● Last week I wrote about the self-proclaimed “child welfare scholar” who insists that the horrors inflicted on children by “residential treatment facilities” have nothing to do with the foster care system. This week, PBS News Weekend spoke to some former foster youth who beg to differ.
● It’s official: Minnesota has a law that will phase in enhanced protections for children facing family police investigations and the risk that they will be placed in foster care. Though some Native Americans have expressed concerns that such laws could dilute the impact of the Indian Child Welfare Act, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a citizen of the White Earth Nation, doesn’t see it that way.
“Other states should follow our lead,” Flanagan said. “As a Native woman, this bill hit home. So I’m incredibly grateful for all of the folks behind me who helped us get here today.”● Of course, if the federal government and the states were serious about, at long last, compensating Native Americans for what family policing has done to them – and continues to do to them – they could follow Canada’s example.
● Amid concern over child abuse fatalities in Tennessee, I have a column in Tennessee Lookout about the best way to curb such fatalities. (It’s what you think.)
● Two cases involving the dubious diagnosis of “shaken baby syndrome” are in the news this week. In one case, The New York Times Magazine says: “Flawed science helped convict Russell Maze more than 20 years ago. The D.A.’s office now says it got it wrong. Why is he still behind bars?” In the other, despite strong evidence that the shaken baby diagnosis was wrong, the father is not only in jail, a date has been set for his execution. That case is in Texas – but you probably guessed that.
In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions:
● NewsNation reports that
A northwest Indiana woman accused in the death of her 10-year-old foster child has been taken into custody in Michigan following a days-long search. … [Jennifer] Wilson has been charged with reckless homicide in connection with the death of 10-year-old Dakota Levi Stevens in late April.
