Hold the Mayo

December 01, 2005

With Liberty And Justice For All

Ronald Reagan famously said "The most terrifying words in the English langauge are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." The government tries to help. I tries to protect us by forcing us to wear seat belts, by sheilding us from second hand smoke, by all regulating all manner of other things mostly with the aim of protecting us from ourselves. They do that very well. Then tend fall a little flat some times when it comes to protecting the good of us from the bad of us.

I used to work with Audra Fleury. She was one of the good ones. She's smart, funny, and a genuinely nice person. She never took offense at a little gentle ribbing about her tendency to have every detail about practically everything she did organized and recorded in spreadsheet. It was sad when she left the company. And even sadder why.

Audra received the call that no parent wants to ever get. Her 15 month old daughter had been hurt badly in a fall. She had suffered a skull fracture that caused her brain to swell and she almost died.

Now three Catherine has only limited use of her right side.

If you are asking how this could happen from a fall, you are not alone. In the arrest warrant affidavte for the Fleury's nanny, doctors compared the injuries to those sustained in high-speen crashes.

Audra and her husband David have avoided speaking publicly about the incident or the prosecution choosing instead to work with the state to seek justice for their family.

They ended that silence when the state chose not to pursue the prosecution and allowed Erika T. Wade to enter a no contest plea to one count of risk of injury of a minor. She was sentenced to 8 years suspended after 90 days, with five years of probation. Having already served 90 days she was released. The state dropped a charge of first degree assault.

There is a lesson in this story that we would be well advised to learn. It's not about how careful you should be in picking a nanny. Audra would not have put her children in the care of someone she had not checked out extremely thoroughly. No doubt she did all of the research your supposed to do and then some. What we should learn is that while doing an overzealous job of regulating our lives in ways that they never should, the state cannot always be counted on to be there to back us up in the way that they are supposed to.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 05:50 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment

1 The nanny, being a nanny and all, is probably close to penniless on any given day. The real lesson, I think, is that we need to remember that no one will love your children the way you do.

Audra left her job after her hired help had failed her and her daughter. Tragically, she left her job too late. It's easy to want to have a career and to raise a family at the same time, but it's impossible. If both parents are working then the primary care of their children is inevitably farmed out to a stranger. Not good. It creates only worry for the parents and chaos for the kids.

I hope that the lesson learned from this is not that we need more screening of strangers but that we need more parenting.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at December 01, 2005 06:05 PM (splRH)

2 I truly feel for the anguish that the Fleury's are experincing. I cannot imagine anmything worse for a parent to go through.

But I do somewhat disagree that the state "didn't back them up as it is supposed to do." The fact is that the evidence was such that there is some doubt on the ability to make the charges stick. Those statements by the doctors are a matter of opinion, and I'm sure the defense could have gotten an equally credible medical opion with a differing view. There are only finite resources that can be brought to bear in the prosecution of cases, and it's also the state's responsibility to use those resources in the best manner possible.

In this case, the Fleury's may not have gotten what they felt was a full measure of justice, but using the plea system did result in at least a measure of punishment. And having a felony conviction on her record will be a punishment for the remainder of Miss Wade's life.

I don't know if that makes up for the lifelong pain that their child sustained...I don't think it would if it were my child; but looking at it dispassionatly from the outside, the state did the best it could with what it had, with no witnesses to what truly occurred.

There is the possibility that it happened just as Miss Wade testified, in which case she is being penalized for an accident...so she may have just cause to feel that the state didn't back HER up as it should. We will never know the truth either way. It's sad that it ever happened in the first place, either way.

T-Spork has a valid point in the abstract, but without knowing whether a second income was TRULY needed by the Fleury family or not, we can't judge the decision. One irony is that, with the medical costs attendant to a disabled child, that second income may well be required now, even if it wasn't then.

Posted by: delftsman3 at December 11, 2005 04:38 AM (gwxg6)

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