Sunday, August 30, 2015

A Misuse of Power - A 13 year old faces being sent to juvenile detention for not seeing her father


I don’t share much of my life history. It’s really not related to writing a food blog, but sometimes you have to step outside your box. When I was 3 my father left my mother, my infant brother, and me for another woman. He did not really want much to do with us kids. My mother had to beg him to come see us. He once tried to get custody so he wouldn’t have to pay child support. It wasn’t much and he was a chemist who made decent money. When I was 6, he told me that I could not keep going back and forth between him and my mom like a yo-yo. That’s exactly what he told me. I wanted to see my dad, but I was terrified of never seeing my mother ever again. She was the one who was always there for me and took care of me. Sometimes there was yelling, but it never escalated beyond that. When I heard about the following story it really touched me deeply and I feel the need to share it.

A fellow mom in a mothers group on Facebook will get the opportunity to watch her 13 year old daughter be arrested and placed in juvenile detention because her daughter does NOT want to see her father, a law enforcement officer, who kicked her out of his house at age 12. It was her 12th birthday and when she told her father that she wanted to spend her birthday with him and not his new wife, he flipped out and kicked his 12 year old daughter out of the house and disowned her. Last year this same man videoed his wife while she shot herself in the head and killed herself to avoid abuse charges! The judge told the father that the mother could not force the daughter to see him, so the father asked the court to arrest his daughter if she won’t see him. The damn South Carolina judge agreed to do so. So a 13 year old girl who has done nothing wrong other than not wanting to see the father who kicked her out of his home on her 12th birthday will go to juvenile detention.  It’s not that she hates her father or doesn’t want to see him; she’s terrified of him. She’s scared of him retaliating against her for not seeing him. He apparently leaves guns all over his house in case someone breaks in. Even her therapist believes that it’s a bad idea to have the daughter and father in the same room. Unfortunately, the judge doesn’t care about that. Obviously this is not about wanting a relationship with his daughter, but about wanting to control her.  It makes me sick, sad, livid, and broken hearted. I understand that there are instances where there is parent alienation, but this is not one of those cases. I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that a judge would arrest a child for not wanting to see a parent.

Please share this story.

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