As a father who's been trying to protect his child from the child's mother who has threatened her child's life and is clearly delusional, it is the syatem, and the people within the system. I've spent an inordinate amount of money, just to keep my ex from potentially killing our child. However, the law states that people have a right to be crazy and raise a child even if they're crazy and untreated. This is often very dangerous to the children. As well, our legal system assumes that if you're a man, you're a scumbag unless proven otherwise, and even then, it assumes you're only less of a scumbag. There is a VERY strong bias for the mother. And mental health professionals won't commit to anything, but are happy to jump in with diagnosis after the tragedy has occured.
Form what I've been through, I am no longer surprised that tragedies such as this, Andrea Yates, Susan Smith occur. Our laws are rediculous, there's incredible bias in the system, and most of the people you find in the mental health community are spineless. Luckinly there are a few judges out there who know children are helpless victims and deserve to be protected, and therefore work the system as best they can.
The first thng that needss to be done though is that the laws have to change. The current laws view the crazy person as the victim, as opposed to the crazy person's family, friends, colleagues and community. There are far to many cases showing proof that we are the true victims, and children should have more of a right ot be protected that the insane person should have the right to remain insane and untreated.
Did the System Fail?
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But they went out there quite a bit—nine times. How could that happen?
There were numerous reports made over the course of several years. I think there was some domestic violence in that family, which would certainly generate a report—and which would have nothing to do with how the mother was caring for the child. Knowing the cases we have here, you could go out there for different reasons at different times and not necessarily see anything that's so glaring that you're going to decide the kids are in imminent danger and need be pulled from their home. So if a worker goes out, the report may be that the mom left the children alone. Well, the reality may be that mom ran down to the basement to do the laundry and didn't really leave the kids alone. And based on the statutes CPS is bound to go by, that's not a neglectful parent. The difficulty comes—what do we do with these families about whom we get chronic reports? I think that's worthy of looking at, as a community.
Any specific ideas on what to do?
I think we can coordinate around these cases everywhere. It's not an issue just for Nassau County by any stretch of the imagination. But it requires resources. It requires people to be able to do the work with at-risk families. And it requires families to be open to wanting help. From my vantage point, there's no easy fix.
Is a lack of funding at all responsible for that?
Those of us doing this work are always struggling for resources, so yes, it would be great to have more CPS workers and organizations well funded to handle families in crisis. It takes a great deal of intervention to get through to some of these families who have historic issues of abuse and neglect. It's not just one parent suddenly abusing children. It's a cycle of abuse.
Which specific links in the chain should be singled out for improvement?
[We should] look more at the chronic cases coming through, who are being called in on a regular basis over the years, being reported numerous times. We could go out there and not see anything glaring, but [we should still ask], what does this mean? There must be something going on here.
Should anything be done at the legislative level? Should laws be changed?
You know, there's a piece of me that says I would love to see the bar raised in terms of what we require as a standard of care for children, but I'm also realistic enough to know that that requires a great deal of resources. If we have parents who aren't meeting this minimal standard now, what would we have to do to get them to meet a higher standard? So it is about resources. If we don't take care of the parents, we can't take care of the kids. But we've got mental health issues, drug and alcohol issues, chronic histories of abuse and neglect that happened to the parents—so you're not talking about one level of intervention, you're talking about numerous systems that have to be in place and be supported.
Could the bias toward giving mothers custody have been a problem?
I don't think we have all the facts that were in front of the judge making that custody decision, or in front of that CPS worker making those decisions. And families are very good at hiding the things going on in their lives. So, do mothers end up with their kids more often than men? Yes. But I would hate to say that in this case, it was an error. It is so gray, all of these areas. I know the public would like it to be black and white, but it's never black and white.
Discuss