Disgraced social worker Chelsie Gray cost a family their four children after she lied about their parenting to a judge at Cerro Gordo County District Court, right (Picture: Google Maps)

A disgraced social worker’s lies about a family saw the mother and father lose custody of their four children.

Chelsie Gray, 30, has just struck a plea bargain for perjury nearly two years after the family lost their youngsters because of 10 falsehoods she told a judge.

Gray, from Cerro Gordo County in Iowa, lied that she’d visited the couple every month, and found a scene of neglect on each visit.

She also made false claims that she had spoken to the children’s teachers, and said those adults had expressed grave concerns about troubling behavior displayed by the youngsters.




The youngsters’ teachers later confirmed Gray had never attempted to contact them, the Des Moines Register reported.

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Gray further lied that the mother had tested positive for drugs, and failed to comply with the terms of her probation for an unspecified offense.

During the December 2017 hearing which saw the children taken away, Gray recommended that the judge terminate the youngsters’ parents’ rights.

Her fabrications were uncovered in April 2018 after Cerro Gordo County attorney Nichole Benes noticed discrepancies in Gray’s testimony and reported them.

That court order imposed on the basis of Gray’s false testimony was dismissed by the judge after her lies were exposed, with the children subsequently reunited with her family.

Gray resigned from her job in September 2018, and filed an Alford plea to the perjury charge last week after a judge branded her testimony full of ‘lies and misrepresentations.’

That means prosecutors have sufficient evidence to prove her guilt, but that she maintains her innocence.

She could face up to five years in jail.

But if her plea deal is accepted, a judge will wipe two other felony perjury charges from Gray’s record.

She will also be recommended for a deferred judgement, meaning the charge would be wiped from her record if she stays out of trouble.

Speaking at an earlier court hearing in October 2018, Judge Sauer said: ‘Providing false testimony of any kind is an unfathomable violation of the trust that the people in the State of Iowa place in their public servants and cast a dark and permanent shadow upon all of us.’

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This story was updated after publication to correct the date – April 2018 – that the fabrications were discovered.