NYTimes: Child’s Ordeal Shows Risks of Psychosis Drugs for Young
Now just imagine if this child were in foster care (a topic I have written about frequently on this blog).
At 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’s severe temper tantrums.
Thus began a troubled toddler’s journey from one doctor to another, from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs. Autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder. The boy’s daily pill regimen multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant ...
A Lawyer’s Guide to Luzerne County’s Kids for Cash Scandal
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania is a coal-mining town along the Susquehanna River, in the Wyoming Valley. A town of about 40,000 people, it is the county seat for Luzerne, in the northeast part of the state.
It is also the epicenter of one of the most scandalous stories about the justice system in the country, involving allegations of bribery and kickbacks to judges from the operation of private juvenile detention facilities. Its implications for juvenile justice will likely set the tone for reforms for the next several years.
Kids for Cash
Mark A. Ciavarella, Jr. was a ...
NYTimes: After Haiti Quake, the Chaos of U.S. Adoptions
Excerpts from this article tell it all:
On Jan. 12, a devastating earthquake toppled Haiti’s capital and set off an international adoption bonanza in which some safeguards meant to protect children were ignored.
Leading the way was the Obama administration, which responded to the crisis, and to the pleas of prospective adoptive parents and the lawmakers assisting them, by lifting visa requirements for children in the process of being adopted by Americans.
Although initially planned as a short-term, small-scale evacuation, the rescue effort quickly evolved into a ...
Facebook “Facts”
A Long Island judge has dismissed a $6 million defamation action filed by a teenager against four former classmates who set up a Facebook page on which they joked that the teen used heroin and contracted AIDS by having sex with animals in Africa.
The judge ruled that no reasonable person could believe that the allegedly defamatory statements were facts.
"A reasonable reader, given the overall context of the posts, simply would not believe that the Plaintiff contracted AIDS by having sex with a horse or a baboon or that she contracted AIDS from a male prostitute who also ...
Constitution Cannot Keep Special Ed Students in School
In a recent little noticed unpublished First Circuit decision, former USSC Justice Souter held that "whatever the scope of a school’s responsibility towards its students . . . there is no apparent constitutional obligation to impose physical restraint upon teenagers not at immediate risk of harm to themselves or others."
This case was brought by mothers of teenagers who were not physically restrained by school officials from leaving their schools during instructional hours. The mothers brought action under state law as well as 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and § 1988 seeking ...
Kansas Passes State “Masha’s Law”
Almost 5 years ago, the Marsh Law Firm was instrumental in enhancing the federal civil legal rights of children who are victims of child pornography. Borrowing from intellectual property law, our firm helped draft, introduce and pass—in just seven months—a comprehensive update to a long-forgotten federal law which gives victims the right to sue anyone who produces, distributes or possess their child sex abuse images. Masha’s Law provides statutory damages of $150,000 for each violation of federal child pornography provisions and was incorporated into the ...
Improving the Legal Representation of Children
In October 2009, the U.S. Children’s Bureau named University of Michigan Law School the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep).
The QIC-ChildRep, is a five-year, $5 million dollar project to gather, develop and communicate knowledge on child representation, promote consensus on the role of the child’s legal representative, and provide one of the first empirically-based analyses of how legal representation for the child might best be delivered.
The Center, which is run by the legendary ...