Posted on 04/27/2004 3:52:32 PM PDT by RedsHunter
One attorney compared the situation at a foster home filled with girls and a pair of unrelated teenage boys as two roosters in a hen house.
Acting on youthful urges, the girls and boys had sex until the youngest girl, then 11, told her teacher about it on Dec. 16.
Police removed the boys -- ages 14 and 15 -- from the home and charged them with criminal sexual conduct. The Family Independence Agency also removed seven girls from the home and put them in temporary foster care.
Attorney Elizabeth Warner, who represents one of two mothers in the home, said the girls were safe once the boys were removed. The FIA should have left the family intact, she said.
"It is shocking how far afield the FIA went in this case," Warner said. The agency violated its own policy requiring it employees to work to keep families together while they make improvements, she said.
Warner lost a host of pretrial motions Monday before Circuit Judge John McBain, but she ultimately won the three-hour hearing.
McBain ordered the FIA to immediately return the children to the home, minus the two boys and one girl who requires therapy. She is staying with a relative.
"There are adequate safeguards in place to protect the children," McBain said. His order is pending a July 19 trial in which the FIA is charging both mothers with child neglect -- a precursor to removing the children permanently.
The foster home is a mother-daughter household. The daughter lives upstairs with her four biological children, including a 15-year-old boy who pleaded guilty to second-degree criminal sexual conduct.
The mother has two foster children and five adopted children, including a 14-year-old boy who is expected to plead to a sex charge. Her husband died in 2001. Together, they had cared for more than 20 foster children, first in Washtenaw County.
They moved to a large farmhouse in Jackson County 13 years ago.
Washtenaw County social workers sent letters to McBain praising the family's dedication to children.
At issue is whether sex among consenting children, all younger than 16, was the result of neglect by parents.
Some children said the mothers knew of them having sex, and others said they did not know.
"They knew only that one of the boys had made sexual advances toward one of the girls last summer, and they put a stop to it," Warner said. Attorney Susan Dehncke represents the other mother.
The FIA and Assistant Prosecutor Kathleen Rezmierski stood alone in arguing the children should remain in protective custody.
Attorneys for the children and the mothers all argued the children should be returned to the mothers.
The mothers agreed with McBain that the girls cannot have any contact with the two boys.
One boy is in a locked-down detention center and the other is in a residential treatment facility, officials said. The mothers can visit them.
Only two of the 11 children were foster. Of the rest, 3 girls and one boy were the children of one of the women (and grandchildren of the other woman). Five were adopted children of the older woman (and thus legally aunts or uncles to the children of the younger mother).
Since we know that at least one of the boys was biologially related, at least one, and perhaps both, of the foster children are girls. (If they specified whether the second boy was foster or adopted, I missed it.)
Since most of the kids are legally, if not biologially related, denying future foster children isn't going to fully solve the problem.
Weren't the girls in violation of the law as well?
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