ShaMay’s Report on Andre Chorney and the Household

.......Andre Tyson Chorney was born on September 23^rd, 2010 around 10:30p.m. through emergency caesarean at Surrey Memorial Hospital. He was a small baby, weighing in at 6 pounds 7 ounces. When we arrived at the hospital – my-self, my little sister (Teasha), and my mom (Judy), got our first glimpse of Andre. He was the most beautiful baby in the world and we automatically knew he was going to be perfect in every way, and we were right. Ciera was exhausted from birthing, so I stayed with her in the hospital for 2 days to help with the baby. During the 2 days, I never left Ciera’s and the baby’s side. I would hold Andre, feed him with the bottle, calm him down when he cried, help Ciera breast feed him, and just provide that moral support as she was a new mother and she needed an extra pair of hands. After the 2 days, Ceira was in better shape from her birthing and was more mobile and able to move around, so I left the hospital and went home. Ceira remained in the hospital for 1 week to sleep in Andre’s recovery room as he was not yet allowed to be discharged from the hospital because they were weaning him off Methadone, regulating his temperature and breathing, and monitoring how he responds to the environment. Ciera came home on September 30^th, 2010 and Andre came home 1 week after Ciera on October 7^th, 2010. He remained in the hospital for 2 weeks.

.......After Ciera and Andre both came home, Ciera’s social workers and a support worker from the Family Preservation programat at the time wanted Austin and Ciera to live together with the baby. Before that, the social worker wanted Austin and Ciera to live on their own with the baby, but my mom urged them not to allow that as Ciera is incapable of caring for herself let alone with a baby and especially with the presence of Austin. As well, Ciera has an abusive relationship with Austin in which she is very easily manipulated and derailed back into her old ways because of him. The only times Ciera has ever done well is when she is with her family, living at home with us, and when Austin is not around. The support worker recognized this, but she still wanted them to live together despite the fact that Austin has an abusive relationship with Ciera where he pimped her, stole from her, beaten and choked her while she was not and was pregnant, encouraged her to do drugs, put her in environments where she became vulnerable, and had no intentions of treating Ciera as his “girlfriend”, or a human being for that matter. Both support worker & social workers told my mom “it was in the past” and that “they were in love”, and therefore they should live together when she knew Austin would continue with his actions even though he now had a child. My mom tried to plead and advise all professional parties involved that Austin live somewhere else and not in our home with Ciera, but they resisted and forcibly encouraged Austin reside in our home.

Now that Austin was living with us, the stress and fear in the household sky rocketed as Austin was putting massive amounts of pressure and demands on Ciera, and then later started to threaten the whole family which turned into a conflict between all of us because it affected not only the people within the house, but Andre was in the middle of it and we were doing everything possible to keep him safe from Ciera’s and Austin’s constant fighting.

For the first 3 months of Andre’s infancy, I was the one who was the primary care taker as Ciera was transitioning with Austin down stairs, my mom was taking her to all her appointments, and she was overwhelmed with being a new mother knowing that Austin was going to bring her down, so I went out of my way to help her with Andre by caring for him when she was doing what she needed to do to settle down and be the best mother she can. Ciera was doing very well with Andre. She was always breast feeding him, he always had toys and clothes, he was always clean, he always had new and different things to do, he slept great, and he was provided with the needs that every child requires. Andre actually had more than what most children get for his age, and that is why he was developing physically and emotionally at a fast rate.

Assuredly, Andre started eating food at 3 months, and this is not “baby food” that I am talking about. It started off as mashed banana and watermelon and then it quickly manifested into meats and potatoes. Whenever we had dinner, it did not matter if Andre was 3 months, 7 months, a year, 2 years, he never once missed out on what we ate. He was not the child to “sit and have his bottle” while the family eats the cooked dinner. Andre was the child to eat the cooked dinner with the family. In anything we did, whether we ate food, went out, watched TV, went to the park, did yard work, did homework, played with the cat’s, played music, played the instruments, danced,  and even cooked and cleaned, Andre always participated.

