A real-life horror story of being a guardian and conservator in Washington, DC, where authorities are progressives and the rules that once would have applied have all been turned upside down – in fact if not (yet) in law.
As the child of an Iranian immigrant father and American mother, the last 50+ years of my life have been a lesson in the contrast between the idealistic multicultural fantasy world, akin to Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets, that progressives imagine they can create, and the reality that the enlightenment values of individual freedom, balanced with personal responsibility, guaranteed by a limited republican form of government, are NOT the norm across Earth, with its diversity of cultures and religious traditions. People raised in the tolerant West often fail to perceive how incompatible non-Western cultures can be with our society and how the good intentions of open societies can be badly abused by self-serving individuals from cultures that do not share the aforementioned values. Progressives in particular are vulnerable to imagining people from non-Western cultures as paragons of virtue, whose actions and motives cannot be questioned and to whom Westerners owe deference and a transfer of rights and benefits that would never be considered for a fellow Westerner living by the rules of our society. Such behavior ends up not only being unjust to the individuals involved; it undermines the integrity of society and builds righteous resentment against the newcomers who arrive on our shores.
Progressives in particular are vulnerable to imagining people from non-Western cultures as paragons of virtue, whose actions and motives cannot be questioned and to whom Westerners owe deference and a transfer of rights and benefits that would never be considered for a fellow Westerner living by the rules of our society.
I learned just how toxic the progressive Cool-Aid can be over the last few years. Thirty years after my mother’s divorce, my father in his mid-eighties had begun to succumb to the effects of old age. His lifestyle living off government programs and grifting those around him had begun to break down from a combination of hoarding, failure to maintain his home, and the gradual loss of ability to pull off the successful con. Public servants from Loudon County’s even more-crazy neighbor, Fairfax, had begged me to become guardian and conservator for the old grifter by having him declared mentally incapacitated. While placement in a mental health facility would have been more appropriate in this case, progressive mythology about the mentally ill never allows a medical diagnosis to interfere with their ideological imperative to afford individuals rights that they have demonstrated they cannot exercise appropriately. (Yes, officials in the safety office of Fairfax County Public Schools actually claimed that being mentally incapacitated should not be cause for discriminating against someone seeking to be a substitute teacher in a K-12 school!) The court found my father mentally incapacitated with my being appointed guardian and conservator despite my living 1500 miles away.
The county’s rules for guardians and conservators are quite clear. Our duty is to ensure that the best interests of the vulnerable adult in our charge are served in terms of healthcare, nutrition, activities and housing while also trying to align with the wishes of the ward. Guardians/conservators are very tightly regulated by the court and social services agencies. We are required to file annual financial accountings accurate to the penny, a standard no government agency fulfills, and we are subject to oversight by Adult Protective Services (APS) to ensure that the vulnerable adult is not taken advantage of while being given as much of the freedom of a normal citizen as possible. Sadly, the county that asks us to step up into these roles treats us as if we are predators seeking to take advantage of those under our care on the one hand, while having no problem expecting us to serve as on call staff for THEIR demands. Guardians/conservators cannot even quit without the court’s permission. This complicated my life enormously as I tried to manage his affairs, because greater DC is run by liberal Democrats, who believe that they can repeal reality whenever it conflicts with their “values.”
In the case of my physically healthy and mobile but non-compliant sociopathic father, with limited financial resources and a propensity for hoarding, I had to move him to a one-bedroom condo with strict financial controls. This conflicted with the old man’s desire to live the life of Jeffrey Epstein with a panoply of attractive young female servants to attend to all his needs, from cooking and cleaning to personal hygiene and other “intimate services.” Despite massive efforts, my father had never been able to find anyone willing to fulfill this role since my mother’s departure in the late 70s and was still more than capable of managing his day-to-day needs.
A serious case of appendicitis shortly after moving to the condo required me to hire in-home staffing for my father’s recovery, service quickly cut short because the old man was so hostile to the caregivers. Between blatant racist and sexist conduct, constantly calling police to remove the caregivers and claims that they were stealing from him, outside agencies soon refused to provide staff. Left to his own devices, conditions in the condo grew more cluttered and unsanitary over time. APS preference in the matter was to press for a live-in caregiver, despite the failure of such efforts in the past. My own attempts to clean up the residence were continually stymied by having the police called on me by my father for “stealing his stuff.” Despite the clear need for intervention and the paperwork demonstrating my legal status as guardian/conservator, the police always deferred to the old man’s preference, preventing me from taking action. The last such attempt occurred in May 2019.
Trying to remove a squatter, who came to the country illegally, from the apartment of a vulnerable senior on whom she is preying is no easy task when law enforcement has gone progressive.
In mid-June I received a call from my father excited that he now had a roommate – a woman he called Morocco, who was going to be living in his bedroom and would cook and clean for him. Upon questioning, he said that she was 32-year-old Palestinian divorcee but did not actually know her name. I pointed out to him that the rules of the condo do not allow him to have a roommate, especially someone who has in no way been vetted. When asked how she came to be in his apartment, my father claimed the Indian woman from the county had sent her. (The APS social worker assigned to this case is of South Asian descent.) Being off site, there was no immediate action I could take to address the issue.
As was easily predictable, a few days later I received a call from police saying that my father had called wanting the woman trespassing in his condo removed. The police had REFUSED his request, saying that the woman claimed to be a caregiver. I informed the police that she was NOT a caregiver, her presence was indeed unauthorized, and she should be removed. The police took no action though they did at least provide the woman’s name. I was eventually able to speak to the woman on my father’s phone. She again claimed she was a caregiver but did not offer any credentials, indicate what agency she worked for, or who had arranged for her to come to my father’s condo. She kept insisting that she was a good Muslim, and that Muslims should help each other. I told her that I was NOT a Muslim and that my father could not be trusted to behave properly, that it was unwise for her to be with him there, and she should leave for her own sake. She refused.
