If the pencil pushers and clock watchers gathered in a small Forsyth Country courtroom at 9 a.m. Friday didn’t fully grasp the seriousness of blowing off a judicial subpoena, they were about to find out.
A 17-year-old girl — a ward of the state — had been cooling her heels in the Forsyth County Jail for nearly three weeks over a simple assault charge that had been filed in connection with a fight at the Children’s Home.
Social workers who had exhausted all local options and the chief district-court judge wanted the kid moved somewhere where she might get some help, but the bureaucrats and behavioral health workers charged with finding appropriate programs in a suitable facility couldn’t manage that. Nor could anyone manage to show up for court to explain why not the first time a subpoena was issued.
Judge Lisa Menefee was visibly angry, and she wanted answers.
Caught in the middle
Technically an adult in the eyes of the law, the kid who appeared on a video screen above Menefee’s shoulder didn’t much look like a grown-up brawler. She looked pretty much like what she is: a 17-year-old kid with a penchant for running away from foster and group homes who is caught in the middle of a storm not entirely of her own making.
She’d gotten into an altercation at the Children’s Home, but it couldn’t have been much. Otherwise, she would have been charged with something more serious than a low-level misdemeanor.
Still, she was booked into the Forsyth County Detention Center on Dec. 17. The Forsyth County Public Defender’s Office was appointed to represent her on the criminal charge, and social workers who are supposed to look out for the girl were notified that she was in jail.
Someone at Centerpoint Human Services – the behavioral health overseer for Davie, Forsyth, Rockingham and Stokes counties – was supposed to find room for the girl in a secure, locked facility where she could receive counseling and perhaps a mental-health evaluation. Maybe it should have taken a day or two.
It didn’t happen. Perhaps Christmas shopping or a busy lunch schedule got in the way.
Menefee issued a subpoena Monday, Dec. 30, demanding that someone show up the next day to explain what had happened. Naturally nobody showed, so the judge issued a second “invitation” for Friday morning.
Shawn Roberson, a Centerpoint worker, Holly Groce, the assistant Davie County attorney, and a Davie County social worker stood behind the prosecutor’s table to answer.
“She is (17) years old and has been in jail since Dec. 17 waiting for a placement,” Menefee said, her voice rising noticeably. “That’s 14 days of a child being in the county jail because of slow movement on this matter. …. Well?”
Roberson spoke first and immediately tried to pass the buck. “I don’t think it was slow movement … it’s the system of care.”
Wrong answer.
“You’re telling me you have no method, no system to expedite the bureaucratic process?” Menefee said. “All of us know better. What really concerns me is a (17-year-old) has been in a county jail house waiting for the process to happen.”
Not our problem
Perhaps not quite attuned to the extent of the judge’s irritation, Roberson continued to dig when Menefee asked who’d been called or what had been done to get this kid out of jail.
“I can’t tell you that,” Roberson said. “We don’t have anything to do with that.”
At that point, Groce, the assistant Davie County attorney, piped up. “I’m just the lawyer here,” she said.
Fed up, Menefee instructed Roberson to have her boss show up Monday at 2 p.m. to explain what progress has been made. She also suggested that she was going to order Centerpoint to pay for every day the kid gets held in jail.
Naturally, the response was yet more double talk.
“Certain things we can do and certain things we cannot,” Roberson said, before explaining that her boss, Ronnie Wilkes, might not be able to make it.
“You have the power and authority to do it,” Menefee said. “(Betty Taylor, Centerpoint’s chief executive officer) does, (Jeff Eads, the community operations director) does. You can run them ragged. Tell them you have a judge on your (backside). … I’m not going to let this go.”
When I approached after the hearing seeking further comment, Roberson, Gross and the social worker who’d accompanied them to court declined. In fact, they refused to identify themselves even though they’d just been in a public court hearing answering a judge’s questions about public business.
Still, within earshot in a public hallway, they discussed the judge’s order. “I don’t know if (Wilkes) can make it,” Roberson told the others. “He’s on vacation.”
Betty Taylor, the CEO at Centerpoint, first tried the standard dodge of citing “privacy issues,” then said her agency did everything it could as quickly as possible. “It’s outside our ability to expedite the process,” she said. “It’s solely within the lap of the DSS in Davie County. We’ve done everything we can.”
And there you have it.
No one’s accountable, no one’s responsible, and somebody else is at fault. Meanwhile a kid who’s learned not to trust adults remains in jail with yet another reminder why she shouldn’t.
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