Ohio Supreme Court: Rights of Biological Parents ‘Precious and Fundamental’Posted on July 27th, 2010 by Glenn Sacks in All News, Ohio News, US NewsRead 331 times.
The following is an article by Fathers & Families Board Member, Robert Franklin, Esq.:
This case out of the Ohio Supreme Court does little but suggests much (Leagle, 7/22/10). Reading the court’s dicta, i.e. the verbal embroidery with which it decorates its actual holding, fathers’ rights in adoption cases just got a huge boost.Back in July 2005, Susan Tuttle gave birth to a child. She was married to Jeremy Tuttle at the time and his name was placed on the birth certificate. The court’s recitation of facts leaves us to guess at just how and why certain events transpired, but, a month later, DNA testing on the baby had been performed. It showed that Tuttle was not the child’s father; Gary Otten was. Just who asked for the testing to be done is anyone’s guess. Whether Otten requested the testing or whether he even knew it had been done, the court doesn’t tell us.Whatever the case, not surprisingly, Jeremy Tuttle divorced Susan in November of that year. A little over a year later, Gary Otten filed a suit to establish his paternity rights and presumably to get some sort of a custodial order. But then Susan married another man, Kevin Crooks, who filed a petition to adopt the child who was then almost two years old. In order for Crooks to adopt the child, Otten’s parental rights would have had to be terminated by the probate court.At this point, it’s a good idea to recognize an important fact. There are two types of adoptions - stranger adoptions and non-stranger adoptions. Stranger adoptions are the kind most people tend to think about when they think about adoption. They’re the ones in which a couple adopts a child they don’t know, a child, in other words, who is a stranger to them.
Crooks wanted to do the other type of adoption. He knew Susan Tuttle’s child; he was married to Tuttle and wanted to formally recognize his parental relationship with her child and tie himself legally to the child should the pair ever divorce. That’s a non-stranger adoption.
In the United States, there are about 125,000 adoptions completed each year. Of those, about 75,000 are stranger adoptions and about 50,000 are the non-stranger variety.
Why does it matter what kind of adoption this was? If a stranger adoption doesn’t go through, it may well be that the child will have no parents at all, or at best a single parent. The child may sit unnoticed in an orphanage. If a non-stranger adoption doesn’t go through because the biological father asserts his rights, the child will still have two parents - a mother and a father - the same as if it had gone through. From the child’s standpoint, then, nothing is lost by allowing the dad to assert his rights.
When it comes to terminating fathers’ rights, the adoption industry often likes to pretend that all adoptions are alike, and therefore that if we allow the biological dad to prevail, the child will miss out on having two parents. That can be true in a stranger adoption case, but not in a non-stranger one. It’s an important distinction that those who make money off of completed adoptions often prefer to overlook.
Back to the case. The Ohio Supreme Court held that, because Otten is the biological father, Crooks can’t adopt the child (and terminate Otten’s rights) unless he can show that Otten is unfit.
One important thing about that holding is that Otten had never registered with the Ohio Putative Father Registry. So according to that law, he wasn’t entitled to notice of the adoption proceeding. The Court of Appeals held that his failure to register foreclosed his paternity suit. The Supreme Court said that’s not so. Essentially, a biological father who’s asserting his parental rights can stop the adoption of his child whether he’s filed with the Putative Father Registry or not.
It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of the court’s language in this case. First, it focuses on core principles of parental rights - principles long acknowledged but often ignored. For many years now, I’ve written of my astonishment at the U.S. Supreme Court’s calling parental rights “far more precious than property rights” and then approving the most bald-faced deprivations of due process in cases construing the rights of fathers. Significantly, those are often in cases involving putative father registries.
Here’s some of the court’s dicta:
[T]he right of a natural parent to the care and custody of his children is one of the most precious and fundamental in law…
Few consequences of judicial action are so grave as the severance of natural family ties…
[W]e have held that any exception to the requirement of parental consent (to adoption) must be strictly construed so as to protect the right of natural parents to raise and nurture their children.
Finally! Here’s a court that sees the obvious - that the rights of biological fathers have legal importance, and that courts and legislatures must respect them for the welfare of all concerned. Not only that, as important as parental rights are, in termination proceedings, states’ rights are virtually nil until a parent has been proven to be unfit.
the parent’s interest is fundamental but the State has no legitimate interest in termination unless the parent is unfit, and finding that the State’s interest in finding the best home for the child does not arise until the parent has been found unfit.
Second, I believe that the Ohio Supreme Court is signalling a change of direction in adoption matters. That’s because in two instances it cites, not the majority in U.S. Supreme Court cases, but dissents. That suggests to me that Ohio court is ready to break with the past. I believe that it is ready to turn away from the notion, clung to for so long by so many jurisdictions, that any adoption is a good adoption even though it’s unnecessary. When a fit father wants to be a parent to his child, there is no legitimate state interest in denying him his parental rights.
This case can be viewed as extremely limited and many will argue for that reading of it. But courts often prefer to obscure the full impact of important cases. Judges fear being tagged “judicial activist.” Given the language of the case, I would not be surprised to find it holding unconstitutional Ohio’s Putative Father Registry law at some time in the not too distant future. Either that or so limiting its scope as to render it all but impotent.
And let’s not forget that, just last month, right next door in Kentucky the state Supreme Court ruled that biological parents rights were “inherent and equitable.” Here’s my piece on that case. It too suggested a significant expansion of parental rights based solely on biology.
It’s important to understand what this case does not do. Somehow, Otten learned about his child and was able to assert his rights. Thus the case deals only with a father who was able to make a timely claim. This case does little or nothing to protect a father from whom a mother successfully keeps his child. What if Otten had found out he was the father, not a year later, but five years later? Could he have asserted his rights then? The case doesn’t say because that’s not what happened.
Some day, that case will come before the court and it will have an opportunity to decide whether a father’s rights can be prejudiced by the fraud of the mother. That happens frequently in adoption cases as I’ve reported on before. But this is a court that says it respects the rights of biological parents. We’ll see how far that goes.
But remember that Kentucky case. That’s exactly the issue it ruled on and it held that a father who’d been kept in the dark about his paternity until the child was three years old, could not be denied his parental rights.
As Bob Dylan once said, “the times they are a-changin.’”
Robert Franklin, Esq., is a board member of Fathers & Families, America’s largest family court reform organization. To learn more, see www.fathersandfamilies.org.
http://www.bloggernews.net/124988
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Has the Most Common Marijuana Test Resulted in Tens of Thousands of Wrongful Convictions?
Has the Most Common Marijuana Test Resulted in Tens of Thousands of Wrongful Convictions?
More than 800,000 people are arrested on marijuana charges each year in the United States, many on the basis of an error-prone test.
July 28, 2010 |
Raised in Montana and a resident of Alaska for 18 years, Robin Rae Brown, 48, always made time to explore in the wilderness. On March 20, 2009, she parked her pickup truck outside Weston, Florida, and hiked off the beaten path along a remote canal and into the woods to bird watch and commune with nature. “I saw a bobcat and an osprey,” she recalls. “I stopped once in a nice spot beneath a tree, sat down and gave prayers of thanksgiving to God.” For that purpose, Robin had packed a clay bowl and a “smudge stick,” a stalk-like bundle of sage, sweet grass, and lavender that she had bought at an airport gift shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Under the tree, she lit the end of the smudge stick and nestled it inside the bowl. She waved the smoke up toward her heart and over her head and prayed. Spiritual people from many cultures, including Native Americans, consider smoke to be sacred, she told me, and believe that it can carry their prayers to the heavens.
As darkness approached, she returned to her pickup truck to find Broward County’s Deputy Sheriff Dominic Raimondi and Florida Fish and Wildlife’s Lieutenant David Bingham looking inside the cab. The two men asked what she was doing and when she said she had been bird watching, Bingham asked whether she had binoculars. As she opened her knapsack, Officer Raimondi spotted her incense and asked if he could see it. He took the bowl and incense, asking whether it was marijuana. “No,” she recalls saying. “It’s my smudge, which is a blend of sage, sweet grass, and lavender.” “Smells like marijuana to me,” said Raimondi, who admitted he had never heard of a smudge stick. He then ordered Robin to stand by her truck, while he took the incense back to his car and conducted a common field test, known as a Duquenois-Levine, or D-L, test. The result was positive for marijuana.
Robin protested, telling them the smudge was available for purchase online for about $7 and gave them the name of a Web site that sold it — information Officer Bingham used his laptop to verify. But the men still searched her truck. After an hour and a half they finally allowed Robin to go home and told her that if a lab test confirmed the field test results, a warrant would be issued for her arrest.
Exactly 90 days later, Robin was arrested at the spa in Weston, Florida where she has worked as a massage therapist for three years. She was handcuffed in front of clients and co-workers, and charged with felony possession of marijuana. She was brought to a local police precinct in the town of Davie where she was booked and held for three hours. Unable to post the $1,000 bail because she was not allowed to call her boyfriend Michael, she was transferred to the Women’s Correctional Facility in Pompano Beach. At no time was she read her rights.
Five hours after her arrest, she was finally allowed a brief phone call and left a message for Michael to post her bail. At the jail, a female officer came in and told Robin to take off all her clothes. She had already been searched at the precinct station and had her shoes, socks and bra confiscated. “I’m on my period,” she said. “I don’t care,” said the officer, who ordered her to pull her underwear down to her ankles, squat over the floor drain and cough. The following morning at 4:30 a.m. she was released onto the streets of Pompano Beach with no idea where she was.
