Monterey Park Dependency Court
Whenever a child is a victim of a crime, or there is a crime that occurs in the home where a child lives, a lot of times, the Department of Child Services will get involved in order to protect the children in the home, especially in domestic violence-related cases.
How that relates to a criminal case is, if it's a crime against a child and that child can no longer live in that home because the child is now subject to possibly some sort of corporal injury or is in danger in some way, then basically, they will be taken into custody – taken into the care of the state – and the dependency court in Monterey Park in Los Angeles – is basically who controls what happens with children.
So, what ends up happening—and I've done a number of the cases there because I've been doing criminal cases for twenty-five years—I've followed some of the children involved in a case and even the parents because the parents end up in the Monterey Park court themselves.
After all, they obviously have parental rights, and to assert those rights, they need to go to the Monterey Park court, which is the Dependency Court in Los Angeles.
So, in order to do that, you're going to want to have an attorney; everybody is appointed an attorney by the court. County counsel is basically the prosecutor in there. There's a judge or a commissioner and they're going to decide what happens to the children.
They're going to have hearings. The DCSF will prepare reports for them, and then, ultimately, the judge will decide whether the children get to go back home, whether they go into a foster home, or whether they can stay with some other family member. There are a number of different resolutions that can occur.
Making Incriminating Statements in Dependency Court
But, if you're a defendant in a criminal case, another concern that you should have as it relates to these dependency cases is, a lot of times, they want you to do counseling; they want you to make statements.
You can make a statement to a counselor or somebody else associated with a Dependency Court, and then that statement can later be used to incriminate you. You could be arrested, and they can now use that statement that you gave.
It's not like that statement is protected by an attorney/client privilege or some sort of doctor/patient or psychiatrist privilege. Those statements are fair game. That's why, a lot of times, I'm representing people in pre-filing criminal cases who are in the Monterey Park Dependency Court.
So, I either coordinate with their attorney, help them on the side, or sometimes get retained, but I only do a few of those cases because that's a whole process in itself. There are a number of different court appearances. The bottom line is it's a big time while these guys try to figure out what they're going to do with the children inside these courts.
Child Abuse, Neglect, or Endangerment
But they are connected to criminal cases because a lot of times, people who abuse their kids or are charged with some sort of crime against their kids or neglect their kids or put their kids in a horrible situation – those same people end up getting charged with a criminal case.
Obviously, they want to get their kids back, but while they're trying to do so, they may often make statements that can be used against them in a criminal court.
That's where I come in to talk to them and advise them. As I said, I coordinate with their dependency attorney often to make sure we're working together for the best interests of the children and the defendant in the case so they keep their parental rights intact. They're also able to defend themselves in their criminal case, which is pending in Los Angeles County.
So, if you've got a dependency matter and you're concerned also about criminal charges related to that, come in and sit down with me. I've been retained in a lot of those situations – either pre-filing, before there are any criminal charges filed with the objective so that criminal charges aren't filed, and then also while the dependency case is pending, I will be involved in trying to steer your way through there to make sure that you don't do or say anything that incriminates you, gets you arrested and charged with a crime.