LilMtnCbn
04-23-2004, 06:06 AM
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1654&dept_id=103710&newsid=11367388
&PAG=461&rfi=9
A real life model for 'Judging Amy'
By:Meg Learson Grosso , Staff Writer 04/22/2004
Frederica Brenneman of Westport will be getting an award tomorrow for her
long-time efforts to ensure that abused and neglected children will not be
further harmed by the decisions of the courts that seek to help them.
This 37-year veteran judge of juvenile court gives full credit for having
learned the theory of "do the least harm" to her mentor Dr. Albert Solnit. His
name will be on the award she receives from Lawyers for Children America, an
organization dedicated to helping abused and neglected children.
Dr. Solnit was a child psychiatrist who founded the Yale Child Study Center. He
learned much from Anna Freud, who worked with the Jewish children who lived
during the Second World War with foster families in Britain. After the war,
these children were reunited with their own parents, but they suffered
psychologically because they were taken from foster families with whom they had
formed strong bonds.
Applying the lessons learned from these situations, Solnit, Freud and a law
professor, Joseph Goldstein, have written books entitled "In the Best Interests
of the Child," and "Beyond the Best Interests of the Child." These address the
difficult decisions that courts must make in deciding custody placements for
children.
Brenneman will be the first one to tell you that there is no "best" way for the
children who appear in her courtroom. It is too late for them to have a sunny,
happy "best" childhood, she said. Most have already been damaged by the
circumstances that bring them there. So, a judge can only choose the least
detrimental alternative.
She sees some obvious cases of physical abuse, but most other cases are more
subtle. They require a judge to decide between removing a child for suspected
neglect that doesn't quite rise to the level of physical injury, and the harm
that would be done by breaking the bond between parent and child.
"You have to weigh the chance of some danger if the child stays in the home,
and the absolute certain harm if the child is removed. Whenever the child is
removed there is psychological injury," said Brenneman. "It doesn't turn up on
the front page, but it does turn up later on in the child's life."
For instance, a child may be taken at birth from a mother who is a cocaine
addict. The child thrives for three or four years and then the parent, having
recovered, says "I want my child back." Popular thinking, says Brenneman, is
that the biological parent is best for the child, but the psychological bond is
with the adoptive parent. It is not an easy decision for a judge to make.
The spectacular headlines of child abuse that make it into the newspaper, make
social service departments nervous and there is pressure today to "yank" a
child from his home upon mere suspicion of abuse, she pointed out.
Brenneman tells of a child who was abruptly and forcefully removed from his
home because there was a suspicion of child pornography. That suspicion turned
out to be false. It had been fantasized by another child. However,
psychiatrists at the Yale Child Study Center said that it would take the
abruptly-removed child two to three years to get over the trauma.
Over the years, Brenneman has both formally and informally shared what she has
learned with other judges, lawyers, and advocates for children. She brought to
Connecticut a program called CASA, which trains volunteer court-appointed
special advocates to look after children's interests. She has been on the
boards of group homes and on many study committees.
If her life as a judge sounds like a popular television show, it is not
coincidental. For Brenneman's 70th birthday, her daughter, Amy, decided to make
a "This is Your Life" video. She went to the court where her mother worked and
started filming the mix of lawyers, social workers, cops and probation
officers. She found it a fascinating group and had the idea for "Judging Amy."
The real-life judge is very proud that her daughter made the pilot and actually
sold it to CBS against great odds. The judge is a consultant to the series,
which is now in its fifth year.
Brenneman did not plan her career, as much as she sort-of fell into it. She
graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe in 1947 and spent three years doing
economic analysis. She found it dry and boring and at the ripe old age of 24,
decided that if she was never going to be married, she should at least have an
interesting career.
While visiting a friend in Cambridge, she had breakfast with some men friends
who told her that law school was great fun and that reading case law was like
reading stories. They marched her down to get an application and she became a
member of the first Harvard Law School class to admit women. As one of 13 women
in a school of 1,570 men, she ended up married at the end of the first year.
After graduation, she practiced law for three full years, but practiced only
occasionally after that.
When her third child was two years old, she was offered the chance to become
the legislative clerk for the legislature in Hartford. She went home to discuss
it with her husband, thinking that they would probably both decide that it was
better for her to wait until her daughter was five and in school. However, her
husband said that a chance like that would never come along again and that she
should grab it. She did.
The visibility that the job offered, and the fact that she handled it well,
meant that Governor John Dempsey thought of her when the number of judges on
the children's court was doubled from three to six. Besides that, he wanted a
woman.
So, with relatively little experience as a lawyer, she became the second woman
to be appointed a superior court judge in Connecticut. Thirty-seven years
later, she is still at it. Officially retired, she works on an on-call basis
and fills the role of judge trial referee in the juvenile court, choosing to
work only on cases of abuse or neglect.
In court decisions, as well as in real life, Brenneman believes in what she
calls "impact thinking," which means thinking about the effect that one's
decisions will have way down the road. In the courtroom, this can mean thinking
about what will happen to a child well into the future. It may mean deciding on
a permanent placement for that child as soon as possible. In everyday life, it
can mean thinking about how you treat the person from whom you buy a loaf of
bread. How will your courtesy or lack of it affect that person's whole day?
Recently, Brenneman shared this thought with her fellow congregants at
Saugatuck Congregational Church: "I am always conscious of the fact that every
person in front of me, adult and child, saint or sinner, is made-as I am-in the
image of God and is therefore entitled to be treated justly, fairly and
courteously."
