CHILD CUSTODY SAFEGUARDS ARE URGENTLY NEEDED | EDITORIAL

Barred by a Florida family court judge from almost all contact with her mother, and terrified of the father the judge sent her to live with, Mia Ward, 15, was in a hospital waiting room when a security guard approached.

“I’m going to keep you safe,” she recalls him saying.

That was the state of Florida’s job. It failed.

A judge in a dependency court hearing can permanently extinguish a parent’s legal and familial connection with a child, a decision sometimes referred to as a “death sentence” for its severity and permanence.

But family court judges overseeing child custody cases are effectively handing out the equivalent of family death sentences, too.

A months-long investigation

As Sun Sentinel reporter Shira Moolten detailed in the newspaper’s months-long investigation, family court judges are barring parents from contact with their children for years at a time, and with none of the safeguards built into dependency court hearings.

There is no real difference between a dependency court ruling terminating parental rights, including the right to contact the child, and a family court custody ruling that keeps a parent from seeing or talking to a child for extended periods of time.

And while the dependency judge’s decision is permanent, the family court judge’s decision can be indefinite.

Dependency courts most often involve children who have been removed from parents because they were neglected, abandoned or maltreated. However, if a family court judge truly believes a parent is so flawed that he or she can have no contact with their child for years at a time, then the parent should obviously be in a dependency hearing, where all of the issues involving parenting can be judged with input from multiple sources.

Florida dependency courts have their own challenges. But because removal is so profound, the hurdles to accomplish it are significant.

First, dependency courts abide by a last-resort principle. They permanently sever a parent from a child only when all other alternatives are exhausted, and the agency seeking termination must meet a higher legal standard of “clear and convincing evidence.”

There is a right to free and effective legal counsel for parents who cannot afford it. The same multiple legal guardrails aren’t present in extended custody battles.

Systemic deficiencies

Some of the problems that Moolten’s reporting identified are systemic.

For instance, crowded court dockets can leave judges more reliant on the assessments of a court-appointed guardian ad litem, who represents the child’s interests.

But there is no requirement for a guardian ad litem to have a specialized skill in interviewing children, including children who may have been abused, or related training, such as social work or psychology.

Both issues could both be addressed by the Legislature through laws creating new judgeships and requirements for specific training for guardian ad litems.

Case studies

Judges need training, too. The attitudes expressed by family court judges stripping parents of their rights are indefensible.

A mother who said her ex-boyfriend strangled her in the hospital while she was holding their newborn was called “spoiled” by a judge.

He sent the child to live with the father. When another mother asked a judge why she was barred from contacting her son, the judge replied: “Because I said so.”

One judge cited a mother for making faces in his courtroom when deciding to sever contact; she said she was trying not to cry. Children’s reports of abuse were dismissed. Mothers who reported were punished.

None of those mothers were found to have abused or neglected their children. It didn’t matter. They still lost their right to be involved in their children’s lives.

No child or parent should be forced to endure years without meaningful contact unless that parent clearly fails to meet standards set by a dependency court.

No family court judge should be allowed to do an end-run around Florida’s dependency courts and effectively terminate parental rights.

If they can’t or won’t stop misusing the power of the bench they were elected to, voters should replace them when given the chance.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.