Driver said it now troubled CPS that Embrace is unlicensed and unregulated, and that its owners had failed to promptly report the allegations of abuse toward Raven. She also said CPS was unhappy that the Bessingers had allowed drug felon Marty Laws to live at the home for a time in late 2005.
"Right now, we're going to try reunifying the child with the mother," the caseworker testified, sounding far more favorably disposed toward Walters than she had just two weeks earlier.
David Hollenbach
Superior Court Judge Lisa Daniel Flores ruled in favor of Ravens mother.
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"We strongly recommend that Raven not be returned to the Bessingers. I know the Bessingers have placed a lot of judgments, which is completely natural, toward the natural mother and father. But that doesn't nix the parents from getting a right to parent their child."
Greg Riebesehl argued that Shelly Walters had lost her authority to sign Raven into foster care when the judge granted custody of Raven to the Bessingers, an intriguing point.
"Bottom line, they are the only parents that this child has ever known," the attorney said of his clients.
Judge Anderson noted that "the only people who've ever stepped up in this child's life [were the Bessingers]."
He then ordered CPS to return Raven to Embrace within 24 hours.
Shelly Walters wouldn't see her little girl for another six months.
Lisa Daniel Flores reported to Family Court in March 2006 after Governor Janet Napolitano appointed her to the bench.
The new judge was well-suited to the assignment, having spent two years of a decade-long stint with the Arizona Attorney General's Office representing CPS in dependency cases.
On June 19, Flores heard testimony for the first time about Raven's custody case, which she had taken over from Judge Anderson.
By then, CPS caseworker Driver had become an outright fan of Shelly Walters, who was living with her two teenagers and an older couple at the couple's home in Apache Junction.
Driver told the judge that she had been visiting Walters, had done background checks on the elderly couple and couldn't be happier with the woman's attitude and progress.
"Your Honor, we have a problem," she testified, "because Mom's done [drug tests]. Mom's been clean, Mom's got a stable job, Mom's got a stable home . . . I strongly feel that Rochelle deserves the chance to be a parent to her child. And this whole thing has turned into quite a mess."
The judge expressed deep displeasure that Walters had been denied access to Raven for months.
"Parents have a fundamental right to parent their own children," Flores told attorney Riebesehl. "And as well-meaning and bonded as your clients may be to this child, and they may have provided a wonderful service and taken good care of her for a significant period of time, as long as the child's mother is able to parent her, the child's mother has absolute preference over anybody else — mother or father . . . The only way [the child's] better off in [the Bessingers'] care is if [the mother is] unable to parent."
Riebesehl responded that "it seems like you're prejudging the matter, that it's an automatic [that] the child is going to be back with Mother, without hearing evidence."
Flores ignored the jibe, and set the case for a full evidentiary hearing on October 4.
Though the judge decided not to immediately remove Raven from the Bessingers' custody, she approved weekly visitations and daily phone calls between mother and daughter.
"The longer Raven goes without seeing Mom, the more difficult the transition will be," Flores said.
Walters' weekly three-hour visitations with her daughter occurred at CPS offices in northwest Phoenix, about 40 miles from her home in Apache Junction. Her only mode of transportation was a series of city buses, but she got there faithfully and on time.
But the Bessingers proved less than accommodating, often showing up late with Raven and making things generally unpleasant, according to CPS accounts.
"This whole case is confusing to me," Charlotte Driver wrote in an e-mail that later became part of the court record. "I can't imagine what little Raven feels like!"
Driver also wrote that Aneta Bessinger had asked her during one visitation, "How could we let a child molester have a three-hour visit with a 3-year-old child?"
That alleged "molester" was Shelly Walters, against whom no charges had been filed nor any wrongdoing substantiated.
In another e-mail, Driver said that "Aneta is saying things to confuse Raven a lot. I think at this point she is trying to pull out all the stops to keep Raven."
During a visitation that July, Aneta Bessinger introduced the CPS workers to Brenda Byers, a Native American woman from Phoenix.
Byers apparently informed them that Raven's DNA was going to be tested to see if the little girl had Indian blood and was eligible for benefits from an unspecified tribe.
"They strongly believe that if the [Indian Child Welfare Act] gets involved, then this whole thing will go away," Driver wrote at the time.
Raven's neophyte Native American connection threw a new wrinkle into the already-complex custody case.
"Oh, yes, the Indians," says Greg Riebesehl, in a way that suggests they aren't his favorite subject.
