Now I’m calling God ‘Your Honor’

Now I’m calling God ‘Your Honor’

I laughed out loud when I caught myself.

She was asking if I was ready to meet a friend.

Well, you see, Your Honor, I began….then laughed out loud

and totally forgot the rest of the sentence that was about to come out.

Oh well.

And why not?

After all, the Dr. who just did my physical said I should walk around at Asan Park

And I would meet people there.

I remember seeing Asan Park on the map when I was first checking out this apartment

It looked close, and maybe even on the ocean.

Then it somehow faded into the dark recesses as other things

Were calling for attention.

The days are melting into each other.  Have I been at work now for two, or three weeks?

The effects are maybe what’s important.

I was lying awake last night -when I was supposed to be sleeping soundly because I didn’t need to get up for work the next morning – speaking to the mother in the Awful Case.

She was on the stand, and I was examining her (sorry, lawyer lingo) as my witness.

I’d subpoenaed her and now my job was to prove, by clear and convincing evidence,

that she was not capable of providing a safe and nurturing home environment for her four youngest children, and that she was not capable in the near future of doing so, even with the help of government services.

                  ( I finally got up and turned on the Voice Memo on my phone, and dictated my questions for about 20 minutes, then took a Melatonin 1 Mg. Sublingual Mint, let it all go and went back to sleep.)

I think I’m going to do it a bit differently, though.  I think I’ll say in my opening statement that this hearing….

Is an emergent process, and I don’t really know how it will come out, that my focus as a representative of The People (that’s how they talk about the government) is to focus on what is best for the children, and that will all become clear, by the end of the hearing.

It’s a trial actually. 

They call it a fact-finding hearing, just because they want everything in juvenile court

To be softer.

Children are not criminals, after all, so we don’t want to treat them as such.

I really do hope the mother can pull it off, though I have my doubts.  I want to give her a chance.  Be compassionate towards her.  AND I want the children to be in a safe, nurturing home environment, and not have to worry about EVER being assaulted again by members of their family.  THAT most of all.

I had the temerity to file a motion, or petition (we wrangled in court over what form it should take) under a relatively new statute from 2022.  Little did I know at the time, but it turns out no on, no one, has ever brought a case under this statute.  Till me.

A “case of first impression” says the judge. 

The appointed attorney for mom argued incessantly against it.  The Guardian ad Litem

for the youngest four children was all for it, in fact she had put the bug in my ear.  The three

older boys were in juvenile custody, the father in prison.  His attorney said not a word.

I said simply, that we felt strongly that the aggravated nature of this case, where sexual abuse of the youngest and most vulnerable of the children, three girls, was generational, chronic and severe – involving abuse by the grandfather, father, uncle and three oldest boys – was exactly the type of situation the statute was meant to address.

It was horrible.  I was aghast when I first read the file. 

If the judge finds that the situation at hand fits the language of the statute, then the usual one-year period which focuses on reunification of the parent/s and children, would be waived, and the Child Protective Services agency must present a Permanency Plan within 30 days.  The Permanency Plan lays out the best option for an alternative placement for the children, outside of the family home, where they can be safe and nurtured.

Talk about softening the language, they use the terms CSC for Criminal Sexual Conduct, and sexual abuse.

I want to call it like it is, forced sex, non-consensual, rape --of three young girls that took place over years.  The oldest two were suicidal when taken away from the family.

On Monday, I sat in on Kristan’s fact-finding hearing, so I could learn a thing or two, for my trial.

Right before it started she begged me not to judge her too harshly – I told her I was not going to judge her at all!—as this is the first time she had done anything like this.  Prior to six months ago, she had never been in a courtroom.

She came from being a lawyer at the EPA, where she had been for 10 years, doing environmental law.  She loved it there, and loved the career she had built.

Then the AG, yes, the very same AG I had thought I liked,  didn’t approve of a stand she took on an environmental issue on Guam,  and asked her to change her stance.  She said she couldn’t do that, because they were following the laws of Guam, and shortly thereafter, she was told that she would be moving to the Family Unit the following day.

Tomorrow?  That’s not possible! She said…I have meetings, I have to wrap things up.

Nope that was over, done. She was moving tomorrow.

And she’s the most hard-working person I’ve ever met.  I shadowed her and then started taking over in court and she sat on the bench observing me, there just in case I needed her.

She’s literally been in court almost constantly, and so had no time to prepare for things like this, her first fact-finding hearing.  (Though she did stay up late the night before and thought she was ready.)

But oh, no.  The other attorneys crushed her into dust. She was struggling to get anything into evidence: medical records (‘non-admissible’ says the judge); testimony of her first witness amid endless hearsay and other objections that were endlessly sustained.

Luckily, at the end, the Guardian ad Litem, Mr. Somerfleck whose upper back was always slouched over, saved the day by examining the same witness and getting all her testimony in.

I took copious notes.

I left early, to head back to the office, to get ready for my afternoon cases. 

I was furious.  Furious at the AG, for treating our unit like a dumping ground (other evidence of this that I won’t go into here), for leaving someone like Kristen with no litigation training nor support to do this part of the job.

And it would be the same for me.  After all, I didn’t know how to help her.  I had done this stuff forty years ago as a Public Defender, but oh, it was long buried in the recesses of my memory.  I never dreamed that I would be doing this stuff again.  “I’m not a litigator!” I used to say.

Well, if I want to stay at this job, I am now.

I was in a state of shock.  Why didn’t the AG tell me this?  He did say ‘court work’ after all. 

But I didn’t realize I’d actually need to be doing trials.

I was about to email the AG and tell him that I was very upset and needed to talk to him.

But Carol, the contract attorney in the office next to mine, talked me out of it.  “He’s the last person you want to talk to about this stuff,” she said, “because he’s responsible for all of this—he’s not going to do anything about it.”

“Maybe now you’re getting a whiff of why Renita left”…..

That night, I, too, was looking at the salaries of the attorneys in the Public Defender office. 

They looked comparable.  I thought I had read that they paid into social security, unlike the AG’s office.  Maybe I’d call the HR person and inquire. Maybe I’d be happier being a juvenile PD.

But once I was back in the office, there was Darla, my sweet paralegal person,

and Eleanor, our admin head, who’s taken me to the farmer’s market,

and Melanie who always greets me so warmly,

and Amber who lets me in so pleasantly when I’ve again forgotten the door code,

and Sharon….and everyone who worked so hard and was so encouraging of our court work…..

......ahh…I guess I’m here.