House of Horror

Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Well, welcome back. Hello.

This evening for Hailey and I has been a crapto. It's really been an experience. My son was asleep when Hailey got here and we were having a nice Shikudhary board. Yeah.

And he came out. Yeah. And he's been out. And that was the end of it.

That was like four hours ago. Yeah. And we have been trying to deal with him and put him back to sleep and back in his room and he wanted to take a bath and then he wanted to do this and he wanted to do that. It's been nonstop.

I have pretended to go to sleep countless times. Hailey's pretended to leave. Yeah. Many times.

Just keep coming back. And he's like, what are you doing? He's like, why does she keep coming back? I was like, I don't know, dude.

Like she just loves us. She can't circle him back. Yeah. And she's what?

I left my car here. I had to walk back. I accidentally left without my car. As one does.

Yeah. In the night. But you know, an area that you don't reside in. Correct.

Yeah. I mean, I went and chilled with Randy. Yeah. And then I came back.

Yeah. Smoked a few Marlboro Reds. Yep. Me and Randy.

I don't think he smokes, but I don't even know. Neither do I for the record. Also don't smoke. Okay.

I just woke up to Randy and he'd like, you want to smoke? And he was like, oh, they're bad for you. Yeah. He's gave me some words of wisdom.

He did. He's like, you know, lady, let me take you side and tell you the truth about Nick and Dean. Yeah. No.

No, my dad was a smoker. You said that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Smoked for like good, 40 years. Very quick. And he quit.

Cool turkey. That's crazy. He like, did something scare him? Yeah.

He had a really bad, like upper respiratory infection and couldn't breathe and that couldn't get up. So he quit and you know, most people have to have like some sort of patch or something like that. Like that oral fixation is still there from cigarettes. So his was eating almonds.

Interesting. He ate a ton of all the game. Like a ton of weight. Yeah.

No, he's always been kind of like, he can lose weight so fast and dress me crazy. That's not fair. I know. Like he can and barquets can like, it's just the whole thing.

It's not fair. It's not fair at all. Yeah. I care for that.

I know. I look at a donut and I gained five pounds. Me too. I say the word.

Yeah. So I, if you notice, I don't even say it. Yeah. You know, oh, that sweet thing.

That sweet thing. That's round with a hole in it. Yeah. But we're not going to get into what the word is because I'm all, yeah.

I'll start blowing up. I can feel it. My hips be like right now. Yeah.

Okay. We have story. I'm excited. This is a crazy story.

So, well, excuse me. This is a recent story. Like hit your headlines just recently. So today, we are talking about a 20, 25 February, 20, 25 story in Waterbury, Connecticut, which is Southwest of Hartford.

Yeah. I was told a friend of mine that I was doing the story and she was super pumped because she's from Connecticut. Yeah. And if you're trying to smell it, it's connect, I cut.

Yeah. Interesting. Never helped you spell it. Yeah.

So we were branching a little bit, but close enough. No, Connecticut is part of the outreach trail yesterday. Sweet. I can roll that.

Exactly. We actually did a story. I did a story from Connecticut about Annabelle at all. Oh, yeah.

I always forget about connect to kit. So, yeah. There you go. All right.

So it is 842 in the evening of February 17, 2025 when 911 dispatch received a call that a house is on fire. I'm not a good thing. No, definitely not. The call comes from a 56 year old Kimberly Sullivan.

Mrs. Sullivan is frantic explaining that she was sleeping and there in this fire started. She woke up to flames, which would be startling. Yeah.

During the 911 call, she indicates that her animals, a dog and two cats along with her stepson are in the house. She says that her stepson is injured and she believes he has passed out. Yeah. She also says that she thinks that the TV somehow started the fire, maybe it's shorted or something like that.

That's scary. Yeah. It is scary, especially if you fall asleep with the TV. Yeah.

So the caller, like I said, seems to be in crisis mode. And you know, when your frantic like that, everybody reacts differently to crisis. So she was just kind of like, hurry again here. You can hear the 911 call.

