The Right Bug Repellant
Years ago when I first started studying the conduct of professionals who assist families during times of conflict, I noticed something interesting. When someone who is intensely worried and frustrated believes they have the right counsel, they will dress as they are told, cut their hair and change various behaviors for the sake of achieving the objective of the day. These changes in behavior and style and speech seem to happen quickly, without study, due diligence or challenge.
Imagine if a man relying on counsel is heading into the woods instead of into a courtroom.
He’s mainly worried about mosquitoes.
He asks his highly recommended counsel to hand him bug repellant to save him from the buzzing mosquitoes. He’s assured that if he applies this spray liberally and forges ahead, he will come out fine on the other side of the woods.
As he heads into the woods, believing he is covered and really has only about 100 yards to go, the buzzing sound goes away but he notices something else. He pulls up his pant legs to find a handful of ticks – you get the picture. Ticks dig in and they are hard to get out. Treating disease caused by ticks? Expensive, time-consuming, stressful, and not always possible.
The man is confused. He has no reason to believe that his counsel would not give him the right advice or that he wouldn’t receive the protection he’s paying for and expecting, so he starts looking around trying to figure out where all the ticks came from and why he wasn’t warned about them. The ticks are much more threatening and painful than the mosquito bites he was trying to avoid…so what to do?
He calls out to his counsel who offers to sell him another bottle of spray and some ointment. So the man pays for what he is handed, takes the bottles out of the bag and begins spraying and applying the ointment. While he’s busy with these bottles another problem hits him. He can’t see his feet…or his ankles any longer. While applying the ointment to the back of his legs and prying out ticks, he doesn’t see he’s been standing in quicksand. He panics – he’s never seen quicksand before and realizes it seems to be pulling his legs in an inch at a time!
Now angry and scared, he calls out loudly to his counsel. Then he pauses.
He sees his counsel and a couple of other suits approaching with shovels and barbed wire. Quickly he tries to rationalize how they are going to save him with barbed wire? Is the shovel enough to move the quicksand away as he is now in up to his hips?
Feeling stuck?
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Where There’s a Will
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
We believe that to be true, but another way to put it, especially if you’re caught in a family conflict or in our court system, is where there’s willpower (and a fat checkbook), there’s a way to avoid accountability and even to harm an innocent party.
In every jurisdiction we’ve studied, multiple cases have surfaced in which innocent parties – especially parents – are being set up to fail. This happens frequently in the form of false allegations of some form of abuse or fraud, targeting the innocent party to take the blame and the consequences of the party actually breaking the law and doing damage to the children and other parent. Our mission began with sorting out why this was happening in family law or domestic cases but the same foul play occurs, of course, in other types of cases.
Our priority at My Advocate Center is the children who are caught in these battles and getting dropped through the cracks in our system, regardless of which court or which type of process is being used.
When children are suffering because someone they need is being intentionally and wrongfully targeted for failure, and when a judge, attorneys, guardians and especially DOCTORS just stand by or even participate in this foul play, we should all stop what we are doing and do not pass go until this problem is solved. And that is where we are in Georgia.
To learn more, to offer support, present a useful resource or to report a case, contact us here.
Just What Did the Doctor Order?
The fewer words we use to describe this here, the better.
The more time you spend understanding what went into this article being shared around the globe, the more you can help solve this mystery in your own backyard.
Professionals focused on improving protections: please connect on these issues.
This is quite simple:
Ask court professionals to put protections over profit, rather than the other way around as they appear on this Cobb County, Georgia case.
Another expensive report in the way of protecting children? $$$
Child abuse is a crime, and preventing crimes from being investigated and blocking the protection of children is a crime. It’s time to stop calling this something that it is NOT.
What is it? #GALmisconduct
What do we do? We ask that the authorities #ReviewCases flagged for professional misconduct. That is step one.
What is a Guardian ad Litem?
Question Number One: What is a GAL?
Now that we see how prevalent the misconduct is and how extreme and lasting the damages are, we are developing the dialogue about what to do next.
You have to understand what a Guardian is and what they are supposed to be doing before you can properly review and judge their work, so let’s start here.
The news station reporting on the GAL misconduct and the bad case outcomes in Augusta, Georgia, asked us to explain more about the GAL program in Georgia.
They asked us, “What is a guardian ad litem, and is what we are seeing in Augusta the norm?”
We are opening the discussion for professionals and parents to work together to help improve this situation. The Augusta Chronicle ran a great summary of the GAL program, so please read that and let’s revisit how to improve this system so that we can avoid more of the same, and improve outcomes for children and families.
Please also connect with us via LinkedIn, and professionals may join the Counsel for Change group to contribute privately as we work on answering and correcting what is is wrong.
Help Break the Silence about GAL misconduct that has been leading to harm to children and good parents.
