When Erin and my nephew moved in with us, mark had to drive to our house to pick up Nathan. Well his dad would shout stuff out the window at us etc... So we talked with our lawyer and got him banned from coming with Mark. So, one week Mark comes and dropes something out of the car, it breaks. It was a walkee talkee. We looked down the street and could see his dad there waving his walkie talkie all around. I remember the week of promI went grocery shopping and I had my camera in my car and was ready to go. Well, as I'm driving down my street, I see Mark's dad on the corner of an intersection between my street and a side street. I stop, and take a picture, so my sister will be able to show the lawyer that he still is coming.. Well, as soon as I tried to do so Mark's dad ducks down and sprints behind my car. Then he jumps up and says, "hey how ya doin big guy!!!!" then ducks down again a. I took a picture when he jumped up so you could see him behind the car. Then he worked his way around to the passenger window, which was down. He then proceeded to repeatedly jump up and down (trying to avoid me taking a picture) shouting "how ya doin big guy!!" repeatedly. It was really scary, so I called the cops and filed a harrasment report. Unfortunatly, this was report was dismissed. When I talked with the officer after it happened, I was really upset and wasn't able to remember every detail. Well in the police report I recalled that his dad had his head in the car window, when I didn't tell the officer that. Anyways, Mark's dad has some issues. He yells things at my sister every time he sees her. What they do now is to stay off the property, yet his dad always comes with. Sometimes Mark's dad has had a video camera others he has had a tape recorder. Mark is known to flick off my sister or whoever is giving him Nathan, while his dad shouts stuff from the car. In addition, Mark will have a huge forced smile on his face and glare at you for the entire time your dropping off or picking up Nathan. Mark and his dad try to get us worked up to go out and start something so he will have it on tape. However, we stay in the house and suck it up. The games and stuff needs to stop. Mark's dad shouldn't be iinvolved like he is. It should be between my sister and her ex husband. However, it does and he wants control of the situation. He types up the reports of what my nephew eats and everything that happens that weekend. The reason we know this is because Mark doesn't know how to read or write. Therefore, its logical to assume it's not him writing them. Furthermore, in those reports they write in detail any scrapes or bruises he has when he arrives. For instance, this past weekend they took off my nephew's colorful cartoon bandaid and measured the cut he had on his arm. The report/sheet stated that the cut was so many in/cm long and so many in/cm wide. Then they replaced the bandaid with a regular bandaid. When my mom brought it up with my nepehw asking why the bandaids were changed Nathan replied with "germs". Most people expect a child to have a few bumps, cuts and bruises because kids fall while they are playing. That is just part of being a kid. When they occur in unusual spots, that's when you start to wonder. Which, my family has done sometimes after my nephew returns from visitation.
We always send Nathan with his favorite stuffed animal, an elephant that he has named "Eli". Well, my family and I found out that Eli goes in the trunk for the weekend. So, before Nathan goes to visitation he is inseperable from Eli. He holds him so close and won't let him go. Another thing about visitation is they don't allow him to talk to my sister. My sister is supposed to be able to call and talk to Nathan but they always say he is sleeping, is eating etc.. or they just refuse to answer the phone and let the answering machine pick it up. A different issue occuring is that Mark and his family seem to be putting ideas into my nephew's head. For example, after he farts when you ask him, "What was that?", he responds with "a Goto"-which is likely a mispronunciation of my family's last name. Wonder who taught him that... Another issue is spite. When my nephew was younger my sister found out that he shouldn't have desitin applied to any part of his body. So my sister told mark this when he came to get my nepehw for visitation. Well, my nephew came back with desitin all over him, including over his genitals. An additional thing that happened once when he was younger, was he came back from visitation with dog hair all over him, including in his diaper. I have no clue how dog hair can end up in a diaper. All I know is that It was just plain disgusting.
Mark is on the state's list of child abusers for 20 years because DCFS holds him responsible for causing the severe damage to my nephew. However, the state is allowing him unsupervised visitation. In fact, the court just recently gave him 9 days for summertime instead of the already horrifying 7 days. What is going on with my nephew is not right at all. Having enough money to pay a good lawyer should not be able to let a child abuser see the child that they were "indicated" for abusing. Please let my nephew's story be heard. It has fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes for too long!
