Note: I don't have a date for this but this incident happened recently. -Angela
By Ellen Barry
Los Angeles Times
LEBANON, Tenn. A judge hearing child-abuse and neglect cases in Tennessee has given an unusual instruction to some immigrant mothers who have come before him: Learn English or else.
Most recently, it was an 18-year-old woman from Oaxaca, Mexico, who had been reported to the Department of Children's Services for failing to immunize her toddler and show up for appointments. At a hearing last month to monitor the mother's custody of the child, Wilson County Judge Barry Tatum instructed the woman to learn English and to use birth control, the Lebanon Democrat newspaper reported.
Last October, Tatum gave a similar order to a Mexican woman who had been cited for neglect of her 11-year-old daughter, said a lawyer who is representing the woman in her appeal. Setting a court date six months away, the judge told the woman she should be able to speak English at a fourth-grade level by that meeting. If she failed, he warned, he would begin the process of termination of parental rights.
"The court specially informs the mother that if she does not make the effort to learn English, she is running the risk of losing any connection; legally, morally and physically; with her daughter forever," reads a court order from the hearing, according to Jerry Gonzalez, the Nashville attorney who represents the woman.
Tatum's orders have become the subject of debate in this Tennessee community, which has seen an influx of non-English speakers over the past decade. Civil-rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have called his orders discriminatory and unconstitutional. But many of Tatum's neighbors cheered the principle behind his act, saying new immigrants should be encouraged to assimilate more fully into American life.
Juvenile court proceedings are often more informal than adult cases, and it's not unusual for judges to give lifestyle advice to parents who come before them in neglect or abuse cases. And, when written down and signed by the judge, those instructions take on the force of a court order.
Such orders should pertain to behavior that contributes to abuse and neglect, said Susan Brooks, an expert on family law at Vanderbilt University Law School. Brooks said she was not familiar with Tatum's orders, but typically the inability to speak English would not fall into that category. The state Supreme Court regards the right to raise one's own children as fundamental, she added.
"That's treading on sacred ground," she said.
Tatum did not respond to interview requests from the Los Angeles Times, but he has explained that he gave the orders in hopes that the parents would make a greater effort to assimilate into American society, opening more opportunities to their children. He has given similar orders to non-English-speaking parents in as many as five cases.
He said he has never removed a child from a parent because the parent did not speak English.
Because records from juvenile court are sealed, further details of the cases were not available.
In Lebanon, a city 20 miles east of Nashville with a population of just more than 20,000, it was once rare to hear a foreign accent, much less a foreign language. Now Lebanon has become home to more than 1,200 foreign-born agricultural and manufacturing workers, including about 400 whose primary language is Mixteco, a language indigenous to Mexico.
Though the judge's order may have been a mistake, "the general sentiment is if people are going to be in this country, we all have a moral obligation to learn to speak the language," said Bob Bright, 61, who runs an insurance agency in Lebanon.
"I know if I was in Mexico I would make an effort to learn Hispanic."
In the October case, Tatum made a clear link between the mother's English abilities and her parental rights, said Gonzalez, the mother's attorney.
In the case, an 11-year-old girl had been placed with a foster family after allegations of neglect, Gonzalez said. The mother, who spoke only Mixteco, asked the court to arrange counseling, and the judge denied that request, instead giving the women a deadline for basic mastery of English.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002181460_english16.html
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