Friday, March 03, 2006

Wounded Boy's Mother Relates Past Threats to Kill Children If She Left
A Minnesota fugitive pulled a gun on law enforcement officers who had blocked in his car as he waited at a Homer, Alaska airport parking lot. Within the car were his 6 month old and 2 year old children. Shots were exchanged and the 2 year old was critically injured. State child protection services have taken custody of the two children. The children's mother indicated they told her she was an unfit mother for "abandoning" her children to a dangerous man. This man was the father of the children, and according to the mother had repeatedly kept the children from her, and on the several occasions where she tried to escape his violence, he would threaten to kill them if she didn't return.

It remains to be seen if state child protection workers will take heed of the Nicholson
v. Scoppeta federal class action lawsuit brought by a group of battered women in New York for the same sort of attitudes and treatment. Federal Judge Weinstein found that New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services had been violating the constitutional rights of mothers and their children by removing children from their homes simply because their mothers are victims of domestic violence. The women prevailed.

http://www.adn.com/front/story/7496264p-7406799c.html
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7493514p-7403615c.html

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