Myself, I started to play the piano at age 12, but I always had an interest in it since I was a little girl. I am 17 years old now. One day I was watching Andre and he was laying on my bed just hanging out with me. He would be around 3-4 months at this time.  My piano faces the back end of my bed, so I moved Andre closer to the end on the side so I could see him while I played. It was when I played the piano, that I found out Andre was musically inclined just like me. The first song I played was “I Gave My Love A Cherry”, and when Andre heard this, he giggled and screamed of happiness, signaling to me that he wanted to play it. I then picked him up and sat him on my lap and continued to play, and as I played, he started to play with me.  He was pressing the keys, banging the key board as I played, and then I realized “wow, I have a very smart nephew”, as I heard the most joyful sounds out of his mouth. Now, Andre opens the piano covering, turns on the piano, climbs on the chair and sits himself in front of the keyboard and plays it all by him-self. When he is done, he turns off the piano, shuts the covering, climbs of the chair, and leaves when he is ready to do something else. Andre and I have always played the piano together since the very first day he signaled me that he wanted to play it. Whether he hears me play it and comes and joins me, whether he calls my name “Mayy!!”, grabs my hand, and takes me to the piano to play with him, whether he wants me to sit there and watch him play it, or he plays by himself.

Moreover, playing the piano really opened my eyes and the eyes of my family into knowing that my nephew has a gift for intelligence and music, and we all thought that Andre would develop slowly and with issues because of years of hard drugs my sister (Ciera) has done, the beatings, the prostitution, and the physical stress she had put on her body. We even thought she was incapable of bearing a child because of how harsh her life has been. But in the midst of all this, Andre baffled us with how quickly he learns and how aware he is at such a young age. I have friend’s that are Ciera’s age that have children who are the same age of Andre and they cannot communicate between individuals and pick up on things quickly the way Andre can, and when I see this, it almost makes me cry as Andre came from a person who has many emotional and physical problems, but yet he develops in ways that are faster than usual at his age. It is amazing. On top of that, he is very handsome and has the looks of a baby angel.

While Ciera is doing great with Andre and she has her family to support her and help her every day with him, Austin is nagging her that she spends too much time with the baby and not him. Ciera has confided in me on numerous occasions and one of them was that she said “Austin gets really jealous of me spending so much time with Andre and not with him. That’s why he gets mad all the time”. My response to her was “As a parent Ciera, you know your main focus is your child, and you are the person that Andre needs the most, but if Austin cannot understand that, then he does not deserve you or Andre”. Even though Ciera knows this, she cannot do anything about it except take it in as Austin was forced to live with us, and so he continued to find ways to hinder her somehow.

Following this further, when complaining to her that she was paying too much attention to Andre was not enough, he started to put demands on her to buy all the food, all the baby supplies, pay the bills, while he contributed nothing and still expected her to give him money when he spent all his on himself. When she could not give him money because she had to worry about what Andre needs, he would go in her purse and steal her money - money that was for the baby. This quickly manifested into hollering and screaming between the two as Ciera had no money to buy food or clothes for Andre because Austin stole it to buy his drugs and do whatever he does with it. Ciera would constantly tell me how fed up she was with Austin and how he does not help her with Andre. She would cry at times and become very emotional as it is hard being a drug addicted mother who is trying to do right for herself and her child and doing everything she can to provide well for Andre, but have the father of your child not even take interest in holding Andre, stealing the baby money, creating stress and trying to cause trouble. Ciera was helpless towards Austin, so all she could do was fight with him and this put Andre at risk.

Although Andre was removed from having to see Austin and Ciera fight whether by me or some else in the house, but there still were times where Andre would have to witness their whole disputes as we were not always home to take him upstairs, take him out, or distract him away from Austin and Ciera fighting. Ciera and Austin would fight in public while Andre was in the stroller, and so he had no choice but to watch it. This created emotional stress on Andre and put fear into him that made him more chronic with his attachment disorder.

