The Most Frequently Asked Question:
Video: What Happened?
Last modified on 2009-07-25 08:42:56 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
This Video May Take Require A Few Minuted To Load
Note: If the video load icon does not appear your browser may not support iFrames… sorry!
Video: Our Driveway
Last modified on 2009-07-27 04:28:06 GMT. 1 comment. Top.
Why Did County Officials Visit Our Property?
Last modified on 2009-08-12 16:42:06 GMT. 1 comment. Top.
The Short Answer:
The Social Service Case Workers were responding to an alleged child abuse complaint filed by our estranged eldest daughter who had moved out of our home about 6 months earlier and who had moved out of the State of Colorado approximately one month earlier. She filed the complaint in an attempt to force my wife and I to comply with her desire to put our three remaining children in touch with adults we knew and had good reason to believe were dangerous. (And yes, I know how strange and ridiculous this sounds).
This was not the first time she had used this tactic of attempting to leverage county officials against us.
In order to understand how she had worked herself into this behavior pattern I need to share a little more family history or this simply will not make sense to anyone.
The History:
I do not think it would be appropriate to go into too many details of the accidents or medical conditions that stressed our family from the middle of 2005 onward. What I will tell you is that two members of our immediate family nearly died and suffered long term disabilities.
- One event was an unfortunate near fatal accident that did not occur on our property and I was not present when calamity struck. (Occurred in the Summer of 2005)
- The other event was medical, again near fatal, with a 21 day hospital stay that resulted in paralysis of one leg and now we deal with the continuing medical condition and paralysis every day. (Occurred in late Fall of 2005)
Both events placed severe strain on every member of our family and our finances and if we did not have the love and support of our local community and my coworkers I believe our family would have disintegrated. Instead, we have grown stronger and closer.
However, while I was focused on supporting the injured members of our family our eldest daughter was obviously suffering in silence and eventually the strain on her was too much. In late 2006, approximately November, she attacked me in the house, kicking, hitting, screaming and I did not protect myself, I simply walked out of the house and went for a car ride to think about the correct course of action. When I returned from my drive, 45 to 60 minutes later, a Sheriff’s Deputy was at our home:
My eldest daughter had called the Police and alleged them I attacked her. While I was not uncooperative with the Deputy, I certainly was not in any mood for this new game. I told the Deputy my daughter was not telling the truth and that I was attacked. The Deputy filed a report, called Social Services and we began the process of Social Services coming out to interview our children.
A couple of weeks later my wife caught our oldest daughter smoking cigarettes in the barn while sitting on a loose pile of hay (Dangerous in more than one respect). She lectured our daughter and then gave her some floor scrubbing chores to help the message sink in. Our eldest daughter proceeded to call the Sheriff again. Unfortunately for her, the Deputy who arrived was a parent and immediately saw straight through her new allegations. This Deputy, upon learning about her earlier allegations against me took the time to interview my son. My son laid the facts out honestly; My Dad did NOT attack my sister, My sister attacked my Dad. This Deputy then filed a new police report with truth from my son and soon afterward Social Services backed off and closed their investigation into our oldest daughters original complaints.
In December of 2007 our oldest daughter turned 18. In February of 2008 she went to school one morning and never came home. We did some investigating (We were worried but she had been threatening to leave for over a year at this point) and we discovered that she had moved in with the family of one of her school friends. Her school grades plunged, her school attendance was pathetic but at this point there was very little we could do for her. At some point she left Colorado and moved to either Washington State or Oregon.
In late June, early July (2008) my wife discovered that our oldest daughter had been putting our three remaining minor in children in contact with adults that we knew and believed to be dangerous (One of these adults had threatened to kill my oldest daughter while she was still an infant). We asked her to stop. She refused and consequently we cut off all communication between our three minor children and our oldest Daughter and the Adults she had put them in contact with. That’s when the threats to my wife and I started and the threats were along the lines of: You will never see your kids again.
We knew that one of the adults who was assisting our now estranged oldest daughter was a long distance truck driver and we were very concerned about kidnapping. This adult had called my cell phone and started the conversation by asking if we could work through the challenges and while I initially agreed I quickly found myself being cursed at and then being told that “people like me had no right to be alive”. Obviously, I hung up the phone and did not take any further calls from this person.
On the day of July 10th, 2008 I received an Email message containing more threats from our oldest daughter.
Consequently, while I was preparing the BBQ for the evening meal and I saw two vehicles I did not recognized enter our property and proceed at a rapid pace down our long driveway, I was not thinking “Who are you?”, “Why are you here?” I simply perceived a threat and asked myself “What should I do?”. A heart beat later I was headed for my shotgun which was close by. My wife was several hundred feet away from me on the other side of our house in the garden and she perceived a threat and was running to join me. My son and second oldest daughter were in the house and independently they perceived a threat, and only the lord knows how since when they are watching T.V. or playing video games I think a tornado could hit our house and they wold not notice, but they came running out. My wife tells me it was because the vehicles were racing their engines as they approached that alarmed everyone. I can’t say what, exactly, caused everyone to perceive a threat but my second oldest daughter was so alarmed that she instructed our youngest daughter to stay in the house which again was atypical for our family.
To be clear, my wife and I had NOT shared the fact that we were receiving threats or that we were very concerned with our minor children. Obviously, they did know something was up with their older sibling when we cut off all communications between them.
To emphasize, the situation of having vehicles racing down our 1/4 mile long driveway was so unique that everyone in our family realized a threat was approaching.
It was at this point that I placed myself in the center of our driveway, deep within our property, with my gun raised high above my head so that the approaching vehicles could clearly see that I was armed. I am not a small person, I am 6′ 2″ tall and with my reach my gun was 8 feet above the ground and parallel to the ground. The cars continued on their approach.
