Why time matters for Rifqa Bary

In the end, some court somewhere probably will put an end to this farce, and Rifqa will be sent home. But by then, will it be too late to heal the family?

First, a recap:

● Rifqa Bary's family emigrates to America from Sri Lanka so Rifqa can get the very best medical care after an eye injury. They wind up living in Columbus, Ohio.

● She's an honor student and a cheerleader, neither of which suggests that her parents are fanatical fundamentalist Muslims.

● Her form of adolescent rebellion is to renounce her faith and embrace evangelical Christianity, ultimately joining a Facebook group that includes husband and wife evangelical pastors from Florida.

● Somehow, just as she is turning 17, she apparently becomes convinced that, as a result of her conversion, her father will kill her. In fact, in the most revealing portion of her heartrending videotaped interview she insists he has to kill her because Islam supposedly demands it.

● Someone pays for a bus ticket so she can run away from home. The pastors say they didn't do it, but they know who did, and won't tell.

● For days, while her desperate family searches for her and, one imagines, wonders if she is even alive, the pastors don't tell authorities that Rifqa is living with them.

● When they finally come forward they exploit Rifqa via the media interview mentioned above.

● The Department of Children and Families places Rifqa in a Florida foster home.

In 48 other states, the child welfare agency probably would realize very quickly that Rifqa's fears are absurd and send her home. But since this is Florida, the case immediately is politicized. (I say 48 other states instead of 49 because the one other state I can imagine behaving as Florida has is Texas, as seen in the FLDS case.)

Perhaps the absurdity of DCF's position is best seen by following a suggestion from Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas and trying to imagine what would happen had the religions been reversed. In other words, what if a child from a loving Christian home were persuaded by militant Muslims she encounters on Facebook to convert to Islam. She then runs away and is hidden for days in the home of a radical Imam. She and the Imam then insist that her Christian father will kill her for renouncing her faith.

But Florida Governor Charlie Crist is running for the U.S. Senate and he faces a primary challenge. Compared to his predecessor, Jeb Bush, Crist has been a moderate and he needs to shore up his base. So, just as Bush did, Crist exploits the plight of a child to play to that base – and DCF promptly caves in, working to hold Rifqa in Florida.

DCF claims it just wants the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to investigate and make sure Rifqa would be safe if she returns home. Meanwhile, John Stemberger, an attorney who runs the right-wing Florida Family Policy Council, a group that helped prolong the agony of Terry Schiavo's family in another notorious Florida case, volunteers to serve as Rifqa's lawyer. DCF and the court allow him to participate even though normally children in these kinds of cases get only the equivalent of a CASA - charged with advocating for whatever the CASA thinks is best for the child. (Rifqa winds up with both, and while usually the CASA-equivalent is a volunteer, this time she's apparently another lawyer.)

I've often decried the hypocrisy of some on the left when it comes to child welfare issues; this case reveals the hypocrisy of those on the right who apparently think family values are for Christian families only.

● Meanwhile back in Columbus, even Franklin County Children's Services, one of the nation's worst when it comes to needlessly taking children from their homes, concludes there is no reason to believe Rifqa won't be safe in her own home. They reach an agreement with Rifqa's family to place her in a local foster home while offering counseling to the family. And the local District Attorney writes a letter to the Florida court assuring it that law enforcement in Columbus is quite capable of keeping Rifqa safe, thank you.

● FDLE concludes its investigation – but the judge agrees to seal the report, so the public can't find out what's in it. And who asked that the findings be sealed? Stemberger – the same lawyer who plasters his Fox News interviews about the case on his website.

● At a court hearing yesterday, a lawyer for Rifqa's mother starts to discuss the FLDE report. Fortunately she manages to mention that, of course, the FLDE report was "very favorable" to Rifqa's parents and found "no indication whatsoever" of abuse. And that raises another question about DCF: Since their original position was they were just waiting for the FLDE investigation, now that FLDE has reached its conclusion, why isn't DCF urging the court to send Rifqa home?

But before the attorney for Rifqa's mother could say more, the CASA-equivalent jumps in and demands that the mother's lawyer be silenced because the report is sealed. (Leave it to a CASA-equivalent to make everything a little worse.)

As I noted in yesterday's Blog, in many ways Florida has a significantly better child welfare system than it had just a few years ago. A key to those reforms has been a new policy of maximum openness and disclosure. It's now common, when news media go to court seeking records in case, for DCF actually to go with the journalists in support of the motion.

So the immediate question is whether that commitment to openness will be the next thing to be sacrificed by DCF to support Gov. Crist's attempt to become Senator Crist.