As the months progressed, Andre is happy with his aunties, his nana, his uncle, his great grandparents, and his mother. If he is not with Ciera, then he is with me, if he is not with me, then he is with aunty Teasha and nana, and if he is not with them, then he is with uncle Markeng (my brother), if he is not with uncle Markeng, he is with all of us. Andre was always with all of us or someone in the house, and the relationships that developed with Andre have been strong and structured ever since he was born. He has never been left alone, he has always been watched, and that is why he was never hurt or injured from day 1 of his life. The only person that seemed to never want to watch Andre or take interest in spending much time with him was Austin. When Austin did watch Andre, it was with anger, impatience and frustration, which turned into being rough with the baby.

Incidentally I went down stairs one day to talk to Ciera only to find out that she had gone out. Austin was sitting on the couch with Andre, and when Andre seen me he automatically started to cry and was holding his arms out to me. He looked as though he had been already crying for a while, but no one was home to hear it as they were buying groceries and I was playing piano. I asked Austin where Ciera was and he told me that she went to meet up with a friend to pick something up. I asked him how long she was gone for and he said “about an hour”. I then picked up Andre because I saw how mad and annoyed Austin was, but also how scared and traumatized Andre was, and I calmed Andre down for about 20 minutes. Once Andre was calmed down, Austin told me to give him the baby. When I handed the baby to him, Andre started to cry hysterically and that is when Austin told the baby in a loud and scary tone to “shut up Andre” as he got up from the couch holding Andre roughly which made him scream and cry louder. He put Andre in the stroller where I then asked him where he was going. He said “he is walking up the street with Andre so he shuts up”. I told Austin I will take the baby up-stairs with me, but he wanted to keep Andre with him and left the house with a bad attitude. As Austin was walking up the street, I could hear Andre screaming and crying as Austin was telling Andre to “shut up”. When he came back, Andre was sleeping probably from exhaustion of all that crying. As soon as Andre came out of the stroller, he started to scream in Austin’s arms, where I then just took him with me up stairs and put him down for bed.  In addition, Mr. John Duncan and Mrs. Joan Duncan (my grandparents) have confirmed that they have seen Austin several times man-handle Andre, tell him to “shut up”, have yelled at him, and has been impatient while showing aggression towards him.

Additionally, Ciera knows Austin was rough with Andre as she has expressed to my mom and I that she does not like leaving Andre with Austin.

In spite of Ciera being under a lot of stress from Austin bombarding her and the support worker from the Family Preservation program now harassing her to move out of the house and live alone with Austin and the baby, she still manages to keep herself together and provide for Andre. However, Austin has been fuming for a while and begins to go off to the deep end. He now disappears for nights at a time leaving Ciera to worry about him and she is also left with no money as he took it from her. When he returns home, Ciera can tell he has done drugs. They begin to argue which turns into screaming, which then turns into Austin punching walls with Andre standing in the hall way crying for Ciera. By this time, Austin is getting more violent. I remember Ciera telling me, after I had heard a huge fight that she locked herself inside her room. Austin was trying to kick the door in, making threats on her while she was struggling to keep it closed. I cannot remember the reason as to why this happened.

As tension grows between Austin and Ciera, Andre spends more time with us up-stairs or we take him out with us a lot when we go to our friend’s house, the mall, take him to the park, or just for a walk to disconnect him from the dis-function and to allow Ciera alone time. Andre was continuing to thrive with his health, his smarts, and his growth. He was becoming more and more cognitive in his thinking, more communicative, more aware, and was able to know how to distinguish new ways of learning.

My nephew loves to learn. He loves his books, he loves his ABC’s and 123’s, he loves to watch “Wheels On The Bus”, “Mickey Mouse Club House”, “E-I-O (what he says) – Old McDonald Had A Farm”, Nursery Rhymes, and so much more. The list can go on and on. Andre has a way that when he plays with his toys, he lines them up perfectly in a straight line or stacks them correctly so that they fit each other.  He is very strategic in this way. Also, when he sees something, he tries to work it or figure it out on his own. For example, the electronic drum set. He figured out on his own how to turn it on, sat himself on the chair, told one of us to pass him the sticks, and he started to drum. Or the day he seen the pots on the floor. I watched what he did. He came into the kitchen and looked at the pots on the floor. Then, he looked at the cupboard and opened it. Once he seen that all the other pots and pans were in the cupboard, he put the pots that were on the floor into the cupboard with the rest of the pots and pans and closed the cupboard.  I was so proud of him that I picked him up and praised him, kissing him all over his face and did my happy dance with him in my arms. He was proud of himself, too.

