Father has an attorney for Juvenile court down at DHS, but that attorney isn't really interested in taking this to a real court so the father is looking for someone to represent him downtown.

The attorneys father has spoken to seem to think he would get the most relief in family court, but we don't know anyone that has experience with trying to get relief from an external entity(DHS) in family court and he is actively looking for someone to take this case asap. If you guys know anyone that would be good for it, we would love a referral or else we are just going to go with whoever.

His juvenile attorney is really good, but he can only do so much. The juvenile court doesn't have due process and is not well designed for contested matters, it only works when everyone is on the same side.

Perfect example of how messed up juvenile is.

The father's criminal charges were dropped February of 2006. The child's court ordered psychologist recommended visitation for the father in April of 2006. DHS had already decided it wasn't going to try to terminate and was going to go for reunification, but DHS and the guardian ad litem on the case wanted to wait until AFTER the adjudication hearing on the matter before the father would have visitation.

The father was willing to stipulate that the child did indeed say the abuse occurred, which would have made the adjudication hearing unnecessary, in return for visitation.

The only offer the father received, was that he could have visitation if he agreed to sign over custody of the child to the mother in family court. (Father had sole custody when the case started, and still has sole custody since that issue can't be decided as long as the state has custody).

At the time I thought that was abuse of process... The father was asking for what he was guaranteed, regardless of what happened at the adjudication hearing. The hearing went on, the child was forced to testify, and when it was over the father was granted visitation. The problem is that the hearing didn't happen until July of 2007.

Only in juvenile court would a trial take 17 months to schedule, that could have been avoided had the party pushing the issue been willing to let the father have what he was going to get no matter what. The reality is that DHS needed those 17 months to further alienate the father from the child for the purpose of ultimately trying to terminate the father's rights.