Free Bless the Child by Cathy Cash Spellman Page A

“She had a baby three years ago, and left her in my care while she went back to the streets. I didn’t hear from her until a month ago when she arrived back, married, with a house in Greenwich—”
     
    “If she has a house in Greenwich,” the woman interrupted, with the first hint of animation, “you’re in the wrong place. We have no jurisdiction over Connecticut.”
     
    “But I live here in the city,” Maggie countered. “The baby—Cody’s her name—lived her whole life in New York City. She’s only been in Connecticut for a month.”
     
    “Be that as it may, Mrs. O’Connor, if the parents live in Connecticut, the case is out of our jurisdiction.”
     
    “Please . . . if you’ll just let me tell you my story . . .” she persisted. “I’m terrified that my granddaughter may be in some kind of danger. I think her mother may be using drugs again . . .”
     
    “Can you prove that allegation? Has she been tested recently?”
     
    “No. I mean, I don’t really know. She’s twenty-one years old, so I can’t force her to be tested against her will.”
     
    The woman wagged her head disapprovingly. “Even if she is on drugs, Mrs. O’Connor, the state won’t consider heroin addiction alone a reason to interfere in you daughters child rearing.” She looked annoyed that Maggie was wasting her time. “Are there physical signs of abuse? Scars, burns, unexplained bruises?”
     
    Maggie shook her head. “It’s not that simple, I’m afraid. The damage seems to be mostly psychological. Cody’s frightened . . . withdrawn. She was never, ever like that before. She isn’t allowed to play with other children, she’s only permitted to play with her nanny, who’s like a character out of Dark Shadows. She’s being threatened and made to drink some kind of concoction—”
     
    “Look, Mrs. O’Connor,” the woman broke in impatiently, “let me save us both some time. A lot of grandmothers are coming in here lately, with similar tales. A drug addict kid drops off a baby and comes back to pick it up years later, after the grandmother has become attached. The law is very clear on this issue. You’ve got no rights whatsoever. The child belongs to your daughter, and the courts are very determined to keep babies with birth mothers, unless there’s documented evidence of physical abuse. So, I’m afraid there really isn’t anything you can do but stay out of the picture. If you insist on pursuing this, my advice would be to let your daughter keep the child for while and abuse her, and then bring it to the attention of the authorities. Then you’ll have a case.”
     
    Maggie sat bolt upright in the chair, genuinely shocked. “Let my daughter abuse her . . . then I’ll have a case? I suppose if I let my daughter kill her, I’ll have a better case!”
     
    The woman behind the desk sat back a moment and glared at Maggie. When she spoke her voice was under tight control. “Look, Mrs. O’Connor, I’m sure you’re under a lot of pressure, so I’ll try not to take offense at that last remark. But here’s the reality I deal with every day. There are thirty thousand cases in my files, of children who do show physical signs of abuse . . . kids who’ve been burned or tortured or chained in a bathtub. Kids who are in my geographic jurisdiction. I do not have the resources, or the investigators, or the available court time, to deal with one third of those children, let alone your granddaughter. By the time the system gets around to most of them it will be too late to help.” She took a deep breath and sighed audibly; she had frustrations, too.
     
    “ You have no case. Even if your suspicions are correct, you have no case.”
     
    Maggie stood outside the municipal building staring, unseeing, at the pigeons for a while, before she decided to go to the police, first thing in the morning.
     

    The living room couch where Maggie sat was piled high with papers. She’d been trying hard to concentrate all