A SLIPPERY SLOPE?
One for JJ.
On the dysfunctional Child Protective Service situation in FL:
One of the worst cases in central Florida happened in 2004, when Hernando County sheriff’s deputies discovered a 10-year-old girl starved to 29 pounds and locked in a bedroom while in the care of family friends.
These friends, Tommy and Lori Allain also had custody of the girl’s brother. The couple had extensive criminal records and lived in a filthy mobile home with holes in the floor. Yet DCF had visited the home frequently and even ended its supervision of the children at one point.
Lori Allain insisted the girl had an eating disorder, her brother abused her and that because the Allains weren’t foster parents, they couldn’t get any help from DCF. The Allains were convicted last year of child abuse and sentenced to 25 years in jail.
Their case left DCF and then-Gov. Jeb Bush red-faced and prompted swift changes: A DCF attorney now must sign off on all placements no matter the time or place, and children in nonrelative care are no longer allowed to be home schooled, as the children in the Allain case were.
The assumption seems to be that homeschooling = potential abuse and that the g-schools somehow protect against this. A better solution might be for the DCF case workers to actually do their jobs. Nah!
5 Responses to “A SLIPPERY SLOPE?”
 Comment by JJ Ross July 1st, 2007 at 9:14 am |
Jeb Bush and DCF? Ptooey. The same governor and state agency that plotted to kidnap Terri Schiavo and hold her hostage to the governor’s own personal religion and politics, with wanton disregard for hers, oh, and for the LAW. Both Schiavo and Bush were Catholic. Child-abusive priests and their superiors who covered it up instead of saving the children were too. Hey! So if we ban Catholicism, we can end child abuse, right? |
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Comment by JJ Ross July 1st, 2007 at 9:26 am |
But would that be discriminatory and unconstitutional? Then let’s ban marriage instead — her anti-abortion-bankrolled parents could’ve kept their adult daughter alive against her wishes forever, if it hadn’t been for the exhaustively upheld legal standing of that pesky husband. But we want to protect marriage and democracy, not destroy them? Well, we could just ban the judicial system. I think that might be pretty popular across the political spectrum these days . . . |
 Comment by Nance Confer July 1st, 2007 at 10:25 am |
Child Protective Services has been chronically underfunded and overworked here for as long as I can remember. And what have we done about it? Cut property taxes! And they wonder why Florida is the number one state mentioned in Keith Olbermann’s stories — when it comes to stupid! Nance |
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Comment by JJ Ross July 1st, 2007 at 11:20 am |
Actually even though the Republican still have the governor’s mansion with Charlie Crist, he named an old-school popular Dem lawyer to take over DCF here, Bob Butterworth. Butterworth was FL’s Attorney General for many years up through Being Gore’s state campaign chair in 2000, years during which DH worked under him as a legal invest-GATOR, had a lot of respect for him as do most pols and voters in both parties. We can’t figure out what he was thinking, to agree to this . . . |
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Comment by JJ Ross July 1st, 2007 at 11:20 am |
Actually even though the Republican still have the governor’s mansion with Charlie Crist, he named an old-school popular Dem lawyer to take over DCF here, Bob Butterworth. Butterworth was FL’s Attorney General for many years up through Being Gore’s state campaign chair in 2000, years during which DH worked under him as a legal investi-GATOR, had a lot of respect for him as do most pols and voters in both parties. We can’t figure out what he was thinking, to agree to this . . . |