A baby-faced 15-year-old made his first court appearance Thursday on charges he torched the gymnasium of Martin Middle School. The wiry teen, wearing an orange shirt and blue pants and sporting a reddish-brown Afro-style haircut, barely said a word during the brief hearing in front of Family Court Hearing Master Stephen Compan.

Many teenage graffitists don't seem to be deterred by their punishment, Juvenile Court Judge William Voy said. "We see it all the time," Voy said. "They do the standard restitution, but they continue to escalate in the system, and then we lock them up."

We responded to this article with an entry on graffiti in our Glossary.

Barbie, beware. The iconic plastic doll is often mutilated at the hands of young girls, according to research published Monday by British academics.

"The girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity, and see the torture as a 'cool' activity," said Agnes Nairn, one of the University of Bath researchers. "The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving."

Ah, that brings back memories! Remember that time when we replicated the French Revolution in our backyard, with Barbie playing Marie Antoinette? "Off with her head!" the crowd roared, and it was so.

A Disturbing Encounter

I say, "That's me. Did you see the article?"

"God DAMN! Son of BITCH! I read that whole fucking article, man! It's Glenn Campbell! I KNEW it was you! I saw you and said, 'That's the motherfucker.'"

He then turns to another guy in the locker room and says, "That's Glenn Campbell. That's the motherfucker! We have a fucking celebrity here. I can't believe that shit goes on, man!"

"You mean Area 51?" I say.

"No, Family Court. You got balls, man!"

The other guy says that he saw the article, too. "I was a social worker once. You can't believe some of those decisions they make."

At this point, I am buck naked, and a bunch of other naked and half naked guys are practically applauding me. I feel a bit vulnerable.

I thank everyone for their support, then I pull away to the showers.

Do you know what the most disturbing thing about this encounter is?

They think I'm a motherfucker.

Glenn Campbell spent years trying to peel back the veil of secrecy around Area 51, a Nevada air base that, according to the U.S. government, does not exist, although it is visible from a desert ridge.

Several years ago, he abandoned that quest, but the desire to get to the bottom of official secrets never left him.

Today, this obsessive eccentric with a penetrating gaze hopes to shine a light on another institution shrouded in mystery: the Clark County Family Court.

Here are scans of the article as it actually appeared (about 700k each): Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Photo 1 | Photo 2

Campbell's angry response to the article is expressed in this this self-portrait.

The article does have one glaring and inexcusable error:

Ex-spouses shout accusations against each other in a dispute that seems to boil down to whether their 12-year-old son ought to be in gymnastics or football.

I was there. There were no shouted accusations in the gymnastics/football dispute; in fact the parties hardly spoke at all. Instead, the exchange was between their lawyers, who did not shout either. The reporter should have known better.

Gotcha!

Flippity Flop?

The third case was one I've been following, a guardianship dispute between a Las Vegas grandmother who wants custody of her sixth grandchild and the state's Division of Child and Family Services, which placed the infant with a foster family.

A family court judge said the foster family, which wants to adopt the child, should have custody of the infant, and the grandmother is appealing that decision.

Attorney Barbara Buckley of Clark County Legal Services argued on behalf of Maria Lopez, the grandmother, who was found suitable to have custody of five grandchildren and wants custody of the sixth.

"Does government have the right to decide how large a family should be and take a grandchild away from a loving grandmother and her brothers and sisters because of an unsupported fear that the family is too large and the grandmother would be overwhelmed with another child?" asked Buckley, the likely next speaker of the Assembly.

This truly is the most heart-wrenching of cases. The baby has lived her entire life, two years, with the foster family. The issues are multiple and complex, and Hardesty focused on one issue: The girl has already bonded with the foster family.

Attorney Dan Polsenberg, also representing Lopez, asked whether it's right that when a government agency makes a mistake by placing a child in foster care when there is a loving family eager to take the child, that bonding would be the deciding issue.

"The bonding has started and that has to be a consideration," Maupin said.

Those were chilling words for the Lopez family, uplifting words for the foster family.

Whatever the justices decide, there will be tears and broken hearts over this well-loved child.

There is nothing particularly complex or "heart-wrenching" about this case. It is pretty simple: Lawyers with a political agenda want to take a 2-year-old away from the only parents she has known and place her with siblings she has never known and has no bond with. The grandmother could have taken the child when she was a newborn, but chose not to. Then she comes back 1-1/2 years later, after the child has already bonded with her new parents, and changes her mind. DFS and Hardcastle deny her request, so she connects with these shyster lawyers at Clark County Legal Services. CCLS jumps at the chance to make new case law that would give them more power, kid be damned.