The next day, Robin found a lab and submitted to voluntary hair and urine tests. These came back clean. She had previously worked for 16 years as a transportation systems specialist with the Federal Aviation Administration, a job that required airport security clearances, so drug tests were nothing new to her. During those years, she was frequently required to pass random drug and alcohol tests.
She later learned that her incense had never been subjected to a confirmatory lab test. She had been arrested and jailed solely on the basis of her positive D-L test results.
The Preferred Test for Marijuana
The Duquenois test was developed in the late 1930s by a French pharmacist, Pierre Duquénois, while he was working for the United Nations division of narcotics. In 1950, he completed a study for the UN which claimed that his test was “very specific” for marijuana; it was adopted by the UN and crime labs around the world as the preferred test for marijuana.
After undergoing several modifications, including the use of chloroform, the test became known as the Duquenois-Levine test, and became widely popular. Though scientists would show in the 1960s and 1970s that the D-L test was nonspecific, meaning it rendered false positives, it remains today the most commonly used test for marijuana — used in many of the 800,000 marijuana arrests that take place each year.
The test is a simple chemical color reagent test, easy to perform but difficult to interpret. To administer the test, a police officer simply has to break a seal on a tiny micropipette of chemicals, and insert a particle of the suspected substance; if the chemicals turn purple, this indicates the possibility of marijuana. But the color variations can be subtle, and readings can vary by examiner.
The field test kits are produced by a variety of manufacturers, the most popular brands being NIK and ODV. Literature about the D-L from NIK’s makers states that it is only a “screening” test that “may or may not yield a valid result” and may produce “false positive results.” Yet, since at least 1990, arresting officers, with the support of prosecutors, have regularly bypassed lab analysts and have purported to identify marijuana at hearings and trials only on the basis of visual inspection and the nonspecific D-L field test. And the manufacturers have taken note.
In 1998, ODV reported in its newsletter with seeming satisfaction that a growing number of police departments were using its D-L field test, marketed as the NarcoPouch, as “their sole method of testing and identifying Marihuana [sic]… To have Officers properly trained in identifying Marijuana and taking the Crime Lab out of the loop is a tremendous cost saving venture for the State…and gives the individual Officers testing the material a greater sense of satisfaction in completing their own cases” (emphasis added). NIK, too, argued that depending exclusively on D-L field tests saves time and money. “Crime laboratories are so busy that drug tests take too long,” NIK states on its website. “With the cooperation of the Prosecuting Attorney, many police agencies have turned to presumptive drug testing. If the results indicate that an illegal substance is present, criminal charges may be filed.
In June 2006, the Virginia legislature went so far as to pass “emergency regulations” permitting law-enforcement officers to testify at trial for simple possession of marijuana cases solely on the basis of a D-L field test. Prior to these regulations, officers had to send suspected material to an approved lab for testing. Nothing in the new legislation specified that the field tests used had to be specific, or even accurate. Frederic Whitehurst, a North Carolina-based defense attorney and former FBI special agent with a doctorate in chemistry, considers the law to be an unconstitutional usurpation of the authority of the courts to determine what test results can be admitted as valid evidence.
The trend toward police officers using the D-L as a confirmatory test has been encouraged by the National Institute of Justice, an agency of the Department of Justice which has funded programs to transform police officers into court experts, based on their use of these faulty field tests. One such ongoing program for the Utah police claims to offer, in four days, “the necessary training” to positively identify marijuana, which would allow officers to serve as “expert witnesses in the courtroom setting.” The program briefly covers the “botany, chemistry and analysis of marijuana preparations,” after which police officers, including street detectives and crime scene lab personnel, “will assume responsibility for all of their agency’s marijuana submissions.” By the end of 2005, such submissions became the exclusive provenance of the Utah officers who had attended the training, and suspected marijuana samples were no longer accepted at the state lab for processing.
In 2009, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation trained more than 1,600 police officers in the use of the D-L test, resulting in a 98 percent reduction in the use of marijuana lab tests. This troubling program garnered the bureau a 2009 Vollmer Excellence in Forensic Science Award by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Test 'Should Never Be Relied Upon'
Despite its widespread use, as early as the 1960s, the D-L test had been proven incapable of definitively identifying the presence of marijuana in a seized substance. A 1968 article in the Chemistry and Pharmacy Bulletin of Japan reported that the D-L tests “lack in adequate specificity.” In 1969, M. J. de Faubert Maunder, a chemist in the Ministry of Technology, a UK government agency, documented the unreliability of the D-L test in an article in the Bulletin on Narcotics, noting that test results depended heavily on the subjective judgment of the analyst — and thus could easily vary dramatically from lab to lab. “[A] positive test is not recorded until this colour has been identified,” he wrote, “and because it is almost impossible to describe in absolute terms it is best recognised by experience.” Moreover, he reported finding twenty-five plant substances that would produce a D-L test result barely distinguishable from that of Cannabis and cautioned that the D-L test “should never be relied upon as the only positive evidence.”
Several articles in the Journal of Forensic Sciences further disproved any claims that the test could specifically identify marijuana. A 1969 study in the journal reported false positive results from “a variety of vegetable extracts.” A 1972 study found that the D-L test would test positive for many commonly occurring plant substances known as resorcinols, which are found in over-the-counter medicines. For instance, Sucrets lozenges tested positive for marijuana. This study concluded that the D-L test is useful only as a “screen” test and was not sufficiently selective to be relied upon for “identification.” Still another study, in 1974, showed that 12 of 40 plant oils and extracts studied gave positive D-L test results.
In 1975, Dr. Marc Kurzman at the University of Minnesota, in collaboration with fourteen other scientists, published a study in The Journal of Criminal Defense that concluded: “The microscopic and chemical screening tests presently used in marijuana analysis are not specific even in combination for ‘marijuana’ defined in any way.” In the 35 years since that study was published, no one has ever refuted this finding.
Indeed, recent research has confirmed Kurzman’s findings. In 2008, Whitehurst, the chemist and former FBI agent, substantiated Kurzman’s findings in an article in the Texas Tech Law Review. That same year, Dr. Omar Bagasra, director of the South Carolina Center for Biotechnology, conducted experiments in his lab also demonstrating that the D-L test is nonspecific and renders false positives. Bagasra, too, has impeccable credentials — he’s a leading pathologist and a board-certified forensic examiner.
A number of high courts have been persuaded by this evidence, and have found that the D-L test does not prove the presence of marijuana in a seized substance. In 1973, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin ruled that the D-L test “standing alone is not sufficient to meet the burden of proving the identity of the substance beyond a reasonable doubt.” The court specifically noted that the D-L field tests used in this marijuana possession case “are not exclusive or specific for marijuana.”
Similarly, in 1979, a trial judge in North Carolina blocked the marijuana conviction of Richard Tate, which was to be based on positive D-L test results. In this case, too, the trial judge found that the D-L test was “not specific for marijuana” and had “no scientific acceptance as a reliable and accurate means of identifying the controlled substance marijuana.” On that basis, the judge allowed the defendant to suppress the use of the test results as evidence. This finding was upheld by the North Carolina Supreme Court, which found that D-L test “was not scientifically acceptable because it was not specific for marijuana” and thus “the test results were properly suppressed.”
Also in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court in Jackson v. Virginia ruled that the results of nonspecific tests could not be the basis for prosecution or conviction. In other words, if the only evidence is a positive D-L test, then the case must be dismissed.
As noted, even the test’s manufacturers do not claim that their product can definitively identify marijuana. The literature accompanying NIK’s NarcoPouch 908 cautions, “The results of a single test may or may not yield a valid result… There is no existing chemical reagent system, adaptable to field use, that will completely eliminate the occurrence of an occasional invalid test results [sic]. A complete forensic laboratory would be required to qualitatively identify an unknown suspect substance.”
Shoddy Science
Shoddy science, though, has muddied the waters. Several studies claim, falsely, to have validated the specificity of the D-L test. For instance, a seemingly authoritative 2000 study funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) purported to have validated the capacity of the D-L test to specifically and definitively identify marijuana. The title of the article, published in Forensic Science International, “Validation of Twelve Chemical Spot Tests for the Detection of Drugs of Abuse,” misstated the researchers’ actual findings. In fact, the study’s authors found that the twelve tests it analyzed, including the D-L, were nonspecific. “The tests,” they wrote, “are not always specific for a single drug or class.” Speaking of the D-L test, they wrote that “mace, nutmeg and tea reacted with the modified Duquenois-Levine,” meaning that they produced false positives. They also noted, echoing Maunder’s 1969 article, that the D-L test is subjective: “The actual color…may vary depending on many factors [including] the color discrimination of the analyst.”
The best-known D-L “validation” study, and thus the most damaging to defendants, was published in 1972 by John Thornton and George Nakamura in Journal of Forensic Science Society. It instantly made the D-L test the gold standard across the country for marijuana identification. But just like the NIST study, this report is internally contradictory and scientifically flawed. On the opening page of this article, the authors state that the D-L test is a “confirmation” test for marijuana. Such a test must be capable of proving the presence of the drug beyond a reasonable doubt, specifically identifying the drug to the exclusion of all other possible substances and producing neither false positives nor false negatives.
