General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
Three Florida children were caught a week ago in the alleged planning stages of a school shooting incident such as at Columbine. The three thirteen year olds were reportedly arrested yesterday for conspiracy to commit murder, a felony.
The plot was uncovered through electronics: text messages, webpages, etc.
According to her sister, one of the kids tried to commit suicide a few days earlier, over her boyfriend’s breakup with her.
All three teens’ mental health was evaluated under Florida’s Baker Act.
The alleged ringleader was angry over being teased by peers. Although he was angry at two particular students, he posted on a website that he wanted to kill as many students as possible - and then themselves.
It has not yet been announced whether the teenagers will be tried as juveniles or adults.
Read more in this Daytona Beach News Journal article - Police: 3 DeLand school teens plotted murder and this Orlando Sentinel article: Fla. 7th-grader arrested for planning school shooting.
The Florida Department of Children and Families receives about 1,000 reports of abuse per month in Lee County that must be investigated.
Investigations must begin within twenty-four hours, three if a child is believed to be in imminent danger.
An investigation takes at least 4 hours of interviews with the child, the person reporting the abuse, family members, neighbors, teachers, etc.
Investigators typically investigate two reports per day.
Background checks of every adult in the home are par for the course.
Investigators are college-educated and receive ten weeks of training plus substantial oversight and mentoring.
And still children die of abuse or neglect.
One six year old child recently died - after three separate reports of abuse, including one from his school.
DCF investigated but concluded that the child was not at risk and, later, at low risk.
That child was later killed by his stepfather, who now faces criminal charges.
Too little, too late.
Read more in this News-Press guest editorial: DCF needs community’s help protecting children and this WXTX Fox 4 News Team Coverage piece: Jenkins Case File.
When children are taken into foster care due to alleged abandonment, abuse or neglect, it sets in motion a series of events, including various hearings in juvenile dependency court.
Juvenile dependency court is unlike any other court.
Many of the families of removed children are indigent. Parents attorneys’ and children’s attorneys are typically court-appointed. They handle hundreds of cases per year.
They barely know their clients, let alone the parents and the family’s circumstances.
Yet these overburdened court-appointed attorneys are the just about the only thing standing between children - and removal from their parents and families.
The courts don’t allow much time for parents to defend return of children to their families. In California, sometimes just five minutes or less.
That’s all the time a judge has to get the facts and determine the best outcome. Informed only by attorneys and case workers who have inadequate time and too large caseloads to sort out the truth and come up with solutions.
And so children are removed from their homes … whether or not they should be …
Read horror story after horror story in this troubling Mercury News article: How rushed justice fails our kids - BROKEN FAMILIES, BROKEN COURTS: A MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION.
A Tennessee husband was just granted a divorce and shared custody of his kids under unusual circumstances. His wife was not present.
She, allegedly struggling with a drinking problem, had an affair with her 17 year old student, after having another affair with a woman. Her own family described her as “troubled”.
She would reportedly lock herself in her bathroom and drink, go into rages against her husband and even her children, eventually abusing one of her kids for revealing details of her affair.
The husband is charged with killing the teenager involved in the affair.
The wife is said to have absconded with their children months ago.
The Tennessee court has appointed an attorney ad litem and a guardian ad litem to search for and make recommendations for the best interests of the couple’s boys.
Every divorce is unique. And some are more complicated than others.
And some cases put judges in the unenviable position of having to make very difficult decisions.
Read more in these Knoxville News Sentinel articles: McLean granted divorce - Judge orders attorney to search for children of slaying suspect and Judge grants McLean divorce, orders search for children.
A four year old Pennsylvania girl is the subject of an order awarding joint, rotating custody of her. The child will move from one custodian to another every seven days.
Not typical, but not unheard of either.
What is unusual is who the alternating custodians are: the child’s two maternal grandmothers.
The little girl’s father murdered her mother and then himself in the middle of their own custody battle, leaving the child an orphan.
The grandmothers settled on this custody arrangement in the middle of a custody trial. They also agreed that one grandfather, a Florida resident, would have visitation rights and be permitted to participate in the little girl’s therapy sessions.
The arrangement may need to be modified when the child starts school in a year. But, at least until that time, the two grandmothers share parental responsibility.
Read more in this Lockhaven [PA] Express article: Joint custody of 4-year-old to continue.
The Arizona Daily Star brought a lawsuit to compel Arizona’s Child Protective Services (CPS) to disclose records in two cases culminating in the deaths of three children.
In Arizona, as in many states, including Florida, juvenile dependency cases are sealed and confidential.