So when firefighters arrive on the scene, Mrs. Sullivan is out of the house holding her little dog. They ask if anybody else is in the house and again, she says her stepson is upstairs in his room. Firefighters go into the home to retrieve the young man who is alive, but he's not in good condition.

His injuries are not as much related to the fire, though. It appears that he is small and gone. When asked his age, he says he is 32, but he is extremely small, like a child. Wow.

When asked what happened, he said, I started the fire because quote, I wanted my freedom. He says he started the blaze with a lighter paper and hand sanitizer. Ting. Yeah.

According to the young man, he had been held hostage by Mrs Sullivan since he was 11 years old. So now he's 32. Yeah. So not really what you're expecting.

So you come to a house fire. Right? No, no, not what I would imagine firefighters are prepared for. No rolling up.

No, definitely not. So police are dispatched. Yep. And there's actually body cam footage of them talking with Mrs Sullivan, who seems to care more for her dog and two cats than her stepson, whom she left in the home while she escaped with her pets.

Gotcha. So, you know, I mean, did the cats make it out? They did. The cats, the dog, they were all okay.

Everybody's fine. Everybody's fine. Okay. Except the young man.

I mean, he's living barely barely. So he's got out. So they got him out. They got him out.

Yes. They got him out. Yes. They actually carried him out because he was just that week.

So they take him via ambulance to the hospital where he's treated for smoke inhalation, but he's also diagnosed with wasting syndrome. Wasting syndrome. Yes. So this is a condition of weight loss and muscle deterioration.

Okay. The police report states that the young man was near starvation when he arrived at the hospital. He was five foot nine inches tall, but weighed only 69 pounds, which is a weight of a sixth grader. Possible.

I mean, we can't even imagine that. Like I work with young people. Like I've seen a sixth grader in recent days, right? And one, they're not five nine ever.

No, no. And two, they're not 60 something pounds. If they are, they're very, very short. Yes.

So we're talking skin and bones. Like I am. So I'm five eight and I weigh 200 pounds. Like that would be what almost a quarter, a little over a quarter of me.

Yeah. So the three quarters of my body weight just gone. So like your knees down. Yeah.

Like that's crazy. Isn't that crazy? That's wild. So in addition to his other diagnoses, he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and depression.

I mean, okay. Yeah. So please keep to the hospital to interview him where he reports that he has been held hostage like I said since he was 11 years old. So over 20 years.

Wow. This leads you to question. How did family school, like nobody knew about this one thinking? We have, I don't know if I'm, can I get the same way?

I'm sure it is, but like in our state, let's say that I work in, we have compulsory attendance laws, where from the time they're age seven to the time or from enrollment, but it has to be by age seven. To the time they're 16, we have compulsory attendance. And there should be somebody monitoring that. Yeah.

And to teach yourself such as myself, what's what I do? Like feels like all day every day. And if I have like, if I have a student who has missed 10 days of school and they fall in that bracket, I take them to court or work on a plan or whatever. Obviously court's not my first stop, but I'm very involved with the family.

Put on our court plan. I don't want to put court pants on. But like, I'm very involved with the family at that point. If they have it like at that point.

Yeah. So it's just bizarre to me. And like if there's a kid who like if I call, because they've been out for a while and I call it on like, Hey, just check it in a little Johnny. And I'm like, Oh, we're going to homeschool.

I'm like, okay, cool, cool. Totally. You're right. Your choice.

Do need you to come in unenroll, provide me with your homeschool ID and like do all the things like there's steps that have to be taken to a lot of people are like, Oh, grab you all that stuff. Yeah. Just return to school. Yeah.

Because it is a lot of work and like there's certain requirements for homeschool. Like you have to have a high school diploma to run a homeschool. So if you yourself dropped out and never got your high school diploma or an equivalency, then you can't educate your children, which makes sense because you may not be able to read. Right.

