DYFS clips the wings of a boy's guardian angel

DYFS clips the wings of a boy's guardian angel
Thursday, July 19, 2007

Good to see Armaun Cameron again. He's a tonic for anyone's blues. His
smile was as broad and sunny as it's always been and, while the
youngster might be locked in wrenchingly sad circumstances, he acted as
if this were his lucky day.

Because he could come home and see his Grandma Rosie.

For an hour.

"Hey, old buddy, how're you doing?" I asked.

"Great!" he said, throwing down his crutches and giving his grandmother
a hug. A big, 12-year-old kind of hug.

That's about all I could say to Armaun, because once his state social
worker learned who I was, he said he would take Armaun back to his
foster home.

"No way," I said. "I'm leaving."

Rosie Mathura, Armaun's 65-year-old grandmother, was about to cry when
she heard the guy from the state Division of Youth and Family Services
threaten to cancel the one hour a week she gets to see the boy she
raised alone for four years.

Ever since Armaun's mother Kathy, Rosie's daughter, died of cancer at 34.

"Please," Rosie said, and, while it was hard to know exactly with whom
she was pleading, I knew I couldn't deprive her of the cruelly small
amount of time the state allows her grandson to come home to their tiny
apartment in Irvington every week.

I wasn't going to argue that I knew Armaun for years and we were
buddies. I'm the press, see, and that makes me radioactive to DYFS.

So I came back after Rosie's pitifully brief hour with the youngster who
has both cerebral palsy and a relentless sense of hope. He wants to be
an actor and, when he talks about that, he says things like, "Look out,
Will Smith, I'm coming!"

"He wants to be home and I want him home," says Mathura. "But no one
will tell me how I can get him back."

No public agency -- certainly not DYFS -- cared very much for Armaun and
his grandmother when I first wrote about them in October 2004. She was
broke and unable to work because of high blood pressure -- a problem she
couldn't treat because she didn't have the money to buy the meds.

Mathura, a south Asian from Trinidad, has been in the U.S. for 20 years.
She worked as a house cleaner without benefits. She's been waiting for a
green card that, somehow, never shows up in the mail, despite three
applications.

After Kathy died in 2003, she and Armaun lived on his disability
payments and the kindness of a landlord who didn't evict them after she
got hopelessly behind.

The articles about Armaun and his grandmother provoked an extraordinary
response from Star-Ledger readers who made sure the tiny family had a
great Thanksgiving and a Christmas the likes of which Armaun had never seen.

A number of readers paid their back rent and bought the meds Mathura needed.

"People were so kind," said Rosie.

But, seven months ago, she suffered two heart attacks and spent three
months in University Hospital in Newark. Efforts to find relatives who
could watch Armaun failed and DYFS was called. The agency placed him in
a foster home.

"I just thought it just would be until I got home," says Mathura, "but I
have been home for three months and I can't get him back."

Mathura says she never surrendered guardianship. She never intended to
give him up. She also never consulted a lawyer; she can't afford one,
anyway.

"Armaun belongs with me," she says. "I can take care of him."

She doesn't bring this up, but I will. The disability payments now go to
the foster parents, not to Mathura. She has zero income, except for what
some devoted Star-Ledger readers continue to provide.

"We'd like to help get the family settled somehow," says Neale Trangucci
of Summit. He's a fund manager on Wall Street but, mostly, he's been a
guardian angel to Mathura and Armaun. "Rosie deserves to know what is
happening to her grandson."

Kay Slattery agrees. She's a nurse and a paralegal from West Caldwell.
She also helps the family.

"We want what's best for both of them -- and, right now, that means at
least letting Rosie see him for more than an hour a week," says
Slattery. She and Trangucci stayed during Armaun's visit with Mathura.

No one from DYFS will talk about Armaun or Rosie Mathura. Andy Williams,
a spokesman for the agency, says he can't talk about individual cases --
no matter how much Armaun and his grandmother might want to talk about it.

"I just want him home," says Mathura. "I miss him."

Bob Braun's columns appear Monday and Thursday. He may be reached at
or (973) 392-4281.



CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NSA / CIA
WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....


CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING HUNDREDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...


BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...