The problem with that is that it all but eliminates oversight by the legislature and accountability to the public.
When there are deaths or near-deaths of children, some Arizona legislators believe that records should have to be turned over to anyone making a request for them, unless disclosure would impede an investigation. Legislation to implement that policy is pending in Arizona.
More pending legislation would
Notwithstanding opening of hearings, the proposed legislation prohibits disclosing personal identifying information about children outside the courtroom.
Some legislators fear that too much information will be made public - and haunt the children involved.
Read more in this Arizona Daily Star article: House discusses opening some CPS files.
It is not uncommon for a parent to ask how far they may go in punishing a rebellious, defiant child - what therapists often call an “oppositional” child.
For example, a NYC Father beat his 7 year old stepchild (Child) as physical punishment for her misbehavior.
Child dies as a result of latest beating.
Father is charged in the Child’s death.
But is it murder?
Is it even illegal?
Physical discipline as such is not illegal in most states.
What type of physical punishment crosses beyond discipline, to abuse that might lead to the state taking your child away from you - or to abuse that might lead to criminal sentencing?
Many parents expect there to be a firm standard they can look to. But, surprisingly enough, the law in many states doesn’t offer clear guidelines, what lawyers call bright lines.
The Constitution protects a parent’s right to parent in the way that the parent thinks best and legislators are reluctant to make hard and fast rules as to what is acceptable or unacceptable.
So both the civil and criminal cases vary quite a bit from case to case and are not always consistent or reconcilable.
What’s a parent to do? Tread carefully may be a prudent rule of thumb.
Read more in this New York Times article: Murder Case Tests Limits on Parents’ Right to Hit.
Juvenile detention costs New York City taxpayers $200,000 per year per youth. In dollars.
There are other, social costs. Juvenile detention may be viewed as the proverbial fork in the road, where young people are more likely to veer off on the path toward a life of repeat offender crimes.
The alternative to juvenile detention, community-based counseling and probation programs, costs substantially less. In dollars. And in social costs. It reduces recidivism.
But New York State’s policies incentivize confining youths in juvenile detention centers rather than community programs. To the tune of reimbursing the city fifty (50%) percent of the costs of detention.
Reimbursement of community-based programs? A whopping zero (0%) percent. Zip.
What’s wrong with that picture for our children?
What has Florida’s juvenile justice system learned from studies such as this?
What can it still learn from its juvenile justice system as laboratory?
Read more in this New York Times editorial: Juvenile Detention Trap.
Florida Baby’s biological mother is incarcerated for trafficking in narcotics and prostitution.
Baby’s biological father left the state when Baby was just three weeks old.
Baby was placed in foster care with a loving family, the only family she has since known.
Baby is now four.
Foster family continues to want to adopt Baby.
But, now, biological father, long absent, returns, out of the blue, to assert his right to take Baby to his new home in California.
It was recommended some time ago that social services terminate the biological father’s parental rights, to free the child up for adoption to her loving foster family.
Only it never happened, let alone in a timely fashion. Had it happened, the courthouse door would most likely have slammed in biological father’s face.
What is particularly sad in this case is that the foster family could have - and undoubtedly would have - asked the Court themselves to terminate the biological father’s parental rights - if they had only known that they had that power and right.
But no one ever told them … until it was too late.
Meanwhile, the biological father is allegedly still battling substance abuse problems of his own, even as the Court appears to be ordering reunification.
But the biological father has rights.
And, according to the family courts, Baby apparently doesn’t.
Read more in this Orlando Sentinel article: Orlando-area family faces losing foster child.
A journalist for the Miami Herald observes that Miami-Dade’s family court is loaded with courtroom dramas.
The court processes some 4,500 child custody cases a year, most of them in its juvenile dependency division.
Those aren’t divorce or paternity cases. They’re cases where children are abandoned, abused or neglected, by one or both parents. So the state must intervene.
The children will typically be placed with extended family for a time or in foster care.
Cases can be very complex. As one court bailiff opines, ‘’[w]hen it’s just two parents who don’t like one another, a lot of times those are the easy ones”. That’s typical of family court.
Juvenile dependency court can be another can of worms entirely. There the mission is to educate parents who may not know on how to parent, and to assist them with the challenges that get in their way. Cases can continue for quite some time.
Twenty percent of the children involved are under the age of one year old. Thirty-three percent are under the age of five years old.
Read more in this Miami Herald article: Dramas large and small play out in family court.
| Listen to Janet |
See if the nonprofit Association against Hidden Family Abuse, Inc. can help you or someone you care about.