Huge. So that happened recently with a student I had that was all planned was to unenroll in homeschool, but there was nobody in the family that had a high school diploma. So she has to remain in school, which I hope she will because then maybe she'll be the first one to get her a school. Yeah.

That's so. So there should be checks and balances in place. All that to say, it is wild to me that nobody from us, even a school standpoint knew. Well, we'll get there.

Okay. Yeah. Unless this kid was like never enrolled. We'll get there.

Okay. There's there's some more to this story. Yes. So young man stated that he had been starved, abused and neglected at the hands primarily of his stepmother, Mrs.

Sullivan. Okay. His prolonged abuse was evident by his body. Many of his teeth had fallen out due to a lack of dental care.

Yeah, that'll happen. He told police that he was allowed out of his room on weekends when his father was alive, but after his father's death in 2024, so the year before the abuse intensified, his stepmother fed him two sandwiches a day and gave him two small bottles of water. He would try and save backs up the water to bathe with. Wow.

But he didn't have any kind of soap. It was just water. Gotcha. He also indicated that she would not let him use the bathroom.

So he would try to remove feces from the room by putting it through a straw and trying to push it out a crack in the window. Ew. And how? I mean, you know, a grown adult feces.

Yeah. How do you put that in a straw? I guess you just take little pieces. Oh my gosh.

Can you imagine? No. Oh, God. Allegedly, the abuse was present from very early on in the young man's life.

His elementary school principal recalls a young man starting kindergarten and stating that he was half the size of your typical five-year-old. He looked like a two and a half-year-old. Okay, red flag number one, exactly. And that he was constantly stealing food from other children and scarfing it down like it was the only meal he had ever had.

Red flag number two, exactly. The principal states that they were extremely concerned and when questioned by staff, young man said he wasn't allowed food sometimes and that his older sisters would get pizza. But he wasn't allowed any of it. Okay.

The school called Child Protective Services, exactly. They called a minimum of 20 times. Yeah. When CPS would show up to the home, the parents would say that they were confused and they took good care of him and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

When CBS themselves were interviewed after this case came out, they stated that there was only one well-checked done by staff, which was in 2005. And at that time, no abuse was indicated. It was substantiated and the case was closed. Did they lay eyeballs on the kid?

Like, did we look at the child? From, so I'm getting a very basic info here. So I don't know. Well, I've seen that happen before when, like, you know, and I'm not on the other side of the DSS side or CBS side.

But I feel like sometimes as a school, like, I'll call several times on one particular family or situation. And there's not a whole lot that happens. And I'm sure that they have their own processes and things like that. I'm not always privy to.

But it became frustrating. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about that in the CPS, because I think that for us, we have worked in the field. We really know a lot of the stuff.

But a lot of our listeners don't really know. So I think it's important to talk about it. So this is different from state to state. But in general, your social services agency is county-affiliated.

So if you live in Green County, then you have a Green County DSS or DHS. If you live in Blue County, you have a Blue County. Purple County. And everybody's might look a little bit different.

Absolutely. So they manage the social programs. So they would manage things like food stamps, quick, foster care, child protective services, right? So in North Carolina, anyone is a mandated reporter, which essentially means that anybody can make a CPS report.

Yeah. If you have stupid reasons, you could, you know. And all adults are mandated to do that. Absolutely.

We witness abuse or neglects no matter who you are, where you are, you have to report it. Exactly. Exactly. So the staff person who takes a call reviews the information that you're giving them.

And they review the case with their teammates and determine whether or not it meets criteria for investigation. So it could be someone says, I saw Hailey out there, and she looked like she was going to smack Hailey. Right. And they always have these, which I usually do.

Look like that. It's true. They have these screening tools. Like everyone's trained on how to use the screening tool.

So it's like a lot of it looks like a flow chart, honestly. Like, if this, then this kind of thing. If they say this, then you have these options. And then if it meets this one, it's a whole thing.

So there's a lot of steps. So as a school employee and also a social worker, what I do is when I call, if I'm going to call, I have that screening tool in front of me. So I know, I should be able to predict the outcome of my call based on the screening tool. Now, there is human people are involved.