Then they get Jane Ann Morrison on board, who conducts no appreciable investigation and writes a couple of columns in support. It fits her philosophy for approaching Family Court: "Hardcastle BAD!" I mailed her my flyer, Send in the Clowns, but she didn't reply. When I introduced myself at the Supreme Court hearing on Monday, she acknowledged receiving my flyer but basically blew me off. Now look at how misty-eyed she is getting in her column: "uplifting", "tears", "broken hearts," "well-loved"

It's called "backpeddling." How can this child be well-loved by her siblings IF THEY HAVE HARDLY EVEN MET HER?

This is a lawyer thing — lawyers trying to make case law — and I hope they go to Hell.

There may be some hope for Jane Ann Morrison, however. I am praying for her soul.

This article seems to suggest that the profile of children in abuse/neglect cases is changing. Although there are more children in the foster care system overall, there are fewer special needs children. To me, this seems consistant with a rapidly spreading epidemic (of meth use?). If some disease hits the parents quickly and hard, it is not going to result in many special needs children, which are more the result of long-term abuse and prenatal factors.

Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, who supported the bill, does not believe that the law is responsible for children languishing at the county's temporary shelter. "It's kind of offensive to say the law is at fault," Buckley said. "It is the county's job to recruit homes willing to take large groups."

This attitude is typical of Buckley and her organization: "We'll make the laws, you deal with them."

This is a messed up philosophy. It says that the legislature can make any law it wants without any regard for how it is going to be implemented. If it were the federal government imposing these idealistic laws, it would be called an "unfunded mandate."

♠ 12/3/05: Autopsy ordered for baby: No foul play suspected in death of infant girl (RJ/gp). A 3-month-old infant died while in foster care.

The baby was born to a 12-year-old Las Vegas girl. The girl was 11 when the infant was conceived. The man authorities allege is the infant's father, Carlos Noguera, 23, is charged with sexual assault and lewdness with a minor under the age of 14. (Criminal case 05-C-215703-C) After the baby was born, Clark County officials took the baby into the custody of the Department of Family Services because of the age of the mother.

Okay, so the wife paid an undercover policeman to kill her husband, but her mother is still defending her and insists the wife was merely frustrated with the court system. Here's my theory: People who hired hit men to kill their spouses are WACKO, and they are WACKO because their parents made them that way. Too bad we can't put the grandmother on trial.

Like the majority of states, Nevada has no law that explicitly permits or prohibits gay or lesbian individuals from adopting, said Annette Appell, associate dean for clinical studies at UNLV's Boyd School of Law. Only married couples are permitted to adopt a child jointly, she said, but any individual can apply for consideration and adopt a child as a single parent.

There are other avenues, such as the one taken by the DiCotignanos. In 1996, Jay DiCotignano became Alex's first adoptive parent. Later, Jayson DiCotignano did what is called second-parent adoption, a process usually taken by stepparents who want to become legal parents to their spouses' children.

Dixon, 22... has been incarcerated since he was 14, and he will not be eligible for parole until he is 54. As a teenaged murder defendant, he was offered a plea bargain that would have put him away for only 10 years, according to his attorney, Kristina Wildeveld. But he refused the deal, against Wildeveld's advice. Convicted by a jury of murder with the use of a deadly weapon, he was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 40 years.

The former head of the state Division of Child and Family Services once said she suspects Nevada is number one in the nation for deaths of children involved with child protective services. It turns out she may be right. The Channel 8 I-Team has learned DCFS has conducted a five-year review of child deaths in Clark County. And the numbers are alarming.

The coming days and weeks will be difficult for the newly reunited mother and son, Mahoney said [caseworker for Nevada Child Seekers]. "It's a double abduction for this kid. What does he understand?" Mahoney said. Very perceptive.

It's not difficult for police officers to shape a kid's message, says Stephen Ceci, a professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University and an expert on child confessions. "They're putty in the hands of a powerful adult authority figure," he says.

"You say to a child who has been in an interrogation room for an hour ... 'If you only tell me what we already know, you can go home,' an adult knows that's not true," Ceci says. "If you say that to a 7-year-old, they'll often tell you, 'I did it.' They can't anticipate the consequences of saying yes."