Andre has always been a well-educated baby, has never been neglected or abused, and has never been hurt in any way.

In our home, we do own an abundance of materials ranging from books of various genres to musical instruments, furniture to fabrics, yard supplies to kitchen supplies, toys to clothes, etc. I as a child growing up, as well as my all my other siblings, experienced the best childhood a kid could ever want. We lived in Delta, Strawberry Hills, on a street with a cul de sac. We had a 5 bedroom house with 2 kitchens, two living rooms, a large dining room, two bathrooms, and two gigantic yards - front and back. My mom had built a playground in our back yard. It was an actual playground that you would see at a park. It had the gravel rocks, the swings, the teeter totter, the gymnastic ropes, and a tree house that was off the ground that my mom built while she was pregnant with me and had the help of my two older brothers (Brooklyn) and (Markeng), my older sister (Ciera), and my Grandpa (Uncle John). I remember playing in this playground for hours every single day. But this backyard was so huge that the playground only took a fraction of its space. On the right-hand side of the yard, we had islands that we dug in the ground. Markeng, Ciera, Teasha, and I would have boat races with flowing water down the canals that we dug. But even the playground and islands combined still left the yard with so much space. To add, the front yard was bigger than the back yard. I remember camping in the front yard, playing in the sun, jumping over the ditch, learning how to ride my first bike in the front yard by my Grandpa who taught me. Inside of the home, we would always have the fire place on and watch movies together. I would fake sleep while watching these movies so I got carried to bed by my mom or brother. My mom would always cook the best foods and deserts, and she would also make play-doo with us on a regular basis.

What I am trying to say, is my mom did everything she could to provide us a playful, fun, and happy childhood, and she did indeed. The same thing is what we were doing with Andre. When I said we have a lot of stuff, I mean this in the way that it always stimulated our minds, and still does to this day. Being surrounded by so many different things, you get to thinking. You think about what it is, how to work it, what to do with it, where it belongs, and then it prompts you to investigate. I realized that not only did my brother (Markeng) and I having been homeschooled really helped us as young children by allowing us to develop at our own pace, but because we always had things to encourage our learning, it opened our heads more strategically and cognitively to learn much faster than others as we always had resources that constantly aroused our minds. This is one of the main reasons Andre is incredibly smart and a fast learner.

Generally speaking, being in a house that has a lot of stuff can get frustrating at times because it can be hard to move around, hard to clean, or claustrophobic. Combined with the pressures of school, work, and personal issues regarding my own life, I have gone into rebel mode against my mother. As a teenager, and being that I am very independent, I wanted to be on my own. I have talked to my previous school councillor about leaving my home and living somewhere else. He gave me a number for teen advocacy to which I called this number. They appointed me a social worker by the name of Betty whom I only spoke to via phone line one time, and she directed a councillor to work with my mother and I. This was in 2011. and she started working with us around late November for a month and a half, and would meet with me and my mom separately on Wednesday’s every week. When she asked me what I wanted, I asked for independent living. She told me I do not “fit” the criteria to be on independent living. I could not understand something though.

I had a friend who is an alcoholic, does drugs regularly, sleeps around, does not commit to school, parties all the time, steals, and causes trouble for anyone that is in her life, but yet she qualified for independent living while living in my house when the process was being done. Not even a month later, she lost her independent living due to failure of agreement. As for me, on the other hand, I am a full time straight A student in school who does not do drugs of any kind, commits to school, does not sleep around or party, and stays home focusing on my school and trying to better my life, but the councillor told me as long as I had a roof over my head, that I did not qualify for independent living. This was not going anywhere. Nevertheless, it should be noted that now when I look back on talking to that woman, I realize she was using me for information against my mom while I was mad at other things in my life and being generally frustrated as a teenager wanting to move out. The reason for this is because she was agreeing and reinforcing what I was saying about my mom being crazy as I wanted my way. She told me that it was confidential information shared between us and that she did not want me telling my mom anything we talked about, and the next councillor that came after her named Diane did the same thing – said my mom was crazy and not to say anything, which made it ultimately harder for my mom because I rebelled even more. To me, it was confirmation in them encouraging that my mom was crazy and that I was not in the wrong.