However, the researchers’ own findings contradict their conclusion and show instead that the D-L test merely screens for marijuana. The authors themselves reported that the D-L test gave false positives and was not a confirmatory test even when cystolithic hairs — visible on the leaves of marijuana and other plants — are found on the suspected substance. They claimed that “the Duquenois-Levine test is found to be useful in the confirmation of marijuana” when cystolithic hairs are observed “since none of the 82 species possessing hairs similar to those found on marijuana yield a positive test.” The problem is, as the authors noted, there are hundreds of plants with cystolithic hairs that they did not test, making their sample of eighty-two species woefully inadequate. In effect, they admitted that the botanical exam itself was nonspecific. Combining two nonspecific tests does not make a specific, confirmatory test, as the D-L and the botanical exam both could easily render false positives.
Without having proved specificity, the authors nevertheless claimed it: “The specificity of the Duquenois reaction has been established, empirically at least, over the past three decades. No plant material other than marijuana has been found to give an identical reaction.” They also noted its widespread use as if it were proof of its efficacy, mentioning that the D-L test was adopted as a preferential test by the League of Nations Sub-Committee of Cannabis and that a version of the test was proposed by the United Nations Committee on Narcotics as a specific test for marijuana. (The UN subsequently found that only gas chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis could affirmatively identify marijuana.)
Inexplicably, this Thornton-Nakamura study is cited by the Drug Enforcement Administration and labs around the country as justifying the use of the D-L test alone or in combination with the microscopic visual exam for proving the presence of marijuana in a seized substance. Even some courts have erroneously ruled that the D-L test is specific and confirmatory. The most egregious example occurred in 2006. U.S. District Judge William Alsup found the D-L test to be a specific identification test and declared, grandiosely: “Despite the many hundreds of thousands of drug convictions in the criminal justice system in America, there has not been a single documented false-positive identification of marijuana or cocaine when the methods used by the SFPD [San Francisco Police Department] Crime Lab are applied by trained, competent analysts.” In fact, according to an affidavit in that case from a senior criminologist at the SFPD, its lab had, for forty years, used the D-L test in combination with a botanical exam to identify marijuana — two nonspecific tests that can each produce false positives. (A spokeswoman says that current SFPD policy is to subsequently confirm these results with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.)
In March 2009, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, speaking of the D-L and other tests, called the analysis of controlled substances “a mature forensic science discipline”; “one of the areas with a strong scientific underpinning”; and an area in which “there exists an adequate understanding of the uncertainties and potential errors.” These incorrect assertions relied on assurances from government witnesses that “experienced forensic chemists and good forensic laboratories understand which tests (or combinations of tests) provide adequate reliability.” The committee’s main witness was Joseph Bono, the former director of a regional DEA lab, who had previously issued a sworn affidavit, referring to the D-L and other forensic tests, which asserted that “tests and instruments that are properly used by qualified forensic chemists are incapable of producing a false positive.” But experience and competence cannot make a test specific if it is not — nor can they make it immune from false positives.
In 2008, Senator Jim Webb, D-VA, said, in announcing a proposed bill, that “the criminal justice system as we understand it today is broken, unfair.” This unfairness is visible every day in the disparate and contradictory court decisions regarding the admissibility of D-L test results. Not only have courts contradicted one another on admissibility, but some courts have even chosen to admit the results of a D-L test while ruling that it does not prove the presence of marijuana beyond a reasonable doubt. This patchwork of admissibility means that a person in one state can be convicted of possessing marijuana on the sole basis of the D-L test while a resident of another state cannot.
In 1978, the Supreme Court of Illinois in The People of the State of Illinois v. Peppe Park illustrated this confused, unconstitutional state of affairs. In denying the admission of ipse dixit (“It’s marijuana because I say it’s marijuana”) reports, the court found that “police officers may not be presumed to possess the requisite expertise to identify a narcotic substance…because it simply is far too likely that a nonexpert would err in his conclusion on this matter, and taint the entire fact-finding process.” This court cited a study that found 241 incorrect identifications of marijuana by arresting police officers. Yet in the same decision, the court erroneously claimed that “to determine accurately that a particular substance contains cannabis, all that is necessary is microscopic examination combined with the Duquenois-Levine test.”
Challenging the Test
Robin Rae Brown never even faced trial on marijuana possession charges. After she was released from jail, she retained this author as a defense expert. When I first spoke with her attorney, Bill Ullman, he had never heard of the D-L test and said he normally plea-bargained cases like Robin’s. I urged him to challenge the test and provided him with several scientific studies cited in this article, relevant court decisions, including Jackson v. Virginia, and other information. When Ullman made inquiries, he discovered that the sheriff’s department had never performed a lab test to confirm his field test results. Robin, he discovered, had been charged with a felony solely on the basis of the D-L test and Officer Raimondi’s “opinion.”
At Ullman’s insistence, the sheriff’s department finally performed a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis on Robin’s smudge, which came out negative. State Attorney Berki Alvarez immediately dropped the charges against her, noting to Ullman, “the scariness that a person could be arrested under such conditions.”
Even scarier was the lab’s revelation that it does not conduct GC/MS analysis until just before a trial, as most marijuana possession defendants plea bargain before the trial. If Robin had accepted a plea bargain, she would have been wrongfully convicted and saddled with a criminal record that could have damaged her future job prospects. How many others before and since have accepted plea bargains based on false positives from a D-L test?
“I am just now willing to share this story,” Robin wrote months after her arrest, “because it was embarrassing and I didn't want to worry my family and friends.” After some serious thought, she recently decided to file a lawsuit for wrongful arrest. “I would like to see them stop using the bogus field tests and to improve their procedures at the county crime lab,” she says. “I would like the public to be aware of the faulty field tests.”
In truth, everyone arrested on marijuana charges has a Constitutional right to a GC/MS analysis. Otherwise, they are being denied both due process and a fair trial. “It is not only unnecessary for the courts to continue to accept conclusory drug identifications based on nonspecific tests, it is also unwise for them to do so,” wrote Edward Imwinkelried, a professor of law at the University of California at Davis whose work on scientific evidence has been cited by the Supreme Court. “Conclusory drug identification testimony is antithetical and offensive to the scientific tradition, and courts should not allow ipse dixit to masquerade as scientific testimony… Even more importantly, sustaining such drug identifications places a judicial imprimatur on testimony that cannot justifiably be labeled scientific. The rejection of such identifications is necessitated not only by due process but also by the simple demands of intellectual honesty.”
Sustaining evidence from nonspecific tests like the D-L, he concludes, “is both bad science and bad law.”
This article was reported in collaboration with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
John Kelly is a court-certified expert witness on drug tests and author of 'False Positives Equal False Justice' and the forthcoming book, 'How to Obtain a Pretrial Dismissal of Marijuana Charges or an Acquittal.' He can be contacted at: kjohn39679@aol.com.
http://www.alternet.org/story/147613/has_the_most_common_marijuana_test_resulted_in_tens_of_thousands_of_wrongful_convictions?page=1
More than 800,000 people are arrested on marijuana charges each year in the United States, many on the basis of an error-prone test.
July 28, 2010 |
Raised in Montana and a resident of Alaska for 18 years, Robin Rae Brown, 48, always made time to explore in the wilderness. On March 20, 2009, she parked her pickup truck outside Weston, Florida, and hiked off the beaten path along a remote canal and into the woods to bird watch and commune with nature. “I saw a bobcat and an osprey,” she recalls. “I stopped once in a nice spot beneath a tree, sat down and gave prayers of thanksgiving to God.” For that purpose, Robin had packed a clay bowl and a “smudge stick,” a stalk-like bundle of sage, sweet grass, and lavender that she had bought at an airport gift shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Under the tree, she lit the end of the smudge stick and nestled it inside the bowl. She waved the smoke up toward her heart and over her head and prayed. Spiritual people from many cultures, including Native Americans, consider smoke to be sacred, she told me, and believe that it can carry their prayers to the heavens.
As darkness approached, she returned to her pickup truck to find Broward County’s Deputy Sheriff Dominic Raimondi and Florida Fish and Wildlife’s Lieutenant David Bingham looking inside the cab. The two men asked what she was doing and when she said she had been bird watching, Bingham asked whether she had binoculars. As she opened her knapsack, Officer Raimondi spotted her incense and asked if he could see it. He took the bowl and incense, asking whether it was marijuana. “No,” she recalls saying. “It’s my smudge, which is a blend of sage, sweet grass, and lavender.” “Smells like marijuana to me,” said Raimondi, who admitted he had never heard of a smudge stick. He then ordered Robin to stand by her truck, while he took the incense back to his car and conducted a common field test, known as a Duquenois-Levine, or D-L, test. The result was positive for marijuana.
Robin protested, telling them the smudge was available for purchase online for about $7 and gave them the name of a Web site that sold it — information Officer Bingham used his laptop to verify. But the men still searched her truck. After an hour and a half they finally allowed Robin to go home and told her that if a lab test confirmed the field test results, a warrant would be issued for her arrest.
Exactly 90 days later, Robin was arrested at the spa in Weston, Florida where she has worked as a massage therapist for three years. She was handcuffed in front of clients and co-workers, and charged with felony possession of marijuana. She was brought to a local police precinct in the town of Davie where she was booked and held for three hours. Unable to post the $1,000 bail because she was not allowed to call her boyfriend Michael, she was transferred to the Women’s Correctional Facility in Pompano Beach. At no time was she read her rights.
Five hours after her arrest, she was finally allowed a brief phone call and left a message for Michael to post her bail. At the jail, a female officer came in and told Robin to take off all her clothes. She had already been searched at the precinct station and had her shoes, socks and bra confiscated. “I’m on my period,” she said. “I don’t care,” said the officer, who ordered her to pull her underwear down to her ankles, squat over the floor drain and cough. The following morning at 4:30 a.m. she was released onto the streets of Pompano Beach with no idea where she was.