My eyesight is not too good (I am blind as a bat without my glasses) and at that point I had put off having my eyes checked or getting new glasses or lenses for over three years due to our on-going medical expenses and weak financial condition. Even with my glasses my vision was not too good. Good enough to see objects but not good enough to make out details. It was not until the vehicles were about 100 yards away making the turn from North to East on our driveway that I realized the second vehicle was an Adams County Sheriff’s vehicle. I still had no idea who was in the first vehicle.
When I realized the second vehicle was an Adams County Sheriff I lowered my gun so that I was now holding it with two hand so that the barrel was in my left hand and the stock of the gun was in my right hand. I had it pointed up and toward the left, away from the approaching vehicles and into an empty field. The cars continued to approach.
The first vehicle stopped about 5 feet in front of me, I noticed that there were two ladies in the vehicle and that the vehicle was unmarked. The Sheriff’s vehicle stopped 15 to 20 feet behind the first and from that point forward I had my attention on the Sheriff’s Deputy. The first question I asked was: Do You have a warrant? He said “No” and I told him he was trespassing.
At this point you are up to speed if you have read the overview of my current situation. It is important to realize that after I was arrested and jailed on July 11th, 2008 that my children were interviewed by the Adams County Sheriff’s Detectives, our property and house were searched (ransacked) and that NO evidence was found to collaborate the allegations made by our oldest daughter to Adams County Social Services.
At the end of the summer of 2008 I received notification from the Adams County Social Services Department that investigation into the complaint filed by our oldest daughter had been closed. Our oldest daughter has filed charges against me twice and twice the complaint was found to be without substance.
I know that I am painting a very negative picture of our oldest daughters behavior. However, I am simply relaying the facts. There was a time before the injuries to our family members when she was the kindest, most honest, gentle, sweet, good hearted person. I really do believe that the injuries to our family members had a devastating impact on her and something broke inside. She started hanging out with the wrong kids at school, she started making contacts with people most of would classify as “bad influences.” We had tried to get her help, we had her in for counseling, we asked friends and neighbors to speak with her. My greatest regret is that we lost her soul through this difficult period in our lives and I am only able to hope and pray that she turns back from this dark path and finds the light of love once again.
However, it is not looking too good. My wife located her MySpace site and she is full of hate and has some very nasty things to say about both my wife and I. Her distortions have grown over time and her deepest desire appears to be to see the death of my wife. My wife is so distressed that she has asked me NOT to assist our oldest daughter if she attempts to contact her. While we did change all of our home phone numbers I did not change my cell phone number of my private business line, I wanted to leave the communications channel open in case she realized that her family does still love her very much.
In fact, just In June of 2009, our oldest daughter did contact me on my private business line and made more threats. She then had an adult (30+ years old) friend call me and make additional threats to call in complaints with Social Services and/or the Sheriff’s office. The threats also included coming directly onto our private property. I immediately informed this adult that our property is private and that neither her or our oldest Daughter were welcome here.
After reading through this I hope it is obvious to you what is taking place: We have a disturbed young women who is in deep emotional pain who is attempting to leverage the powers of Adams County to seek her vengeance upon her parents.
My wife and I do NOT abuse our children. We are caring and loving parents who have dedicated our lives to our children and to each other. We have scarified our comforts and our pleasures for the benefit of our family and did so without any resentment as we both determined long ago that raising a family was our greatest joy.
While I am frustrated (very frustrated) with how the Adams County Social Services and Sheriff’s Department have decided to handle this situation I will tell you that they are as much pawns in this vindictive scheme as my wife and I are. When our eldest daughter called in her complaint to Adams County Social Services last July 10th, 2008 she had not been in our house in months and had made the complaint from out of State.
Both Social Service Workers had access to the prior reports and should have been suspicious of the complaint from the moment it was called in. Instead of determining to make a “surprise visit” they could simply have called and told us they were coming or scheduled an appointment to do their “child welfare” check. One of the Social Services workers has admitted that their intention was to surprise us and she also admitted that they KNEW I had guns before ever entering our property in her statements to the Sheriff’s Department Detectives. The Same Social Service Worker also admitted that this information was NOT relayed to the Sheriff’s Deputy in her statements. The Social Service workers also had the opportunity to halt their vehicle as soon as they saw that I was carrying a gun and yet they made the decision to move forward.
The person I have the most empathy for in this confrontation is actually the Sheriff’s Deputy. The Deputy was called by the Social Services Case Workers as no complaint was filed by our oldest daughter with the Sheriff’s department. The Deputy had no opportunity to review prior reports and was not given the entire story by the Social Service Workers when they met before coming onto our property. The Deputy was being used by the Social Service case workers as an “enforcer” and had been taken out of his natural role to “preserve the peace”. Simply due to the fact the Social Service Workers car was the lead vehicle, he had no opportunity to halt progress of the advancement onto our property once he saw the gun, the only option he had was to follow the Social Service Case Workers into a possible armed conflict.
The honest truth is that I do have respect for the Adams County Sheriff’s Deputies. They had clearly saved the life of my wife at least once before, and probably twice and that is not something you forget.
Clearly, my view is that my arrest and the charges I now face are clearly unconstitutional if the Colorado Constitution has any remaining power in our State. And while I am not out for retribution I do believe that some “tune up” training is in order to assure that a situation like this never occurs again. We the People have given Social Service Workers and our Sheriff’s department tremendous power and unless we hold some checks and balances against that power our society will surely devolve into a despotic Police State.
The only questions remaining is will the Colorado Constitution survive this test and who will stand with me to protect the equal application of the rule of law?
Peace,
Dave Brady
Recent Comments