Minor Matters

Most of you know that after graduating from Law
School, I spent the next 15 years representing children in Juvenile Dependency Court and Family Law Court. I represented children who were abandoned, neglected, beaten, raped, molested, exposed to illegal drugs, and exposed to domestic violence. They ranged in age from newborns to seventeen (sometimes as old as 23) years old.

I was their voice in court. It was a voice in the dark.

Malina (not her real name) was five years old when she saw her father kill her mother by drowning her in the family bathtub. The father was sent away for life in Pelican Bay, his parental rights were terminated and Malina was adopted. When Malina was eight, her adoptive mother returned Malina to the courts and terminated the adoption. Malina had been exhibiting strange behavior; she liked knives. The adoptive mother awoke one night to find Malina standing over her with a knife in her hand. Malina spent the rest of her childhood in group homes.

Malina was 15 when I was appointed to take over her representation from a retiring attorney. She was a pretty bi-racial girl with a beautiful smile and a charming demeanor but her social worker had written in her report that Malina was manipulative and conniving. All Malina wanted from the court was the ability to spend time with her "grandmother", a woman who had been godmother to her ex-adoptive mother.

The court allowed only monitored visits. Malina was on all kinds of psychotropic medication. She was failing in almost every subject in school. She refused to take her meds because they made her sluggish. No one trusted her; no one listened to her. I set her up for a review of medications, counseling, and I offered to monitor the visits with "grandma". None of that took place. A few weeks after I first met her, Malina went AWOL.

Two years went by where Malina's review hearings consisted of renewing her warrants for detention. Then a new case came into court, an infant had been born to a minor mother and I represented that mother. It was Malina. She was now bloated from her recent pregnancy, but thrilled to be a new mother. She named her baby boy "Lawrence" (not his real name). Dad was a white boy Malina had come to know on the streets.

Malina was placed in a large facility for girls in the system. Social workers did not want to place baby Lawrence with Malina because she had been a runaway. But the facility had lockdown capabilities, so Malina and I managed to convince the court to give her a chance to care for her baby.

There might have been another reason that social workers did not want to place Lawrence with Malina. Lawrence was caucasian in appearance. With all the black and hispanic babies in the dependency system, healthy white babies were in huge demand by adoptive parents. When babies are removed from their parents, they are "fast-tracked" for adoption.

Malina took all the parenting classes at the facility and relished her role as mother. But, she was loud, opinionated, and lazy, at least according to the social workers reports. Staff had found dirty diapers stashed under Malina's bed. They found dirty bottles lying around her room and discovered Lawrence with a diaper rash. Lawrence was six months old when the social worker decided to place him with Dad, a 16 year old, and his step-mother. Dad was then found to be not appropriate as he might have been doing drugs and refused to submit to testing. So placement of Lawrence was now with the woman who married Dad's dad.

This destroyed Malina, but I convinced her to buck up and do whatever was necessary to get her baby back: take more classes, get good grades, do not argue with your social worker. Now, Malina liked to talk. And she was opinionated. No one wanted to monitor her visits with Lawrence; they had to take place at a social worker's office. Malina lost hope and she started going AWOL again. She was transferred from placement to placement. Now reunification seemed all but impossible.

I volunteered to monitor the visits every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. This truly was detrimental to my limited social life. First, I picked up Malina, then we went to Baby Lawrence's Dad's home (where Dad was not allowed to reside because of the unresolved drug issues). Along with Baby Lawrence, we picked up a car seat, stroller, and huge bag full of diapers and baby paraphernalia. We went to the mall. We walked around Old Town Pasadena. We went to lunch. In gasoline and lunch money alone, I was going broke.

But Malina loved taking care of her baby and Baby Lawrence was a happy, delightful little fellow, pink cheeked with straight brown bangs just like Moe from the Three Stooges. Malina taught him to drink from a sippy cup. She made sure we ordered vegetables so he could push them around his highchair tray. "I read that it's really good for babies to learn to feed themselves by allowing them to play with their food", she told me while wiping off rice that had become paste in Lawrence's sweaty little palms.

We became familiar with every ladies' room that had clean diaper changing facilities. Malina carefully applied medicated cream to Lawrence's raw bottom. "He has eczema and psoriasis.", she told me. "Look, they took him from me because he had a diaper rash. He still has a diaper rash. It's because has really sensitive skin."

In Dependency Court, parents do not get much time to reunify with their children. Time was flying and a hearing was set to determine if Malina had earned the right to be able to have Lawrence placed with her again. But Malina's placement would not allow babies, and many other facilities would not consider her because of her past runaway behavior. Dad's step-mother wanted to adopt Lawrence.

The court decided it was in Lawrence's best interests to have a permanent adoptive home rather than wait and see if a home could ever be found for Malina and Lawrence. Many times, if the baby's placement is with a relative, courts will allow the mother to live in that relative's home. If the relative will allow it. Dad's step-mom and Malina did not like each other.

I set the matter for trial. I estimated that the trial would take three hours. I would have mother and baby evaluated by court appointed experts. I didn't want her to give up. I don't know if she heard a word I said. I told her I would visit her over the weekend. But before week's end, I got another AWOL report. I never saw Malina again.

I don't know where she went or what happened to her. It still breaks my heart.