So what I interpret as meeting criteria may not, the person they might not interpret it that way, which can, that's when you get this frustration. And, you know, so it's not a, it's not a foolproof system by any means. Exactly. Yeah.

And, you know, Hailey's right. So if they determine it meets criteria for investigation, which would be abuse, neglect, domestic violence, something to that, that dependency, abandonment, you know, all that kind of stuff, then they would investigate it. So what happens is they typically let the family know that they're going to come out. Yeah.

There's usually a phone call made to parent or guardian or. Within 48 hours. They have to make it 72 or 48. Depends on my case.

Yeah. Yeah. So they'll make contact and say, Hey, we've got to come out and come to your home. Yeah.

And so they let them know they show up to the home. They talk to the family. They talk to the child by themselves. If they suspect that there is abuse, they can either at that moment, you know, talk to their, you know, their supervisor and say, Hey, I think we need to pull the kid.

Sometimes they come back with the sheriff. Sometimes, and you know, that's when you see kids either go into like kinship, foster care, that kind of thing. Or sometimes they just make a plan, a safety plan in order to keep that child in the home. It depends on what they see.

And the goal is always to keep kids with their, their biological family. Like that's important to know, like, yes, social workers, you know, I've not done the CPS side. Have worked very closely in programs with them. But the goal always is to keep kids with family.

Like that is that's important. You never want to remove a kid from the home if you can avoid it. But if if you have to, you have to, right, for the safety of everybody. Yes.

Absolutely. So once a case is opened, the social worker has 30 to 45 days to talk with a child, the parents and colaterals. So, colaterals are individuals who are involved in the daily life of the child and family who can, like, speak to how the parents treat the child, you know, kind of be like almost like a character with us. You know, so visit the home twice, at least in North Carolina.

So the first visit is like, talk with family, kind of do an interview, do an assessment, so to speak. And then the next visit, assuming they keep the children in the home, is unexpected. So they typically will come unannounced. Yeah.

And that's when they are like, oh, hey, just wanted to make sure lay eyes on the child again. And they're required to do that within a 30 day period. Yeah. So that's, if it gets screened in.

If it gets screened in, many get screened out. Yeah. And, you know, when they're investigating like a child who's in care, they have to kick it out to another county if they're guardian of that child. So like let's say Hailey has a cute little foster child from Green County.

Green County is a legal guardian. So it is unethical for them to investigate on that child because there's bias there. Yeah. So like if I was the foster parent of said child and somebody called to report in and said that I hit said child in the grocery store, then they would have to, they couldn't investigate exactly from the camp from that county.

So blue county then would have to do it. So they would have to go and do it exactly, which is it's protocol. Yeah. So anyway, but the so once the case is closed, the family who the report is on and the reporter who would remain nameless for their protection, like they would never tell the family, yeah, Hailey made this report on you because then that put Hailey in a vulnerable position.

Right. So each receive a letter in the mail and it says, you know, the case was closed. Was it substantiated for abuse, neglect, abandonment, dependency, any of those things under the state criteria or was it unsubstantiated, which means didn't meet criteria, you know, for abuse. Yep.

Kind of thing. I request and you some counties will go ahead and send them out no matter what, some places you have to request in the county that I work in, you have to request a letter and typically whoever takes the screening call will ask, like, would you like to receive a letter about the case decision or whatever. And I always say yes. And if they don't ask, I just ask.

Well, because if it's not documented, it didn't happen. Right. So yeah, you know, and one tip that I've I've done a couple times and I've heard other people say is anytime that you call and make a report and hopefully, like you never have to, but if you do, I've made plenty like I make them all the time. Unfortunately, but one thing that I have learned to do is to ask whoever has taken my report to read my report back to me, just to make sure that everything I said, because sometimes like they'll ask you a question and you.

Talk to quickly or you've given them a lot of detail and they're having to like write it down really quick or type it really quick. So just things can get missed. And sometimes it's that one little thing that would have screened in a call versus out. Right.

