http://www.newsnet5.com/home-backup/10689409/detail.html
Mom Says Social Worker Took Her Kids, Husband
Social Worker Resigned After County Discovered Marriage
A woman said a county social worker persuaded her to give custody of her four children to her former husband -- and then married him herself.
Rochelle Kidd and her lawyer are asking a judge to decide whether the relationship between social worker
Na'Sheema Hillmon and Kidd's former husband affected the decision about where the children should live.
Attorney Josh Barnhizer said the social worker convinced Kidd that her husband would get custody of the children no matter what she did. Kidd had earlier been accused of abuse and neglect.
Hillmon resigned from the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services after the department found out about her marriage. The county reviewed the file then and concluded the children belonged with their father.
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http://www.cleveland.com/news/plain...yahoga/1168162776299160.xml&coll=2&thispage=1
Custody fight descends into 'atrocious case'
January 07, 2007
It was
Na'Sheema Hillmon's job as a county social worker to protect abused and abandoned children.
Now, she's being accused of putting her own interests first.
A Cleveland mother says she was duped into giving custody of her four children to her husband before she discovered that he and Hillmon, their social worker, had secretly dated - and later married.
The mother's attorney, Josh Barnhizer, said she was convinced by conversations with the social worker that her husband was going to gain custody of the kids no matter what she did, so she agreed to it. The mother and Barnhizer are asking a judge to decide whether the social worker's relationship colored the decision about where the kids should live. And the mother wants a chance to get her children back.
"It's an atrocious case, but sadly enough I'm not shocked in this county," said Barnhizer, a public defender. "Here, the social workers' word is like the word of God."
Barnhizer said the mother deserves an unbiased chance to reunite with the children she has not seen since May.
"I just want her to get a fair shake at it," he said.
Hillmon resigned from the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services when the department found out about her marriage.
But officials there never told Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court or the children's mother of the conflict.
The county reviewed the case file at the time and still believes the children belong with their father and not with the mother,
who acknowledged whipping them with an electrical cord before she took parenting and anger-management courses at the county's urging.
But it never sent a worker -- independent of Hillmon -- to visit the children, now 6 to 12 years old, and to confirm they are safe and well-cared for, according to Jim McCafferty, director of the Family Services department, which handled the case.
"We still have never gotten any kind of call alleging maltreatment by the father," McCafferty said.
Without an allegation, McCafferty said, his department can't take children from a biological parent.
"What this worker did is horrendous, in my opinion," he said.
"I'm not trying to defend that. I'm sick over this. All I can say is that as soon as it came to our attention, we took aggressive action on this.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing," he said, explaining that in his 16 years as an administrator with the department he has never seen a marriage between worker and client.
Hillmon, 30, admits that getting romantically involved with the children's father -- a man she met because his kids were abused -- was a mistake and unprofessional, but she insists the children are better off now because of it.
Before she resigned because of the conflict, Hillmon had excellent reviews and reports of her work.
"I'm not a troublemaker," said Hillmon, a single mother of three before she married the children's father, Victor Anderson.
"I'm just going to be honest with you and tell you that I fell in love with these kids before I ever knew Victor's name. . . . I found happiness, and I'm sorry it was at somebody else's expense. But her children are very well taken care of.
I do their hair, I do their laundry, and I love them to death. I do." I do, I do, I do dat! Yassuh!
Anderson, 33, says he never saw a conflict in the relationship.
"This was of the human heart," he said.
"It goes far beyond bureaucracy. You don't make a move like that and depend on the agencies to validate it. When you get to the point where you let the government regulate what you do, you're in a bad place."
The parents had tangled lives before they met Hillmon.
Anderson says the children's mother, Rochelle Kidd, is violent and obsessive and has stalked and threatened the family.
He asked a judge for a court order protecting him, his new wife and their seven children from Kidd.
Kidd, 31, calls her ex-husband a hustler, who plays women for gain and sells drugs.
She said he collected food stamps and cash from the county while the children mostly lived with her.
Both parents have criminal convictions: Anderson for selling drugs and for domestic violence; Kidd for two assaults.
About three months after Anderson and Kidd's January 2004 marriage, the county took the four children (who were born between 1994 and 2000) from Kidd's Cleveland home for
abuse. The two parents lived apart.
By October 2004, the court gave Anderson custody of the children, though a different social worker previously noted that Anderson had failed to protect them even after seeing their bruises.
The children were placed with Anderson but sometimes stayed with their mother.
Seven months after that, in May 2005, the county removed the children from Kidd's care again. The youngest boy, then 4,
was spotted hanging over a porch railing,
(little monkey)unsupervised, on the first floor of their apartment.
The court gave Anderson the children back the next day and granted him legal custody again on June 6, 2005, just days after he divorced Kidd. Hillmon supported the decision. Seven weeks later, Hillmon and Anderson married. She continued as the social worker on the case.
In August 2005, Hillmon filed an affidavit with the court saying she visited the family at Anderson's new residence in Cleveland and found "the home and living situation appropriate and that no further services were needed for the family."
She did not mention she had married Anderson.
Hillmon and Anderson insist their whirlwind relationship began only weeks before their July 25, 2005, wedding day.
But Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle records show that two months earlier, Hillmon had obtained a vanity license plate reading VUDUE -- Anderson's nickname.
Hillmon, one of the top 40 high school
basketball players in America in 1994 when she was a senior at Trinity High School, said the two started dating when she was on medical leave in July.
She got the license plate before that. "Maybe I liked the nickname and the reasons behind it, but the plate wasn't for Victor," she said.
Her new plate -- LADYVUDU -- is in honor of their relationship.
Hillmon said she and Anderson do not live together, because that would prevent him from collecting Social Security disability payments. Another county agency, which doles out welfare money, is investigating Hillmon for fraud. The agency would not comment on the investigation.
Hillmon helps care for the kids and warns that future contact with their mother should be closely watched.
Meanwhile, Kidd said she's doing what she needs to do to get her children back:
She said she continues to work full time, has moved out of public housing, is renting a four-bedroom house, has completed an anger-management class and is back in parenting classes.
"My kids shouldn't have to go through this," Kidd said.
"The games that was played, it just ain't right. Once they saw what Ms. Hillmon did, they should've got back in touch with me and helped me get my kids back. That's basically all I want.
I love them to death."