The next day, Robin found a lab and submitted to voluntary hair and urine tests. These came back clean. She had previously worked for 16 years as a transportation systems specialist with the Federal Aviation Administration, a job that required airport security clearances, so drug tests were nothing new to her. During those years, she was frequently required to pass random drug and alcohol tests.
She later learned that her incense had never been subjected to a confirmatory lab test. She had been arrested and jailed solely on the basis of her positive D-L test results.
The Preferred Test for Marijuana
The Duquenois test was developed in the late 1930s by a French pharmacist, Pierre Duquénois, while he was working for the United Nations division of narcotics. In 1950, he completed a study for the UN which claimed that his test was “very specific” for marijuana; it was adopted by the UN and crime labs around the world as the preferred test for marijuana.
After undergoing several modifications, including the use of chloroform, the test became known as the Duquenois-Levine test, and became widely popular. Though scientists would show in the 1960s and 1970s that the D-L test was nonspecific, meaning it rendered false positives, it remains today the most commonly used test for marijuana — used in many of the 800,000 marijuana arrests that take place each year.
The test is a simple chemical color reagent test, easy to perform but difficult to interpret. To administer the test, a police officer simply has to break a seal on a tiny micropipette of chemicals, and insert a particle of the suspected substance; if the chemicals turn purple, this indicates the possibility of marijuana. But the color variations can be subtle, and readings can vary by examiner.
The field test kits are produced by a variety of manufacturers, the most popular brands being NIK and ODV. Literature about the D-L from NIK’s makers states that it is only a “screening” test that “may or may not yield a valid result” and may produce “false positive results.” Yet, since at least 1990, arresting officers, with the support of prosecutors, have regularly bypassed lab analysts and have purported to identify marijuana at hearings and trials only on the basis of visual inspection and the nonspecific D-L field test. And the manufacturers have taken note.
In 1998, ODV reported in its newsletter with seeming satisfaction that a growing number of police departments were using its D-L field test, marketed as the NarcoPouch, as “their sole method of testing and identifying Marihuana [sic]… To have Officers properly trained in identifying Marijuana and taking the Crime Lab out of the loop is a tremendous cost saving venture for the State…and gives the individual Officers testing the material a greater sense of satisfaction in completing their own cases” (emphasis added). NIK, too, argued that depending exclusively on D-L field tests saves time and money. “Crime laboratories are so busy that drug tests take too long,” NIK states on its website. “With the cooperation of the Prosecuting Attorney, many police agencies have turned to presumptive drug testing. If the results indicate that an illegal substance is present, criminal charges may be filed.
In June 2006, the Virginia legislature went so far as to pass “emergency regulations” permitting law-enforcement officers to testify at trial for simple possession of marijuana cases solely on the basis of a D-L field test. Prior to these regulations, officers had to send suspected material to an approved lab for testing. Nothing in the new legislation specified that the field tests used had to be specific, or even accurate. Frederic Whitehurst, a North Carolina-based defense attorney and former FBI special agent with a doctorate in chemistry, considers the law to be an unconstitutional usurpation of the authority of the courts to determine what test results can be admitted as valid evidence.
The trend toward police officers using the D-L as a confirmatory test has been encouraged by the National Institute of Justice, an agency of the Department of Justice which has funded programs to transform police officers into court experts, based on their use of these faulty field tests. One such ongoing program for the Utah police claims to offer, in four days, “the necessary training” to positively identify marijuana, which would allow officers to serve as “expert witnesses in the courtroom setting.” The program briefly covers the “botany, chemistry and analysis of marijuana preparations,” after which police officers, including street detectives and crime scene lab personnel, “will assume responsibility for all of their agency’s marijuana submissions.” By the end of 2005, such submissions became the exclusive provenance of the Utah officers who had attended the training, and suspected marijuana samples were no longer accepted at the state lab for processing.
In 2009, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation trained more than 1,600 police officers in the use of the D-L test, resulting in a 98 percent reduction in the use of marijuana lab tests. This troubling program garnered the bureau a 2009 Vollmer Excellence in Forensic Science Award by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Test 'Should Never Be Relied Upon'
Despite its widespread use, as early as the 1960s, the D-L test had been proven incapable of definitively identifying the presence of marijuana in a seized substance. A 1968 article in the Chemistry and Pharmacy Bulletin of Japan reported that the D-L tests “lack in adequate specificity.” In 1969, M. J. de Faubert Maunder, a chemist in the Ministry of Technology, a UK government agency, documented the unreliability of the D-L test in an article in the Bulletin on Narcotics, noting that test results depended heavily on the subjective judgment of the analyst — and thus could easily vary dramatically from lab to lab. “[A] positive test is not recorded until this colour has been identified,” he wrote, “and because it is almost impossible to describe in absolute terms it is best recognised by experience.” Moreover, he reported finding twenty-five plant substances that would produce a D-L test result barely distinguishable from that of Cannabis and cautioned that the D-L test “should never be relied upon as the only positive evidence.”
Several articles in the Journal of Forensic Sciences further disproved any claims that the test could specifically identify marijuana. A 1969 study in the journal reported false positive results from “a variety of vegetable extracts.” A 1972 study found that the D-L test would test positive for many commonly occurring plant substances known as resorcinols, which are found in over-the-counter medicines. For instance, Sucrets lozenges tested positive for marijuana. This study concluded that the D-L test is useful only as a “screen” test and was not sufficiently selective to be relied upon for “identification.” Still another study, in 1974, showed that 12 of 40 plant oils and extracts studied gave positive D-L test results.
In 1975, Dr. Marc Kurzman at the University of Minnesota, in collaboration with fourteen other scientists, published a study in The Journal of Criminal Defense that concluded: “The microscopic and chemical screening tests presently used in marijuana analysis are not specific even in combination for ‘marijuana’ defined in any way.” In the 35 years since that study was published, no one has ever refuted this finding.
Indeed, recent research has confirmed Kurzman’s findings. In 2008, Whitehurst, the chemist and former FBI agent, substantiated Kurzman’s findings in an article in the Texas Tech Law Review. That same year, Dr. Omar Bagasra, director of the South Carolina Center for Biotechnology, conducted experiments in his lab also demonstrating that the D-L test is nonspecific and renders false positives. Bagasra, too, has impeccable credentials — he’s a leading pathologist and a board-certified forensic examiner.
A number of high courts have been persuaded by this evidence, and have found that the D-L test does not prove the presence of marijuana in a seized substance. In 1973, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin ruled that the D-L test “standing alone is not sufficient to meet the burden of proving the identity of the substance beyond a reasonable doubt.” The court specifically noted that the D-L field tests used in this marijuana possession case “are not exclusive or specific for marijuana.”
Similarly, in 1979, a trial judge in North Carolina blocked the marijuana conviction of Richard Tate, which was to be based on positive D-L test results. In this case, too, the trial judge found that the D-L test was “not specific for marijuana” and had “no scientific acceptance as a reliable and accurate means of identifying the controlled substance marijuana.” On that basis, the judge allowed the defendant to suppress the use of the test results as evidence. This finding was upheld by the North Carolina Supreme Court, which found that D-L test “was not scientifically acceptable because it was not specific for marijuana” and thus “the test results were properly suppressed.”
Also in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court in Jackson v. Virginia ruled that the results of nonspecific tests could not be the basis for prosecution or conviction. In other words, if the only evidence is a positive D-L test, then the case must be dismissed.
As noted, even the test’s manufacturers do not claim that their product can definitively identify marijuana. The literature accompanying NIK’s NarcoPouch 908 cautions, “The results of a single test may or may not yield a valid result… There is no existing chemical reagent system, adaptable to field use, that will completely eliminate the occurrence of an occasional invalid test results [sic]. A complete forensic laboratory would be required to qualitatively identify an unknown suspect substance.”
Shoddy Science
Shoddy science, though, has muddied the waters. Several studies claim, falsely, to have validated the specificity of the D-L test. For instance, a seemingly authoritative 2000 study funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) purported to have validated the capacity of the D-L test to specifically and definitively identify marijuana. The title of the article, published in Forensic Science International, “Validation of Twelve Chemical Spot Tests for the Detection of Drugs of Abuse,” misstated the researchers’ actual findings. In fact, the study’s authors found that the twelve tests it analyzed, including the D-L, were nonspecific. “The tests,” they wrote, “are not always specific for a single drug or class.” Speaking of the D-L test, they wrote that “mace, nutmeg and tea reacted with the modified Duquenois-Levine,” meaning that they produced false positives. They also noted, echoing Maunder’s 1969 article, that the D-L test is subjective: “The actual color…may vary depending on many factors [including] the color discrimination of the analyst.”
The best-known D-L “validation” study, and thus the most damaging to defendants, was published in 1972 by John Thornton and George Nakamura in Journal of Forensic Science Society. It instantly made the D-L test the gold standard across the country for marijuana identification. But just like the NIST study, this report is internally contradictory and scientifically flawed. On the opening page of this article, the authors state that the D-L test is a “confirmation” test for marijuana. Such a test must be capable of proving the presence of the drug beyond a reasonable doubt, specifically identifying the drug to the exclusion of all other possible substances and producing neither false positives nor false negatives.