So I just make sure that whoever's taken my report reads it back to me and that it checks all my boxes that I needed to make sure got across and well, and we do know that people make Volonius reports. Oh, yeah. All the time. We'll get mad at their neighbor because the neighbor put a fence what in what they consider their yard.

Right. So they're like, I'm going to get back to them. I'm going to make a report and scare them. Yeah.

Or it's, you know, one, it could be a family member that, you know, is mad that a parent put in a boundary with them or something. So then they call in and they make it this whole thing. And like it happens all the time. I have seen it a lot in divorce cases where, you know, mom will make a report against dad saying that there's, you know, this abuse happening so that she can win custody.

Right. And then first of all, like, it just happens. I've seen it a lot all the time. Yes.

So in this case, it appears the 2005 investigation was deemed unsubstantiated, meaning they didn't find any abuse neglect going on in the home, which again is like, OK, if the child in kindergarten was emaciated, right? Small and all these things. Clearly, this abuse was happening. I don't understand.

Right. Why? So in 2005, so that was 20 years ago. Yeah.

That would have put him at 12. Yeah. I just, I don't get it. Yeah, that's weird.

Make a lot of sense to me. So officials with the Department of Children and Families, which is what Connecticut calls their CPS program, every state is different. So they reported that they didn't find any records of agency involvement with the family, but they were continuing to look. Yeah.

Yeah. They added that reports of neglect or abuse deemed unsubstantiated are erased after five years. So when the investigation closes five years later, they just get rid of it. That's crazy to me.

Yeah. Us too, because I feel like that should stay. Yeah. Like, because then if you have somebody that calls them again, right, that should pain like exactly we've had this before.

Isn't that strange to me? Yeah, me too. I don't know. So there is a quote here and it says, we are shocked and saddened for the victim and the unspeakable conditions he endured.

The department said in a statement, this is now adult victim has shown incredible strength and resilience during this time of healing and our hearts go out to him. I don't know. I mean, I feel like somebody dropped a ball here. I did you.

Like, I'm just saying. I mean, I feel like the school tried to do their due diligence. Right. But what happened to him from kindergarten to when he left school?

Well, we'll get there. OK. So kind of going back to our story. So he starts kindergarten at this local school.

When he reaches fourth grade, he was taken out of school. OK. After constant reports. So according to the former principal, the school was told that he would be enrolling in another district.

OK. The family told CBS when they came out in 2005 that the child was taken out of school to be homeschooled. So somebody didn't follow their procedures like you were talking about earlier. Because when that happens, at least in our state, when that happens, and I have a family that says, hey, I'm going to pull for homeschool.

Great. Fine. Bring me all the things. You bring me all the things.

We release the records. We take them out of our system. They are now in the homeschool system being monitored by whatever homeschool personnel or and then they have to submit all their state testing and stuff like that. So there's still some kind of like looking in there a little bit.

But what happens when we don't get that paperwork is once I hit 10 days of not showing up at school and I don't have any record that says they're homeschooled. They're now truant. Yeah. If they're under the age of 16.

And so I'm putting in this Haley's Put in a Court Pants. And that means I'm putting a Court Pants on and I'm calling you every day. I'm sending the police to your house or an SRO to be like, hey, what's happening? What's going on?

I'm filing. So then I'm sending, you know, you're going to get served to show up in court. Like it's a whole thing. And same thing if you go, they say, Oh, we're going to enroll them in another school.

Okay, great. You have to give us the name of the school you're going to or when you go to enroll. In fact, documentation or when you go to enroll in the new school, that new school sends a records request to the old school. That way, the old school can say, okay, here's everything.

Here's all their educational records, everything we have on file. If they have special education services, we send it over all that stuff. And then they're set up in the new system. Parents would sign an ROI or release the records, you know, release it info that you come to you.

And that's, it's very simple. Have we do this all the time? We have kids that transition to us and our school, we have kids that go to different schools because they move, we have kids that come into us from homeschool. Like it just is a normal part of our data manager's life.

