Comment on We've All Been Here
Grainne@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days agoWould the better option not be to directly help the child?
The police are just likely to force her back to a physically abusive household as they are to hurt her in the back of their car.
Redfox8@mander.xyz 4 days ago
We just don’t know the reason so can never be sure what’s actually better. So maybe not. Maybe something bad happened as a one off, maybe it was school bullying & nothing to do with the parents.
As I suggested, some police depts. will handle it better than others, so there’s a risk that it’s not the best option. But that doesn’t mean it’ll always be the worse one.
So would it be better to just leave them alone to become permanently homeless? Depending on the country, even the state or charity orphanage may not be better than going home. There’s a tiine of variables we don’t know.
How to you propose someone ‘directly’ helps btw? Adopt them on the spot?! Ask them what they want? (This won’t necessarily be the best thing for them). Also bear in mind that the op had said they’d just taken mushrooms… A scared homeless kid having two drugged up strangers talking to them, that’s not going to be bad at all is it?!
Anyhow, it’s all wild speculation. All anyone can do is make as best a decision for the moment.
Monument@piefed.world 3 days ago
I didn’t want to weigh in while the conversation was “hot” but as someone who survived a stint in foster care, and an extremely dysfunctional childhood, I tried to both avoid catching charges and also avoid putting her back into a situation where she was suffering abuse.
She was here for about an hour before we called the police. Before we called, we checked with an attorney-friend (sorta, I told a buddy I wasn’t sure what to do and he asked his friend that practices family law). We also spoke with several of her family members. We ascertained she had run away from her mother, whom she had only lived with for a few weeks. She had been living with another family member before being kicked out. She tried to convince a friend’s family to take her in, but they refused. Privately (she used our phone, so I spoke with the other adult), they described her as someone who lies and is frequently in trouble, amongst other concerns. For a sweet seeming 13-year old, their list of concerns about her was long.
She actually ran away again the next day and returned to our place. We called immediately that time, but the police had something come up, so they took several hours. We had her watch TV while we worked.
When the police were here, my wife realized her phone was missing, and dinged it with her watch. The kid started ringing. I think everyone was surprised. She tried to run, and found herself in a room with no exit.
We didn’t press charges about the phone. We just wanted the situation out of our life.
My understand is that she went to go live with her mother again, although her mother (with out consent via the police) actually asked us to press charges on the hope that she would be detained for a little bit and change her ways. My wife’s phone is valued above the felony larceny amount and that would follow her for the rest of her life, so we did not want to go that route.
Redfox8@mander.xyz 1 day ago
Thanks for your reply, don’t blame you for waiting a bit. I wasn’t much in the mood for allowing such a remark to stand that day!
What you say just goes to show what other possibilities there are & also that how the child behaves is an important factor to consider. Sounds like she’s probably had a rough time, possibly without any stable care or support, if not direct abuse.
Sounds like a challenging situation you did well to navigate as best as possible. Good job!