The first councillor was pregnant during her time of working with me, and she went on maternity leave at the end of December. She told my mom and I a new councillor had replaced her and was to meet with us in January (2012), but this never happened. Months passed by, I was very agitated with school and the current job that I was working at and angry that I was not getting help from anyone. The house was getting to me at the time as well because I was already mad, so being in a house with a lot of stuff was making it worse, and I was having issues with my mom and sister. By this time, I really wanted to leave and live somewhere else for a while, as I felt removing myself from the situation would give everyone including myself more space and time to clear our minds. My mom requested another councillor to work with her and me. The councillor we got was named Diane. She was working with us during Summer Break while I was working, but she only stayed with us for about 3 weeks. Again, she said the same thing the first woman did by telling me I did not qualify for independent living, my mom was crazy, that it was confidential and I was not to say anything and then they fucked off, so I got fed up and quit.

In addition, my point is I have caused some trouble for my mother with rebelling. I did want to live on my own at times, but I realize now that all those things I did to try and get there created bad publicity about my mom which could affect Andre being in her custody. I was upset and frustrated in those times of wanting to live somewhere else, and so I sugar-coated a lot of what I said to make it seem like I was not able to live within the household. I wanted that independent living. Though, Andre has always been cared for properly and carefully by everyone who shared the responsibility no matter what was going on.

To be sure, I want to make this clear because I am not certain if the social worker currently working “with” us has what happened between my mother and I, with me wanting to leave on her file as information to use against my mother. That past issue was with my mother and me and it does not relate to Andre being in my moms’ custody or living in the house with us. That was me agitated and mad with my life at the time from all the pressures of everyday life, combined with my own independent curiosity. My mother has never had social services involved in her life until Ciera started doing drugs. I have said some bad things about my mom out of anger, but it was nothing that I meant. I have had a great life with her from childhood to now, the only difference is, now is harder, and as we grow up, we are faced with more and more responsibilities that puts added stress, frustration, and sometimes aggression on us depending on what it is. Having said this, if this is information that the social worker wants to use against my mom, I am saying it is completely invalid and irrelevant to Andre being here and living with us in my moms’ care. Andre should not be suffering from my own preceding problems.

Likewise, as a family, we do have issues, we do have dysfunctions, we do fight at times, but Andre was almost never subject to having to see it when it happened. He was always removed by one of us when a dispute was in place. Subsequently, frequent fighting was always occurring when Austin was living and not living in the house. From the time he lived with us, to the day he left, the conflict never ended because he could not leave Ciera alone. During his time with living with us, as I said in the previous paragraphs, he was stealing from her, complaining about spending too much time with the baby, putting demands on her to pay for everything and give him money at the same time, getting violent, being rough with the baby, but then he started to do drugs…

While Ciera was continuing to pass all her pee tests and following through on her appointments and treatments, Austin was deteriorating. As I said before, he was disappearing for nights at a time as he was doing drugs. This became a frequent situation. He would get Ciera to ask me many times to pee in a cup for him because he had done drugs and did not want to fail his pee tests. This was during living in the house and after he left. He also had paid my younger sister (Teasha) $20 for her to pee in a cup for him, while he continued to do his drugs. My mom did not have any awareness of Austin paying my sister to pee in a cup for him and getting Ciera to ask me to also pee in a cup for him until Andre was removed from the household and a conversation came up about it.

On the contrary, if anything, my mother would call the police all the time on Austin to have him removed from the house or to scare him away, but with Austin, it does not matter what it is, he always comes back whether it is a few hours from now, a few days from now, or a month from now. He always comes back. Even my brother (Markeng) had to charge him at one point, but that did not stop the problem. Austin has a cycle of homelessness and jail, and he uses us as his only family, dysfunctional and all because Austin grew up in the “Foster Care System”.

