Court Opinion

ID: 9714358
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:35:55.437885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:25.442527
License: Public Domain

CAVANAUGH, Judge,
concurring:
Under the evidence in this case I am constrained to concur in the result reached by the majority. I am concerned however that this case be read as a precedent for facile resort to the criminal justice system as a vehicle for enforcement of a prosecutor’s personal notions as to parental responsibility.
*128If the conduct engaged in by appellants is not condoned by the professionals within our agencies that promote the welfare of children, the means by which that conduct is best altered is not through the imposition of criminal convictions. While the evidence in this case is strongly suggestive that appellants are not fully suited to their parental tasks, I believe that other forms of legal intervention are available to protect the interest of the juveniles involved before invocation of the criminal law and its unavoidably devastating effect on the hope or resolving appellants’ problems in parenting.
Indeed, the appellants were the subjects of frequent intervention by both social workers with the child welfare agency and police personnel after numerous, and often anonymous, reports of child abuse were made regarding them. After a year of reports and visits to the appellants’ household at all hours of the day and night by social workers, accompanied by the chief of police, the agency determined that the reports were unfounded. The pattern of calls to the child abuse hotline, followed by immediate visits which revealed no evidence of abuse, raises considerable suspicion regarding the intent with which the calls were made and the atmosphere in which the appellants were prosecuted.
The record reveals that all three of appellants’ children were removed from the home upon their arrest on the instant charges. The children’s wellbeing, if threatened by living with their parents, was protected through the system that is designed to safeguard their interests. Less than ideal circumstances, resulting from poverty and mental deficiency of their parents, may have caused the children of Debby Ogin and Glynn Wildoner to be among those considered to be less privileged by our society. However, branding her parents with criminal convictions will do no more to improve April’s chances of happiness in childhood and of normal development as an adjusted and secure adult than would a conviction of April herself for being a part of the family unit.