The Texas
court of appeals ruled today that the lower court has 10 days to vacate the order that placed 450 children in the state's custody. I completely agree with this ruling and am actually surprised that it did not happen sooner.
Although I find this group of people very creepy (for lack of a better word) and I personally would love to see ALL the children given to parents who were not going to indoctrinate them with their creepy beliefs, I was very troubled last month when I found out that the state of Texas had detained all of these chidren. Here's why: I spent 3 years interning and then working for Los Angeles County DCFS(Department of Children and Family Services). Many times I had to make the difficult decision about whether or not to detain a child from his/her home. There were many times when I FELT that the home was not suitable for the child, but I could not remove him/her because after the detention comes the court hearing where the burden is on the State to prove that the conditions merited a detention. For ex: Personally I think it a shame that many children grow up watching their parents spend more time doing drugs than taking care of them. However, drug use in and of itself is not grounds for first time removal. DCFS must prove that the drug use impedes the parent's ability to parent. Do you know how hard that is to prove? People have the right to do many things as parents that we may not agree with, but that doesn't give us the jurisdiction to detain their children.
I was completely baffled as to how Texas got away with systematically detaining so many children without PROVING that abuse or imminent danger of abuse was happening with EACH ONE . Each family should have been dealt with on a case to case basis and not just treated as a giant whole. I have no doubt that there is abuse going on in some of the families, but they must be dealt with individually. Should some of those children been removed- of course, but I can only imagine what a judge in Children's Court in LA would have said to seen over 450 kids show up for detention hearings without proof of anything. Was it a witch hunt-yes!!
Also, detention is the LAST option. Why was it used first? There are many other things that could have been done such as taking away the men.
This is when I actually wish I was still in school because I would love to hear what all my professors think about this case.
What do you think?
Happy 30th Birthday to my wonderful Mike. Today is the day I have been waiting for for 2.5 years. I've felt pretty old the past couple of years while I have been in my thirties and my youngun Mike has still been in his twenties. Here's to a great decade!! 
