Suicide Survivor

I am a suicide survivor and this is one of the most deeply personal blog entries that I will write.

A suicide survivor isn't someone who has attempted suicide and lived, it is one of the people left behind after a suicide.

On February 28, 2014, my partner and best friend killed himself. Apparently, he took a dose of cyanide, and although he "lived" for three days until March 2, 2014, he died that Friday when he heard the "guilty" verdict from a jury that was prevented from hearing the full story.

One of the struggles that many suicide survivors go through is thinking that the one gone didn't love them. I'm here to tell you that isn't true.

Often, the only reason a suicide has lived one more hour, one more day, is out of love for those around them and a desire to not cause them pain.

Jon and I had many discussions about his depression and suicidality. I had no illusions that he spent much of his time wanting to die, especially after the lies that destroyed his faith in many people.

What I never doubted either was that his love for me (as well as his mother and sister) was what kept him going for almost two years.

We both knew that the verdict that came down would be used by the same corrupt individuals to try to destroy my life and that of my children. Oddly enough, the lesson that Jon indirectly taught my children was that true family stands together, even through the bad times; and that love and faith in truth and justice is more important than money and power and desire for fame.

So I know that his love for me kept him going, kept him strong, kept him wearing his "mask" to appear as though he was okay.

But there are so many other ways that he expressed his love for me.

At the end of the day, I would come home to dishes washed, dinner ready or planned, and a relatively clean house. If you think this is "no big deal", keep in mind that Jon's depression would keep him in bed curled up in a ball on many days, and the energy he expended to get up and do those things would make him sleep for hours later.

Jon would be the one to say - "let's go...(fishing, out to dinner, to the movies)" because he knew that I wasn't ashamed of him and wasn't scared of what other people would think. To accomplish this, he had to muster up all his strength because every time he went in public he was frightened that people would point their fingers or believe the worst of him.

Depression is a dark and ugly and scary world, and one that I had problems dealing with...so I had to frame it in the abstract, make it hypothetical. I did this out of my love for Jon, because it was part of him that I had to deal with in order to stay by his side.

And it got very dark and scary at times - but Jon's love for me is what kept him on the straight and narrow path.

Depression was part of Jon when he returned into my life. We had known each other from seventh grade through graduation, but had lost touch along the way. In the intervening years, life had dealt him some nasty turns, and that's when the depression really grabbed hold of him.

His love for me was what made him listen when all he wanted to do was wreak havoc on those who had worked to destroy him.

His love for me was what kept him from utilizing all his resources to take down those corrupt individuals who decided that money, power, job security, political position, were far more important than five children, two adults, and their friends and family members.

Jon was brilliant, far too smart to have ever done what he was accused of doing, and able to accomplish pretty much anything he set his mind to do. This is the same man who somehow manufactured cyanide and was able to kill himself while in court custody - something that most other people wouldn't think was even possible.

I learned far more than I needed to know about the Silk Road, the upper echelon of Anonymous, zero day apps, honey pots, LD50, and more. And none of those was utilized, because Jon listened to me out of love, and realized that it wouldn't be the right thing.

So at the end of the day, love wins.

Jon didn't commit suicide - he was issued a death sentence. The verdict didn't come from the misguided jury, it came from the judge who chose to suppress all evidence of Jon's innocence. It came from the District Attorney and Assistant District Attorney that denied him justice, persecuted and prosecuted an innocent man, and harassed his family and friends. It came from the DSS attorney who repeatedly stated to OUR attorneys that he knew all the charges were "BS", but that he had been "ordered" to proceed by the county government to avoid a lawsuit.

I'm not sure how any of you sleep at night, but kiss your integrity goodbye. You lost that when you deliberately, and with malice aforethought, sent an innocent man to die.

Stand up, speak out, expose corruption!

CPS (Career Preservation Society)

We all hope to one day get a career, not just a job. The difference between the two is that a job pays the bills, a career is something you believe in and enjoy doing (while you get paid to do it).

One of the factors of being employed (whether a job or a career) is being evaluated on what you do and how well you do it.

Such is the situation with CPS...they are accountable to a variety of forms of oversight - the government agencies directly responsible for the supervision of their branch (in NYS it is the county, then the state, and ultimately the federal government), the immediate supervisor, and the director of their branch.