In this case, the boys were questioned without lawyers or family in the room. Their statements were not recorded. And from the moment they walked out, both denied they'd ever confessed.

"I didn't do it, Grandma," R.G. repeatedly said after the interrogation, during which police held his hand and bought him a Happy Meal and a toy car.

The boys sentenced to Spring Mountain are felons, but not hardened criminals -- those go to the state correctional facility in Elko. Judges send to Spring Mountain those boys they think might be able to turn their lives around if taken out of their environment and exposed to the mountain air, stern but respectful treatment, intensive counseling, academics and activities such as sports....

Behind one end zone, about 50 of their fellow inmates sit in a line of folding chairs to watch. They wear the camp's uniform of blue jeans and hooded sweatshirts. A couple of them hold babies in their laps -- robotic babies that sound an alarm if not properly cared for. The babies are from a parenting class.

Angela Madden landed in a foster home at 3 and didn't know her real mother, a Las Vegas prostitute who went to prison for soliciting after contracting HIV. Two decades and at least one prostitution conviction later, Madden risks losing custody of her own child after the toddler was found wandering the streets last weekend.

In her newspaper column this morning, Jane Anne Morrison discusses a case in which a grandmother (Maria Lopez) has been given custody of five siblings and wants custody of the 6th, an infant. Both DFS and Hardcastle denied this placement and have fast-tracked the infant for adoption in another family.

This is very similar to another case whose court hearing I happened to witness on 7/14. At the hearing, the illustrious Mr. Hiltz (·), lead attorney of the Children's Attorney Project (¿), was petitioning the court to have a 2.5-year-old child placed with his older siblings, who were living together with another foster family. (I don't recall if it was a relative placement.) Mr. Hiltz was representing the older siblings, and the basis for his motion was an NRS statute which gives preference for placing siblings together for foster care and adoption.

This all sounds noble: The bond between siblings should be respected. In this case, however, it was not the right thing to do, and this hearing solidified my opinion of Mr. Hiltz as a representative of Satan on Earth.

A time comes in a man's life when the potential of prison time and whopping fines loom large and he starts to think about one thing: Protecting his assets. So it made sense to discover former Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone and his wife of 11 years, Rosemary Palacios-Malone, quietly divorced in April, just days before the May 3 start of his corruption trial in San Diego. The divorce appears to be a sham, since they are still living together in their northwest Las Vegas home with their two sons.

If you love your kids, should you cage them? I have been thinking about the Sept. 14 news story from Ohio where a couple adopted 11 special needs children and kept them in homemade cages. Authorities removed the children from the home following a tip, and an investigation is now ongoing. It may seem repulsive to us to confine children like dogs, and most of us wouldn't even treat our dogs this way. The fact is, however, there is nothing in the law, either in Ohio or Nevada, specifically barring such confinement. Full Text

Mosley said Tuesday that this case was yet another indication that "narcotics is destroying society." The judge went on to say that in his 27 years on the bench, every morning 70 percent of the people before him in court are there to answer to charges that are in some way related to drugs.

9/28/05: Welcome to our new blog. Now we shall begin... Got a problem? Sue somebody! It is really nice when someone loves someone else enough to sue them, but I honestly question the effectiveness. I am referring to the article below about two former members of the Child Advocacy Alliance joining a lawsuit to reform child welfare in Las Vegas. No question that child welfare has problems, but how is a lawsuit going to fix anything? Child welfare is messed up because society is messed up and Family Services isn't allocated enough resources to address the needs. Yes, kids have been abused by the system, but that doesn't mean there is any court-ordered remedy. There is a limited pot of funding and talent available and the pot is stretched too thin. Suing the system doesn't make the pot any bigger; it can only force the system to allocate resources differently than it did before. If a court orders DFS or Juvenile Justice to devote more resources to Program "A" or Safety Concern "B", then corresponding resources have to be taken away from all the other programs. What it comes down to is, the people doing the suing think they know better than management how internal resources should be used. That's what you hire managers for. If you don't have confidence in the managers then fire 'em, but don't try to micro-manage them through the courts.

The founders of a leading local nonprofit organization, the the Children's Advocacy Alliance, have resigned, saying they intend to pursue a lawsuit against the county because of flaws they see in the child welfare system. Donna Coleman and Toni Isola-Bayer, who founded the organization in 1998, announced they would be working with a Washington-based group called Demanding Justice for America's Children (not found on Google), local attorney Jeffrey R. Sylvester and the National Center for Youth Law in mounting a lawsuit in the coming months.

