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A Push To Open Juvenile Courts
By COLIN POITRAS
Courant Staff Writer
January 18, 2007
Lawyers who work in the state's closed juvenile
courts have no shortage of horror stories about abused and neglected
children suffering in unsuitable care because the state bureaucracy
has failed to move quickly enough to help them.
If lawmakers are serious about helping abused
and neglected children and holding state agencies accountable, child
advocates said Wednesday, they need to hear the heartbreaking stories
that currently remain behind closed doors.
Such as the 4-year-old boy, unable to speak
English, who was stuck in a shelter for 180 days with staff who
did not speak his language. He communicated with hand signals, pictures
and a few words of broken English, often inquiring about his 1-year-old
brother, who was living in a separate foster home.
Or the 11-year-old girl in foster care who for
three years was bounced around 13 different placements - a youth
shelter, foster homes, a psychiatric hospital and finally a large
institution for troubled kids. When she finally was cleared to return
to a specialized foster home, the Department of Children and Families
took 10 months to find her a placement, only moving her from the
institution two days before a judge was to consider holding the
agency in contempt.
For years, the conventional wisdom has been
to bar the public from child dependency proceedings in order to
protect children from further trauma. But a new generation of child
advocates says the courts should be opened, arguing that privacy
hurts some children by allowing serious flaws in the state's child-welfare
system to go unnoticed and unchecked.
"The severance of children from their families
is one of the gravest actions the state can take, and today children's
voices are silenced behind the closed doors of the juvenile court,"
said Sarah Healy Eagan, a lawyer for the Center for Children's Advocacy
in Hartford, which is preparing legislation this year to improve
public access in juvenile courts.
"The public does not see the depth of their
need, their heartache as they move from one foster home to another,
or their anguish in not being able to live with their parents or
siblings," Eagan said. "The public does not witness the frustration
of families, lawyers and social workers as parents and children
wait for programs or services that take months to materialize -
if ever."
Nineteen states, including New York, New Hampshire
and Pennsylvania, have opened their child protection proceedings,
and others are considering it.
Proponents of the legislation raised the issue
Wednesday as the legislature's judiciary committee considered several
bills to increase public access in state courts.
Similar legislation that proposes an open-court
pilot program in juvenile court won judiciary committee support
last year but failed in the General Assembly.
Judiciary committee co-Chairman Sen. Andrew
McDonald, D-Stamford, said the matter is getting a lot of attention.
Whether the General Assembly favors it this year remains to be seen,
he said.
"I think it's moving in that direction, but
whether it happens this year or not I don't know," McDonald said.
"It's definitely got more legs this year than last."
On Wednesday, the judiciary committee held a
public hearing on two proposed bills that incorporate many of the
recommendations to improve public access to state court information
that were laid forth by the Governor's Commission on Judicial Reform
and the Judicial Branch Public Access Task Force.
Those recommendations included such things as
allowing television cameras into criminal proceedings as part of
a two-year pilot program in one judicial district, and making complaints
about judges public.
Much of the nearly five-hour hearing centered
around the ongoing debate over privacy and the public's right to
know. Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane was among those who argued
against allowing cameras in courtrooms. He said it might intimidate
witnesses from cooperating and hinder the prosecution's efforts
at getting at the truth in criminal matters.
But when it came to opening up child protection
courts, Judge William J. Lavery, Connecticut's chief court administrator,
was very clear. He didn't like it.
"The tsunami of change shouldn't carry children
who can't defend themselves along with it," Lavery said.
Lavery said he was not representing the judicial
branch as a whole. He was only speaking for himself as a judge with
26 years on the bench and 40 years in public service. Lavery said
he was worried about the children.
"Some of the most disturbing testimony I heard
as a trial judge involved sickening examples of child abuse and
neglect," Lavery said. "Opening a child-protection proceeding will
allow the public to learn intimate allegations of abuse and neglect
perpetrated on children, not in the abstract, but with a name and
a face attached."
Lavery said he favored creating a bipartisan
committee or task force to study the matter further, something he
believes the judicial branch, as a whole, also favors.
Sen. John A. Kissel, R-Enfield and a committee
member, also urged caution.
"If we are going to go down this road, there
are a lot of other things we need to do before we open up these
proceedings," Kissel said.
Contact Colin Poitras at cpoitras@courant.com.
Copyright 2007, Hartford Courant.
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