Sometimes I'm involved. I'm not always involved as a worker in that. The complicated and kind of weird ones. Sometimes I get involved in.

Yeah. You're always down for weird. I'm always down for like a weird case. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's not a difficult process. Exactly. To do if you are truly going to do it correctly.

So the family tells TPS to go to homeschool. They have an approved and detailed homeschool plan. Right. All these things.

Great. This was not true. The child was not allowed to attend school any longer and allegedly was locked in his room five days a week. The young man identified in records as male victim one stated that he was kept in an eight by nine foot room, which was like a closet, essentially.

So a room inside of a room. Without heat or air conditioning. The young man told authorities that he was let out of the room in the mornings for 15 minutes to two hours in order to do chores and was quickly locked back away. He states that this occurred daily and that he was not allowed to see other family members or friends.

He stated that his father would sometimes let him work in the front yard. But the last time he left the house was when he was about 14 or 15 years old. Again, keep in mind he's 32. So can you imagine not leaving your house for 17 to 18 years?

No. I mean, I can't stay here for a weekend. No. I mean.

Yeah. And I love my house, but like I need to be out and about. Well, when it snows, I can't stand it. Yeah.

I get antsy. I'm like, I gotta go. Got to go. Exactly.

So when a detective asked why he never told anybody about his situation, he said he wanted to, but he feared, quote, the constant threat of longer lockdowns and further dish management of food. Yeah. I mean, that's your, you know, we see that with a lot of cases of these situations, kidnappings, whatever, like, why don't you tell anybody? It's like, well, I couldn't.

Right. Well, and I mean, you know, when CPS showed it to the house, he got severely punished for that. Yeah. No, he did.

Yeah. So, I mean, he's learned his lesson. Like he said, not gonna say anything. Yeah.

Yep. He describes the life of being mentally conditioned by his stepmother. He stated that the threat was that he would not see the light of day if he told anyone, and knowing that he had little time out of his room to that point was not something that he was going to risk. Yeah.

I mean, because that 15 minutes to two hours, even doing chores was probably fantastic for him. Yeah. Just to be out of that room. Yeah.

So you have to ask yourself, how could this have gone on for years? And like, family didn't even question. Right. Like grandma didn't say like, I didn't see him at Christmas.

Like, I mean, what's happening? And like, what about these other kids? Yeah. Like the older sisters he was talking about.

They didn't say anything. I don't really know like how much older they were. I don't know. Right.

There's not a lot of details about them. And again, this is a very fresh story. So I'm sure more will come out. But there was an uncle who said, you know, the last time I saw him, I noticed that he was very thin.

He had poor hygiene. Like, when I tried to talk to him, the stepmother would like intervene and like not allow the conversation to continue. So the young man's biological mother states that she was devastated when she heard the reports and she'd actually been searching for him for years. Apparently, she'd given up her parental rights when he was very young.

OK. So I mean, it could have been a situation of maybe she had some addictions, maybe she was in a lifestyle where she would truly couldn't take care of him. Right. Sounds like she signed over rights, probably to what dad dad and then dad and stepmom raised.

What's she gonna see? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was trying to call him on a car.

So when interviewed, Mrs. Sullivan, the stepmom refused to talk with police on March 12th after gaining enough evidence for an arrest. This is Sullivan mistaken and custody. Good.

She was charged with kidnapping, assault, unlawful restraint and other crimes. While firefighters who found the young man in the unlock, they found him in an unlocked room reports alleged that he was so fearful that he wouldn't even try to escape. Wow. So it didn't matter that he wasn't locked up anymore.

Like he just was our evidence that they're being like, oh, way to lock the. I don't know. It doesn't say. But something that I did think about was, I mean, she called 911.

So she knew they were coming. So what if she just like quickly like unlocked it? Right. You know what I mean?

I don't know. Yeah. So her bond was set at $300,000, which she posted. And she is currently free awaiting her next court date, which is scheduled for March 26th, which if you're hearing this, you're hearing this on March 27th.

