NCCPR news and commentary round-up weeks ending December 3, 2024

● Tearing children from their parents because the parents are receiving medication-assisted treatment to control drug addiction doesn’t just impose enormous needless trauma on the children. As The Imprint points out in this two-part series, it also happens to be illegal. But when has the law ever applied to the family police or the family courts? 

And by the way, I wonder how many of the sanctimonious judges who insist that taking a drug every day to remain healthy is just another form of addiction are themselves staying alive in part by doing something I do: taking a statin every day – because we just can’t seem to abstain from fatty foods.

● In The Des Moines Register a Native American parent writes, and speaks, about her experience with the Indian Child Welfare Act.  But read or watch it to the end – the story doesn’t go where you may expect. 

● Brooke Scianna, now age 23, never needed to be torn from her family and institutionalized in a group home when she was 16. Now, KNXV-TV reports, she and her parents have settled a lawsuit against the Arizona family police and the group home for what was done to her there. 

● Two other young people who endured institutionalization write in The Imprint about why such places need to be abolished. 

● A stunning story from Mother Jones and Reveal: When neither the police nor the family police in Florida would believe that Taylor Cadle was being repeatedly raped by her adoptive father she had to gather the evidence herself. She was 12 years old. Taylor had been placed in the home by the Florida Department of Children and Families. 

● ABC News Nightline has followed up on the story of the Georgia mother who was arrested because her 10-year-old son walked a mile from his rural home to their small-town Dollar Store all by himself. The story includes the bodycam video of the arrest. 

● The Boston Globe published a story about caseworker turnover that’s better than most such stories. I have a blog post about the lessons that can be learned from the Globe’s findings. 

In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

From the Santa Fe New Mexican 

A 9-year-old boy suffered physical restraint and food restrictions and was secluded in his room during a 2022 stay at a Los Lunas center for children with mental and behavioral health issues, a new lawsuit alleges.  The suit, filed in state District Court in Santa Fe earlier this month, alleges staff at the privately run Sandhill Center abused and neglected children, including the boy, who is now 11. 

The center was understaffed and more interested in the profits from enrollment, and the state Children, Youth and Families Department, which licensed and oversaw the center, was aware of issues at Sandhill and allowed the abuse to happen, the suit alleges. …