Saturday, April 12, 2008

So What's a Father to Do?

I've found quite a few websites relating to the struggles parents have had in dependency court. It's certainly understandable how the pain and frustration of the experience leads people to seek a place where they can vent their feelings and maybe figure out a way to either "get back"at the beast that bit them or help others stay out of the meat grinder of the CPS system. One thing that is common to all of these websites is that the parents believe that they have been wronged.

I am wondering whether there are any serious academic studies of dependency court cases. Given that these cases are confidential, any studies would no doubt have to de-identify the parties involved. The first thing it would be interesting to know is just what percent of petitions filed against parents by the state are contested by the parents, and what percent are not. When we had our very first hearing, I wanted to contest the allegations of the petition. I was certain that if my wife and I had the opportunity to explain our side of things, someone in a position of authority would certainly listen to reason, realize that the whole matter was a huge mistake and dismiss it at once.

Boy, was I naive.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Child Protection Reform

After our boys were taken away from us by CPS in 1999, I began to search the Internet for information that might help us to get them back. One of the websites that I found was that of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, www.nccpr.org. That organization advocates for systemic reform to policy makers and legislative bodies but does not deal with individual cases.

A helpful website was created by Suzanne Shell.  After reading it, I purchased a copy of her book, Profane Justice. Although my belief system differs from Suzanne's, I found her practical approach to be very helpful guidance. I was very impressed with her efforts to train family advocates and to proactively let people know what they needed to know in order to protect themselves from systemic abuses.

One thing that most impacted my family's situation was the administrative law flavor of dependency cases. Neither fish nor fowl, dependency court was different from both criminal court and civil court, where, presumably, rules of evidence apply and hearsay can only be admitted under certain exceptions to the exclusionary rule. In dependency court, social workers were free to include whatever they wanted to in their reports, without regard to hearsay.  Not only were inaccuracies and untruths included, many of their written statements were highly objectionable from a legal standpoint.  Nonetheless, those reports were admitted wholesale into evidence.  I found that the court typically accepted whatever the Department of Social Services said as truth, without question.  Thus, once accused in the allegations of a filed petition, parents were treated as guilty until they could prove themselves innocent.

Consequently, the first things I recommend are that the burden of proof be shifted and the standard for proof be changed.  These cases should require the state to prove guilt, and to do so by virtue of the standard of, at a minimum, clear and convincing evidence.  This is NOT just a preponderance of the evidence, but clear and convincing evidence.

Next, the mandated reporter provision in the law regarding the reporting of suspected cases of child abuse and/or neglect needs to be eliminated.  Allowing teachers, coaches, etc. no discretion to make a reasoned assessment before reporting cases to CPS is one of the things that caused us to end up in the meat grinder.  It was all so needless.  Once the ball started rolling, though, there was no way to stop it.

In our case, the injury that lead to our boys being taken away was a black-and-blue mark left behind after an accidental bump on our younger son's forehead.  And even more ridiculously, on that particular morning, we had costumed our son as Thomas Alva Edison, for he was to present a book report on a biography of the inventor.

My wife fashioned a costume that came close to the depiction of Edison on the cover of the book, and I went so far as to put gel in his hair and part it right down the middle, as in the style worn by Edison.  When I did so, it uncovered that black-and-blue mark on his forehead that had otherwise been hidden by the straight hair bangs that normally fell down to his eyebrows.


Now, I ask:  would I -- or would anyone -- have done such a thing if they had any inkling that they might be accused of child abuse?

For all of you out there who either are parents or were once a child yourself (and I hope that covers everyone!), I must ask whether you or your child ever bumped your head by accident.  Let me see a show of hands, please.  O.K, looks like about half of you, if not slightly more. So if a child has a bump on his head, should teachers be mandated to report that to CPS or should they be allowed the discretion to try to find out what happened?

I am convinced that had we been given the opportunity to meet with the mandated reporter, she would have realized that what was suspected child abuse was clearly the result of our son having accidentally bumped his head, an incident that his parents had absolutely nothing to do with.  In fact, our son did not even remember at first how he did it.  Only later did he recall the details of what had happened.  It was entirely innocent and accidental, and no one else was involved.   

That was just the tip of the iceberg for us.  So many other things could have been done to prevent the case from going forward if only some reasonable efforts had been made to do a thorough investigation of our family. I'll go into that topic in a subsequent post.