The couple, it would appear from the story itself, does have
a case. Whether the case can be settled justly in the state of Connecticut is,
as the logicians say, a separate issue.
The parents are referred to in the story as John and Jane
Doe, not at all unusual in cases of this kind. The Attorney General’s office,
obligated by statute to defend state agencies in court cases, is insisting that
the names of John and Jane Doe should be made known because “the couple asserts
no harm and requests no action on behalf of their daughter, but are suing in
their individual capacities and claiming emotional distress.”
John Doe, the father of the daughter removed from his home and
placed temporarily in foster care by the state Department of Children and
Families (DCF), claims in an affidavit, “After learning that my daughter is
homosexual and that our family is Catholic, E.O. Smith High School staff
members launched a campaign to undermine our parental rights, to keep my wife
and I away from our daughter and to destroy our relationship with our daughter.”
The plaintiffs’ claim is not unsupported by detailed
representations drawn from DCF files and court proceedings. The father and
mother assert in their affidavit that “DCF failed to investigate their
daughter’s substance abuse and instead documented that plaintiffs are
‘extremely religious, unwavering in their beliefs, and rigid and controlling,‘ the
lawsuit says, apparently quoting from DCF case reports.”
Representations made by the parents’ lawyer, Ashling Soares
of Westport, are telling. Soares writes that DCF social worker Jennifer Davis
“repeatedly harassed plaintiffs about their religious beliefs. For instance,
Davis asked plaintiffs if they would attend their daughter’s gay wedding
several times and told them that they need to ‘evolve their religion’ and ‘go
with the times.’ ”
The series of events that led to a suit began, ironically,
with a poem written by the daughter that “revealed suicidal thoughts… A
mandated report of a suspicion of emotional abuse or neglect was made to DCF,
and the agency went to a judge and ultimately won permission to temporarily
place the teenager in foster care with E.O. Smith track coach Cassandra Rowett.”
So far, so good: mandated reporters are obliged to refer
such incidents to DCF. But the preliminary finding of emotional abuse or neglect,
we are told, “was later overturned by a DCF hearing officer. The allegation of
maltreatment went down in the record as unsubstantiated,” not an unimportant
datum.
The parental affidavit reveals that the daughter temporarily
removed from her family by DCF had told a counselor “her parents yelled at her
and father pushed her because they do not agree with her identifying as a
lesbian.” The parents maintain they were “only angry with their daughter for
months of extreme misbehavior, including drug and alcohol use.” In addition, “My
daughter’s history of suicidal ideation stems in part from personal battles
with her sexuality.”
Yet another assertion made by Soares calls into question the
internal biases of the Attorney General’s office. Soares has alleged that Assistant
Attorney General Susan Castonguay improperly contacted the teenager. Castonguay
“instructed her as to what she should report to DCF regarding her parents,” according
to the parent’s lawsuit.
It is doubtful that a shark’s fin will rise above the surface
in any Connecticut court. The state in general has not been vigilant in
defending Catholics against attacks on their constitutional First Amendment rights.
Some years ago, the Democrat co-chairs of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee attempted to pass through the legislature a bill
that, if enacted, would have altered the apostolic structure of the Catholic
Church. Both co-chairs, it had been reported in newspapers at the time, were
gay; one co-chair was later appointed by then Governor Dannel Malloy as
Connecticut’s prison Czar, and the other now sits on Connecticut’s Supreme
Court.
Most recently, the Judiciary
Committee voted out a bill that would abolish necessary statute of
limitation provisions in cases brought by plaintiffs alleging sexual assault on
minor victims, a harpoon that will be launched principally, some critics
believe, against priests unable to defend themselves because they are, in some
cases, deceased. Live school teachers will seek shelter from the pending suit
storm under union umbrellas, and Attorney General William Tong will always be
on hand to defend state agencies against any assault on the sovereign immunity doctrine
that protects both live and dead state
agency molesters. The pigs, as George Orwell pointed out in Animal Farm, are “more equal" than the other
animals
Dead men tell no tales, and neither does Connecticut’s
Attorney General William Tong. Asked by a reporter to comment on the charge
that one of his Assistant Attorneys General was coaching an accuser in a case that
alleges anti-Catholic bias on the part of DCF, a state agency his office is by
statute obligated to defend, Tong said, according to the news report cited
above, his office does not comment on active cases, although he himself has with
wearisome regularity commented on an active suit he has joined, along with
other attorneys general, against President Donald Trump.
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