on her daughters (18-month-old Kelsi was napping in another room).

“Kayleigh’s such a smart, beautiful kid. She has a heart of gold,” Tara said. “I don’t know what I would do if they took her away from me.”

Read More ...
Robert Slager - 4 opinions posted