I was thinking the same thing, not a great track record.
Is the father definitely still alive? It does seem really odd that there’s no mention at all of him apart from ‘had a troubled relationship with the boy’s mother’.
Hear Hear
As to the rest, i withhold judgement til i hear the mom’s side of the story. Seems like she has no one Advocating for her.
IMO this thing could go anywhere from the Grandparents deserve a damn medal to some serious jail time. I guess when the facts come out we can make better informed decisions.
I will say it is pretty gut wrenching to see a shitty/non parent royally fucking up a decent kid and at some point I wouldn’t blame somebody for saying “fuck the law”.
Do we know if the bio mom ever did get her shit together?
It’s official: The mother & stepfather were living out of their car, contrary to what they told CPS.
Anyone else wanna say the grandparents made the wrong decision??
From the missing boy/man’s Facebook: “For you people who jump to conclusions you should find out the whole story I was where I needed to be. My ‘grandparents’ were in the the right I dont care what anyone else thinks.”
Did you read the article?
They did not abduct the child when she was homeless.
So Grandparents. Their son and daughter-in-law are homeless. The son gives the grandparents tempoary guardianship, while he is unemployed.
The Mother of the child has to move into a group home, that can’t take kids.
The father of the child sues for and gets weekend visits. (why won’t his own parents let him see his kid?)
When she is remarried and living in a house. She seeks and is given custody by the courts.
Then they steal the kid.
Have you ever done a CPS custody hearing? She wouldn’t have gotten custody without validation that she had a home to live in. There are home visits. There are follow up visits. There are surprise visits. If she was living in her car, the grandparents had nothing to fear at the moment.
And even if she was living in her car, while she shouldn’t have gotten custody, she should have had visitation with her son if she desired it - provided there wasn’t a child safety issue. So the grandparents making the decision they made removed that right of hers.
Moreover, a five year old boy has little say in who he ends up with, and a man raised by grandparents who abducted him is pretty likely to not know the whole story himself.
EDIT: As Zebra said, that is not what that says.
New article with pictures. I sure hope these people aren’t charged. They said in yesterdays article that the statute of limitations ran out long ago on the original charges.
I don’t see much new there, or any reason they shouldn’t be prosecuted. Which is not to say they should be convicted, but common sense and the law demand that they should at least have to defend their act, no? Surely being good parents after the fact does not justify or excuse an abduction.
The quotes from the young man and his wife are total red herrings.
So, to recap, the grandparents kidnapped the child just to prevent visitation? Or am I reading that wrong? As to the grandson defending them, that’s not very surprising on several fronts. Even if they were horrible at raising him, there’s the Stockholm Syndrome to consider. If, on the other hand, they did right by him, he undoubtedly loves them partially because that’s all he’s known. And I noted that he still lives on their property. I don’t know about you, but if I bad mouth someone, they’re probably not going to keep giving me a place to live.
Now, maybe they did do the right thing, but just based on the evidence thus far (and emotions or projection aside), it appears that they should indeed be charged for their crime. Just because you do what you think you have to do, doesn’t mean you also don’t have to pay the consequences.
Disclaimer: IANAL. Even if their argument for why they did it is valid, shouldn’t that count only as mitigating circumstances, not a get-out-of-trouble free card? They still overrode the court’s decision and ran roughshod over the mother’s rights. The grandparents may have been right about her, but they are also emotionally involved and probably not very objective
I don’t like the idea of kids being given to parents who are obviously messed up, but OTOH I wouldn’t like to see a precedent set where if the kid turned out okay and the abductors seem like nice people, then it’s okay for them to do what they did. Then any grandparent or interested party might be able to get away with it, too, even if the kid isn’t in danger and they just don’t like the parent.
Wow. “Mental illness” encompasses a lot of conditions.
I agree with this. I can understand their position if they truly felt the child was in danger, but OTOH they might have done this because they didn’t like her and they wanted to be the one to raise him.
I thought that the statute of limitations had expired.
It isn’t the best cite, but I don’t think so: Divorce Settlement Statute of Limitations in Chicago, Illinois | Law for Families
I have no idea if the journalist is correct.
If the charge was custodial interference rather than kidnapping the statute of limitations could indeed have expired.
StG
I’m not as willing to assume, in the presence of contradictory evidence, that ‘the system and due process’ is always right in some individual case.
To my mind, what is most important in custody cases is the best interests of the child, not necessarily the rights of a biological parent over than child. To my mind, parenting isn’t merely a matter of biology, but also one of establishing relationships - I don’t regard adoptive parents as any less parents. In this case, the uncontroverted (so far) facts appear to be that the grandparents had raised this kid to age 5 because of mom’s (and dad’s) various problems. It could well be that, just as a man who bows out of taking major care of his kids because of his problems (but then breezes in after a few years and wants custody rights from the mother), at that point it would be effectively too late as far as the kid was concerned - not so much “Stockholm Syndrome” as “these people are my real parents and you are now a stranger to me”. Certainly the boy’s responses at the time (and the man’s responses now) are consistent with such a theory, no?
If ‘the system and due process’ was clearly not delivering the best interests of the kid, I’m not as willing to wish punishment on the grandparents now as a matter of course, even though what they did was illegal. The concept of limitations is designed for this sort of situation.
OTOH, as I’ve said many times, we don’t know all the facts, and the ones we have been told turn out to be controversial - was she living in a car or not?
It is certainly not always right, but it is the law and the established process.
And sometimes the law fails in epic fashion.
When that happens (not saying it DID here) have a trial, look for an excuse to give a ceremonial slap on the wrist and move on.