However, the researchers’ own findings contradict their conclusion and show instead that the D-L test merely screens for marijuana. The authors themselves reported that the D-L test gave false positives and was not a confirmatory test even when cystolithic hairs — visible on the leaves of marijuana and other plants — are found on the suspected substance. They claimed that “the Duquenois-Levine test is found to be useful in the confirmation of marijuana” when cystolithic hairs are observed “since none of the 82 species possessing hairs similar to those found on marijuana yield a positive test.” The problem is, as the authors noted, there are hundreds of plants with cystolithic hairs that they did not test, making their sample of eighty-two species woefully inadequate. In effect, they admitted that the botanical exam itself was nonspecific. Combining two nonspecific tests does not make a specific, confirmatory test, as the D-L and the botanical exam both could easily render false positives.
Without having proved specificity, the authors nevertheless claimed it: “The specificity of the Duquenois reaction has been established, empirically at least, over the past three decades. No plant material other than marijuana has been found to give an identical reaction.” They also noted its widespread use as if it were proof of its efficacy, mentioning that the D-L test was adopted as a preferential test by the League of Nations Sub-Committee of Cannabis and that a version of the test was proposed by the United Nations Committee on Narcotics as a specific test for marijuana. (The UN subsequently found that only gas chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis could affirmatively identify marijuana.)
Inexplicably, this Thornton-Nakamura study is cited by the Drug Enforcement Administration and labs around the country as justifying the use of the D-L test alone or in combination with the microscopic visual exam for proving the presence of marijuana in a seized substance. Even some courts have erroneously ruled that the D-L test is specific and confirmatory. The most egregious example occurred in 2006. U.S. District Judge William Alsup found the D-L test to be a specific identification test and declared, grandiosely: “Despite the many hundreds of thousands of drug convictions in the criminal justice system in America, there has not been a single documented false-positive identification of marijuana or cocaine when the methods used by the SFPD [San Francisco Police Department] Crime Lab are applied by trained, competent analysts.” In fact, according to an affidavit in that case from a senior criminologist at the SFPD, its lab had, for forty years, used the D-L test in combination with a botanical exam to identify marijuana — two nonspecific tests that can each produce false positives. (A spokeswoman says that current SFPD policy is to subsequently confirm these results with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.)
In March 2009, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, speaking of the D-L and other tests, called the analysis of controlled substances “a mature forensic science discipline”; “one of the areas with a strong scientific underpinning”; and an area in which “there exists an adequate understanding of the uncertainties and potential errors.” These incorrect assertions relied on assurances from government witnesses that “experienced forensic chemists and good forensic laboratories understand which tests (or combinations of tests) provide adequate reliability.” The committee’s main witness was Joseph Bono, the former director of a regional DEA lab, who had previously issued a sworn affidavit, referring to the D-L and other forensic tests, which asserted that “tests and instruments that are properly used by qualified forensic chemists are incapable of producing a false positive.” But experience and competence cannot make a test specific if it is not — nor can they make it immune from false positives.
In 2008, Senator Jim Webb, D-VA, said, in announcing a proposed bill, that “the criminal justice system as we understand it today is broken, unfair.” This unfairness is visible every day in the disparate and contradictory court decisions regarding the admissibility of D-L test results. Not only have courts contradicted one another on admissibility, but some courts have even chosen to admit the results of a D-L test while ruling that it does not prove the presence of marijuana beyond a reasonable doubt. This patchwork of admissibility means that a person in one state can be convicted of possessing marijuana on the sole basis of the D-L test while a resident of another state cannot.
In 1978, the Supreme Court of Illinois in The People of the State of Illinois v. Peppe Park illustrated this confused, unconstitutional state of affairs. In denying the admission of ipse dixit (“It’s marijuana because I say it’s marijuana”) reports, the court found that “police officers may not be presumed to possess the requisite expertise to identify a narcotic substance…because it simply is far too likely that a nonexpert would err in his conclusion on this matter, and taint the entire fact-finding process.” This court cited a study that found 241 incorrect identifications of marijuana by arresting police officers. Yet in the same decision, the court erroneously claimed that “to determine accurately that a particular substance contains cannabis, all that is necessary is microscopic examination combined with the Duquenois-Levine test.”
Challenging the Test
Robin Rae Brown never even faced trial on marijuana possession charges. After she was released from jail, she retained this author as a defense expert. When I first spoke with her attorney, Bill Ullman, he had never heard of the D-L test and said he normally plea-bargained cases like Robin’s. I urged him to challenge the test and provided him with several scientific studies cited in this article, relevant court decisions, including Jackson v. Virginia, and other information. When Ullman made inquiries, he discovered that the sheriff’s department had never performed a lab test to confirm his field test results. Robin, he discovered, had been charged with a felony solely on the basis of the D-L test and Officer Raimondi’s “opinion.”
At Ullman’s insistence, the sheriff’s department finally performed a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis on Robin’s smudge, which came out negative. State Attorney Berki Alvarez immediately dropped the charges against her, noting to Ullman, “the scariness that a person could be arrested under such conditions.”
Even scarier was the lab’s revelation that it does not conduct GC/MS analysis until just before a trial, as most marijuana possession defendants plea bargain before the trial. If Robin had accepted a plea bargain, she would have been wrongfully convicted and saddled with a criminal record that could have damaged her future job prospects. How many others before and since have accepted plea bargains based on false positives from a D-L test?
“I am just now willing to share this story,” Robin wrote months after her arrest, “because it was embarrassing and I didn't want to worry my family and friends.” After some serious thought, she recently decided to file a lawsuit for wrongful arrest. “I would like to see them stop using the bogus field tests and to improve their procedures at the county crime lab,” she says. “I would like the public to be aware of the faulty field tests.”
In truth, everyone arrested on marijuana charges has a Constitutional right to a GC/MS analysis. Otherwise, they are being denied both due process and a fair trial. “It is not only unnecessary for the courts to continue to accept conclusory drug identifications based on nonspecific tests, it is also unwise for them to do so,” wrote Edward Imwinkelried, a professor of law at the University of California at Davis whose work on scientific evidence has been cited by the Supreme Court. “Conclusory drug identification testimony is antithetical and offensive to the scientific tradition, and courts should not allow ipse dixit to masquerade as scientific testimony… Even more importantly, sustaining such drug identifications places a judicial imprimatur on testimony that cannot justifiably be labeled scientific. The rejection of such identifications is necessitated not only by due process but also by the simple demands of intellectual honesty.”
Sustaining evidence from nonspecific tests like the D-L, he concludes, “is both bad science and bad law.”
This article was reported in collaboration with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
John Kelly is a court-certified expert witness on drug tests and author of 'False Positives Equal False Justice' and the forthcoming book, 'How to Obtain a Pretrial Dismissal of Marijuana Charges or an Acquittal.' He can be contacted at: kjohn39679@aol.com.
http://www.alternet.org/story/147613/has_the_most_common_marijuana_test_resulted_in_tens_of_thousands_of_wrongful_convictions?page=1
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Abusive mothers improve parenting after in-home training, emotional support of therapists
Abusive mothers improve parenting after in-home training, emotional support of therapists
by BJS on JULY 27, 2010
Mothers who live in poverty and who have abused their children can stop if they are taught parenting skills and given emotional support.
A new study has found that mothers in families in which there is a history of child abuse and neglect were able to reduce how much they cursed at, yelled at, slapped, spanked, hit or rejected their children after a series of home visits from therapists who taught them parenting skills.
There were large improvements in mothers’ parenting in the families that received the intensive services, compared to families that did not receive the services, according to SMU psychologists Ernest Jouriles and Renee McDonald at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
As a result of the intensive, hands-on training, the women in the study said they felt they did a better job managing their children’s behavior, said Jouriles and McDonald, two of the study’s eight authors. The mothers also were observed to use better parenting strategies, and the families were less likely to be reported again for child abuse.
“Although there are many types of services for addressing child maltreatment, there is very little scientific data about whether the services actually work,” said McDonald. “This study adds to our scientific knowledge and shows that this type of service can actually work.”
Help for violent families
The parenting training is part of a program called Project Support, developed at the Family Research Center at SMU and designed to help children in severely violent families.
The study appears in the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Family Psychology. The article is titled “Improving Parenting in Families Referred for Child Maltreatment: A Randomized Controlled Trial Examining Effects of Project Support.” SMU psychologist David Rosenfield also authored the study. For a link to the article abstract and related information see www.smuresearch.com.
The research was funded by the federal Interagency Consortium on Violence Against Women and Violence Within the Family, along with the Texas-based Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.
“Child maltreatment is such an important and costly problem in our society that it seems imperative to make sure that our efforts — and the tax dollars that pay for them — are actually solving the problem,” said Jouriles. He and McDonald are co-founders and co-directors of the SMU Family Research Center.
In 2007, U.S. child welfare agencies received more than 3 million reports of child abuse and neglect, totaling almost 6 million children, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Poor and single with children
The study worked with 35 families screened through the Texas child welfare agency Child Protective Services, CPS. The parents had abused or neglected their children at least once, but CPS determined it best the family stay together and receive services to improve parenting and end the maltreatment.
In all the families, the mother was legal guardian and primary caregiver and typically had three children. On average she was 28, single and had an annual income of $10,300. Children in the study ranged from 3 to 8 years old.
Half the families in the study received Project Support parenting education and support. The other half received CPS’s conventional services.
New parenting skills + help
Mental health service providers met with the 17 Project Support families weekly in their homes for up to 6 months. During that time, mothers, and often their husbands or partners, were taught 12 specific skills, including how to pay attention and play with their children, how to listen and comfort them, how to offer praise and positive attention, how to give appropriate instructions and commands, and how to respond to misbehavior.
Also, therapists provided the mothers with emotional support and helped them access materials and resources through community agencies as needed, such as food banks and Medicaid. The therapists also helped mothers evaluate the adequacy and safety of the family’s living arrangements, the quality of their child-care arrangements and how to provide enough food with so little money.
