To: The Pennsylvania State House, The Pennsylvania State Senate, and Governor Tom Wolf
Protecting children in PA
Currently, in the State of PA, even if Children and Youth finds a parent guilty of sexual abuse, or rape, their parental rights are not terminated. This must change.
Why is this important?
In 2010, my then nine year-old child came forward with information of sexual abuse which occurred at the hands of her father. Children and Youth found her father guilty of penetration (this was pre the change in the definition of rape), in August of 2010. He was initially charged with three criminal aggravated sexual assault counts, and held in state prison for over a year, as the new charges were a violation of his probation (he was on parole out of NV for drug trafficking, unbeknownst to me). However, the DA dropped the sex charges in Sept. 2011, because as they told me, "he had passed a lie detector test." Now, since his release from prison in Dec. 2011, I have had to pay $5,000 (my house tax monies) to legally keep my child from her rapist. $2500 was for the lawyer to file and attend the pfa hearing (pfa=restraining order), and another $2500 for when he filed an appeal on the PFA (even though he only filed the appeal and never actually went through with doing his end of the paperwork).
My issue is this, if the State of Pennsylvania's Children and Youth found this man guilty of penetration (rape in my book, and also as defined by the Admin's new definition of rape), why is there even any discussion of him still having any rights to my child? Why must I pay to fight for what has been proven true? And what about parents who don't have the money for lawyers? Not to mention, all the atate would thus offer my child, protection wise, was a maximum of a three-year PFA (which we were lucky to get as it's up the the sitting judge's discretion). So that means, as it stands now, in three more years, my child must once again, go through another whole day in court, testifying about what this monster had done to her. It's simply not fair. Not only is it not fair to her, but it's not fair for the other children in similar situations. I would not want to see any other parent have to fight so hard for what is their child's God given right, a right of savoring their innocence.
For children, and even adults, to come forward with such horrific events is challenging to say the least, and I feel it is nothing more then a punishment for the state to force them to relive their horrific events every several years, especially when their own state's Children and Youth found the child credible and the perpetrator's, guilty, of committing the act(s).
Please help me continue in protecting my own child, as well as the many others' in the same situation in the state of Pennsylvania.
Thank you and God bless
My issue is this, if the State of Pennsylvania's Children and Youth found this man guilty of penetration (rape in my book, and also as defined by the Admin's new definition of rape), why is there even any discussion of him still having any rights to my child? Why must I pay to fight for what has been proven true? And what about parents who don't have the money for lawyers? Not to mention, all the atate would thus offer my child, protection wise, was a maximum of a three-year PFA (which we were lucky to get as it's up the the sitting judge's discretion). So that means, as it stands now, in three more years, my child must once again, go through another whole day in court, testifying about what this monster had done to her. It's simply not fair. Not only is it not fair to her, but it's not fair for the other children in similar situations. I would not want to see any other parent have to fight so hard for what is their child's God given right, a right of savoring their innocence.
For children, and even adults, to come forward with such horrific events is challenging to say the least, and I feel it is nothing more then a punishment for the state to force them to relive their horrific events every several years, especially when their own state's Children and Youth found the child credible and the perpetrator's, guilty, of committing the act(s).
Please help me continue in protecting my own child, as well as the many others' in the same situation in the state of Pennsylvania.
Thank you and God bless