1. A child who is to be referred to a juvenile detention center must be screened for mental health or substance abuse problems.
2. Medical personnel must refer a new mother to a child welfare service agency for counseling if her child is affected by prenatal drugs or has withdrawal symptoms.
3. An adult is prohibited from leaving a child 7 years old or less in a car alone without supervision of at least a 12-year-old. The law applies if the conditions present a safety risk to the child, such as excessive heat, or if the engine is running or the keys are in the ignition.
4. A new crime category was created. It will be against the law for a person, who in the presence of a minor, uses, sells or manufactures drugs, other than marijuana. The penalty ranges from three years in prison to a life term if the child dies.
5. A law, set to expire this year, is extended to permit juvenile courts to send delinquents to the local morgue to learn the potential consequences of their actions.

Roger said state law prohibits records involving child abuse or neglect to be disclosed "to protect children from ridicule somewhere down the road." "We concluded that the statute was pretty clear, and I think that Judge Bell agreed that only certain matters or documents could be turned over," Roger said. "With due respect to Thom Reilly, we are the lawyers who represent Child Protective Services. We have to make sure that they don't violate the law." But Roger said his office would like Nevada courts to determine whether the federal law should take precedent. "There is a federal statute (which one?) that provides that if you receive federal grant money, which the state does, then you have to have a policy that allows opening of public records," he said. "So we have petitioned the court to see which law governs. Is it our state law that says the public should not have access, or is it the federal law that says we do?"

District Judge Stewart Bell on Friday declined a request by the Review-Journal and the Las Vegas Sun to unseal the contents of a child welfare investigation in the case of a 2-year-old girl who authorities say died of abuse and neglect.... In Friday's hearing, Judge Bell said the child welfare records are presumed confidential under Nevada law, and without further guidance from the Legislature on what is releasable under such circumstances, he could not order them released.

On August 11, the Review-Journal filed a records request with the Clark County Department of Family Services, seeking all records generated by the agency regarding the care of Adacelli and the agency's investigation. Clark County Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Vibert wrote in a letter to the newspaper that the agency can release only select information about such cases under Nevada law because they are confidential.

The LV Sun case number in District Court is 05-A-509842-P. Docket sheet and calendar available through Blackstone.

The criminal case number is 05-C-214701-C (both defendents). Docket sheet, calendar and minutes available through Blackstone.

[Related articles]

What is really going on here? From the evidence presented, it seems that a reporter and photographer are staking out the courthouse district looking for a story, and when one doesn't materialize, they make it themselves.

County Manager Thom Reilly acknowledges the problems found in the study are serious but he defends the division as overworked and overwhelmed, yet making the best of an impossible situation. He also is protective of family services boss Susan Klein-Rothschild, whom he just named the county's manager of the year.

Senate Bill 287 makes it a misdemeanor to leave a child 7 or younger unsupervised in a vehicle if the weather and other factors "present a significant risk to health and safety" of the child or if the engine is running or the keys are in the ignition. As long as there is someone older than 11 to supervise the younger child in the vehicle, there would be no violation of the new law. The measure also gives the court the authority to suspend the misdemeanor penalty if a person cited for the offense takes an educational course on the dangers of leaving a child unattended. It also provides law enforcement officers protection from lawsuits regarding removal of children from vehicles.

Criminal Case: 05-C-214336

Fujii said Snyder has been institutionalized twice for mental illness for periods of 30 days or more in the mid-1990s while living in Florida. "She said it was for manic depression," Fujii told the court...

Fujii said after court the key to the case is whether Child Protective Services acted appropriately or whether officials should have removed Adacelli from her home to save the girl's life. Child Protective Services officials have said their records show the agency provided "intensive" case management for Charlene and Adacelli Snyder.

"The death of Adacelli Snyder, an 11-pound two-year-old, has drawn criticism of Clark County Child Protective Services from children's advocates who say system failures are as responsible for the child's death as are the parents."

Duran and the girl's mother failed to show up at the hearing, and then-Family Court Judge Bob Gaston granted the father custody of his daughter and ordered no contact between the girl, her mother and Duran.

Employees at the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center strap unruly teenagers to chairs and hit them with pepper spray in violation of their civil rights, according to a report released Wednesday by two nonprofit agencies. The report faults the county's Juvenile Detention Center staff f