● The court ignores the FLDE findings, the Franklin County Children's Services findings and the Franklin County District Attorney – and orders Rifqa held in Florida for at least another 30 days. He orders "mediation" in the case. But whether or not Rifqa's evangelical friends caused her fears by brainwashing her, as some have alleged, there is no question they are stoking those fears now. Stemberger has said he, too, is convinced Rifqa's father could kill her, telling CNN.com, "She is a person who is ripe for apostate killing or mercy killing." That doesn't bode well for the mediation sessions.

And if all this doesn't raise enough doubts about the judge, the Orlando Sentinel reports that, in a state where everyone's consciousness should have been raised by one news story after another about the misuse of psychiatric medication on foster children, the judge himself actually asked if Rifqa should be doped up. Fortunately, even the CASA-equivalent had the sense to say no.

Eventually, Rifqa probably will be sent home. But by then it may be too late.

In less than a year, Rifqa will be free to leave home and go anywhere she wants. Once she's 18 no one can, or should, stop her. Whether or not she was "brainwashed" in the first place, it's clear that the evangelicals she's fallen in with, including her own lawyer, are stoking her fears, thereby widening the rift between Rifqa and her family.

So with every day this goes on, the odds that she'll ever be able to reconcile with her family diminish – and the odds increase that Rifqa will remain estranged from her family for years. Do we really want her to realize what's happened to her only when it's too late, perhaps after the death of one or both parents?

That's a pretty high price, even for a U.S. Senate seat.

UPDATED, 5:45 PM: Just when I thought it was safe to say nice things about Florida…

SEE THE UPDATES AT THE END OF THIS POST

…the Florida Department of Children and Families caves in to another governor and politicizes another human services case.

This is something of a habit in Florida. Every few years a case comes along which gives a conservative governor a chance to shore up his political base – and the Department of Children and Families promptly caves.

DCF isn't only responsible for children – so it was involved in then Gov. Jeb Bush's astonishingly cruel attempt to politicize the case of Terri Schiavo. But one would hope that even a governor of Florida would understand that children should be off limits. The record shows they don't. The last two governors have felt free to order the child welfare agency to play politics with children's lives.

A few years ago, it was a 13-year-old foster child who wanted an abortion. Somehow Bush got wind of it and demanded that DCF try to stop it. Then there was the Cuban child who wound up in the hands of wealthy, powerful Cuban-American foster parents – through no fault of his Cuban father. DCF tried to deny the child the right to live with his own, loving father, and, in fact, managed to force a compromise at the child's expense. (This is not the notorious Elian Gonzalez case, in which DCF had little involvement, but it was similar enough to be branded Elian II in many quarters.) This case lasted long enough for both Bush and his successor, Charlie Crist to order DCF to put its huge thumb on the scales of justice against the father – which both hurt the child and cost taxpayers $250,000.

Right now, DCF is in court mounting a half-hearted defense of the state's law banning gay people from adopting, even though it's obvious the agency knows the law hurts children.

But all that at least began when DCF had so many other failings that politicization was the least of it. DCF really has improved a lot in the last couple of years – but not when it comes to halting the practice of putting politics ahead of children.

Which brings us to the case of 17-year-old Fathima Rifqa Bary, which is scheduled to be the subject of another court hearing today.

The case, and DCF's inexcusable behavior, were so perfectly summed up by Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas that I don't need to summarize here. The Sentinel even sent a reporter to Bary's home – her real home - in Ohio, no small feat in these days of newspaper budget cuts. That story makes even clearer the harm being done to this entire family because Gov. Crist is running for the Senate, faces a primary challenge and needs to pander to his base.

While one might expect as much from a politician, especially in Florida, it would have been nice if, once, just once, a DCF leader stood up to it. But no. DCF argued to keep Rifqa in Florida, which only will prolong everyone's ordeal. One need only watch the widely-circulated video of Rifqa on Youtube to see that every extra minute this case drags on makes everything more difficult for the family and, especially Rifqa.

Not only did DCF take the wrong stand, DCF Secretary George Sheldon personally came to court for the case (something, you may be sure, he does not do every day). Indeed, if he's got that much time on his hands, he could put it to far better use, by say, addressing Florida's ongoing problems of misuse and overuse of psychiatric medication on foster children. (Florida's problems in this regard are no worse than any other state's but, DCF has been astonishingly candid about them - and for that, Sheldon deserves credit.)

Sheldon also met personally with Rifqa and her lawyer. He apparently felt no need to meet with her distraught parents and their lawyer.

The very fact that Rifqa has a lawyer is highly unusual. In Florida, children in such cases are not entitled to them. Rather, they are assigned Guardians ad litem (usually not lawyers at all, but essentially CASA volunteers) who advocate not for what the child wants, but for whatever the guardian happens to think is best.

