These are just a few of the messages that numerous family rights groups brought to Washington DC last week in a concert, rally, and many meetings with legislators and legislative aides. They are many groups, representing millions of Americans, but the basic message is the same – our children matter, and they need their families.
On Sunday, September 8, there was an all-day concert under the banner of “4 the Children” with Robert Slaven. “Joyce the Voice” Catalano and Ed Elliot organized the schedule for the day. Musicians entertained, pouring their hearts out in song, while advocates talked to passers-by about the injustices they see happening to families in family courts. More
The numbers do not add up. There are more children adopted out of foster care to non-family members than there are “substantiated” allegations of abuse or neglect against the parents. The data calls into question the entire rationale that has been given for funding adoptions from foster care.
The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), promoted by the Clintons and passed by Congress, was publicized as an important means of “keeping those poor, abused, neglected foster children from languishing in foster care, helping them to find their Forever Families.”
At the time when ASFA was enacted, The Washington Posttouted the bill as:
the most significant change in federal child-protection policy in almost two decades.
The rhetoric sounded good, and it resonated with millions of Americans, and with lawmakers. The problem is – that is not what is happening.
Instead, hundreds of thousands of children are being taken from families whose biggest crime may be that they are poor, or that they asked for a second medical opinion for their child.
ASFA Adoption Bonuses – Only Apply to Stranger Adoptions
The Adoption and Safe Families Act provides large amounts of federal dollars to states and Child Protective Service (CPS) agencies, to the tune of billions of dollars per year, to financially incentivize the adoption of children from foster care.
Marian Leonard died in a nursing home that she was forced into by a judge in early 2018. Last month, her court-appointed guardian Sidney Summey restricted her from having any visitors except a token hour and a half visit twice per month from her daughter – the woman that Mrs. Leonard had designated as her chosen power of attorney, not just once, but 3 different times over a 30 year period.
She died alone. No family or friends were permitted to be with her in her final weeks. The guardian had even taken her away from her roommate, whom Nancy viewed as her mother’s “guardian angel.”
Nancy, who has been fighting the court since custody of her mother was seized by the state, is devastated.
It’s like being in the middle of a horror story.
All her mother’s planning to ensure that she would live out her elderly years on her own terms vanished with the stroke of a judge’s pen, at the request of social workers from the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR) and St. Vincent’s Hospital. The simplest request, that her only daughter be with her at the end, was denied.
Nancy’s voice cracked as she cried:
I couldn’t save her. I tried so hard to get her out of there.
Marian Leonard was known to her former English students as “Mrs. Gregory.” Yearbook photo provided by family.
The admission sounded like something out of “Logan’s Run” or other dystopian sci-fi movie, not an explanation one would expect to hear from legal associates. Nancy Scott and others who joined her in a peaceful prayer vigil for her mother’s life on Tuesday, August 20, were stunned when representatives from the court-appointed guardian’s office explained that the reason that retired Alabama schoolteacher Marian Leonard was on hospice was because she was old.
According to Medicare.gov, hospice care is supposed to be for people who are certified by a hospice doctor and the patient’s regular doctor that they are terminally ill with a “life expectancy of 6 months or less.” Hospice care is palliative, or “comfort” care, rather than curative care, and it is supposed to be a choice that the patient makes, not a decision thrust upon them without their consent.
That is not what has happened with Marian Leonard. When the state seized guardianship of Mrs. Leonard in February 2018 at the request of St. Vincent’s Hospital and the Department of Human Resources (DHR), she was forced into a nursing home, Diversicare of Riverchase, and forced onto hospice care, against her will and that of her designated Power of Attorney, her daughter Nancy Scott. More
On the morning of Tuesday, July 16, 2019, Connie Reguli received a phone call notifying her that there is a warrant out for her arrest.
She will be turning herself in to the Brentwood Police Department on Wednesday morning.
Connie has never been arrested before. The founder of the Family Forward Project has no criminal history, nor have there been any allegations of criminal activity. Yet, for doing her job as an attorney to have the voice of her client, a parent, be heard, she is being criminally charged.
Retaliation like this, Connie says, is the reason that families often cannot get legal help when their children are taken from them. Attorneys who fight for clients’ Constitution rights such as due process and who fight against corruption are often threatened or bullied into backing down.
This makes it difficult for parents whose children are taken by Child Protective Services, no matter how unjustly. Many attorneys are simply scared.
More often than not, the allegations against parents are baseless and end up being unsubstantiated. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “Child Maltreatment” Report, only 17% of allegations against parents are substantiated. (See link.)
The charges against Connie Reguli are facilitation of custodial interference and accessory after the fact of custodial interference in the case of a client she represented. The client is also facing charges of custodial interference.
The client’s children were seized by the Tennessee Department of Children and Families (DCF) based on an “ex parte order.” That is, the order was brought before a judge and signed by a judge without notifying the mother or her attorney.
As the mother’s attorney, Connie Reguli asked for her client to have due process and get a court date where she could be heard after the children were seized on the basis of an ex parte order.
Ex parte orders are supposed to be reserved for times when there is an emergency situation, one in which there is risk of irreparable harm if parties have to wait for a court hearing. All too often, however, they are the normal practice in Child Protective Services cases.
In the case in question, there was never any evidence of the allegations against the mother, and the petition against her was ultimately dismissed. However, DCF took her children away from her, put them in several different foster homes, and subjected the children to almost a year of trauma before the case was dismissed and the children returned home.
Action Sparks
Connie will be turning herself in around 11 am. She anticipates being released on her own recognizance.
Anyone who would like to support Connie Reguli is invited to come to the Brentwood Police Department, 5211 Maryland Way # 1000, Brentwood, TN 37027, at 10:30 am on Wednesday, July 17.
Calls may be made on Connie’s behalf to the Williamson County District Attorney Kim R. Helper at (615) 794-7275. She is also on Facebook.
