March 5, 2007
The Child Protective Services division of the Macomb County Department of Human Services is expected to file a petition in the county's juvenile court Tuesday asking a judge to take legal jurisdiction over the two children of Stephen and Tara Lynn Grant.
A hearing is to be held at 3 p.m.
to determine whether the petition will be authorized, according to a county official familiar with the plan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak about the Grant case.
After spending three nights with their father's sister and brother-in-law, the Grant children -- a 6-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy -- were picked up late Monday by Tara Grant's sister, Alicia Standerfer, 32, of Ohio.
The children were bundled in winter clothes in the backseat of Standerfer's car. A reporter could see Standerfer, whose husband was driving, turn around to speak to the children, who peered out the car's rear windows as they drove away. Stephen Grant's sister and brother-in-law -- Kelly and Chris Utykanski -- live in a subdivision off Schoenherr.
They declined to comment after police and the Standerfers left at 6:30 p.m. The Utykanskis told the Free Press during the weekend that as far as the children knew, their mother was still missing and their father was on a trip.
They said they planned to tell the children about the weekend's events with Tara Grant's family and a counselor present. The DHS petition does not necessarily mean that DHS wants to change custody of the children or place them into foster care, the official said. But it is likely that DHS will ask a judge to terminate Stephen Grant's parental rights to the children, given reports that he has confessed to killing and then dismembering his wife while the children were in the home.
A similar petition was filed in Oakland County Family Court in 2004 even before Mark Unger was charged with killing his wife during a vacation trip in northern Michigan in 2003. A judge allowed Unger of Huntington Woods to have supervised visits with his sons until he was officially charged with the murder of his wife, Florence Unger. Unger was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a sentence of life in prison without parole.
His parental rights were terminated by a family court judge in December. Yes, he attended Columbine H.S.
and grew up in Jonestown Guyana.
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:18 am
Does anyone know what highschool and college(if any) Stephen attended and where did he grow up?
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:01 am
Now I didn't say there isn't a bunch of red tape.
..there is.
Court involvement, caseworker involvement, legal stuff.
But, ASSUMING a family member is willing, proven reliable via investigation, AND knows it's not like getting a couple Jack Russell terriers from the pet shop you can bring back, the children SHOULD AND WILL be given into their care.
I don't know about county, but the State gets no more money for placing a child with a relative than a Foster Care parent.
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 11:37 pm
All Macomb County CPS is going to do is scr*w these children up. If DHS did anything worth while Michigan DHS will find a way not to do what they are supposed to do. Macomb DHS/CPS has about as much conscience as Stephen has, .
. . .
. . .
NONE!
Macomb CPS they don't care, they just don't care. CPS's idea is to create another Stephen, natural born killers.
These children do not need CPS now! What they are going to need is stability in their young lives. Maybe they want to adopt out the children.
Ever wonder why DHS/CPS wants to adopt out children rather then reunite them with their parental units? Because they get more money from the Fed's for every child adopted out that is why, then they do for keeping family together. Now if the Fed's reversed it and the state got more for keeping family together, then it would be found that the state DHS/CPS would keep families together.
To get back to the issue of who should get the children, Tara's sister should. I think he witnessed Daddy (Grant Sr.) beating up Mommy when he was young and thought this was okay to beat up on women.
Daddy must have been a control freak, Daddy Most have been dominant in the relationship. So Stephen thought this was the way to treat women. Women are men's partners in life and neither should try to dominate the other or subjugate the other.
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 11:18 pm
tootsie, I have dealt directly with Macomb County CPS (a story for another day) and I know first hand their first priority is NOT to keep kids with their family. While they may pay lipservice to this idea that children are better off with natural families-their actions tell another story. The family members have to go to court and fight and beg and plead with a magistrate to keep the kids in the family.
Macomb County CPS gets money for each child they place in Care House or some other form of foster care setting. It is a dispicable system and does nothing but harm children, decimate families and create loads of heartache and grief. One can only hope that all the media attention on this case Macomb County CPS will be kept in line and won't tear those kids away from the only family they have left.
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