As readers of this Blog probably know, I believe children should have lawyers and their mandate should be to advocate for what any child old enough to express a rational preference wants. So I believe Rifqa should have a lawyer arguing for her position, even though her position is tragically wrong. But how is it that DCF and the Florida courts managed to make an exception and allow a lawyer to represent this one child in a child welfare proceeding?

Most shameful of all is Sheldon's disingenuous claim that all they're doing is watching out for Rifqa's safety. Thomas' column makes clear the absurdity of the claim. But also, that was, of course, the excuse for all the horrible things Florida did to children before recent reforms. In fact, it's the excuse for terrible things done to children all over the country by child welfare agencies – think of the FLDS raid, for example, or every time a child's poverty is confused with neglect in the name of "erring on the side of the child." Or, better yet, just think of it as the Dick Cheney defense. After all, all that torture during the (George W.) Bush Administration was in the name of "safety," too.

It sends a terrible message to frontline workers to say, in effect, "we now realize how harmful foster care is to most children most of the time, so we will no longer hide behind safety to justify needless foster care – except in the politically-charged cases."

I'm not really sorry that I've been saying nice things about Florida. It is, in fact, a much improved child welfare system over the one that existed just a few years ago. Although the agency still has a long way to go, DCF has been doing an admirable job of wringing the wrongful removal out of the system.

Now, if it could just do the same with the politics. Today's court hearing would be a great place to start.

UDPATE, SEPT. 5, 5:45PM

But no, it was another victory for politics - Rifqa stays in Florida. And to top it off, the judge has imposed a gag order. DCF's signature reform over the past couple of years has been openness; if the agency can appeal the gag order and does not do so, then its signature will be hypocrisy.

At one point in today's hearing, the lawyer for Rifqa's father urged the judge to "let common sense prevail.

Clearly, he forgot he's in Florida.

UPDATE, SEPT 3, 3:05 p.m.:

● The Columbus Dispatch reports that Franklin County Children’s Services, the county-run child welfare agency in Columbus, is convinced Rifqa will be perfectly safe in her own home. That’s particularly significant because, as it happens, few agencies in the entire country normally are more fanatical about taking away children than Franklin County Children’s Services. For details, see NCCPR’s report on Ohio child welfare.

● The Florida Department of Law Enforcement did its own investigation and filed a report with the court in Florida. But when the Orlando Sentinel asked for a copy, it was denied because the judge sealed it. The request to seal the report, and prevent the public from knowing what’s in it, at least for now, was filed by Rifqa’s lawyer, who, of course, is trying to keep Rifqa away from her parents. I wonder what he doesn't want us to see?

TexProtects seems to think we’re pretty dumb

A group called TexProtects, The Texas Association for the Protection of Children, has put out an "Advocacy Alert" urging people to write to the Governor to ask him to sign SB 1440, that bill discussed in previous posts to this Blog that would legalize CPS' illegal behavior in cases like the FLDS raid.

Their argument boils down to this: Current law is terribly vague, but this bill supposedly makes things more specific. Therefore, TexProtects says, the bill "actually provides more protections for a parent in connection with orders in aid of an investigation."

Let's leave aside, for the moment, the phony notion implied by that statement that unlimited state power benefits children and basic due process benefits only parents. Let's ignore, for the moment, that in cases like the FLDS raid it was the children who suffered most from CPS' actions.

The argument from TexProtects still leaves out one small detail: Two key court rulings. One is the Texas Supreme Court ruling in the FLDS case, the other came from a federal appellate court in one of those rare cases where CPS picked on someone with the money to hire good lawyers. These rulings have filled in a lot of the blanks. Thanks to those rulings, the law now is a bit more specific. What SB 1440 really tries to do is undermine those court rulings and effectively return things to where they were before those courts ruled.

And let's get serious. If SB 1440 really increases families' protections, why are groups like Texas CASA and the Center for Public Policy Priorities, groups that strongly favored the FLDS raid, desperate to see SB 1440 become law? And why are so many groups that were against the raid urging a veto?

“Enhanced interrogation” in the war against child abuse

    As newspapers do their "one year later" stories about the raid by Texas CPS on the YFZ Ranch, we're learning more about what happened to more than 400 children torn from their families – and why.

    We'll never know the single worst moment for the children. Perhaps it was the initial removal from the Ranch. Perhaps it was the terrible conditions where the children were interned for the first days after the raid – essentially their own private Guantanamo. Maybe it was being sent to institutions hundreds of miles from home. But for many of the children, especially the youngest, the worst moment probably came a year ago yesterday, when they were taken from their mothers.

