CROSS-EXAMINATION

BY MR. SHERLUND:

Q.     Ma'am, you raised the mother of these two girls didn't you?

A.     Yes, I did.

Q.     Okay, you--you had a hand in shaping her, right?

A.     I tried to, yes, as a mother, to put her in the right direction.

Q.     Right the whole listening and shaping and all that stuff that you just

       testified to, right?

A.     Sure, um'm.

Q.     She wasn't exactly a success story as a parent, was she?

A.     No, she wasn't.

Q.     In fact she was a dismal failure as a parent, wasn't she?

A.     Yes, she was.

Q.     So, really the product of your influence and your raising turned out to be a

       mother that this Court saw fit to terminate the parental rights of, correct?

       Correct?

             MS. COOK: Judge, I guess I'll object to the relevancy, because if this

             is the standard that the Court would have to utilize there isn't a

             single grandparent in the world, or family member that would get a kid

             out of a neglect case.

             MR. SHERLUND: I believe the Court can assign whatever relevance or

             weight it believes is appropriate to the testimony, your Honor.

             THE COURT: And the Court will assign no weight to that testimony. I'd

             have to judge you by your children, wait till they grow up, and I

             wouldn't want to do that, Mr. Sherlund.

             THE COURT: --I'd rather judge you by your merit.

We raised 3 children Erica and 2 boys. Our older son is a very well respected employee with the public school system. Our other son is in his 4th year at Cornerstone University. He will be a teacher after he graduates. All 3 of our children were raised in the same manner with the same morals. Scott Sherlund wanted the court to believe or think that after your child is an adult, the parents are responsible if their adult child makes a wrong choice in life.

Hence the reason I wrote this Apple Tree statement as this is the same mind set DHS/CPS workers have.

                       APPLE TREE

Most parents raise their children to have morals and to be responsible adults. After their children grow up to adulthood and make their own decision whether good or bad. Does this mean if this adult child makes bad decisions they didn’t fall far from the apple tree, so to speak? This seems to be the premise of a lot of the child protection workers (CPS). So I guess my question is this. If these same CPS workers grab children then lie, put fraudulent information in documents and such just so they can keep these children, can we surmise they didn’t fall far from their apple tree?