God bless you, Penni! I already knew I liked you a whole, whole lot, but I didn't realize you were a heroine! I am so proud of you. I was a guardian ad litem in a number of "those" type cases, as well as defense attorney for parents, and I learned that the social workers are usually the ones who know the score. And learned that if a social worker has a different take, they would be willing to go off somewhere quiet and talk about it, and sometimes I changed a mind or two and sometimes I had mine changed. And I know about horrors myself. Not as much as the people who did it longer than I did, but enough to know that I didn't want to do it anymore (only maybe 4 years.) It wounded me ~ the sense of accomplishment from helping others couldn't compensate.
I never got treated badly, nor saw anyone else getting treated badly, except when that person was shitty to begin with ~ arrogant, condescending, supercilious. It's one thing to do the best you can for your client ~ it's another thing to treat people like dirt when you're doing it. What goes around comes around.
I should say here that as a lawyer, your duty is to your client. If I had represented a man accused of child rape, which I never did, I'd have done my best to get him off if the evidence was favorable to him, but if it were against him, I'd have tried to get him to plead and get treatment. I know lawyers that will defend the man even if the evidence is against him, and that's probably the right thing to do, but I couldn't try to make someone look like a liar if I thought they were telling the truth. I think that's beyond what's required. |
