Gloria Gonzales finally started to pull her life together After 14 years of drug abuse, brushes with the law, intermittent homelessness, the birth of six children and the loss of four of them due to neglect, she and her husband Benjamin were on the right path. They attended a drug rehabilitation program and parenting classes. Their goal was to be reunited with their two youngest daughters, ages one and two. The girls were currently in a foster home.
The couple separated, however, and Gloria moved in with her boyfriend. Benjamin was later murdered while visiting Gloria and her boyfriend at their apartment. The police considered Gloria's boyfriend to be a prime suspect.
She abruptly left for California, leaving a social worker with the task of breaking the news of their father's death and their mother's disappearance. The social worker was hopeful that Gloria would return. One year passed by, and the girls had no contact from their mother.
Gloria would later tell the court that her time spent in California became a blur. She was confused and afraid her former boyfriend would kill her next. She began to use drugs again and did not contact her daughters or remember them with cards or gifts. Their birthdays came and went unnoticed.
Gloria resurfaced one year later. She told the court that she was completing another drug treatment program and was re-discovering religion. Her life was straightening out and she wanted her daughters back. The state alleged the girls no longer recognized their mother and were thriving in their new home. A petition to terminate her parental rights was presented to the court, based upon what the state described as her intentional abandonment of the children. The court agreed and terminated her rights.
On appeal, Gloria's attorney argued that his client lacked the requisite intention to abandon the children. He cited her extreme emotional trauma following the death of Benjamin as fueling her confusional state. Linda Anderson, assistant attorney general in Las Vegas, Nevada, told The Forensic Echo that upon questioning by the court, Gloria's appellate attorney acknowledged that his client had disappeared and was not in contact with him.
Holding: The termination order was upheld. Her conduct in leaving the state and ignoring the girls during the year following Benjamin's death showed a clear intent to relinquish all of her parental rights. The court was especially concerned that she did not demonstrate the ability to put the welfare of the children above herself during a time of crisis.
Dr. Goldzband Comments: Determining clear and convincing evidence of the risk of definite and permanent harm is a matter in which psychiatrists and other child specialists are often involved-or at least should be involved. Prediction is always iffy, and expertise in child development ought to be a criterion for expert testimony. The prediction ought not to be the exclusive province of court-associated child protective agencies. Too often, the agendas of the workers are to demonstrate harm rather than to question it genuinely. Granted, it is hard to maintain open and objective attitudes when working with the police and seeing one genuinely horrible case after another.
Crusading often becomes the norm. On the other hand, there is no room for "sob-sisters" who continue to give repeated chances to parents who lack the least capacity to use those chances productively.
"Widespread drug use is an epidemic whose disruptive impact may affect the thinking of judges. . . ."
In this case, as in so many, drugs are a major issue. Widespread drug use is an epidemic whose disruptive impact may affect the thinking of judges who hear these individual cases, or the consultants who provide data for them. The Gonzales' drug use was local in that it affected only the parents of the children in this matter. Its control failed here too.
Several facts are noteworthy in this case. The mother fled a few days after the shooting death of her husband, killed by her then-new boyfriend with whom she had a stormy relationship. Her flight may have been prompted, not so much by the traumatic effect of the shooting as from the social worker's instruction that she had to help break the news to her children about their father's murder. What role does that demand play? Does her flight imply that she lacked sufficient sense of responsibility to tell the children? Does it imply that she lacked sufficient ego strength to confront her own feelings about the murder, which would then be heightened by telling her children? I cannot deny my automatic attitude that things might better be fixed than broken.
Mrs. Gonzales fled to California, which, after all, is not so far from Las Vegas and her children. After six months, she entered a residential drug treatment center What did the program staff have to say about her? Did they advise her to contact her children? This is a significant question. The amount of bonding between the children and their foster parents is another significant question.
The term "bonding" is a more easily remembered synonym of "attachments." In custody matters, attachments are the ne plus ultra criteria for disposition of the children if both parents are capable. The Gonzales children saw their biological mother once during three years. The court was told that the children did not recall their biological mother, and their attachments to their foster parents were warm and strong.
The identification process of these still quite young children will probably proceed normally through their relationships with their soon-to-be adoptive parents. I wonder, though, what those parents will tell the girls about their biological parents. The mother disappeared during the oral argument and has not been heard from. Will there be a possibility of the children developing a peripheral relationship with their mother if she returns? Would that be a positive or negative aspect of their growth and development?
"Black and white doctrines are rarely satisfactory to mental health specialists"
Questions such as these, generally left unaddressed in court recommendations, are urgently significant. They represent some of the reasons why these cases are so complex, and why black and white doctrines are rarely satisfactory to mental health specialists who treat children who have been buffeted so terribly by their pasts.