But ultimately, their job, or career, or paycheck - however they view it - relies on one thing and one thing only: having enough cases to justify their positions, and those of their co-workers.

So they "found" cases based on the "quality" of the case in order to provide sufficient numbers to continue their employment.

However, many of the standards used have nothing to do with abuse or neglect, but are based solely on some very inappropriate reasoning.

The list below includes a number of reasons that CPS is taking children nationwide and funneling them into the foster care system. The ultimate goal is to help meet adoption quotas and secure funding, as well as to justify their jobs based on numbers of cases.

• "Medical neglect" based on the disagreement of a temporary health care provider (ER doctor, first time specialist, etc) or the caseworker with the diagnosis of the regular provider or the parents' wish for a second opinion or different - but medically accepatable - treatment.
• Ability of the parent to pay child support in excess of the foster care expenses.
• Animosity between family members which can be utilized to generate additional false allegations of neglect or abuse.
• "Adoptability" of the children - fitting the high-demand criteria (racial and ethnic appeal, lack of disabilities, lack of negatively impacting backgrounds).
• "Prior history" of the parents, including any history of having been in foster care, prior reports to CPS, or any other item which CPS deems makes them "high-risk".
• Inability of parent(s) to have the financial resources to implement a good defense.

Additionally, caseworkers will lie and manufacture allegations in the paperwork to support their wrongful seizure of children.

CPS no longer is an acronym for Child Protective Services, it has evolved to represent Career Preservation Society, a group of individuals whose sole purpose is to collect paychecks based on performing jobs in a manner that continues to support them collecting a paycheck.

Find a voice! Tell your story! Speak out against CPS! It is time to shut down the self-serving corruption!

Gaslighting

Ken Shaw is a master at gaslighting - however the only people who believed him were those who were less intelligent than him, the DSS attorney and the AFCs.

One of the nastiest stunts he pulled was filing a false report with the local police department, as described below:

Let's start with the obvious - Jon Massey was not at the house and had not been at the house since the onset of this matter when he was served with the orders of protection. Not only was he NOT at the house, at the time in question he was at an appointment with his therapist, and then making the follow-up appointment with the receptionists (yes, plural).

In fact, what should stand out is that while Ken Shaw was calling the police, his wife Mary had already gotten on the computer, logged on to the website for the local police scanner, and had put on headphones to make sure she heard what happened.

I'll add another layer of context for you - Ken and Mary live in another country, approximately three hours away. In order for Mary to even know that there was a police scanner website for our locality, the two of them would have had to research it IN ADVANCE. Just as she was ready IN ADVANCE to listen to what happened as a result of the false police report. That sounds like pure premeditation.

It is odd that when the police actually showed up at the house, neither my daughter nor I were here - I had left to deal with some insurance issues with my son, and my daughter had left to pick up a friend from work.

More to the point, neither of us had EVER told Ken Shaw that Jon was sneaking into the house - what he had been told in August was that Jon was living with his mother over 20 miles away.

As to "Jon's car"? It was actually registered to his mother, and while living with her, then his sister, and finally a friend of ours, he had no need of the car as others were available to him. So his mother had allowed my daughter to use the car to transport herself to the local college and her job, as Jon was no longer available to do so.

In fact, at visitations on at least three occasions prior to the false report, IN FRONT OF Ken and Mary Shaw, my daughter had told her youngest sister about driving the car to and from school and work. Additionally, the caseworkers had seen the car parked IN THE DRIVEWAY OF OUR HOUSE on two home visits they conducted.

But what truly gives this away as completely premeditated was this email from the DSS Attorney to the caseworker - dated 20 DAYS before Ken Shaw's attempt at filing a false police report:

The person who approached the DSS Attorney was Ken Shaw's attorney, obviously setting the stage for the false reports.

Once Ken Shaw was unsuccessful at his initial attempt, the CPS caseworkers jumped right on the ball and directly contacted the head detective at the police department with the following email:

She sent a copy of Ken Shaw's email above, and received the following cc - the head detective contacted the second in command at the police department:

The result was that our house was raided at about 3 am Sunday morning - searched top to bottom by police officers who tracked mud all through the house. And once again, Jon Massey was not there. Why? Because unlike Ken Shaw (who has lied to police by his own admission under oath and by his actions above, has lied to a judge under oath, and who has a long history of being a scofflaw) Jon Massey believed in playing by the rules.