Accordingly, he was making threats on my mom that he was going to burn down the house, in which case she pursued a restraining order against him for harassment and threats of burning down the house. We believe Austin does have psychological problems and likes to hurt animals. One day, Austin had abused one of our cats, Mickey. My mom caught him peeing on her in a box, and then she found Mickey with her hair chopped up and had a severe eye injury where it was bulging out of her head. Austin denied this, but Ciera has admitted to witnessing Austin doing some disturbing and disgusting things to which she did not want to speak about.

Ciera irrevocably does has brain damage from all the years of harsh drugs she has done, but she is also emotionally traumatized because of her childhood resulting from having to visit her dad when young leading up to now with all the things she has been subject to and has had to bear witness to see. Because Ciera is very kind at heart, people see in her, her kindness and take it as a weakness. From there, they take advantage of her, and since she is easily persuaded, she fails to recognize the intentions of others. Ciera can be manipulated in the blink of an eye as she is gullible and does not think twice about the situation, the consequences, who it affects, what it will do, and where it will take her and others in the long run. Austin likes to feed off of Ciera’s kindness and uses it as a means to derail her to fall back into his level. When Ciera is taking initiative for her life and for Andre, and trying to be responsible with everything she does, Austin is around to nid-pick at her that everything is about him and she should not be accountable to the family, or the baby. He is good at doing this.

Now that Ciera has the baby with Austin, Ciera feels obligated to him for life, “because that’s my baby’s daddy” as she has uttered to me. Austin knows this, and he uses that for more power over her to do whatever he wants. The only time Austin is ever nice to Ciera and actually shows a little bit of respect, is when he wants something. But as soon as he gets it, he comes back 3 times more abusive because in his head, he has gotten away with it and he continues to get away with it. Austin seems to find ways to keep Ciera with him, and even though Ciera wants to leave him desperately, she does not know how to break free from him and his abuse, thus resulting in her staying with him.

Ultimately we have tried to fend off Austin continuously, especially my brother Markeng, but as said before, he convinces Ciera somehow to stay with him. Austin likes to isolate Ciera from us, and as the Family Preservation worker was harassing Ciera to move out with him and the baby, now Austin was nagging her to do so as well because he did not want Ciera to have protection and support from her family as he wanted to control Ciera and make more demands on her while he was completely disregarding how this would put Andre at risk immensely to injury and emotional trauma. My mom had talked to Ciera about using her time with Austin living in the home to observe him to see if he had true intentions of stepping up and being a father and boyfriend, but even now with having a baby, Austin displayed worse behavior than what he was before as he now had to compete with the baby for getting attention from Ciera as he persists on manipulating Ciera away from her family and Andre.

Ciera identified that Austin had no goals towards being a good father, being a good boyfriend, and working on himself so that everyone as a whole could be happy, but also Ciera, Andre, and Austin could build a family that had structure, stability, resources, communication, reliance on each other, and the best interest of the baby. Consequently, Ciera knew before Andre was even born that Austin would not have any ambitions to caring for the baby and building a good relationship between them. But with all circumstances made by the family support worker, Ciera had to comply with instructions on living with Austin, which tore Ciera a part in the long run.

Throughout Andre’s life, Ciera took very good care of him with the undivided help of her family. Another big reason why Andre was never hurt and was always safe was because several of us were in the house at the same time to not only assist Ciera with childcare, but we all had different schedules to address Andre in an emergency if necessary. It did not matter what was going on, Andre was either with many of us, all of us, or with one of us.

Austin lived with us for the first year of Andre’s life, and a general overview of that time was full of Austin trying to get Ciera to stop caring for the baby, stop taking her Methadone, stay away from her family, trying to take her to crack shacks, putting demands and pressure on her to do everything, and constantly fighting with her.

After Austin had left the house, he was getting worse with his addiction and coming around often to drag Ciera into his antics and to harass her to move out and live with him, and to also demand money from her. When Ciera told him she was staying, he went on a rampage threatening her that he was going to burn the house down, and when my mom got involved, he told her the same thing. This was the 4th time he had made threats like this.

