By Deacon Mike Manno
(The
Wanderer) – One of the issues that I’ve been watching closely during
the run-up to the mid-term elections had to do with children, their schooling,
what happened to close the schools for so long, and how public schools and the
teachers’ unions have reacted to, and possibly encouraged, young people in
their care to consider transgenderism.
In fact, while my radio program has been on the air for
over six years, I think we have spent more air time on this topic in the last
six months than in all of our previous air times put together. When we started,
parental complaints and legal fights were usually over something we would
consider mundane by today’s standards, for we have gone from kids being told
they cannot pray over their food at lunch to after school drag-queen programs,
Trans closets, new pronouns — but remember, don’t tell your parents. And of
course, the renegade teacher that does let the secret out of the bag gets fired
and has her teaching career blackballed.
As they say, we’ve come a long way, baby. Unfortunately, long
or short, it’s the wrong way.
And we’ve been trying to warn parents, who are now starting
to fight back against school boards and teachers’ unions who consider your kids
their property to influence at will, in spite of the threat of being criminally
investigated by the corrupt Biden administration and their fellow-travelers in
the Department of Justice.
So, I just saw a new case about a child taken from
his/her/its (hard to know anymore) parents for not accepting the young man’s
(yes, that is how he was born) delusion that he should be a girl. Now this is
not the first case of this sort in which a family trying to deal with this
“mess” has lost custody, or even parental rights, over their unwillingness to
“accept” a teenager’s decision to make the change.
Reading the case I was reminded of my early days practicing
juvenile law, and how children and parents were treated in the system.
In that system there are three parties, or camps, if you
will. The first are the children who, for whatever reason need — or so it is
thought — the protection of the state. They are usually represented by
court-appointed attorneys familiar with juvenile law and known by the judge to
be at least somewhat competent. The second camp includes the parents whose
actions have somehow raised some questions about their parenting ability. The
third group includes the social workers from social services who investigate
and with state attorneys present their findings to the court for adjudication.
The key player in this contest are the social workers from
the state social service agencies. Their lawyers follow their lead and respond
as any lawyer would to a client’s requests or demands. Sometimes they are able
to talk sense into them when they are clearly wrong, but most of the time they dutifully
follow the company line.
The next key player is the judge who is supposed to be
neutral. But when the he-said, she-said conflicts surface in the court
proceedings, the judges will, like their counterparts in criminal law who tend
to believe the police, tend to rely on the social worker.
Thus I’ve seen some pretty questionable conduct from that camp.
Now I’m sure things have gotten better, and I know and get
along with several social service workers, and would trust them with my
reputation, but when I started many of those workers were opinionated and
tended to jump to conclusions without giving any thought to the other side.
Thus they would receive a complaint, meet with a child at school, make a
decision and mom or dad were consulted only after a decision had been made.
In my later years doing this, perhaps because I became more
experienced, the social workers would often ask me for my recommendations and
we could sit down and dissect the facts and often come to a reasonable outcome
that was satisfactory to each camp. Those social workers were invaluable to the
system and worth their weight in gold — or at least chocolate.
What brought these visions of the ghost of courtrooms past
was a case decided by the Court of Appeals in Indiana. The case started out
simply enough, a mother was accused of verbally abusing her then 16-year-old
son. The reason, apparently, was that he wanted to be a she and that did not
sit well with mom who didn’t take the news well.
The child’s demeanor had changed throughout this matter. He
was sullen, tended to isolate himself from others, including his parents, and
changed his dining habits, rarely eating full meals, hiding his food and
throwing it away. The state laid the blame at the feet of the parents who were
ultimately charged with two rather serious counts of child abuse and the child
was removed from the home.
As I read the court’s decision, it appeared that while the
situation was difficult for the parents, they were at least trying to get their
boy-girl some help with counseling and therapy, and social services was
on-board with the plan, although they did have some differences.
The child involved was diagnosed with major depressive
disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, parent/child relationship problems, and
gender dysphoria. The diagnosis was made by a neuro-psychologist. A later
psychologist and sex researcher also reviewed the child’s records and opined
that the child may be suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD)
rather than gender dysphoria, and reported that BPD is associated with eating
disorders not gender dysphoria.
The state (social workers) then offered the family a
compromise. The two charges would be dismissed and all reports expunged from
the record if they would agree with a single third charge which characterized
the child’s abuse as self-inflicted, thus eliminating serious repercussions
against the parents. Everybody, including the child, agreed to that resolution.
Naturally, the parents thought that since they were not responsible for the abuse,
they would regain custody.
Wrong. The state doubled down on their position and
maintained custody which was upheld by the appeals court. What happened here?
What happened is not clear, but the court rejected all the parents’ claims,
especially those related to the dismissed counts, and left standing the custody
order which was birthed from the first set of hearings with those counts, some
of which were based on the parents’ reaction to their child’s gender claims.
Remember, those counts were dismissed and the reports were expunged from the
record. Yet the parents and the child agreed to accepting the third count for a
complete dismissal of the other counts, apparently under the belief that the
child might be returned.
This brings back memories of my go-arounds with state
social workers. My early experience was that oft-times the workers would
befriend the parents, meeting them for lunch for a friendly discussion of the
case. Once the worker had established a certain bond with the parent, promises
were inferred until the next court hearing. Then the situation changed and the
promises turned out to be illusory and things the parents told the worker which
they thought were in confidence were placed, often with some exaggeration, on
the record.
Now I hope this is not the case here, but it does bring up
something I think all parents should understand. When you are dealing with a
public agency that is investigating your family, use extreme caution,
especially nowadays when so many are populated by “woke” employees who are
bound to promote their own agenda over the public good.
Just a word of warning, I’m not suggesting that this
happened here or that any party was operating with malicious intentions, only
that a situation such as this is rife with opportunity for nefarious
manipulation.
(You
can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday on Faith
On Trial at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial.)
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