By any reasonable measure, what happened to Butch and Kitral Chaplin
and their 13-year-old daughter, Abbey, should never happen to any family
— especially in America.
The “land of the free,” however, is not always understanding or kind
to parents the system has deemed unfit. But even at that, the Chaplins
— who live in Hannibal, Missouri — would never have guessed that
state-sponsored kidnapping was legal or even possible.
The nightmarish ordeal began when the Chaplins, described by friends
as caring, loving parents very interested in their daughter’s
well-being, discovered that Abbey was beginning to hang out with the
wrong crowd and experiment with drugs. They say they tried everything to
resolve the problem — talking with their daughter, meting out
punishments — but eventually came to realize that the problem was
bigger and more serious than they believed they could handle. It was a
difficult and anguishing decision to make but nonetheless the Chaplins
finally decided it was in Abbey’s best interest to get some outside
professional help.
Like most parents who trust the system, Butch and Kitral turned to a
rehabilitation center in a nearby community for counseling help for
their troubled daughter. The center — Charter Hospital in Columbia,
Missouri — was believed by the Chaplins to have a good reputation, and
the hospital was even recommended by the Rapha Center, a local Christian
counseling outfit that they also knew and trusted.
But the morning after her admission to Charter, Abbey’s parents said
they were shocked to learn that the psychiatrist treating her, Dr. Lisa
Thomas, wanted to put her on Prozac — a medicine designed to subdue and
depress behavior. The Chaplins said they were immediately concerned
because they had heard there was some controversy surrounding the drug
and they didn’t want to take the chance that it could further harm
Abbey’s mental capacity. Beside, they said, they had not specifically
given the hospital permission to medicate Abbey.
To compromise, the Chaplins told Dr. Thomas that if medication was
necessary, they wanted her to use a less toxic herbal remedy instead.
Dr. Thomas refused, citing a lack of FDA approval, and suggested that
the Chaplins pick up Abbey.
The Chaplins complied and immediately began seeking a second opinion.
Their efforts were cut short, however, when out of nowhere the state
Department of Family Services showed up at their front door the day
after they removed Abbey from Charter, with armed police officers,
saying they had a court order to take the teenager from their home. The
charge was “medical neglect,” which was filed by Dr. Thomas and Charter
officials, ostensibly because the Chaplins had refused to allow her to
be treated — even though they removed Abbey from Charter on Dr. Thomas’
suggestion.
“It was amazing that they could just do this without even talking to
us first,” Butch Chaplin told WorldNetDaily. “I mean, they just came in
and took her, essentially at gunpoint.” Mr. Chaplin was out of the house
at the time.
“I was scared and shocked,” added Abbey’s mother, Kitral. “At first I
wasn’t even sure they were going to let her get dressed.” The visit from
DFS came about 9 a.m., and the family was still getting ready for the
day.
Upon removing her from the Chaplin home, Abbey was returned to
Charter Hospital, where she was subsequently prescribed two medicines by
Dr. Thomas — Prozac and Luvox. That combination, they were later told
by two separate medical doctors, could have killed Abbey because the two
medicines essentially do the same thing and over a short time would have
resulted in a massive accidental overdose.
Armed with new resolve the Chaplins went to court to get Abbey back.
But the judge said no, adding that keeping their daughter in Charter
“was in her best interests,” Mr. Chaplin said.
“I guess it didn’t matter that the drugs they gave her nearly killed
her.”
“Ironically,” Mrs. Chaplin said, “the judge told us that he wouldn’t
have wanted this to happen to one of his own kids. That was kind of the
icing on the cake.”
But Abbey did finally get to go home a few weeks later, even though
the Missouri DFS continued to fight the Chaplins to keep her locked in
Charter.
“The whole case is filled with lies, incompetence, falsified official
reports, and perjured court testimony,” Mr. Chaplin said. “This system,
which is supposed to help kids who are really abused, has proven to me
that it can also harm — even destroy — families inasmuch as they can
help them.” The difficulty, he added, was getting the system to
recognize a mistake in judgment before tragedy struck.
But, he said, “the people in the system are just too arrogant to
admit they were wrong.”
Mr. Chaplin complained that the system is “unresponsive, heavy-handed
and operates with a presumption of guilt — even before one shred of
evidence has been collected.”
“That’s what needs to change the most,” commented Mrs. Chaplin.
Besides an unreasonable approach to solving the problems some
families have, Mr. Chaplin said, “our particular case has even more
twists in it.” He believes it was also about “controlling us, even
though we didn’t want to be controlled by this obviously incompetent
system.”
And, Mr. Chaplin asserted, “this private hospital was using the power
of the state, via a false endangerment report, to fill up one of their
beds and get paid for it. That’s outrageous.”
“What bothers me is that the state at one time was saying that
because we removed her from an environment we weren’t comfortable with,
that we were refusing to get our daughter any help at all,” Mrs. Chaplin
said. “We went to these people ourselves, on our own” said Mrs. Chaplin,
precisely because the family was “concerned about our daughter.”
“We trusted these people and for that, they took her away from us,”
she added.
Regarding the issue of money, Mr. Chaplin said, “When we first
contacted Charter, they said it would cost around $2,800 to treat her,
which we agreed to. But later they came up with a charge for another
$2,500 or so, and when we asked them why, they didn’t give us a reason.”
“They just said it was ‘added expenses,'” said Mrs. Chaplin. “That
was another indication that something was wrong.”
After their ordeal — and with nothing more than insincere apologies
from DFS and Charter — the Chaplins are left to pick up the pieces of
their lives and move on. The DFS agent who handled their case never
admitted lying to them, though she told them she was doing “the job I
get paid to do.” Though Abbey is doing better, the Chaplins say they’re
not going to forget this anytime soon.
“The National Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse says that 67
percent of all reports of child abuse and neglect are phony,” Mr.
Chaplin told WorldNetDaily. “This can’t go on or more families are going
to be struck by this system.”
To leave a system in place that, when a mistake is made, there is “no
recourse and no way to recover damages,” said Mrs. Chaplin, is
“criminal.” Because of their ordeal, the Chaplins have started a private
advocacy organization called, Deliberate Focus, based in Hannibal.
Currently they are raising funds to “fight this battle and this
injustice,” and have made an appeal for help. They said they were going
to use the funds to hire attorneys and lobby for a change in state (and
federal) laws that allow agencies to get by with erroneous and damaging
judgment.
“We’re going to make them accountable,” Kitral Chaplin said.
“We’re good and caring Christian parents who got caught in this
overbearing
state-federal control system,” Butch Chaplin said. “People in this
country should not have to put up with KGB-style tactics just because
they tried to get their child some help and didn’t agree with the
methods the state was using. It is past time to end this kind of
state-sponsored interference in our lives.”