So this has happened the day before and we are recording about six days before this. So, you know, we'll keep you posted. It is. So the young man had few clothes, had few items, anything, really.

So police officers kind of got together and gifted him some things, which I thought was very nice. The stepmother's attorney denied all the allegations against her. He says, quote, he was not locked in a room. OK, she did not restrain him in any way.

She provided food. She provided shelter. She is blown away by these allegations. OK, so how do you explain then the conditions when he was living in?

He wouldn't be doing this to himself. Right. That's that's insane. OK.

The quote is I would encourage people not to rush to judgment. I'm rushing on there. Me too. This woman is presumed innocent.

Their house in Waterbury, Connecticut is currently boarded up and not livable, largely due to the fire, but also I would assume just with everything that went on there, who would want to be there. Yeah. It's unclear where the victim or his alleged abuser are saying. And I do want to say alleged because we don't know.

Right. We haven't done trial. Isn't until provigility. Yeah.

But they are being kept away from each other, obviously via court order. So we'll keep you posted. This is a crazy story. Yeah, it just is wild.

And I feel like more is going to come out as like this trial happens. Everything happens. So I do wonder like the father had passed away, but how involved really was he? Right.

I mean, I mean, he seems he had to have been. He had to have been if it was like, I allowed you to go out unless he was abused by the wife. Right. And possibly we don't know.

But yeah, I want to know more about the sisters and yeah, I don't know. It's just like, you know, with all the stuff going on with the public schools now, I just team public school. Yeah, we just have a lot more eyes on and and you'll see that we have like, if you've worked in the school or in like a CPS situation, or if you don't know anything about it, this is kind of interesting. There are significantly more CPS reports made during the first month of school.

That is correct. And the first month after they returned from a break. Because and over the summer reports go down because you don't have other adult eyes on kids. And another I'm saying, all homeschools are bad.

There's wonderful homeschools out there. Like they're great. I have several friends that were homeschooled. I know she could go home school.

I know like several families who do it and do it really well. It's amazing and wonderful thing. But there's just not a lot of eyes. No, there's not a lot of eyes on kids and it gets and there's just not a lot of oversight, which is kind of the point right?

Right. At homeschooling. But there's just not a lot like we want to protect kids. Right.

And you know, the argument can be made the same way for public schools. Like they can be victimized in school and it happens. Yeah. But your child is much more likely to be victimized by somebody they know and by a family member than a stranger.

So just going to keep that in mind. Team public school. One, because I work in one and two because there's a lot of good in public schools. And we can just like get so many more services than the kids lives too.

And not just public school, but like school in general, like being around adults and you know, yeah, that's my set box. No, no, I totally, I totally agree. I mean, I just think that the system really did fail this child. It sounds like it.

Yeah. I mean, I also, and I mean, all this is alleged, right? But I also feel like saying like, oh, yeah, I see here we came out in 2005. But the school is saying we made at least 20 warports, if not more.

Right. Over the course of these four years that he was in our school, come on. You didn't investigate any of these. Right.

That's why it is so, so important if you are in the field, working with kids, working with adults, working with vulnerable populations, document the crap out of everything. Anytime you call a maker, report, you request a letter. They don't send a letter, you call back and ask for one. That way you can say, Hey, I made 20 reports.

Here's every single time it was screened out. Exactly. Like we did what we were supposed to do. Scan it into your data system, scan it into the file, keep that paper copy.

Like I'm a hoarder of paper. When it comes to things like that, I have a whole file of things like I never throw those out. Even if it's been, you know, I have files that I inherited and the kids have been graduated for five, six years. Yeah.

Like I keep it because they may have a sibling. Exactly. They may have like, I can look back and be like, we made this report. Well, and my guess would be because I don't really know what happens.

Like because I mean, heck, I could call my high school right now and say I need a transcript and they would have to like pull my records, right? And I graduated 20 plus years ago. Right. So do they just keep that on like microfiche or something or like, what is that?

