A Case Worker Told Me To “Trust The Process” When My Foster Son Was Covered In Bruises,

The Deep Dive

I couldn’t sleep. At 3:00 a.m. I was deep in a research spiral looking up everything I could find about Williams.

Her daughter’s Instagram was public. College student—seemed nice, normal. I scrolled back through years of posts looking for something, anything, that might help.

My thumb slipped. Like a photo from 2019, her high school graduation with Williams smiling proudly beside her.

I unliked it immediately, but the damage was done. By morning I had a text from my best friend.

His wife had seen the Instagram activity somehow. The neighborhood Facebook drama, the Nextdoor post, and now this. “We can’t have that drama around our kids,” she told him.

Twenty years of friendship gone because I’d liked the wrong photo at the wrong time. The coffee shop was my last refuge.

Every morning: same corner table, same black coffee. But now the regulars avoided eye contact.

The barista who used to chat about her foster cats just silently handed me my cup. Williams had been in the day before.

Told everyone about the “dangerous foster parent” who was stalking her. Only the pastor still said, “Good morning. Bless him.”

Williams played her next card brilliantly. Claimed she’d meant to forward those photos of Jaden’s bruises to her supervisor but there’d been an “email glitch” that week.

It confirmed it. System-wide issue. Emails getting stuck in outboxes. Totally plausible. Totally unprovable.

Jaden’s backup therapist finally called me back. We’d been trying to get him seen while waiting for the trauma specialist.

She hemmed and hawed before admitting the truth. She needed Williams’ referrals. Half her practice was DCFS kids. She couldn’t afford to get on Williams’ bad side.

I thought I’d found something when I proved Williams had lied about a meeting date. Pulled the emails, showed the timestamp, but accessing them meant I’d violated HIPAA.

I’d logged into Jaden’s medical portal without being the authorized representative—Williams was.

The Legal War

The celebration dinner was the worst. Sharon Wheeler had finally been arrested—real arrest this time, not just questioning.

I took Jaden to his favorite restaurant. We should have been happy—justice finally.

But I was too loud, too excited. Other diners heard me talking about the child abuse case and saw me gloating.

Someone posted about it online. The narrative wrote itself. “What kind of person celebrates children being hurt?”

That night, staring at the ceiling while Jaden whimpered in his sleep, I understood this wasn’t about truth anymore. It was war, and only one of us could survive in this system.

Williams had made that clear. Her or me. One of us would remain Jaden’s advocate; the other would be destroyed.

I made my choice. If she wanted war, she’d get it.

But first I needed to document everything. Every lie, every cover-up, every dirty trick.

My laptop screen glowed in the darkness as I started typing. Names, dates, evidence. Building my case.

Jaden stirred in the next room, calling out in his sleep. Something about the bus. Always about the bus.

I kept typing for him. For all the kids she’d failed. For every foster parent she’d gaslit into silence.

Ms. Williams had no idea what she’d started, but she was about to find out. The war was officially declared.

Legal Sabotage

The paralegal thing happened faster than I expected. Williams started showing up to meetings with information she shouldn’t have.

Details from my consultation with the family lawyer. Word-for-word quotes from conversations I’d had in confidence.

The paralegal, a young woman named Melissa, had been dating Williams for three weeks. Long enough to access my file. Short enough that nobody thought to mention it.

I discovered this when Williams casually mentioned my concerns about Jaden’s attachment issues. The exact phrasing I’d used with my lawyer.

Private session. Privileged information. She smiled while saying it, watching my face change as I realized what had happened.

The weekly check-in calls became a battlefield. I started recording them on my phone.

Williams must have been doing the same. When the custody review came up we both submitted our recordings.

Mine showed her being dismissive and condescending. Hers somehow captured me sounding aggressive and unstable. Same conversations, different edits.

The judge looked confused, then annoyed. Neither recording was admitted as evidence.

My old emails came back to haunt me next. From when Jaden first arrived I’d written glowing messages about Williams.

Praised her dedication; thanked her for her support. She submitted them all to the court, highlighted the relevant passages. “Even Mr. Foster acknowledges my commitment to Jaden’s well-being.” My own words weaponized against me.

The Ambush

The school counselor meeting felt like an ambush. Jaden had mentioned to her that I “got really mad at Ms. Williams.”

Kids don’t understand context. Don’t know how to explain complex situations. To him I was just angry all the time.

Now the counselor’s notes reflected a child worried about his placement stability—about his foster dad’s “fixation” on his caseworker.

Then came the Ring doorbell footage. Williams lived six blocks from the pharmacy I used most.

Direct route past her street. She submitted three weeks of footage showing my car driving by.

Timestamps proved it was always during pharmacy hours, but the visual was damning. “Foster father repeatedly passing caseworker’s home.”

Family court treated my documentation differently than I’d expected. The binder of evidence I’d compiled. The timeline of lies and cover-ups.

Instead of seeing a pattern of negligence, they saw obsession. The judge used words like “fixation” and “concerning focus.” My thoroughness became evidence against me.

I got desperate. During a supervised visit I noticed Williams had written her DCFS portal password on a post-it note stuck to a folder in Jaden’s file.

Sloppy security. I memorized it.

That night I logged in. Downloaded her evaluation history. Three other cases with similar patterns.

Kids removed after unsubstantiated abuse claims. Always the same narrative. “Overreacting foster parents.” “Bruises that meant nothing.”

Williams fought back on social media. Public Facebook posts about the “challenges of social work.”

Never naming names, but the details were specific enough. “Some placements become toxic when caregivers project their own trauma onto the system.”

Her friends rallied around her. Other caseworkers shared similar stories. I became the unnamed “problem foster parent” in a dozen sympathetic posts.

My gym buddy, Marcus, got dragged into it. We’d worked out together for years; talked between sets.

I’d vented about Williams. Said things like, “I’ll make her pay for what she did.”

Gym talk. Meaningless anger released between deadlifts.

But when Williams’ lawyer deposed him, those words sounded like threats. Marcus looked miserable repeating them in the transcript.

The recording attempt was pure stupidity. I thought I could get her admitting to the cover-up.

Kept my phone in my shirt pocket during our next meeting. But Williams spotted it immediately—the red recording light visible through the fabric.

She smiled while dialing 911. Reported illegal surveillance.

The responding officer looked embarrassed taking the report, but he had to follow protocol.

Every day at 3:00 p.m. I had to leave whatever I was doing to pick up Jaden. Williams knew this.

Started scheduling important calls for 2:45. Documentation requests due at 2:55.

So she’s using his own words against him and turning every single person in his life into a weapon. Wow.

I’d have to choose between fighting for evidence or being there for my kid. She knew which I’d choose. Used my reliability as a parent against me.