Artist Pat Lloyd, the divorced mother of three who refused to plead guilty to charges of child abuse brought by the State Dept. of Children & Families (DCF) and the State Attorney's Office, went on trial Tuesday. But after only two hours of testimony, Judge Mark Jones abruptly stopped the trial and recused himself.
"He didn't give us a reason," Lloyd said Wednesday. "He just quit."
Earlier in the day, Lloyd had fired her court-appointed lawyer and retained Michael Barnes, who was the winning attorney in the now-famous Nowatney case.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The DCF and the State Attorney's Office accused Nick and Carrie Nowatney of child abuse, took their two young children and held them in foster homes for 200 days before Judge Jones threw the case out of court without even hearing all the testimony.
"In pre-trial hearings and meetings, both the judge and my court-appointed attorney had pushed me hard to plead guilty," Lloyd said. "But I couldn't plead guilty to something I didn't do."
Lloyd has two sons, 15 and 11, and a 7-year-old daughter.
She said the state's first witness Tuesday was Karla Buzzell, the DCF's chief investigator here.
"She testified that I had abandoned my 15-year-old," Lloyd said. "But her testimony broke down under Mr. Barnes' cross-examination. Also, she could not provide even one example of how I might have abused my younger children. They just didn't have a case.
"Listening to Ms. Buzzel's testimony, I couldn't help but wonder why I was sitting there in that courtroom," Lloyd said. "Apparently, the judge was thinking the same thing."
The DCF started getting involved in Pat Lloyd's life right after her divorce in 1997.
"My ex-husband began harassing me by calling the child abuse hotline long distance and making false charges against me," she said. "Each time— maybe 20 times overall— the DCF investigated and determined that his charges were unfounded.
"But nobody seemed to care that the guy making the calls was thousands of dollars behind in his child support payments.
"Ironically, the DCF people themselves have documented that I am a good mother."
But last year, Lloyd started having trouble controlling her 15-year-old son.
"He was staying out late, refusing to go to school and he was abusive to me. When he got in trouble at school, he was sent to the Children's Shelter— but he got in trouble there, too," she said.
"I even sent him to live with his father in California. But his father sent him back. And he continued to get into trouble. I needed help," Lloyd said. "So I went to the Dept. of Children & Families. I thought that's what they do— provide help for children and families.
"But, incredibly, they told me that they don't offer any help for families with out-of-control children. A woman there whose son had been in prison told me that I would just have to suffer with my son, as she had suffered with hers. But they did tell me that they could put my son in foster care and get him some counseling— if I would stipulate that I was an unfit mother," Lloyd said.
"I couldn't do that! I'm a good mother and everybody who knows me knows that I'm a good mother. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't leave my kids home alone. Why would they want to try to make me say that I'm not a good mother?
"One morning, my son was particularly abusive to me. He even punched a hole in a door," she said. "Concerned for my safety, I called the Sheriff's Office. A deputy arrived and took my son to the DCF offices.
"Two weeks later, the DCF charged me with `abandoning' my son and a custody hearing was set.
"Meanwhile, they placed him with two gay men for foster care. When I protested that arrangement as inappropriate, a woman in the State Attorney's Office told me that if I didn't like it, I should call Key West The Newspaper.
"So I did," Lloyd said.
DCF officials then included Lloyd's two younger children in their dependency action.
"I was horrified," she said, trying to hold back her tears. "This was beyond my imagination. I went to the DCF for help in keeping my family together. But, rather than helping, they seemed to want to break my family apart.
"But last month," Lloyd said, "it dawned on me why they had suddenly included my two younger children in the case, even though there had been not even a hint that those children have ever been abused or neglected. They called me to a meeting and told me that if I would plead guilty to abusing my older son, they would drop the two younger children back out of the case.
"I learned later that this is what the State Attorney and the DCF do— pile on the charges and, then, offer to drop some of them in return for a guilty plea to one or more of the other charges.
"When I refused to accept that plea bargain offer, they came to trial and told the judge that they wanted to declare all three of my children dependents of the state," Lloyd said. "But, of course, they didn't have a case— and it was obvious.
"That's when Judge Jones stopped the trial."