Like your records or like all your records. Is that stored or do they eventually like burn your crap? I don't know how long they have to store them. But we keep at least physical copies of all records for in our building, I think for five years, we keep them and then no, that's wrong.

I think they keep the physical copy for a certain amount of time and then they scan it into something. But when we graduate, like when our seniors graduate this year, part of what our data manager will do over the summer is she'll go through all of our graduating seniors, she'll pull all their cumulative files that we keep on hand, which has like a copy of their birth certificate, a copy of, we don't use our scooters anymore. But like their residency forms, like where they're living, test scores, any kind of like disciplinary actions or anything. Yeah.

Court records that have to do with like guardianship or custodian, like that sort of stuff, we keep all of that in their cumulative file. So we pull all that out and we send them down to our central office or like our district office and then they live there for a certain amount of time. And they're in our system for, I think they're, they stay in our like computer system for maybe two or three years because there's certain times we can, like if a kid calls back in and says they decided to go to college or something like that or transfer and they need a copy of their transcript, they can call us and say, Hey, can you send me my transcripts? And if they're within a certain number, like a couple of years, we can usually still pull them out of our system, but anything beyond that, we have to say you need to call the district office and they'll pull it.

And then they have copies of anyone who's ever graduated from that system. Now, I think they're probably digitized at this point, of course. And then they're probably locked in like a iron mountainsward situation, yeah, yeah, which is like a place where you send files to be stored indefinitely, which is a spooky place. I've actually never been there.

I haven't either, but I've heard things. Could you imagine this giant warehouse? Giant warehouse of files. Yeah, spooky, spooky.

Yeah, but there's a lot of like things like that that people just don't realize what goes on and that happens behind the scenes. Like, I didn't know any of this stuff happened when I was in school. But like as a social worker now in a school, I am constantly like checking on kids and talking to families and making reports. Yeah, I have made reports.

I have seen the ramifications of reports being made. We've both been in places when investigations have happened. Absolutely. Working in there.

Yeah. People, families were interviewed. Like I was there, you know, so I've made the call on a family. Me too.

And it's not fun. It's not fun because there is that fear of, oh my God, what if they know it was me? What if they know, you know, or the fear of what if this isn't screened in or what if they come out and find that nothing happened and the child gets punished. Right.

That's always a fear that crosses my mind, but it's such a, such a fine line. It is. And like if you have evidence of abuse and neglect, like you have to report it and you have to hope that the systems we have in place do their jobs and sometimes things that doesn't happen. Sometimes people don't do their jobs correctly and bad things happen.

Yeah. But as like, you know, in most places that work with kids, you're trained on what to look for. Yeah. And I am going to throw out because playing devil's advocate, it is social worker appreciation in my, Hey, so in defense of these CPS social workers, sometimes you're just doing your job.

You're doing what the boss tells you to do. You're just, you're trying to make, you know, sure this child is safe in this child. You're trying to manage everything and honestly things could throw a fall through the cracks and you're always going to get the blame. You're always going to get the wool.

Why don't they do anything about it? You know, I think that, you know, also saying like there are more players in this to blame, you know, for sure. And a lot of times, you're CPS workers, there's certain, like, I know certain counties don't have caselit max. Like there's certain counties and like that's why I haven't ever crossed over to doing that kind of work across the dark side.

I say to the dark side, but it's not it's like that's that's selfless work right there. Like I can imagine they're going to houses where they don't know if the family has guns. They don't know. Oh, yeah.

And you're standing up with like a folder or a clipboard and like good luck. Sometimes you're sent with a sheriff, but I mean, I've had CPS workers who've told me, you know, they've been chased before they've been like stocked before, you know, they've come to places with, you know, police officers have been killed. Yes. I mean, it's a case of Chris Watts, right?

Chris Watts. Oh, it was Chris Watts. It was the one that the social worker had come to drop the children off their visits and he blew up the house. She kept saying like something's wrong.

Yeah, something's off. Something's off. And he blew the house. Yeah.