© Burning Sage Publishing House
I've been writing about the abuses going on in adult guardianship proceedings now for over ten years. Details regarding the physical and financial abuse of seniors and disabled are nothing new to me. One might have thought I would have been prepared for
The Worst Interests of the Child, by Keith Harmon Snow. But I was not.
"This book is about the organized crime of Family Courts in the United States," writes Snow in the preface to this book. Keith Harmon Snow is an award- winning journalist, photographer and writer who has worked in 45 countries. He worked as a journalist accredited with the United Nations Observer Mission in Congo (MONUC), as a human rights investigator for Genocide Watch, and as genocide investigator for the United Nations in Ethiopia.
In this compelling and disturbing book, Snow has launched an expose of Family Court in Connecticut, although his research and findings are echoed in courts across America.
The victims in his study, like the victims of guardianship court, are vulnerable and cannot protect themselves. However, unlike the elderly victims of guardianship court, these young victims are just beginning their lives. The scars from the abuses that Family Court refuses to address, refuses to protect them from, will be carried throughout the rest of their lives. Through no fault of their own, through the unfortunate happenstance of being born the child of a predator, these children have received, as Snow so aptly states, a life sentence.
Snow writes:
The problem with Family Courts is that financial interests outweigh the judicial issues, and the entire legal system has been geared to support the financial plunder of clients. This is most evident by examination of the behavior of lawyers who take cases for both perpetrators of abuse and protective parents (not only, but usually, the mothers).
His investigation reveals a seamy web of professionals—lawyers, judges, guardian ad litems, psychiatrists and supervised visitation companies—whose back room connections well serve their own financial interests at the expense of an abused child's welfare. As Snow repeatedly demonstrates in multiple case histories, the protective parent's resources are drained by these professionals, as she seeks to do whatever is financially necessary to protect her child.
Comment: There are far too many psychopaths breathing our air.