Services provided to families receiving traditional child welfare services varied widely. The range of services included parenting classes at a church or agency, family therapy or individual counseling, videotaped parenting instruction, anger-management help, GED classes and contact by social workers in person or by phone.
Fewer recurrences of abuse
Only 5.9 percent of the families trained through Project Support were later referred to CPS for abuse, compared with almost 28 percent of the control group, the researchers found.
“The results of this study have important implications for the field of child maltreatment,” said SMU psychologist David Rosenfield, who also authored the study.
Project Support was launched in 1996 to address the mental health problems of maltreated children and children exposed to domestic violence, both of which often lead to considerable problems for children later in life, such as substance abuse, interpersonal violence and criminal activity. Previous studies have shown the program can improve children’s psychological adjustment as well as mothers’ ability to parent their children appropriately and effectively, according to the researchers.
Project Support: A promising practice
With funding from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Project Support has been included in a study evaluating 15 “promising practices” nationally for helping children who live in violent families.
Jouriles is professor and chairman of the SMU Department of Psychology. McDonald and Rosenfield are associate professors.
Other researchers were William Norwood, University of Houston; Laura Spiller, Midwestern State University; Nanette Stephens, University of Texas; Deborah Corbitt-Shindler, SMU; and Miriam Ehrensaft, City University of New York.
SMU is a private university in Dallas where nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools.
Related posts:
Mothers with mental illness benefit from extended family support
Nurses are assessing mothers with mental health issues despite lack of guidance and formal training
Supportive co-parenting may reduce some child behavior problems
U of I study: When a violent marriage ends, is co-parenting possible?
Center-based care and insensitive parenting may have lasting effects
http://scienceblog.com/36948/abusive-mothers-improve-parenting-after-in-home-training-emotional-support-of-therapists/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+scienceblogrssfeed+(Science+Blog)
by BJS on JULY 27, 2010
Mothers who live in poverty and who have abused their children can stop if they are taught parenting skills and given emotional support.
A new study has found that mothers in families in which there is a history of child abuse and neglect were able to reduce how much they cursed at, yelled at, slapped, spanked, hit or rejected their children after a series of home visits from therapists who taught them parenting skills.
There were large improvements in mothers’ parenting in the families that received the intensive services, compared to families that did not receive the services, according to SMU psychologists Ernest Jouriles and Renee McDonald at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
As a result of the intensive, hands-on training, the women in the study said they felt they did a better job managing their children’s behavior, said Jouriles and McDonald, two of the study’s eight authors. The mothers also were observed to use better parenting strategies, and the families were less likely to be reported again for child abuse.
“Although there are many types of services for addressing child maltreatment, there is very little scientific data about whether the services actually work,” said McDonald. “This study adds to our scientific knowledge and shows that this type of service can actually work.”
Help for violent families
The parenting training is part of a program called Project Support, developed at the Family Research Center at SMU and designed to help children in severely violent families.
The study appears in the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Family Psychology. The article is titled “Improving Parenting in Families Referred for Child Maltreatment: A Randomized Controlled Trial Examining Effects of Project Support.” SMU psychologist David Rosenfield also authored the study. For a link to the article abstract and related information see www.smuresearch.com.
The research was funded by the federal Interagency Consortium on Violence Against Women and Violence Within the Family, along with the Texas-based Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.
“Child maltreatment is such an important and costly problem in our society that it seems imperative to make sure that our efforts — and the tax dollars that pay for them — are actually solving the problem,” said Jouriles. He and McDonald are co-founders and co-directors of the SMU Family Research Center.
In 2007, U.S. child welfare agencies received more than 3 million reports of child abuse and neglect, totaling almost 6 million children, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Poor and single with children
The study worked with 35 families screened through the Texas child welfare agency Child Protective Services, CPS. The parents had abused or neglected their children at least once, but CPS determined it best the family stay together and receive services to improve parenting and end the maltreatment.
In all the families, the mother was legal guardian and primary caregiver and typically had three children. On average she was 28, single and had an annual income of $10,300. Children in the study ranged from 3 to 8 years old.
Half the families in the study received Project Support parenting education and support. The other half received CPS’s conventional services.
New parenting skills + help
Mental health service providers met with the 17 Project Support families weekly in their homes for up to 6 months. During that time, mothers, and often their husbands or partners, were taught 12 specific skills, including how to pay attention and play with their children, how to listen and comfort them, how to offer praise and positive attention, how to give appropriate instructions and commands, and how to respond to misbehavior.
Also, therapists provided the mothers with emotional support and helped them access materials and resources through community agencies as needed, such as food banks and Medicaid. The therapists also helped mothers evaluate the adequacy and safety of the family’s living arrangements, the quality of their child-care arrangements and how to provide enough food with so little money.
Services provided to families receiving traditional child welfare services varied widely. The range of services included parenting classes at a church or agency, family therapy or individual counseling, videotaped parenting instruction, anger-management help, GED classes and contact by social workers in person or by phone.
Fewer recurrences of abuse
Only 5.9 percent of the families trained through Project Support were later referred to CPS for abuse, compared with almost 28 percent of the control group, the researchers found.
“The results of this study have important implications for the field of child maltreatment,” said SMU psychologist David Rosenfield, who also authored the study.
Project Support was launched in 1996 to address the mental health problems of maltreated children and children exposed to domestic violence, both of which often lead to considerable problems for children later in life, such as substance abuse, interpersonal violence and criminal activity. Previous studies have shown the program can improve children’s psychological adjustment as well as mothers’ ability to parent their children appropriately and effectively, according to the researchers.
Project Support: A promising practice
With funding from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Project Support has been included in a study evaluating 15 “promising practices” nationally for helping children who live in violent families.
Jouriles is professor and chairman of the SMU Department of Psychology. McDonald and Rosenfield are associate professors.
Other researchers were William Norwood, University of Houston; Laura Spiller, Midwestern State University; Nanette Stephens, University of Texas; Deborah Corbitt-Shindler, SMU; and Miriam Ehrensaft, City University of New York.
SMU is a private university in Dallas where nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools.
Related posts:
Mothers with mental illness benefit from extended family support
Nurses are assessing mothers with mental health issues despite lack of guidance and formal training
Supportive co-parenting may reduce some child behavior problems
U of I study: When a violent marriage ends, is co-parenting possible?
Center-based care and insensitive parenting may have lasting effects
http://scienceblog.com/36948/abusive-mothers-improve-parenting-after-in-home-training-emotional-support-of-therapists/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+scienceblogrssfeed+(Science+Blog)
Fixing a flawed system
Fixing a flawed system
Child welfare cases deserve teamwork from Clark County professionals
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.
Among the toughest decisions facing Clark County social workers is determining when it is appropriate to remove children from their households based on allegations of abuse or neglect. Many times, it takes nothing more than common sense to conclude that an abused child with obvious physical or emotional scars should be removed immediately from a dangerous home environment and placed in the child welfare system. On the other extreme are situations where all it takes is parental instruction on basic tasks such as housekeeping or knowing how to balance a checkbook to justify keeping children in their homes.
The fact remains that child welfare in Clark County, as it is in many other locales throughout the country, is an imperfect system that is difficult to fix.
That’s because determining the best interests of the child is an extremely complex, emotionally charged process that involves the delicate fabric of a troubled family, along with legal, financial and medical issues.
The latest evidence of this, as reported Sunday by the Las Vegas Sun’s Joe Schoenmann, is the fact that Clark County Manager Virginia Valentine is reviewing 82 cases in which the district attorney’s office says that the county’s Family Services Department would have returned children to dangerous homes or would not have had them removed quickly had the DA not intervened. These cases have led to finger-pointing among the district attorney’s office, Metro Police and Family Services.
Where children are concerned, it is time for these parochial battles to end once and for all.
In its place, we urge Family Services and law enforcement agencies to work together on a comprehensive strategy with a singular goal — doing what is best for the child. A county senior management analyst said related discussions have been planned, but we believe everything should be on the table, even if it takes reconstructing the child welfare system from scratch.
Start with basics such as a definition of child abuse or neglect. Take a close look at social worker training and caseloads. Don’t settle for a well-trained caseworker with an unduly heavy case-load or an ill-trained worker with an average load. Both scenarios can produce wrongheaded snap judgments that are not good for the child. Superior training and reasonable caseloads should be the reality, not some fantasy.
Work on better communication between Family Services and law enforcement to provide the team effort children deserve. Make sure children are adequately represented in court, whether that means participation from the district attorney’s office or use of pro bono private attorneys or another legal avenue that is fair to all parties involved.
To keep as many children in their homes as possible, the county should ensure that there is enough counseling and other resources available to help well-meaning but troubled parents regain the footing they need to rear their children in a safe, nurturing environment.
On behalf of children who must be removed from their homes and placed elsewhere on a long-term basis, conduct a thorough review of the foster care system. Make sure foster parents are both properly screened and adequately paid for the services they provide. Do as much as possible to keep siblings together.
Do all of these things and we may one day have a child welfare system that is rid of scandal and finger-pointing. The children who are involved in abuse and neglect cases have already had a rough go. They deserve nothing less than full cooperation and teamwork from the professionals who control their destiny.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jul/27/fixing-flawed-system/
Child welfare cases deserve teamwork from Clark County professionals
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.