    None of the mothers had been accused of abusing the children. They had not been accused of arranging underage marriages. Some were accused of "failure to protect" children from underage marriages – which, in fact, is a euphemism for sexual abuse. Most were accused, in essence, of living in the same place where other mothers may have failed to protect children from this kind of sexual abuse. This is much like the all-too-common practice of taking children from battered women simply because the women had been beaten and they had "failed to protect" the children from witnessing the beating. A class-action lawsuit led to a ban on this pernicious practice in New York City. (NCCPR's Vice President was co-counsel for plaintiffs in the case.) During the trial one expert testified that, for the child, being taken from his mother under these circumstances is "tantamount to pouring salt into an open wound." The approach of Texas CPS boiled down to "please pass the salt."

    Initially the explanation from Texas CPS was the same chilling explanation they gave for everything they did wrong in this case: "It's what we always do." And, as I've noted before, the most frightening thing about the entire FLDS case is that this particular claim is true.

    But now, it turns out, in the FLDS case, CPS actually tried to be a little kinder to the children. It's well known that many of the children were allowed to stay with their mothers at first, only to be torn from them after their first days in internment. Now we know CPS was pressured into taking the children from their mothers.

But who would do that? Who would know – or care - so little about child development that they would go out of their way to impose an extra measure of misery on helpless children? Who would be so caught up in their own self-righteousness that they could advocate something so cruel?

    CASA, of course.

    The San Angelo Standard Times reports that it was the local chapter of Court-Appointed Special Advocates that "pressed CPS and the court to remove the mothers, something that eventually occurred April 14."

    In several previous posts to this Blog, I've written about the enormous harm CASA does to the children it is supposed to help – and who most CASA volunteers genuinely want to help. I've written about the major national study, commissioned by the National CASA Association itself, which shows that the program accomplishes almost nothing except to prolong foster care and reduce the chance that children will be placed with relatives – while doing nothing to make children safer. And I've written about the vile racism by a performer at a CASA fundraiser in Kansas.

    And now we find similar poor performance by CASA in the FLDS case.

    The CASAs don't even pretend they thought the children actually would be abused by their mothers. No, their only argument was that some of the mothers "began to inhibit efforts to elicit truthful answers from their children." That isn't necessarily cause to take any of the children from those mothers, much less tearing all the children from all of the mothers. What CASA is saying is that it's ok to inflict cruelty on hundreds of children to get "the truth" out of them and build a case against someone who may have abused some of them.

In fact, it might have been easier to question some of the children once their mothers were completely out of the picture – just as it probably is easier to get a story out of a terrorism suspect if you waterboard him. And yes, it's even possible that the information gleaned this way from hundreds of children who were never abused might reveal a child who was abused or prevent some other child from being abused. It also may be that if you waterboard hundreds of innocent people, and a few real terrorists, you might prevent a terrorist attack.

    But there is no more justification for "enhanced interrogation" in the war against child abuse than in the war against terror.

    Of course no CASA wants to hurt a child; on the contrary, they genuinely want to help children and keep them safe. But once you decide the ends justify the means …

    The CASAs go on to dismiss the anguish of mothers seen on television when their children were taken. They say the mothers were faking it. "Most of that was just staged," one of the CASAs said. How do they know? Because the mothers on TV weren't the same mothers they were working with. But CPS took children from all the mothers, not just the ones these particular CASAs were "working with." (Also, as it happens, CPS' justification for taking the children was that the YFZ Ranch functioned as one family. If that's true, then it stands to reason that all the mothers would grieve for all the children. You can't have it both ways.)

And it gets scarier.

    Almost anyone who followed the FLDS case will recall the courage of 11 mental health professionals sent by Texas CPS itself to the places where the children were interned in those first days. They put their careers on the line by breaking confidentiality oaths to tell the world just how horribly the children were being treated. Their statements are available here. Again, these are statements not from advocates for the parents but from professionals sent in by the State of Texas. And what do the CASAs say about this? They suggest it never happened.

    According to the Standard Times: "Although not explicitly questioning the truthfulness of the claims, the CASA workers said they saw none of the alleged incidents detailed in the reports." Talk about being "in denial."

    And, it appears, the CASAs only wish the children were still far from everyone they know and love. They condemned Texas CPS – not for inflicting all this damage in the first place, but for supposedly dropping cases too quickly after the courts ruled that the removals were illegal.

    Toward the end of the story, even one of the CASAs admits that "There were definitely some of the cases where the children shouldn't have been removed and should have been returned quickly." But she expresses no remorse for this, or for her role in it; no sympathy for the suffering these children endured when taken from the ranch and then from their mothers. Rather, she simply declares that "these are children who were removed for a reason."

    Well, yes. But that doesn't mean it was a good reason.