Please help reunite Peri with her biological mother (Carla Moquin) and biological
sisters, Alpha and Echo. Peri's adoption at birth was procured through the
extensive fraud of her now-adoptive parents, Susan Englert and Demyn Plantenberg,
and I am working to regain custody of her. I have the support and assistance
of several professionals in this effort, and I plan to keep Peri in contact
with her adoptive parents if I am able to regain custody, for Peri's well-being. |
We have a trial date--March 22, 2010. I now have a fantastic attorney
(Paul Thorndal) to handle the trial. However, I need to come up with at least $30,000 as
soon as possible in order to hire him (this is actually less than most attorneys
would have cost because he's great about letting me help where I can to save
money). I also need to raise about $10,000 to hire Erich Speckin, the expert who tested the handwritten note explained in this section, to testify
at the trial. My financial situation is still very precarious due to the
tens of thousands of dollars I spent fighting the appeal filed by Susan and Demyn (which was based on their fabricated claims), so I am hoping
that I will be able to raise enough money to take this the rest of the way for Peri. The evidence in the case is in
great shape; I am very likely to be able to prove fraud at trial. California
law is clear that, if my consent to the adoption (the relinquishment of my
parental rights) was procured by fraud, it is invalid--meaning that my parental
rights were never legally terminated and the adoption never legally happened. |
I recently discovered more disturbing evidence in the case. I
had filed a huge (45+ page) declaration early on in the case in the course of opposing
the inappropriate anti-SLAPP motion (claiming it was their "free speech"
right to defraud our family) filed by the adoptive parents' attorney that delayed
this case by nearly two years. In that declaration, I laid out in great detail
the sequence of critical events and most of the documentation I had of the
fraud that I believe was committed by Susan and Demyn. |
When I was writing the declaration, I forgot about a phone call from
Susan and Demyn that had taken place around late July 2005, soon after Echo (Alpha
and Peri's younger sister) was born. I had been napping while Echo slept,
and the phone call woke me up. Susan and Demyn (who had received an email from
me announcing Echo's birth) were very cold and harsh during the conversation--the
call appeared intended to make clear that they were not intending to change
the "no contact" rule between the six-hour annual visits they were permitting.
The other thing they emphasized was that during the upcoming visit later that year,
they did not want us to use the word "sister" around Peri and they wanted
to be sure we made this clear to Alpha so that she didn't tell Peri they were sisters
(as you can imagine, that was not a happy conversation, trying to tell a
four-year-old that she wasn't allowed to call her sister her sister). I called
Pam Steele (she is the adoption counselor who coordinated Peri's adoption and
who tried to help the families resolve the contact issues prior to my realizing
the fraud that had been committed by Susan and Demyn) shortly after the phone
call; I was very upset about it, and I found the timing of the call incredibly
callous so soon after we had just had a baby. |
I now have three experts who will be helping me to prepare a transition plan
and structure for ongoing contact between Peri and Susan and Demyn if I regain
custody. I believe that, even given Peri's age, I will be able to make
a very strong argument that, if I prove fraud, it would be extremely unhealthy
for Peri to stay with the people who illegally took her from her biological family
(and, especially, kept her from her biological sisters). In addition,
Susan and Demyn's statements and behavior over the years to Peri, to our family,
and directly to me also greatly concern me. At a mediation in this case
several months ago, Susan completely lost control and was swearing at me, yelling
at me, and slamming her hands on the table--she said that her lawyer told
her to "show emotion" to "get through to me" (they're firmly convinced that they
did absolutely nothing wrong in all of this, which also concerns me as to their
awareness of what constitutes decent treatment of other people). |