Among the toughest decisions facing Clark County social workers is determining when it is appropriate to remove children from their households based on allegations of abuse or neglect. Many times, it takes nothing more than common sense to conclude that an abused child with obvious physical or emotional scars should be removed immediately from a dangerous home environment and placed in the child welfare system. On the other extreme are situations where all it takes is parental instruction on basic tasks such as housekeeping or knowing how to balance a checkbook to justify keeping children in their homes.
The fact remains that child welfare in Clark County, as it is in many other locales throughout the country, is an imperfect system that is difficult to fix.
That’s because determining the best interests of the child is an extremely complex, emotionally charged process that involves the delicate fabric of a troubled family, along with legal, financial and medical issues.
The latest evidence of this, as reported Sunday by the Las Vegas Sun’s Joe Schoenmann, is the fact that Clark County Manager Virginia Valentine is reviewing 82 cases in which the district attorney’s office says that the county’s Family Services Department would have returned children to dangerous homes or would not have had them removed quickly had the DA not intervened. These cases have led to finger-pointing among the district attorney’s office, Metro Police and Family Services.
Where children are concerned, it is time for these parochial battles to end once and for all.
In its place, we urge Family Services and law enforcement agencies to work together on a comprehensive strategy with a singular goal — doing what is best for the child. A county senior management analyst said related discussions have been planned, but we believe everything should be on the table, even if it takes reconstructing the child welfare system from scratch.
Start with basics such as a definition of child abuse or neglect. Take a close look at social worker training and caseloads. Don’t settle for a well-trained caseworker with an unduly heavy case-load or an ill-trained worker with an average load. Both scenarios can produce wrongheaded snap judgments that are not good for the child. Superior training and reasonable caseloads should be the reality, not some fantasy.
Work on better communication between Family Services and law enforcement to provide the team effort children deserve. Make sure children are adequately represented in court, whether that means participation from the district attorney’s office or use of pro bono private attorneys or another legal avenue that is fair to all parties involved.
To keep as many children in their homes as possible, the county should ensure that there is enough counseling and other resources available to help well-meaning but troubled parents regain the footing they need to rear their children in a safe, nurturing environment.
On behalf of children who must be removed from their homes and placed elsewhere on a long-term basis, conduct a thorough review of the foster care system. Make sure foster parents are both properly screened and adequately paid for the services they provide. Do as much as possible to keep siblings together.
Do all of these things and we may one day have a child welfare system that is rid of scandal and finger-pointing. The children who are involved in abuse and neglect cases have already had a rough go. They deserve nothing less than full cooperation and teamwork from the professionals who control their destiny.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jul/27/fixing-flawed-system/
Foster Child Suffers Burns, Lawsuit Filed
Foster Child Suffers Burns, Lawsuit Filed
Posted: Jul 26, 2010 10:39 PM EDT
by Amanda Hara
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - An 11-year-old foster child suffered third degree burns over his entire body. Now his foster parents and the company that placed him in their care are at the center of a three million dollar lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims that a stove fire caused the burns and that the foster parents kept the child suffering in agonizing pain for three hours, before eventually taking him to the hospital.
The painful burns across his body only added to a lifetime riddled with agony. It was 2007 and the then 11-year-old boy had already witnessed domestic violence at home, was then taken away from his family, only to suffer from behavioral issues and find himself in foster care.
His new guardians, Terry and Closhetta Shelton, were supposed to be his new beginning.
But when the boy was allowed to fry food on the stove unsupervised, things went wrong. The grease caught fire, and then the flames spread to his body.
A newly filed law suit claims that the boy's foster parents responded to the burns not with urgency, but neglect.
Attorney Gary Blackburn said the boy was left to suffer at home, then in the car as Mr. Shelton pumped gas, and dropped another foster child off at school. Three hours later, Blackburn said the burns were finally attended to at Vanderbilt.
Terry and Closhetta Shelton are named in the suit, including Omni Visions, the company contracted by the Department of Children's Services to place children in foster care.
In all, the suit asks for three million in damages, not just to help with the boys lifelong disability fund, but also to send a message to companies like Omni Vision, that there are consequences.
The attorney said the boy is still in foster care, but that plans are in the works to reunite him with his mother within the next few months.
NewsChannel 5 tried getting in touch with Omni Vision, but their offices had closed before the suit was made available. We were also unable to reach the foster parents, Terry and Closhetta Shelton.
Jim Henry owns Omni Visions, the company named in the suit that places children in foster care and works with developmentally disabled children.
Henry's own child suffers from a disability. In 2002, he ran for Governor on the Republican ticket and in the 1980's he served in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Email: ahara@newschannel5.com
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=12873703
Posted: Jul 26, 2010 10:39 PM EDT
by Amanda Hara
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - An 11-year-old foster child suffered third degree burns over his entire body. Now his foster parents and the company that placed him in their care are at the center of a three million dollar lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims that a stove fire caused the burns and that the foster parents kept the child suffering in agonizing pain for three hours, before eventually taking him to the hospital.
The painful burns across his body only added to a lifetime riddled with agony. It was 2007 and the then 11-year-old boy had already witnessed domestic violence at home, was then taken away from his family, only to suffer from behavioral issues and find himself in foster care.
His new guardians, Terry and Closhetta Shelton, were supposed to be his new beginning.
But when the boy was allowed to fry food on the stove unsupervised, things went wrong. The grease caught fire, and then the flames spread to his body.
A newly filed law suit claims that the boy's foster parents responded to the burns not with urgency, but neglect.
Attorney Gary Blackburn said the boy was left to suffer at home, then in the car as Mr. Shelton pumped gas, and dropped another foster child off at school. Three hours later, Blackburn said the burns were finally attended to at Vanderbilt.
Terry and Closhetta Shelton are named in the suit, including Omni Visions, the company contracted by the Department of Children's Services to place children in foster care.
In all, the suit asks for three million in damages, not just to help with the boys lifelong disability fund, but also to send a message to companies like Omni Vision, that there are consequences.
The attorney said the boy is still in foster care, but that plans are in the works to reunite him with his mother within the next few months.
NewsChannel 5 tried getting in touch with Omni Vision, but their offices had closed before the suit was made available. We were also unable to reach the foster parents, Terry and Closhetta Shelton.
Jim Henry owns Omni Visions, the company named in the suit that places children in foster care and works with developmentally disabled children.
Henry's own child suffers from a disability. In 2002, he ran for Governor on the Republican ticket and in the 1980's he served in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Email: ahara@newschannel5.com
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=12873703
Our foster-care system fails kids and the city
Daniel Leddy on Law > Dan Leddy
Our foster-care system fails kids and the city
Published: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 6:10 AM
Daniel Leddy
Cover your backside! It’s standard operating procedure for Family Court judges who want to stay in the good graces of the powers that be, the institutional honchos and other bigwigs who flex their muscles at reappointment time to make or break judicial careers.
It’s also an unconscionable betrayal of the public trust, particularly for defenseless children who bear the brunt of judicial cowardice.
In last Monday’s Advance, reporter and columnist Jeff Harrell commented on the tragic case of Patrick Alford, the 8-year-old West Brighton boy who disappeared from a Brooklyn foster home on Jan. 22.
The placement followed the arrest of his mother on a shoplifting charge, and the ensuing conclusion by the Administration for Children’s Services that she had neglected the youngster. Poignant and hard-hitting, Harrell’s piece asserted that “most adults who work off the public for the so-called good of the child could screw up a glass of water.”
Cumulatively, I served more than three years as the sole judge of the Foster Care Review Term, a citywide forum charged with reviewing the status of children voluntarily placed in foster care. Calendars typically averaged over 100 cases a day. During the remainder of my judicial career, I presided over countless child abuse and neglect cases, many of which resulted in judicially ordered foster care placements.
Not being privy to the Family Court proceedings involving Patrick, I cannot comment on the appropriateness of his foster-care placement. I do, however, second Jeff Harrell’s blunt assessment of the system.
My first day in Foster Care Review brought me face to face with what accommodating judges had allowed agencies to get away with. In the very first case, the caseworker told me why she wanted the child, an 8-year-old boy, to remain in foster care.
When I asked if the youngster was in court, she replied that agencies didn’t bring children to review proceedings. Her oral report, sans the case file, was all that any other judge had ever required, she insisted.
Thus I began the arduous task of putting an end to that imbedded nonsense. An 8-year-old child was perfectly capable of telling me how things were really going in his foster home, I told her, and I wanted to hear from him. And when she returned with the child, I also wanted to see her file — all of it. I handled case after case that day the same way.
ABSENT CASEWORKERS
When there were over 40 court files left and no more caseworkers, I encountered shocking reality number two: Caseworkers only showed up in court when they felt like it. So I started keeping a diary, noting the agencies that failed to appear and the docket numbers of the kids they had left hanging.
And I warned the agencies that failure to appear without a very good excuse would henceforth be dealt with as contempt of court. Slowly, the word got out that I meant business.
A month or so later, I ran into an acquaintance who told me that her sister, an agency caseworker, had appeared in my court.
“She doesn’t think very much of you” he said.
“That’s fine,” I replied. “But she’s going to do things my way.”
There are specific time frames in which children must be brought to court for foster-care proceedings. Do you know how many cases were actually brought on time? Virtually none. Do you know how many were late by several months? Most.
One Staten Island kid was in foster care for an incredible seven years and had never had his case reviewed by a judge, a truly shocking violation of law.
Ultimately, however, judges were the real culprits for having allowed the court to be reduced to the status of a rubber stamp for whatever the agencies wanted. Abdicating their judicial responsibility to children, they worried more about offending agencies, including the city’s child protective service, the umbrella agency. That, of course, is the mayor’s agency, the same mayor who makes Family Court appointments and reappointments.