Over time this woman’s true intentions became clear. Not only did she refuse to leave when the old man and the guardian/conservator said she needed to, she claimed she had a “right” to live there. My father the con man had gotten well and truly conned by this woman, an “undocumented migrant” in the Progressive Newspeak of our times, whose goal was to marry an older American, get his property and citizenship, bring her 14 siblings to America and then…well, accidents happen.
With the same police who were glad to ask me to leave at my father’s request in May now refusing to remove this woman on both his and my requests in June, I reached out to APS for their assistance. APS exists to ensure that vulnerable adults are not exploited, which this woman clearly was doing, while creating an unsafe situation for the 92-year-old man. Not only did APS refuse to take any action to assist in the woman’s removal, it staunchly defended her “right” to live there! APS even claimed to have visited the condo and said the woman had cleaned things up and my father should be happy to have her there! I finally had to evict the trespasser myself.
Well, try to, anyway. Trying to remove a squatter, who came to the country illegally, from the apartment of a vulnerable senior on whom she is preying is no easy task when law enforcement has gone progressive. So, in order for her to finally leave, I had to go through the eviction process, twice! In the week leading up to the first eviction attempt in October, the illegal alien predator clearly began to get worried. At 32, she demanded that my 92-year-old father marry her immediately to avoid the eviction. He refused, saying he would never marry a divorced woman such as her, as she is like a “used car.” (It can sometimes be amusing to see how Muslim men and women approach marriage! My father immigrated from Iran many decades ago yet retains a great many attitudes that are – shall we say? – Islamic.) The woman, offended by his response, lashed out and stabbed him! The police were called – and still would not remove her! In fear, my father fled to a police station.
The police called me and directed me to find alternate housing for my father. I refused, saying the woman who assaulted him had no business being in the condo, her eviction hearing was literally the next morning, and the fact that she assaulted my father, as shown by the police report, indicated that she should be removed just as any abusive spouse or roommate would be removed. If she has a “claim” of residence, let her make it in court. The police STILL refused to remove her and took my father to his elderly sister’s residence, over both my and his sister’s objections. The next day, the trespasser did not show up in court to contest the eviction with my lawyer. The eviction notice should therefore have been filed and acted upon after the two-week period for an appeal had expired.
The judge was literally establishing a RIGHT for this illegal alien, who had also illegally taken up residence in my father’s condo and then assaulted him, to live in the condo of a vulnerable adult against his and his guardian’s will.
Two weeks after the court date, the lawyer I had hired went to check if the eviction could proceed. We were dismayed to learn that the judge had REJECTED the eviction, claiming that no “lease” had been attached to the court papers. The judge was literally establishing a RIGHT for this illegal alien, who had also illegally taken up residence in my father’s condo and then assaulted him, to live in the condo of a vulnerable adult against his and his guardian’s will. We had to appeal the ruling in front of a different judge with me present before the eviction was successful. The process took 6 months and forced me to lose 4 months of work due to the constant disruptions.
The damage done to the condo was terrible with the apartment now infested with both cockroaches and bed bugs. After I had cleaned out the belongings, it took a professional commercial and residential restoration service three days to restore the ONE-BEDROOM condo to habitability. From detailed imagery of the condo before and after the arrival of the illegal immigrant, it is clear that she never cleaned anything. Even the cleaning supplies I had purchased for use in May remained in the unit unused.
The kitchen and living room allegedly cleaned by my father’s “roommate.”
So, what happened to the illegal immigrant? Once condo management was aware of her, they discovered she had victimized two other elderly residents of the complex in this same way before my father, and they were now on guard looking out for her. Law enforcement made no effort to locate her before she finds her next victim.
What about Adult Protective Services? After the agency refused to assist in removing the intruder, they remained quiet until January when they began an inquiry into unsanitary conditions in the condo – conditions that had been rectified the month before, following the second eviction.
One might ask why Fairfax police would act in such a bizarre fashion toward the illegal alien given their mandate to protect vulnerable adults and their clear willingness to act against the legal guardian. While this drama was playing out, FOX News’ Tucker Carlson reported that a Fairfax police officer stopped a driver for running a stop sign. The officer discovered the man was in the country illegally and had an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detainer on file. (A detainer is a request from ICE to local enforcement agencies asking the local agency to hold that person for an extra amount of time so ICE can facilitate their deportation. There is no legal requirement for the local agency to respond to the request.) The officer called ICE asking if they wanted the man and ICE came and took him into custody. The Fairfax County Police Chief threw his own officer under the bus, outraged that one of his own had acted against department policy NOT to work with ICE and clearly agonizing over what would happen to the illegal alien and possible separation from his family. Now it all makes sense. The progressive politics of Fairfax County persist because of the 70+ percent of voters who endorse such policies every time they pull the Democrat lever.
Meanwhile, back home in Minnesota, ground zero for Black (Thug) Lives Matter attacks on law enforcement, things are also getting interesting. But that’s a story for another day. Is there hope for Western civilization with such progressive policies? I find consolation in the astonishing fact that, despite all the Woke nonsense that they are bombarded with daily from so many sources, the young people I’ve been teaching in this small college town still seem to have a lot of common sense! Some of these students are training to be police officers and/or serve in the National Guard. Their moral clarity is not obscured by progressive smog. The Metamorphosis is not complete – nor inevitable. 