Murder in the Courts: All in the Name of Parental Rights?

A must-read piece by Susan Murphy-Milano.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/crime/2012/02/13/murder-in-the-courts-all-in-the-name-of-parental-rights/2/

2/13/2012 @ 12:39AM


Murder In The Courts: All In The Name Of Parental Rights?

Susan Murphy-Milano, Contributor

Murder in the courts isn’t the image by which I would want the world to remember 7-year-old Charles and 5-year-old Braden Powell.

But that stark reality seems the only way for this country to look from behind their rose-colored glasses into the war of intimate partner violence and homicide — a war being fought in every neighborhood across America, behind closed doors, since the beginning of time.

On Sunday, February 5, the details of the boys’ battlefield literally exploded, catapulting these two children into the forefront of national headlines when their father, Josh Powell, took them from a social worker, locked the door, and carried out his calculated plan to kill them and himself by blowing up the house. The Pierce County Medical Examiner issued a statement saying that Josh Powell murdered his two young sons by “chops to the neck” (he used an axe) as well as carbon monoxide poisoning preceding the explosion.

If during their short lives Charles and Braden made headlines for being blown up by their own father, then we, as a society, have surely failed them. Are we a country whose legal system returns helpless children to dangerous individuals, all in the name of parental rights?

On December 6, 2009, their mother, Susan Cox Powell, vanished from her home near Salt Lake City, Utah. According to interviews from Josh Powell, he had taken the boys, then 2 and 4, on a midnight camping trip in freezing weather and returned to an empty house. He claimed then that he had no knowledge of where she might be. Within a month, Powell took his two boys and went to Puyallup, Washington to live at the home of his father, Steven Powell, who is currently behind bars for having child pornography on his computer.

As law enforcement began investigating Susan’s disappearance, Josh Powell was eventually named the only person of interest. Charles and Braden had been in their father’s care until the summer of 2011. After Steven Powell’s arrest, the boys were removed and placed temporarily in Susan Cox Powell’s parents care until a court hearing that determined their maternal grandparents should have permanent custody. The judge’s ruling granted Josh Powell supervised visitation with the children twice a week, as well as ordering him to have a stringent psychosexual evaluation. I have to wonder, in the aftermath of this tragedy, if the judge took time to read those reports prior to the custody hearing?

In cases of a missing parent, especially when the other parent is considered a suspect, or a person of interest, no conditions should be granted for visitation until that person is completely cleared. In speaking with a former U.S. attorney about missing mother cases, he told me, ”Stop using the phrase ‘person of interest.’ It is a weak-kneed statement — a C.Y.A. phrase that could mean something as innocuous as just a ‘fact witness,’ which every husband/boyfriend always is. Step out and call these (people) what they should be — stone-cold targets of the investigation.” He’s right; it’s better to err on the side of caution than to put a child’s life in the balance.

When a victim of intimate partner violence, whether male or female, tries to break from the cycle of violence and gain the courage to leave, that’s when the very legal system in place to protect seemingly does the most damage. The courts are ill equipped to handle all of the issues, often turning dangerous and, in some instances, as in the Powell case, deadly.

Communication and training among judges, court-appointed mental health experts, and guardians ad litem often appear nonexistent, leaving tragedies of epidemic proportions as family members are left to discover gruesome crime scenes followed by making funeral arrangements for innocent loved ones, as recently evidenced in the murders of Charles and Braden Powell.

In 2007, Amy Lichtenberg, a mother from Illinois, did everything in her power to keep her children safe, but the judge presiding over her case turned a deaf ear. Her dangerous and violent husband violated a court order of protection more than 50 times. He also manipulated the legal system to gain access to the children by wearing down the judge with the filing of one motion after another until he was granted unsupervised visitation. Three weeks after the judge’s decision, Amy’s children, Jack and Duncan, were found murdered by their father.

The majority of abusers could care less about the children, although they will outwardly show signs. Often abusers are so enraged over the ending of the relationship, the only interest they have is seeking revenge on their victims. This happens by killing the person who ended the relationship or murdering the children, keeping the abuse victim alive and unharmed, as a sick and twisted punishment for breaking up the family.

Recently, another mother, 33-year-old Michelle Parker went missing in November 2011. Michelle was last captured on surveillance video at 3:15 p.m. that day in an east Orange County, Florida, neighborhood. She was driving to her ex-fiancé Dale Smith’s home to drop off their 3-year-old twins. Ten days after she disappeared, the Orlando Police SWAT Team raided, with weapons drawn, the home where Dale Smith had been living with the twins. As of this writing, he is still the only named suspect in Michelle Parker’s disappearance while the legal system plays ping pong with the children.

ABC’s Good Morning America reported Dale Smith having a colorful past of arrests, court orders of protection, and numerous charges while serving in the Marine Corps. The visit by a SWAT team should be enough to remove the children from their current environment. If police thought the situation was dangerous enough to draw weapons, why didn’t the Florida family court system?

I have great respect for judges. What I do not respect is ignorance within the legal system. Judges, elected and appointed, require more than just a two-week crash course in a classroom setting on how to be a judge, otherwise those court orders that they sign without consideration to human life will amount to nothing more than court-ordered executions.

Charlie and Braden Powell’s deaths must be the alarm to implement immediate action — not more apologetic legal lip service — to overhaul a family court system that seemingly rewards an individual’s access to their children as if they were game pieces on a chessboard.

Don’t let their deaths be in vain, and don’t let it happen again. Be more mindful of the interests of the children in these cases and much more cautious as they’re about to deliver them to evil.