Six-year-old Megan lets loose after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Ronald Reinstein tells her and her older sister, Jenna, that their foster parents have officially become Mom and Dad.
To emphasize that she really gets it, the youngster slowly spells out her new last name for all to hear.
The girls are dressed in their Sunday best, pretty bright dresses and shiny black shoes.
Their "new" parents, who are in their late 20s, beam with pride. They met at a Bible-study class for singles and, after getting married, took a stab at being foster parents before having their "own" kids.
They did not reckon they would fall so much in love with the sweet little girls, one of whom has significant medical problems.
The judge's courtroom in downtown Phoenix is empty but for the girls, their new parents, court personnel, attorneys, other advocates involved, and a reporter.
Legally, this courtroom is supposed to be closed to the public. But months before Megan and Jenna bounced into court, Judge Reinstein already had pulled back the curtain on a part of the legal system that long had been shrouded in secrecy.
He did so by allowing New Times to observe the proceedings in his courtroom, asking only that the newspaper not identify the children involved by their real names.
This is Dependency Court.
One of two prongs of the county's juvenile-justice system (the other is Delinquency Court), its judges consider abuse and neglect allegations made by state Child Protective Services against parents or guardians.
Federal law provides a broad definition of abuse and neglect as "any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation, or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm."
Unlike Delinquency Court, where judges try to sort out what is best for juveniles and for public safety, Dependency Court is all about the kids.
Its judges rule on whether children should stay in CPS custody after the agency removes them from their homes, and for how long. The children are put into shelters, group homes, or foster homes or, if possible, placed with "safe" family members.
Under Arizona law, the judges also may order severance of parental rights.
CPS had taken Megan and Jenna from their birth mother, Maggie, four years before this final adoption hearing, after a fire at her trailer home killed the girls' 7-year-old half-brother and injured another half-brother. (The girls' surviving half-brother and a half-sister were placed with different foster parents.)
The blaze ignited after Maggie and her sister, high on crack cocaine and methamphetamine, had left the premises, leaving the young boys alone.
Police reports said the fire probably was caused by burning drug paraphernalia.
The little sisters were with their mother during the fire.
Only one of the three men who had fathered Maggie's five children still was around. The other two were in parts unknown.
Maggie somehow evaded criminal prosecution for her young son's eminently preventable death.
Yet CPS caseworkers continued to list "family reunification" as its goal for the woman and her surviving children for several months after the fire.
Perhaps that should not have come as a surprise, as CPS policy and practice long have been to try to reunite parents with their children, if at all possible.
But some mothers and fathers clearly are not fit to safely parent their children.
One monumental task of a Dependency Court judge is to figure out which ones these are.
Over the fiscal year that ended June 30, there were 343 cases in Arizona in which the rights of parents were severed.
Maggie would have to negotiate an array of hurdles — drug testing, counseling, and other requirements — before CPS and Judge Reinstein would let her reunite with her surviving children.
She never did make the grade.
"It's so hard for parents to succeed in doing what they are ordered to do in dependency cases," the judge said later. "Trying to maintain a job and do all the other things is much more taxing than even being on probation for a crime. And when substance abuse is involved, it's a real uphill struggle."
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Juvenile's Rights 02/01/2009 10:39:11 PM
This should give the public an idea of what is going on in the juvenile and family courts: Editorial: Judges Sentenced Kids for cash The setting is Pennsylvania coal country, but it's a story right out of Dickens' grim 19th-century landscape: Two of Luzerne County's most senior judges on Monday were accused of sending children to jail in return for kickbacks. The judges, Luzerne County President Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, and his predecessor, Senior Judge Michael T. Conahan, 56, will serve seven years in jail under a plea agreement. They're alleged to have pocketed $2.6 million in payments from juvenile detention center operators. When a federal judge reviews their plea, though, the question ought to be whether the punishment is adequate - along with the judges being bounced from the bench, disbarred, and losing their pensions. If the allegations are true, Ciavarella and Conahan were involved in a disgraceful cabal far worse than one that merely lined their pockets. First, the judges helped the detention centers land a county contract worth $58 million. Then their alleged scheme was to guarantee the operators a steady income by detaining juveniles, often on petty stuff. Many of the kids were railroaded, according to allegations lodged with the state Supreme Court last year by the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, an advocacy group. In asking the court to intervene in April, the law center cited hundreds of examples where teens accused of minor mischief were pressured to waive their right to lawyers, and then shipped to a detention center. One teen was given a 90-day sentence for having parodied a school administrator online. Such unwarranted detentions left "both children and parents feeling bewildered, violated and traumatized," center lawyers said. "Very few people would stand up" to the Luzerne judges, according to the law center's executive director, Robert G. Schwartz. Fortunately, Juvenile Law Center was willing to do so, along with backing from state Attorney General Tom Corbett's office and the state Department of Public Welfare. The blind justices on the state's high court, though, took a pass. Only last month, they offered no explanation in declining to take up the law center's request that the court step up. Now, the state Supreme Court should revisit the issue, since the scope of corruption alleged at the Luzerne County Courthouse in Wilkes-Barre could further undermine confidence in the courts statewide. Authorities need to redress running roughshod over juveniles' rights - a process also likely to bring damage suits. While the local district attorney pledges to "do our best to right the situation," this calls for an independent, outside review. The two judges' downfall may have rooted out the worst perpetrators of this evil scheme, but the abuse of power alleged in Luzerne County is so startling that it should send shock waves for reform around the state court system. Comment by Juvenile's Rights from East Valley on Feb 1st, 2009, 17:47 pm