Lisa's Law

Just a few months before I retired from my job as a social worker, I got involved with a family that will stick with me forever. The referral came to be as a rather common one. A high school girl had a black eye and swollen lip. She alleged her dad did it. It was late in the day so I hurriedly grabbed my “shadow,” a new worker who followed along to learn the trade. We ran to the school and met with the girl.

 

She was terrified. She was not terrified of me. Her eye was black, her lip was bruised blue on the inside, and her nose was swollen and bruised. She told me that she had talked to PS workers before in the past and that no one had been able to help. She admitted to a history of hurting herself. Luckily it was warm that day and she had on a sleeveless top and showed me her arms, which had no marks at all.

 

Since school was about to release and I still had to interview her sister, I told her that I might have to remove her from the house. I expected a tirade about how he didn’t mean it, that she didn’t want to be away from her friends just as school started, and that it really was no big deal and that I should just leave her alone. She was in some special classes and was worried about her homework. She hoped wherever I took her that she could keep up with school. We called for the school police liaison officer to take a report while the shadow and I went to speak to the sister.

 

Cramped in the police liaison’s office, the shadow listened while I asked the second girl, I will call her Lisa, if she had seen anything unusual at home lately. She said her father had hit her sister the night before and that it had happened in the past. She quietly denied any abuse to herself. That day was her first or second day of high school, an important time in a girl’s life. I told her I might need to remove her from the home. She said, “OK.” Quietly. Red flags popped up in my mind, but the school bell went off and I had to get her back with her sister and let the officer take them to the station for pictures of the older girl. Medical exams later proved her nose to be broken.

 

The police refused to arrest or even go to talk the father. They said the injury was too old and the girl waited too long to report. At that point, the injury was less than 24 hours old and she had reported it as soon as she was out of the house. Eventually the father was arrested for sexual abuse of Lisa. She disclosed the sexual abuse when she realized her sister might be removed from the home and she might get stuck getting raped and being beaten also. The children, three in all, were removed that same night and taken to a shelter. They have never been back to the home and never will.

 

The father was their adoptive father. He had been arrested and convicted of a sexual crime and served a long sentence before he was released and allowed to adopt. The courts were aware of the previous crime. Apparently he was allowed to adopt after going through counseling, plus the previous crime was not against a child.

 

These special girls had to go through numerous legal hearings and trials. I can only imagine that the medical exams were bad enough. They were tough, strong, honest and slightly impatient to get the ordeal over. It went on over a year. They are now in a very wonderful foster home and the father is in jail for at least 45 years. The last thing Lisa said on the stand was “I respectfully request that my father be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” She was not even old enough to drive.

 

There is a new law in our state saying that an adult who has been convicted of a sexual crime cannot adopt a child. I think of it as Lisa’s Law.