Rules which were violated not only by the DSS Attorney, but also by the ADAs and the judges involved in the Jon Massey case.

Ken Shaw lit a torch that helped lead to an innocent man's death. Playing with fire...

Sunglasses at Night

I pity CPS workers.

Let me say it again. I pity CPS workers.

They have an incredibly warped worldview - especially as it pertains to parents and children, and the myriad interactions which occur within families in all their configurations.

Through these dark glasses that CPS workers wear, society is a very bleak place in which all step-parents abuse their step-children. The minute they learn that one of the parents appearing on their radar is a step-parent, CPS goes into full-out attack mode. The majority of CPS workers were spoon fed the Disney fantasy that demonizes step-parents in larger than life animation, and they freely apply that model as though it were the fount of reality. Given the modern day statistics of the number of children living in homes with a step-parent, if this were actually the case, CPS would be the world's largest employer - far outstripping the police and teaching as a profession. The reality is far different - CPS is now an agency whose turnover rate is extremely high and it struggles with job preservation, advancing unfounded cases and false allegations in order to secure funding and justify their continued existence.

(Anecdotal side bar 1 - there is a major exception to this "step-parent" rule that involves family members of CPS employees. A friend of Ruby's was constantly at our house, and frequently complained about her stepmother belittling her and her brother - calling them "stupid", "useless", "never amount to anything", and other derogatory phrases. She described how her stepmother threw her brother out of the house when he turned 16. Imagine our amazement when we discovered that this stepmonster was the sister of a CPS investigator actively involved with the Jon Massey case.)

Constantly inundated with examples of the worst of humanity, many CPS workers can't - or won't - see that this is not the norm, and that the majority of society does not treat others with callous disregard. Instead, when they encounter a person who has absolutely no criminal record, CPS "investigators" will relentlessly pursue the blameless in the misguided belief that lack of a record indicates that an individual is just devious and adept at avoiding being caught. The sheer stupidity of this belief is staggering - if all people without a criminal past were secretly guilty of something, we would be living in a state of sheer anarchy with the crime rate through the roof.

In the dark land of the Career Preservation Society, all inappropriate behavior by children can be directly attributed to neglect or abuse by parents and family members. Acting out is proof positive of allegations - the cart drives the horse. There is no room in the murky tunnels of their minds to acknowledge that all humans are different and respond in a broad variety of ways to the same situations, or respond to peer and societal pressure differently.

There is a name for this - CSAAS (Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome) - and it has been deemed "junk science" by the psychological community and was retracted by Roland Summit, the man who "invented" it in the first place. Under the original theory, AFTER a diagnosis that sexual abuse has actually occurred, a number of behaviors could emerge and be attributed to the abuse. However CPS has repeatedly claimed that the emergence of any of those listed behaviors can be used to prove that sexual abuse occurred. Again, the cart before the horse.

(Anecdotal side bar 2 - One of the CPS caseworkers approached me in court to ask for assistance regarding her teenage daughter. Apparently her daughter was sneaking around, changing clothes at school to more revealing and/or inappropriate outfits, and using makeup despite her mother's prohibition. Ironic isn't it? The very acting out behaviors that CPS - and this caseworker - claimed were "proof positive" of the abuse allegations against Jon Massey were being exhibited by this girl. But rather than being attributed to abuse, because it involves a CPS worker, the actions were considered simply the 'normal' behaviors of a teenage girl. Even worse, the CPS worker turned to one of their alleged perpetrators for assistance.

Anecdotal side bar 3 - A CPS investigator himself - as well as his younger brother - both exhibited some of the same "everything but the kitchen sink" behaviors described in CSAAS - as well as exhibited by Ruby - sneaking out of the house, underage drinking, and yet the behaviors weren't considered "out of the ordinary" or proof of any form of abuse.)

