Never mind.
Posted on 10/11/2005 10:36:09 AM PDT by SmithL
POTTSVILLE, Pa. - Melissa WolfHawk, due to give birth any day now, lives in fear that her baby will be taken from her - by the government. The county child-welfare agency believes her child won't be safe because her husband is a sex offender who spent more than a decade in prison for rape in a case involving two teenage girls.
But WolfHawk says her husband of three years, DaiShin WolfHawk, is no "monster," and she won a federal court order Sept. 30 keeping child-welfare workers from asking about her pregnancy, at least until a hearing next week.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has taken her side, argued that the county was too aggressive in monitoring her pregnancy and will ask a judge Monday to block the agency from taking the baby.
Melissa WolfHawk also is fighting to regain custody of another child, a girl now 21 months old living with a family in Maryland, in a case that also began with questions about her husband's fitness as a father.
Despite the restraining order she won last month, Melissa WolfHawk is still required to notify the Schuylkill County Department of Children and Youth Services within 24 hours of giving birth.
"I am living every woman's worst nightmare - that when your child is born and you close your eyes for one second, if that baby isn't sleeping on your chest, you open your eyes and that child isn't going to be there," the 31-year-old said in an interview last week at her modest row home in this town 75 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
She said she is not worried about her husband's past.
"If he was this miserable monster - and I've dealt with miserable monsters - I wouldn't be able to close my eyes at night, knowing I was carrying his child," she said.
DaiShin WolfHawk, 53, was known as John Joseph Lentini when he pleaded guilty in his native state of New York in 1983 to rape, attempted rape, sodomy and attempted sodomy.
"I'm not saying I was an angel. Maybe more like a Hells Angel," he said in an interview.
DaiShin WolfHawk, who is unemployed, said he lives about 20 miles from the home his wife shares with her father. He described himself as the chief of an American Indian tribe, the Unole E Quoni, which he says has 175 families in eight states but is not recognized by any state or by the federal government.
The ACLU argues that officials in Pennsylvania have no right under state law to question Melissa WolfHawk about her unborn baby, and that DaiShin WolfHawk should not be punished further.
"There's just no evidence in this case that Mr. WolfHawk has engaged in criminal acts against very young minors," said attorney Paula Knudsen. "And while the charges that were lodged against him in the early 1980s are not excusable, he certainly has paid his time for those crimes and has moved on."
Melissa WolfHawk's federal lawsuit, filed in Harrisburg, says county officials violated her due-process rights by threatening "to 'take' her baby" and leaving notes on her front door saying they were monitoring her pregnancy.
Schuylkill County Children and Youth Services confirmed in a Sept. 23 letter to WolfHawk's attorney that the department may seek custody of the boy once he is born.
"Schuylkill County Children and Youth Services believes this child's physical and emotional health is in danger because of the abuse perpetrated by the natural father against other minor children," wrote agency attorney Karen E. Rismiller.
Rismiller told The Associated Press that confidentiality rules prohibit her from commenting further.
"Every case you need to look at individually and assess the safety factors, not only of children who may be in (foster) care but any children born subsequently," she said.
A rapist, by definition, is dangerous.
And they don't have to prove that he has reoffended - he is a sexual predator by definition and he can never own a gun again, or vote again or enjoy a host of other rights which he forfeited by committing a sickening, cowardly crime.
He can't even vote in a primary for the local dogcatcher, but he should be guaranteed unsupervised access to small children?
Get real.
Since when do conservatives advocate punishing people for a crime they did not yet commit?
Since when do conservatives ignore reality? Sex offenders reoffend 99% of the time.
There is a slight chance he might not reoffend - in other words, the kids have a 1% chance that he won't molest them. Only a sick, demented bastard would place kids in that kind of situation.
The father is also clearly mentally unbalanced in other ways, since he considers himself the chief of an Indian tribe that never existed.
Wake up.
The mother has a clear choice: continue associating with a violent lunatic or continue associating with her kids.
A fit mother would make the right choice immediately.
Earlier thread, same topic: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1500620/posts
This IS the earlier thread. The other came later.
Marrying and having children with a child-molestor is doing something wrong.
"Marrying and having children with a child-molestor is doing something wrong."
If you had said "Marrying and having children with a rapist is doing something wrong." I would agree with you, but she didn't marry a "child-molestor".
Never mind.
Being an adult having sex with a child makes him a child molestor.
So now we're encouraging the government to take preventative action against people (the mother) who have not committed any crime? They'll be taking the babies of women married to people with firearms offenses next -- just watch.
The root problem here is this ridiculous registered sex offender business. If child predators cannot be rehabbed (and I believe that they cannot), then they should never be let out of prison alive in the first place. If this woman's husband is truly a child predator, then he should still be in jail or he should have been executed. Then we wouldn't have to decide whether we should give the government power to seize the children of innocent, albeit stupid, people.
You place the restrictions on the offender, not an innocent party who happens to be stupid enough to associate with him. So far, stupidity alone isn't a crime, and certainly not one that's punishable by having one's children seized by the government. And furthermore, considering the statistics on children being molested/raped/beaten/killed/lost in the foster care system, I don't know that the state taking these children represents a step up for them.
What it comes down to is that this guy should never have gotten out of prison at all, except in a body bag. Since the state already screwed up by releasing him (ostensibly as a registered sex offender), then they need to restrict HIM from seeing the children -- NOT the mother who has not committed any crimes.
Then it's simple: send him back to prison where he belongs on a parole or sex offender registry violation. That's a much more reasonable solution then setting another precedent where the government gets to punish people who have not committed a crime for something that might happen in the future. Having him back in prison would protect the rest of our children from him, too -- a societal benefit NOT conferred by the state seizing this woman's children only.
Or might the state consider taking my children too (for their own protection, of course), if I live near him? Or maybe they'll take this guy's nieces, nephews, cousins, etc. from their parents, too, if their parents still associate with him? That's the (il)logic here -- why not just take the offender himself out of the mix???
You make a very good point! The freak should have had what little balls he had, cut off when he was released! I'm just so afraid for that child, well intentioned that his/her idiot mother may be.
I'm afraid for that child, and for all the other children who live in this guy's vicinity. If he's a child predator, he needs to be taken out of commission for everyone's sake. I'll never understand why the obvious solutions are so difficult. Sigh.
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