GA: Judges case shows how inconsistent DFCS is

GUEST COLUMN

Hickson case shows system is inconsistent

By RICHARD WEXLER






Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child
Protection Reform.




Judge Nina Hickson has recused herself from handling cases of child abuse,
neglect and adoption.

Forum:
• Was the Judge Nina Hickson case handled fairly?





Below are two "crimes" and two "punishments." Can you correctly match the
punishment to the crime?
•Grandma screams at her 13-year-old granddaughter. She calls the teen vulgar
names and threatens to beat her. There is no evidence that Grandma did beat the
teen -- then, or ever.

•Mom thinks her 4-year-old is asleep, so she dashes out of the house to run a
quick errand. But the girl wakes up, gets out of the house and is found
wandering on the street around midnight.

Now, the sanctions:

One caretaker serves no jail time and does not lose custody of her child. The
other serves more than two weeks in jail. The child and her siblings are
separated from the caretaker for more than a year and placed with another
relative.

Of course, the caretaker who left the child home alone -- a far more dangerous
mistake than a verbal tirade -- happens to be Fulton County Juvenile Court
Judge Nina Hickson. She's middle class. She's someone like us. So we can
identify with her, and agree with Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page
editor Cynthia Tucker when she writes that "many parents have probably made
similar reckless decisions without dire consequences" ("Take away judge's
title, not her child," @issue, Jan. 7).

But Grandma's not a judge. She's not like us. So her grandchildren lose their
grandmother for a year, and no columnist comes to Grandma's defense.

Tucker writes of Hickson's case that "courts rarely remove a child under such
circumstances." But courts don't make the initial decision. Agencies such as
the Department of Family and Children Services do. They can take children on
their own authority and hold them for several days before even the most
perfunctory court hearing.

And in most of the country, it is common to take away a young child found
wandering the streets late at night, at least until the first full-scale court
hearing -- provided, of course, Mom is not a judge.

A few years ago in Augusta, a 3-year-old was taken from his mother because he
got out of the house and wondered over to a playground at 3 a.m. -- while his
mother slept.

And children always are taken if they're left home alone and tragedy strikes --
an irrational distinction best described as the Rule of Fate. The children are
taken even when the parent left them only because she was desperate to keep a
night-shift job and couldn't find a sitter -- not to run a purely discretionary
errand.

We need consistency. But in which direction?

The paradox of the Hickson case is that DFCS did the right thing, though
probably for the wrong reason.

When the agency declined to confiscate the judge's child it spared that child
enormous, unnecessary suffering. For a 4-year-old child, being taken from her
mother and thrown in with strangers -- or even another relative -- can be an
experience akin to a kidnapping.

But being taken from a parent -- or grandparent -- also generally is a lot more
traumatic than being yelled at. What Grandma did certainly was harmful, and she
clearly needed help. But that help could have been provided without risking
trauma to the grandchildren by taking them from the home.

Foster homes are filled with children like these. They're taken because workers
are terrified to do anything else because of what will happen to their careers
if they leave any child at home and the child subsequently is harmed. It's a
fear shared by many judges.

But there is one judge who may see things a bit differently now. One judge
probably has a new understanding of human fallibility.

I'll bet Hickson has a new appreciation for the fact that leaving a very young
child home alone in order to run an errand is very, very dumb. I'm sure she
also knows that launching a verbal tirade against a teenage granddaughter is
dumb. But I'll bet she also knows this: Taking away children on these grounds
is a whole lot dumber.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child
Protection Reform.








Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/o...08hickson.html


EMAIL THIS | Close


DESCRIPTORS; DFACS, CPS, CHILD PROTECTIVE, GRANDPARENT, CHILD ABUSE, JUDICIAL
MISCONDUCT, RECUSAL, YELLING, KINSHIP CARE, ADOPTION