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
&PAG=461&rfi=9
A real life model for 'Judging Amy'
By:Meg Learson Grosso , Staff Writer 04/22/2004
Frederica Brenneman of Westport will be getting an award tomorrow for her
long-time efforts to ensure that abused and neglected children will not be
further harmed by the decisions of the courts that seek to help them.
This 37-year veteran judge of juvenile court gives full credit for having
learned the theory of "do the least harm" to her mentor Dr. Albert Solnit. His
name will be on the award she receives from Lawyers for Children America, an
organization dedicated to helping abused and neglected children.
Dr. Solnit was a child psychiatrist who founded the Yale Child Study Center. He
learned much from Anna Freud, who worked with the Jewish children who lived
during the Second World War with foster families in Britain. After the war,
these children were reunited with their own parents, but they suffered
psychologically because they were taken from foster families with whom they had
formed strong bonds.
Applying the lessons learned from these situations, Solnit, Freud and a law
professor, Joseph Goldstein, have written books entitled "In the Best Interests
of the Child," and "Beyond the Best Interests of the Child." These address the
difficult decisions that courts must make in deciding custody placements for
children.
Brenneman will be the first one to tell you that there is no "best" way for the
children who appear in her courtroom. It is too late for them to have a sunny,
happy "best" childhood, she said. Most have already been damaged by the
circumstances that bring them there. So, a judge can only choose the least
detrimental alternative.
She sees some obvious cases of physical abuse, but most other cases are more
subtle. They require a judge to decide between removing a child for suspected
neglect that doesn't quite rise to the level of physical injury, and the harm
that would be done by breaking the bond between parent and child.
"You have to weigh the chance of some danger if the child stays in the home,
and the absolute certain harm if the child is removed. Whenever the child is
removed there is psychological injury," said Brenneman. "It doesn't turn up on
the front page, but it does turn up later on in the child's life."
For instance, a child may be taken at birth from a mother who is a cocaine
addict. The child thrives for three or four years and then the parent, having
recovered, says "I want my child back." Popular thinking, says Brenneman, is
that the biological parent is best for the child, but the psychological bond is
with the adoptive parent. It is not an easy decision for a judge to make.
The spectacular headlines of child abuse that make it into the newspaper, make
social service departments nervous and there is pressure today to "yank" a
child from his home upon mere suspicion of abuse, she pointed out.
Brenneman tells of a child who was abruptly and forcefully removed from his
home because there was a suspicion of child pornography. That suspicion turned
out to be false. It had been fantasized by another child. However,
psychiatrists at the Yale Child Study Center said that it would take the
abruptly-removed child two to three years to get over the trauma.
Over the years, Brenneman has both formally and informally shared what she has
learned with other judges, lawyers, and advocates for children. She brought to
Connecticut a program called CASA, which trains volunteer court-appointed
special advocates to look after children's interests. She has been on the
boards of group homes and on many study committees.
If her life as a judge sounds like a popular television show, it is not
coincidental. For Brenneman's 70th birthday, her daughter, Amy, decided to make
a "This is Your Life" video. She went to the court where her mother worked and
started filming the mix of lawyers, social workers, cops and probation
officers. She found it a fascinating group and had the idea for "Judging Amy."
The real-life judge is very proud that her daughter made the pilot and actually
sold it to CBS against great odds. The judge is a consultant to the series,
which is now in its fifth year.
Brenneman did not plan her career, as much as she sort-of fell into it. She
graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe in 1947 and spent three years doing
economic analysis. She found it dry and boring and at the ripe old age of 24,
decided that if she was never going to be married, she should at least have an
interesting career.
While visiting a friend in Cambridge, she had breakfast with some men friends
who told her that law school was great fun and that reading case law was like
reading stories. They marched her down to get an application and she became a
member of the first Harvard Law School class to admit women. As one of 13 women
in a school of 1,570 men, she ended up married at the end of the first year.
After graduation, she practiced law for three full years, but practiced only
occasionally after that.
When her third child was two years old, she was offered the chance to become
the legislative clerk for the legislature in Hartford. She went home to discuss
it with her husband, thinking that they would probably both decide that it was
better for her to wait until her daughter was five and in school. However, her
husband said that a chance like that would never come along again and that she
should grab it. She did.
The visibility that the job offered, and the fact that she handled it well,
meant that Governor John Dempsey thought of her when the number of judges on
the children's court was doubled from three to six. Besides that, he wanted a
woman.
So, with relatively little experience as a lawyer, she became the second woman
to be appointed a superior court judge in Connecticut. Thirty-seven years
later, she is still at it. Officially retired, she works on an on-call basis
and fills the role of judge trial referee in the juvenile court, choosing to
work only on cases of abuse or neglect.
In court decisions, as well as in real life, Brenneman believes in what she
calls "impact thinking," which means thinking about the effect that one's
decisions will have way down the road. In the courtroom, this can mean thinking
about what will happen to a child well into the future. It may mean deciding on
a permanent placement for that child as soon as possible. In everyday life, it
can mean thinking about how you treat the person from whom you buy a loaf of
bread. How will your courtesy or lack of it affect that person's whole day?
Recently, Brenneman shared this thought with her fellow congregants at
Saugatuck Congregational Church: "I am always conscious of the fact that every
person in front of me, adult and child, saint or sinner, is made-as I am-in the
image of God and is therefore entitled to be treated justly, fairly and
courteously."
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
