Well, I think that most folks don’t want to punish minors with jail time. they are not working with all of the experience and self restraint that an adult is assumed to have. So, there are different expectations and sentences for minors.
The parents of children are expected to exercise some type of parental role in their childrens life, and they are responsible (financially, and to some extent, legally) for what their kids do.
If a child of mine threw a rock through a neighbors window, I can be expected to pay for it.
Unless I jump through the home schooling hoops, I am required by law to send my kid to public school.
The details seem to me a little sparce, but isn’t it possible that the judge felt that the dad did not make reasonable attempts to get his kid to school? The judge does have some latitude with his discretionary powers here…
Exactly what are reasonable attempts to get your kid to go to school? Enrolling them seems reasonable. According to the sister’s report, she was enrolled in school, just not going:
So, now then she started taking classes for the GED:
And by now she’s presumably passed all but the mathematics section. So, I’m kind of curious as to how the judge has determined that he hasn’t made reasonable efforts towards her education. What exactly does he expect?
My son is currently enrolled in school, but refuses to attend. Does that mean I should go to jail? The officers at his school are fully aware of all the students who regularly do not attend and they aren’t doing anything about it. What are they going to do other than keep giving them community service which they couldn’t care less about anyway?
You can’t make restitution for your child’s truancy. If judges started throwing parents in jail for their kid’s actions, it’s going to get ugly real fast. At that age, delinquent kids are only too willing to allow someone else to pay for their own misdeeds.
Well, that’s because paying for a window is something that’s totally within your own ability. I’m not questioning the expectation that a parent takes general responsibility for their child, I’m questioning the threat of prison time for the parent based on the child’s performance on a test.
Does that matter? Being under the jurisdiction of juvenile court doesn’t give the father custodial powers over his adult daughter, does it?
Is this logical? Does a parent have the power to “take [his/her progeny] out of school” if that offspring is legally an adult?
It seems reasonable for a court to order a father to make sure his minor child goes to school, but once that child reaches the age of majority, how can the court order him to do something he has no power to do? It would have made more sense for the court to have locked him up as soon as the daughter turned eighteen.
Suppose I have a minor daughter and am convicted of contributing to her delinquency, and suppose the court suspends my sentence on the condition that I cut her hair or make her get it cut. Assume for the sake of argument that the court is justified in making this order. If the girl turns eighteen, and her hair still hasn’t been cut, is it appropriate for the court to continue to order that it be cut or I go to jail? I would say not, because this means that the court is either ordering me to do something I have no power to do (cut my daughter’s hair against her will) or it is trying to compel her to do something by threatening to punish her father, which seems to go against the spirit of American law. Instead, if the girl turns eighteen and has not had a haircut, the court should throw me in jail immediately, for I have missed my chance to comply with its orders.
Any actual lawyers want to take some potshots at my layman’s analysis?
Without knowing all the facts I have to assume this goes back a number of years. what I don’t understand (per Brian Gegner’s sister) was the judge’s order to pull the daughter out of school and get her GED. If, she failed part of the tests that mean’s she’s TAKING the tests. That implies good faith effort. Mr Gegner cannot be held accountable for her achievement any more than any teacher could.
If this is an accurate scenario and Mr. Gegner looses his job I can’t imagine this not affecting the judges’ career. But as is often the case, information is usually missing or inaccurate.
AFAICT, The girl studied for the test, took the test, and kept failing the math portion. So, because she’s either dumb, math-impaired, or learning disabled, her father is being PUT IN JAIL.
So by that rationale, if you have a learning disabled kid, a mentally disabled kid, or a kid who just has a low IQ, you can be sent to jail if they can’t pass a GED or graduate high school? WHAT THE F*CK COUNTRY ARE WE LIVING IN?!?!
The fact is, there is no law on the books that criminalizes parents for the academic failings of their children (i.e. if your kid fails tests, classes, etc. proceed directly to jail). However, he is being jailed for not following a court order… so basically, the judge can order anything, no matter how unreasonable or impossible, and send someone to jail for failing to do it. JUDGES HAVE TOO MUCH POWER! That is unfair and unjust!
Clearly these family courts have too much power, abuse this power, and have no oversight. I’ve heard of cases where fathers are ordered to pay a huge amount of child support or go to jail, even though they are unemployed. (See this story, which ended up with the father dead - in a nutshell, an unemployed father owed $9,000 in back CS, and feared being arrested… when cops showed up at a house he was at, he ran and they chased him and he ended up drowning in a lake.)
He’s been sent to jail, according to my reading of everything, because he, as the child’s legal guardian at age 16-18, didn’t make her go to school. And that’s against the law in Ohio. Using the excuse that he allowed her to go live with her mother and that’s when the truancy occurred didn’t sway the judge. He violated a court order.
The original order said she had to go back to school. Which she did for a short time. Then she dropped out again (I think she was pregant by then). When she stopped going again the judge ammended it to getting her GED.
IANAL. I don’t see her CURRENT age being a get-out-of-jail-free card.
"Court administrators say that even though Brittany is an adult now, the case remains active in their court because she was a juvenile when the problems started. "
If I had sex with a 15 year old girl, and was arrested for it 4 years later, I couldn’t say “Hey, she’s an adult! It’s not a crime anymore.”
I’m not saying that I think that he should have been put in jail. I’m just saying that I don’t think the fact that she is 18 NOW is relevant.
ETA: I had this post in preview, and forgot about it (lot of tabs open) for about a day. So sorry if it’s redundant.
That’s not the case here. This is an ongoing case involving a juvenile who skipped school. Since it’s illegal to shackle her to a desk it is unreasonable for a judge to hold her father accountable for each and every transgression this adorable child has done.
The judge ordered her to get her GED. She tried and failed. Sentencing her father to jail is a drastic measure that accomplishes nothing. More than likely, the father will end up taking care of his grandchild because his daughter appears to have significant limitations. If he looses his job it will be a lose/lose situation for everybody.
On Sunday evening, I read the 5 or so replies, and then typed up my reply to all of the “she’s an adult” posts. I got tired of waiting for the hamsters and went on to other things, and forgot to actually post my reply. On Monday, I actually hit “submit”. I then read through a day’s worth of posts.
That said… I wasn’t commenting on feasibility of making a teenager do something that they don’t want to do. I wasn’t commenting on the fact that he’s not the biological father (It must be like getting a Poison Ivy plant as a wedding present.) I was simply pointing out that her current age wasn’t as relevant as most of the first repliers were making it.
Maybe he’s a saint and she’s a cunt with a learning disability. Or maybe he’s a bad parent. I’m actually leaning towards the former, but I was just illustrating that her current age didn’t let him completely off the hook.
As the custodial parent, he was ordered to make sure she attended school. He failed to do that. (Her skipping school while living with her mother doesn’t obviate this. It did not transfer custody nor relieve him of the responsibility to see that she attended.)
Having failed to satisfy the order, he was liable to face consequences. The judge decided to defer the consequences and offer an alternative - if she could obtain a GED, then school attendance per se could be deemed (retroactively) unnecessary, and the hope and intent of the original order could be considered satisfied.
When the alternative was not fulfilled, and with the original order still unsatisfied, the deferred consequences came due. Without more info about what he did and did not do as a parent, it’s hard for us to effectively evaluate whether the punishment was reasonable or not.
