Originally Posted by
lizett
You work for the justice system, correct?
I haven't quoted the rest of your post because it's more blog and less info leading to advice.
I don't work "for" the justice system. I work "in" the justice system. There's a difference. I see inequities, too. However, I feel no need to defend the judicial system OR explain what happened to you or your friends when I had no part in either the events leading up to legal intervention or the legal decisions. If you would like to address a specific situation where I played a part, I'm happy to talk about that. I’m sure you have no interest in defending all the counselors in the World. That’s how I feel about the legal profession.
Do I have an opinion when I know only what you've said and none of the other details? Nope.
As far as any other opinions I've offered, you posted anonymously on a public board - I would handle this no differently if you were standing in front of me and we were talking person to person. I personally have difficulty with people who are too disabled to work, including part-time, but not too disabled to bear children and raise them.
You don't have a problem with that. You are no less entitled to your opinion than I am to mine!
In NY - and I appreciate you are not in NY - the Court is currently taking the position (and this changes as the political climate changes) that the parents' primary responsibilities are to the first family. The second family comes second. Presumably the second wife/girlfriend realizes that there are other children out there, born before her children, and that those children are her husband's/boyfriend's responsibility, financially and emotionally.
So, again, get a good Attorney, declare the stepdaughter a person in need of supervision (or whatever the classification is wherever you are) and get her removed from your care/custody/control and made a ward of the State.
My sympathy is with your stepdaughter who neither asked to be born into this situation nor has any control over her own destiny at this point. She's now been labeled "bad," and she's really too young (and it's probably too late) to change that. She's cutting for a reason, probably because physical pain masks emotional pain, and no one sees or hears her.