As a result of this obsession with believing the worst possible scenario, CPS workers are unwilling or unable to give credibility to any evidence presented to them, unless it has been discovered by themselves. This could be attributed to their awareness of the frequency that they themselves present false information and lie, and therefore any documentation of wrongdoing received from outside sources would be considered founded in untruths also...they only "trust" their own lies. As a result of this twisted reality, CPS workers have often zealously advocated that children be placed with sociopaths or convicted abusers rather than with the parents who have protected them and kept them safe. This is even more true when those parents have engaged in a fight with CPS, against all odds, to present the truth.

(Anecdotal side bar 4 - Although we were able to document the extent to which my youngest daughter's father would go to get his own way, CPS deliberately ignored disturbing reports he made to them as well as their own agency's records, testimony by a psychologist hired by the court, and documentation of his lying in court, and instead insisted that he was an upstanding and appropriate parent.

Anecdotal side bar 5 - An even more distressing case is that of Kendall Lebow, whose mother has been fighting to regain custody of her daughter, who was place with a convicted sexual offender. When the mother began seeing signs of sexual abuse on visitations, CPS insisted that her visitation be cut off, rather than investigating - and potentially finding their own liability for a child being abused. You can view her story at savekendall.com)

Immersed in a job where everything is focused on the darkest human behaviors, the whole world becomes a moonless night. But CPS workers deliberately go one step further and put on their sunglasses, so that they wander through life thinking the worst of everyone and seeing evil in every situation - a belief system entirely of their own making.

I pity CPS workers.

Lies CPS Will Tell You

In no particular order, here are some of the lies, half-truths, and myths of "working with CPS":

1. If you sign the service plan, CPS won't take your kids away. Status? MYTH/LIE - CPS will use your signature as acknowledgement of your guilt, and then even as you work through the service plan (which utilizes people who are paid directly by CPS and know where their pay is coming from), "issues" will keep cropping up that prove you are an unfit parent. Best case scenario? They will string you along for years before finally leaving your family traumatized but "intact" or "reunited".
2. If you don't let us in the house, we will take your kids away. Status? LIE - They cannot enter your house without a warrant, and a warrant takes probable cause. However if you live in a small community CPS works hand in glove with the local authorities and probably can get a warrant based on their lies. If you don't let them in, they will use it against you in court. If you do let them in, they will manufacture lies about your home/living environment and what they allegedly found. It's a no win.
3. If you sign over your kids to us, we won't seize custody. Status: LIE - If they don't prove their case, you can sue them for emotional distress. Once they hit this point, they are going to move heaven and earth to prove you an unfit and/or abusive parent. Part of this means that they need to have custody of your children to use parental alienation techniques.
4. Nobody should be talking to your children about the case. Status: LIE/MYTH/HALF-TRUTH - The only person who isn't allowed to talk to your children about the case is you. The caseworker and the foster parents will talk to your kids endlessly about the case, use parental alienation techniques, and taint your children's memories. Any family members who are cooperating with CPS are also allowed to continue to talk to the kids about the case in a way that is detrimental to you.
5. If you do everything we tell you, you will get your children back. Status: HALF-TRUTH - If you do everything in the service plan, AND have an attorney watching out for your interests, AND do everything that they add on to your service plan, AND you end up with a reasonably good set of foster parents or kinship care that doesn't use parental alienation, AND your children aren't easily adoptable, THEN you will get your children back. I've probably forgotten some of the hoops they make you jump through, but you get the idea.
6. You are the child's parent and still have input and feedback. Status: HALF-TRUTH/LIE - You are only allowed to make decisions or to get reports if you cooperate. Otherwise, the foster parents and the case worker get to make all decisions for your child regarding religion, education, medical care, etc. We even have an email from the DSS attorney to the case worker stating that "unless they let you in the house, don't give them any reports". So they ignored my input regarding my daughter's medical conditions, educational needs, etc. for a year and a half.

This list is a "to be continued" - feel free to leave a comment that adds a new category or expands on one already listed. I will do revisions as we go.

If you were to ask me our particular favorite? The CPS investigator called me on the phone and told me that if I voluntarily signed my children over to him and if I testified against Jon, they wouldn't file charges against me. Last time I checked, that was known as "suborning perjury" and a criminal offense.

Please be sure to visit the article about Jon's trial! CLICK HERE