How Florida Family Courts Destroy Florida Families

I was researching liens and levies at about 6PM Sunday afternoon when the phone rang.   An hour later I was sitting in the home of a fit, muscular man of 50 in his 4 bedroom home in Largo (Pinellas County) Florida.  Greg Pound has a wife, Melissa, and 5 precious children under the age of seven.

I knew before arriving that I wouldn’t hear the laughter of children playing or smell dinner on the stove.  Greg had told me that Florida’s Department of Children and Family (DCF) had stolen all of his children 2 years ago.  Subsequently, his wife had a baby, but had escaped so the DCF could not take that one too.  Greg spent a month in jail for contempt because he could not tell the court where his wife had gone with their 3-month-old baby.  And Greg had invited me over to pick up a copy of a DVD he produced from interviews of people in front of the Pinellas County Criminal Courthouse building on 49^th Street in Clearwater Florida.  After hearing his introduction I had to pay him a visit and see that DVD for myself.

So, Greg and I sat facing one another in the waning twilight of a humid Florida evening.  And the saga unfolded.

A couple of years ago, Greg’s sister Diane had come to visit and brought her white German Shepherd-like dog.  They kept the dog outside, but Diane brought the dog inside to escape the rain.  Greg had taken the 3 older children with him to run some errands.  Melissa had lain their two-week baby on their large bed, left the room, and closed the door behind her.  Greg’s sister went into the bedroom a few minutes later to check on the baby, then left the bedroom, leaving the door ajar.  A few minutes later Melissa went into the living room and found the baby lying on the rug, with the dog lying in front of the baby.  The baby was not crying.

Apparently, the dog had entered the bedroom, picked up the baby off the bed in its mouth, and carried it into the living room by its head, and stood watch beside it on the floor.  It seemed to be a protective act, but the teeth had left puncture wounds in the newborn baby’s skin.

Melissa called 911 to get an ambulance over to make sure the baby was okay.  She took the baby to the hospital.  The hospital people called the Department of Children and Family.  The DCF’s investigator Megan Gallagher arrived, asked Greg and Melissa what had happened, wrote down the events, and informed them that they would not be able to take their baby home.

During the days that followed, DCF forcibly removed all the children and put them in foster homes.  The children have been taken to doctors 70 times since then and suffer from neglect, ring worms, lice, and numerous other indications of abuse.   Since the dogbite incident, Greg and Melissa followed the Court’s “Case Plan” mandated by Judge Marion Fleming in order to get their children back.  But, the court and DCF refuse.  The plan required the Pounds to attend domestic violence classes, and to agree to instruct their children about homosexuality and masturbation, among other remedial steps to correct the family problems.  According to Greg, the DCF and the judge both lied and misrepresented facts about them, in spite of the requirement of Chapter 39 of Florida statutes to find ways to keep the family together.  Greg says Gallagher wrote an affidavit about them in which everything except their names and address was a lie.  And, he says the state has done anything and everything it can to destroy the family and make him and Melissa give up hope and abandon the children.

The Pounds named their new baby, now 5 months old, Moses, after the biblical story in which Moses’ mother hid him in the river reeds to prevent the Pharaoh’s agents from taking the baby away.  DCF, upon learning that Melissa had given birth to Moses, came after her in order to take the baby away and put it in a foster home.  Instead of allowing that to happen, she absconded with her child.  DCF officials have threatened Greg if he does not reveal her whereabouts, but he’s not talking.

And that is why I found Greg all alone and nearly hopelessly depressed and demoralized in his large, empty house, with nothing but the ghosts of his imagination to remind him of the precious wife and children who used to live there in happiness and harmony.

You see, Greg and Melissa are not derelicts, drug addicts, alcoholics, or crooks.  They are a devout Christian couple whom Bruce Bent, pastor of Tampa’s Grace Peace and Fellowship church married in 1999.  Bruce has been a tree-trimmer for 30 years and runs his own company.

You can read the newspaper articles here:

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/04/24/Tampabay/Missing_mom_may_have_.shtml

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/04/18/Tampabay/With_woman_missing__a.shtml

You are probably doubting all this right about now.  You are thinking “Why on earth would a good judge conspire with the DCF to destroy a good Christian family like the Pounds?”

Greg has the answer, in one word:

MONEY

That’s right.  DCF agents have their minds on the money and the money on their minds.  Money motivates them to destroy families.

Greg says he discovered that DCF receives millions of dollars in extra money for taking children from families and placing them in foster homes.  He indicated that an investigator who successfully does that earns 10 times what a sheriff’s deputy earns for making an arrest.

Certainly, the DCF also takes children away from truly abusive parents.  But how can it be that they actually take children from good loving homes and put them into foster homes that abuse and neglect the children?

Greg set out to discover the truth of that question.  He stood with his video camera in front of the 49^th street Criminal Courthouse in Clearwater, and taped his interview with many people in the area.  He carried a sign to attract interested parties with a story to tell.  And there he discovered that his case is not unique, but that the DCF systematically uses any possible excuse to destroy families (for the money) – not bad families, but good, loving families.

Greg created a DVD of the interviews, and I shall make copies in the next few days for those who will spread the word.

The DVD title: 

 

Greg Pound Interviews:  How Florida’s Government Destroys Families

With introduction by Pastor Bruce Bent.

I know you can imagine how Greg and his family have suffered over the past 2 years from government persecution over an accident in the home.  The DVD goes on to reveal how simple household accidents, or vicious lies from antagonists, or just going through a divorce or job change that brings financial hardship, or any trivial reason can cause the DCF to raid a family home and forcibly extract the children from that home, and subject the parents to years of litigation, imprisonment, social ridicule, outrageously false and character-destroying allegations, and financial disaster.  Ordinary families simply cannot stand up against the force of corrupt government officials who receive bonus money for their destructive and criminal acts.

Greg and Melissa and their children, and many other families like theirs, need your help, financially, emotionally, and legally.  When parents like Greg and Melissa have to go to family court to watch a brutal judge tear their family apart with the force of misapplied law, they need YOU there in the visitor’s gallery taking notes and showing you support them.  They need YOU to write affidavits delineating the violations of judges and prosecutors of their constitutional rights.

And they need your financial support, and that of your neighbors, friends, and churches.

Right now, Greg and Melissa have fought the DCF harder than any other family in the Tampa Bay area.  They deserve your support for that alone.  But Greg’s DVD of his interviews might be the fuse for the powder keg that will rock the lethargic folks of our communities into action to correct this egregious wave of racketeering in our corrupt justice system.

To send money or encouragement (hopefully both) to Greg and Melissa:

 

Greg Pound
9166 Sunrise Drive
Largo, FL 33773

greg@rescuemykids.com 

And please POUND ON YOUR STATE LEGISLATORS, ATTORNEY GENERAL, and GOVERNOR about this travesty of justice.  Demand they overhaul Chapter 39 and stop rewarding DCF and Sheriff Deputies for destroying families and arresting people.

 

Bob Hurt