As Austin was gone from the house, Ciera could now focus more on Andre. She was taking him swimming regularly, she was taking him out more, her, Teasha and I would take him to the park every day, we always went to the mall, we went for walks, we always did yard work in which Andre learned how to water the flowers and to put the dirt into the pots for planting flowers, doing arts and crafts, and so much more. When Austin left, it gave Ciera a window of time to really center Andre and herself. For the whole 26 months of Andre’s life, Ciera was at her best that we all had ever seen her in all the years she had done drugs. She had put all her weight back on, her hair was full of life, her skin was nourished, she was happy, she was healthy, and she was thriving with Andre. Ciera had come a long way from childhood trauma to now, and to deal with her past and present issues and still be able to hold her-self together and care for Andre was truly a remarkable achievement. However, Ciera slowly started to fall off the grid as Austin did not like seeing her doing good with her life.

One day, and this would have been around late July - 2012, Ciera had told me when we were on our way to Surrey Central Mall that Austin wanted her to go with him to Barry’s and Jackie’s place (drug house). Austin, Barry, and Jackie were all participating in substance use while Jackie was telling Ciera to “take a hit”. As Ciera tried to resist, Austin was encouraging her to “smoke with them and that it was okay”. Ciera articulated to me that she really tried not to participate, but she was under a lot of pressure from Jackie and Barry, and Austin bugging her join in the midst of being surrounded by all the fumes. At which time she did finally accompany with smoking drugs, she felt disappointed in Austin and furious at him that he would tell her and want her to smoke drugs knowing that they had a child together and that Ciera was doing very well with the baby and providing the best she could. Ciera felt guilty and also disappointed in herself that she allowed this to happen, but Austin was the one who manipulated her into that situation in the mind set of knowing Ciera would become vulnerable.

Again, my mom knew nothing of this as she was doing a park event at Holly Park in July. As well, Ciera was doing really well, looking good, she helped with the park event, and she asked me as her sister not to say anything to my mom because she did not want to disappoint her and put more stress and worry on her. Ciera had already felt ashamed enough. Ciera was also helping my mom do children programs with the music activities at the restaurant I was volunteering and working at, so despite me knowing Ciera’s relapse, there was never anything displayed in her that would suggest to my mom that she was even going in that direction. For the month of October (2012), Austin was not coming around the house, but before that in the Summer time up until Fall, I can actually say that he was doing really well with Ciera because he was working as a monitor to a recovery house and from my understanding, he was also moving furniture and was clean for over eight months. Consequently, it started to all fall apart in November when Ciera started going out more often for longer periods of time while we were physically and mentally tired because she would leave for 7 -8 hours at a time at all hours of the day. At this time, because sleeping patterns were out of coordination for Andre as Ciera always went to bed late with him even though my mom was constantly reminding her which would turn into an argument about Andre sleeping earlier, but Ciera did not listen. In the end, my mom was doing double shifts from 10a.m. to 5a.m. all day long cleaning the house or doing other household chores like shopping, paying bills, etc to having to watch Andre all night long despite her always keeping an eye on my younger sister and me while we watched him for Ciera if my mom could not do it herself.

A lot of things Ciera would listen to my mom on which contributed largely to her recovery, but Ciera did not like to listen when it came to Andre because she said she was the mom and she could do as she pleased.

In conclusion, Ciera throughout her recovery with Andre was the best experience she had since she was a little kid playing in the backyard at our house in Delta in 2001, but this experience was also the happiest she had ever been and we have ever saw in her, and she admitted this herself after about a year of being back home with us and Andre. For me as a little sister to Ciera, that was the most I have ever had Ciera in my life to help me as a bigger sister would, give me advice, stick up for me when I needed it, and that is because my mom never ever gave up on her or any of us. Even now, she still fights for Ciera. It was nice while it lasted. I hope we can be a family again where everyone is happy, healthy, and doing great with their lives. Most importantly, with Andre coming home. Feb 1, 2013