Family Court judges cover their backsides other ways too. Juvenile delinquency proceedings? Convict the kid. Neglect or abuse cases? Put the child in foster care.
If he’s harmed there, the city is a convenient scapegoat. Agencies’ disregard for judicial orders? Let them slide. Children languishing in foster care pose no threat; lawyers representing these agencies, including the mayor’s own attorneys, can sabotage a judge’s reappointment.
Sure there were some phenomenally good caseworkers. The only problem was that they get so burned out by the malaise around them that they rarely lasted very long. And there were some courageous Family Court judges too, exemplary jurists who never forgot that every foster care file represented a young life in crisis. Those were the judges with bulls eyes on their backs.
So, could many, if not most adults who work off the public for the so-called good of the child really screw up a glass of water? Yeah, that’s about right. Ironically, that’s also how they keep their jobs.
[Daniel Leddy’s column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Editorial Page.
His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.]
http://www.silive.com/opinion/danielleddy/index.ssf/2010/07/our_foster-care_system_fails_k.html
Our foster-care system fails kids and the city
Published: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 6:10 AM
Daniel Leddy
Cover your backside! It’s standard operating procedure for Family Court judges who want to stay in the good graces of the powers that be, the institutional honchos and other bigwigs who flex their muscles at reappointment time to make or break judicial careers.
It’s also an unconscionable betrayal of the public trust, particularly for defenseless children who bear the brunt of judicial cowardice.
In last Monday’s Advance, reporter and columnist Jeff Harrell commented on the tragic case of Patrick Alford, the 8-year-old West Brighton boy who disappeared from a Brooklyn foster home on Jan. 22.
The placement followed the arrest of his mother on a shoplifting charge, and the ensuing conclusion by the Administration for Children’s Services that she had neglected the youngster. Poignant and hard-hitting, Harrell’s piece asserted that “most adults who work off the public for the so-called good of the child could screw up a glass of water.”
Cumulatively, I served more than three years as the sole judge of the Foster Care Review Term, a citywide forum charged with reviewing the status of children voluntarily placed in foster care. Calendars typically averaged over 100 cases a day. During the remainder of my judicial career, I presided over countless child abuse and neglect cases, many of which resulted in judicially ordered foster care placements.
Not being privy to the Family Court proceedings involving Patrick, I cannot comment on the appropriateness of his foster-care placement. I do, however, second Jeff Harrell’s blunt assessment of the system.
My first day in Foster Care Review brought me face to face with what accommodating judges had allowed agencies to get away with. In the very first case, the caseworker told me why she wanted the child, an 8-year-old boy, to remain in foster care.
When I asked if the youngster was in court, she replied that agencies didn’t bring children to review proceedings. Her oral report, sans the case file, was all that any other judge had ever required, she insisted.
Thus I began the arduous task of putting an end to that imbedded nonsense. An 8-year-old child was perfectly capable of telling me how things were really going in his foster home, I told her, and I wanted to hear from him. And when she returned with the child, I also wanted to see her file — all of it. I handled case after case that day the same way.
ABSENT CASEWORKERS
When there were over 40 court files left and no more caseworkers, I encountered shocking reality number two: Caseworkers only showed up in court when they felt like it. So I started keeping a diary, noting the agencies that failed to appear and the docket numbers of the kids they had left hanging.
And I warned the agencies that failure to appear without a very good excuse would henceforth be dealt with as contempt of court. Slowly, the word got out that I meant business.
A month or so later, I ran into an acquaintance who told me that her sister, an agency caseworker, had appeared in my court.
“She doesn’t think very much of you” he said.
“That’s fine,” I replied. “But she’s going to do things my way.”
There are specific time frames in which children must be brought to court for foster-care proceedings. Do you know how many cases were actually brought on time? Virtually none. Do you know how many were late by several months? Most.
One Staten Island kid was in foster care for an incredible seven years and had never had his case reviewed by a judge, a truly shocking violation of law.
Ultimately, however, judges were the real culprits for having allowed the court to be reduced to the status of a rubber stamp for whatever the agencies wanted. Abdicating their judicial responsibility to children, they worried more about offending agencies, including the city’s child protective service, the umbrella agency. That, of course, is the mayor’s agency, the same mayor who makes Family Court appointments and reappointments.
Family Court judges cover their backsides other ways too. Juvenile delinquency proceedings? Convict the kid. Neglect or abuse cases? Put the child in foster care.
If he’s harmed there, the city is a convenient scapegoat. Agencies’ disregard for judicial orders? Let them slide. Children languishing in foster care pose no threat; lawyers representing these agencies, including the mayor’s own attorneys, can sabotage a judge’s reappointment.
Sure there were some phenomenally good caseworkers. The only problem was that they get so burned out by the malaise around them that they rarely lasted very long. And there were some courageous Family Court judges too, exemplary jurists who never forgot that every foster care file represented a young life in crisis. Those were the judges with bulls eyes on their backs.
So, could many, if not most adults who work off the public for the so-called good of the child really screw up a glass of water? Yeah, that’s about right. Ironically, that’s also how they keep their jobs.
[Daniel Leddy’s column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Editorial Page.
His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.]
http://www.silive.com/opinion/danielleddy/index.ssf/2010/07/our_foster-care_system_fails_k.html
Families rally in Washington DC on Parents Day
Families rally in Washington DC on Parents Day
July 27, 4:19 AMFamily Rights ExaminerTeri Stoddard
families 4 justice at fathers 4 justice parental justice march - leisha
Related Articles
Fathers speak out on Fatherless Day 2010
International Parental Alienation Awareness Day
Parents and family preservation advocates gathered in Washington DC this Parents Day weekend to bring attention to what they say is the immediate need for family law and CPS reform. (See slide show below.) Complaints about CPS have increased by 300% in some areas the last few years.
National Parents Day (the 4th Sunday of July) isn't a widely recognized holiday. "Did anyone, anywhere see anything in the news, radio, tv, etc about Sunday being Parents Day?" asks NY parent Jack Frost, "If you are a government official or reporter why was it not mentioned?"
Frost, a noncustodial parent, protested outside his son's pediatrician's office in June of this year to have his rights respected about his son's DNR order. "Kudos to Assemblyman Tony Jordan's staff for getting back to me regarding recognizing Parents Day," said Frost, "they were the only ones that actually did."
Families 4 Justice and TKJP Music Fest each held outdoor rallies. Families 4 Justice also provided indoor workshops and Fathers 4 Justice had their annual Parental Justice March. "Children lead Sunday's Fathers 4 Justice Parental Justice March," said Leisha Tringali, with Families 4 Justice. "It was a good event," said Robert Dickerson, Fathers 4 Justice member, "there were some great speakers, and the workshops were helpful."
Subscribe to my articles.
Teri Stoddard is a nature loving, 50-something San Francisco Bay Area native, mom of four and grandma to two. After a career in foster and child day care, Teri continues her child advocacy by reporting on family rights and issues affecting San Francisco Bay Area families.
For more info:
Families 4 Justice DC Rally for Family Rights
Fathers 4 Justice
2010 Parents Day in DC
View Slideshow »
More About: cps · child custody · family rights · parents rights · events · peaceful protest · fathers 4 justice · Families 4 Justice · Washington DC · Parents Day · DC Rally for family Rights
http://www.examiner.com/x-15873-Family-Rights-Examiner~y2010m7d27-Families-rally-in-Washington-DC-on-Parents-Day
July 27, 4:19 AMFamily Rights ExaminerTeri Stoddard
families 4 justice at fathers 4 justice parental justice march - leisha
Related Articles
Fathers speak out on Fatherless Day 2010
International Parental Alienation Awareness Day
Parents and family preservation advocates gathered in Washington DC this Parents Day weekend to bring attention to what they say is the immediate need for family law and CPS reform. (See slide show below.) Complaints about CPS have increased by 300% in some areas the last few years.
National Parents Day (the 4th Sunday of July) isn't a widely recognized holiday. "Did anyone, anywhere see anything in the news, radio, tv, etc about Sunday being Parents Day?" asks NY parent Jack Frost, "If you are a government official or reporter why was it not mentioned?"
Frost, a noncustodial parent, protested outside his son's pediatrician's office in June of this year to have his rights respected about his son's DNR order. "Kudos to Assemblyman Tony Jordan's staff for getting back to me regarding recognizing Parents Day," said Frost, "they were the only ones that actually did."
Families 4 Justice and TKJP Music Fest each held outdoor rallies. Families 4 Justice also provided indoor workshops and Fathers 4 Justice had their annual Parental Justice March. "Children lead Sunday's Fathers 4 Justice Parental Justice March," said Leisha Tringali, with Families 4 Justice. "It was a good event," said Robert Dickerson, Fathers 4 Justice member, "there were some great speakers, and the workshops were helpful."
Subscribe to my articles.
Teri Stoddard is a nature loving, 50-something San Francisco Bay Area native, mom of four and grandma to two. After a career in foster and child day care, Teri continues her child advocacy by reporting on family rights and issues affecting San Francisco Bay Area families.
For more info:
Families 4 Justice DC Rally for Family Rights
Fathers 4 Justice
2010 Parents Day in DC
View Slideshow »
More About: cps · child custody · family rights · parents rights · events · peaceful protest · fathers 4 justice · Families 4 Justice · Washington DC · Parents Day · DC Rally for family Rights
http://www.examiner.com/x-15873-Family-Rights-Examiner~y2010m7d27-Families-rally-in-Washington-DC-on-Parents-Day
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