Decades after custodial dad brutally abused little boy, 36-year-old son dies from his injuries (Oshkosh, Wisconsin)

Famous case from the 1980s. Custodial dad is identified as RANDY DESHANEY. Basically got away with a tap on the wrist for destroying this boy's life, all while CPS enabled him to death.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/obituaries/joshua12-b99614381z1-346259422.html

Boy at center of famous 'Poor Joshua!' Supreme Court dissent dies

Joshua (DeShaney) Braam died Monday at 36, decades after horrendous abuse at the hand of his father led to a landmark court ruling.

Boy at center of famous 'Poor Joshua!' Supreme Court dissent dies

By Crocker Stephenson of the Journal Sentinel Nov. 11, 2015

Whatever childhood Joshua DeShaney might possibly have had ended at the age of 4, in the early spring of 1984, when his father delivered the semiconscious boy to Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh.

The boy's father, Randy DeShaney, received custody of his son in a 1980 divorce settlement in Wyoming and moved to Winnebago County. It is not clear how long the father abused his son. Officially, according to the meticulously kept but ultimately useless records compiled by the Winnebago County Department of Social Services, probably two years.

In early 1983, following a report of child abuse and hospitalization, the department recommended the boy be kept in the hospital. In a matter of days, the child was returned to his father. Again and again and again, a department social worker reported suspicion of child abuse. There were bruises, hospitalizations and days when Joshua was too "sick" to be seen. Again and again and again, the department made agreements with the father that the father then ignored.

In March 1984, the boy was brought to Mercy with new and old bruises over much of his body. Doctors opened Joshua's skull and found evidence of serious head injuries suffered over a period of time, leaving the boy with serious and permanent brain damage. His father said he had fallen down stairs.

Randy DeShaney was charged and convicted of child abuse, but served less than two years in jail.

And Joshua, who was 36 when he died on Monday, would go on to live two lives.

One would be private, spent in the care of his adoptive parents, Richard and Ginger Braam, who made room for Joshua in their Muskego home when he was 12.

The other would be public, preserved in a precedent-setting Supreme Court decision that to this day is cited in legal briefs, analyzed in law review articles and argued about in constitutional law classes.

Joshua's biological mother sued Winnebago County, arguing that child welfare workers violated Joshua's constitutional rights by failing to rescue him from his abusive father. Melody DeShaney sought compensatory and punitive damages under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

To the consternation of many children's rights activists, a decision issued by the court in 1989 and authored for the majority by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, said they had not.

The due process clause, Rehnquist wrote, "is phrased as a limitation on the state's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety."

Due process, in other words, protects us from government intrusion. It does not compel the government to act.

Justice Harry Blackmun's dissent is one of the most famous of his career:

"Poor Joshua! Victim of repeated attacks by an irresponsible, bullying, cowardly, and intemperate father, and abandoned by (child protective services), who placed him in a dangerous predicament and who knew or learned what was going on, and yet did nothing....

"It is a sad commentary upon American life, and constitutional principles — so full of late of patriotic fervor and proud proclamations about 'liberty and justice for all' that this child, Joshua DeShaney, now is assigned to live out the remainder of his life profoundly retarded. Joshua and his mother, as petitioners here, deserve — but now are denied by this Court — the opportunity to have the facts of their case considered in the light of the constitution...."

The storm spawned by the Supreme Court's decision blew over the Braam's home in Muskego. "We didn't pay a lot of attention to the politics," Ginger Braam said.

"What we've tried to do is provide Joshua with what he didn't have — a family and a home.

We were content to have him a part of our family.

"He made a difference in our lives."

Besides Richard and Ginger Braam, Joshua is survived by 15 adoptive and foster siblings. Joshua (DeShaney) Braam Visitation will be from 10 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. Wednesday with funeral services to follow at 2 p.m. at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, S66-W14325 Janesville Road, Muskego.