Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Long Angeles DCFS v. Superior Court (Cal. Ct. App. - Dec. 17, 2013)

Read the first two sentences of this opinion and tell me if you can guess which way the Court of Appeal is going to come out:

"The Department of Children and Family Services (Department) seeks a writ of mandate to reverse respondent court's order dismissing a petition filed under [Cite]. Respondent court dismissed the petition, finding that a two-year-old male, S.G., was not at substantial risk of sexual abuse by S.G., Sr. (father), even though father was convicted of sexually assaulting young boys on two separate occasions, was civilly committed as a sexually violent predator (SVP) for almost 13 years after his 7-year prison term, and discontinued any sex offender treatment after his release in 2009."

Yeah.  You guessed it.  Father isn't going to win this one.

Which means he doesn't get to live with his child.

P.S. - There are a ton of sex offender/SVP/dependency cases in the Court of Appeal.  But it's memorable -- because it's rare -- that you see the words "Muslim" and "sex offender" in the same opinion.  Here, one of the reasons the father got out of prison (after serving his time and then another dozen additional years for his "civil" commitment) was because he adhered to the Muslim faith while in prison.  And one of the reasons the Court of Appeal expressly mentioned as a basis for taking his son away from him was because the father no longer practiced the Muslim faith.  Pretty unusual stuff.