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Juvenile court referee Katharine English isn't exactly the typical standard-bearer for family values. Not only is she a lesbian, but she's been stuck with a reputation as a squishy, soft-on-crime liberal--one that was cemented early in her career on the bench, when Multnomah County prosecutors, angered by what they saw as her righteous zeal and short fuse, mounted a vigorous campaign to keep juvenile crime cases out of her courtroom. But at age 53, English says she is a different woman with an outlook that has evolved with experience. In a December interview with WW, the jurist used the buzzwords of conservatives as she lamented the changes she has seen in her 14 years on the juvenile bench--the decline of the family, the scourge of drugs, out-of-control young criminals. Certainly, English has seen the worst life has to offer. Juvenile referees decide delinquency cases--that is, cases in which kids are charged with crimes--and dependency cases--where the referee must make the emotionally grueling decision, with the advice of workers from the State Office for Services to Children and Families, about whether to pull kids out of abusive homes. Although English has managed to retain the same passion she had years ago, she decided to retire last month, after coming to the conclusion that she and her longtime partner didn't need her income. WW reporter Maureen O'Hagan interviewed her in her courtroom at Portland's juvenile justice complex. Willamette Week: You've been on the bench since 1984. How did you last so long? Katharine English: Because of the work. I love this work, and I will love it until the last minute I'm on the bench, but it's very exhausting. If you do it well, it is so emotionally draining. How do you deal with that? Well, the emotionally draining part is easier to deal with than the press of work. Our work has doubled since 1984. Bob Tiernan can say all he wants about laggard [government] employees, but this bench, these workers in juvenile court and most of the workers in SOSCF work way, way harder than we ought to for our personal health. On days I'm scheduled to work eight hours, I routinely work 10 hours. The other workers work every bit as hard. But it is also emotionally draining. You don't stay long in this business unless you can reconcile yourself to the emotional upheaval. You have to work through children's deaths, through families that you thought were going to be successful, through children in terrible circumstances. From your view from the bench, what changes have you seen in society over the years? The falling apart of the family. It's kind of odd coming from a lesbian who's had to fight "family values," but I solidly subscribe to strong families with structure, nurturing and as many adults fostering the children as possible. Not necessarily heterosexual, but two parents--or grandma, grandpa and daughter. I can argue that the vast majority of cases that go through the delinquency and the dependency arena come from shattered families. What would you say is the percentage of success stories in your court? Ten percent? I'd say that's about right. Success is measured differently. Returning children to a parent is a great success to me. But if the parent failed, and you rescue the children from that situation and get them into a reasonably good adoption situation, then that's a success in its own right. But it's not as much of a success, in my mind, as rehabilitating a family. Yet in Oregon, there's a trend away from assuming family reunification is always best. Do you agree with that shift? My entire career has been spent on promoting family unification, and I agree it ought to happen much more quickly. In the past, we kept the children in foster care for years while we tried to give the parents chance after chance after chance. I think it's a good trend to move away from that, in most cases. If the parents don't rehabilitate within a certain amount of time, then we move on to a different permanent solution for the kids. I still always think that the best parents for kids are their real parents. But if the parents aren't healthy, then I think the kids need to be put into a permanent adoptive home with a guardian situation, or even permanent foster care. What I would also like to see, however, is not a severing of their relationship with their parents. Even if the parents are rotten, no-good people...? The vast majority of parents who are not able to parent aren't evil. And kids need to know who their parents are, as they grow up, to be able to form their own opinions about them. So as long as you can keep them safe and in a nurturing environment in which they can be raised, I see great value in letting them continue to have contact with their parents. I would have thought that terminating someone's parental rights would be about the worst thing you could do to a person. It is. In many ways it's like prison for life; it's a terrible deprivation of liberty and family. But I'll tell you what's harder: It's the initial removal. Say we pick up these kids in a drug raid--does that mean we should take them away, or should we try to work with the mother or father and leave the kids with them? Separation initially is very damaging. Imagine someone comes to Willamette Week and says, "Maureen, we heard about the problems at home. We are going to take you to a new home. You can't take any of your things with you, and we'll give you a new husband or companion. You can't go back to your old job; we've got you a new reporting job at The Gresham Times." You'd go crazy. These are very hard decisions in the beginning. The kids are innocent, absolutely, and sometimes they don't even know what's going on. They may go into one shelter home for two weeks and then we have to move them into foster care. They're left with the blame of what's happening to their world. That's a terrible decision for me. Is there a better way? I don't know that there is. I think we try to do the best we can. We try to examine how we could put support services in the home and keep the kids at home. But sometimes the kids are in real danger if we leave them in the home, especially older children who have talked [to authorities] and whose parents may punish them. It's a terrible dilemma. What to do about girls who have been sexually abused? We remove them. What does that tell them? Do they feel victimized or punished? Do they believe that they never should have told? How hard is it to sentence a kid to MacLaren (Oregon's juvenile jail)? That also comes after a period of having worked and worked with the children. I have very little difficulty sending a child to MacLaren who has been told and told and told that probation is a gift that is given to kids who we trust will comply with probation. If they do not comply, then they know from the very outset that the remedy could be MacLaren. We cannot let them go on and on violating their probation without giving them the ultimate sanction. I don't know if this is true, but I feel like I sentence kids to MacLaren more often than anyone else. Why are more kids being locked up today? Are they committing more crimes, or are we less tolerant? I don't know. Over the years, I've gotten more conservative about locking kids up as a punishment--meaning I do it more often. I'm not as sympathetic as I was when I first came to the bench. Why's that? You see too much, you learn too much. What I've learned is that I think kids respond to reasonable and predictable consequences. If you're a believer that kids respond to consequences, then I assume you're a full supporter of Measure 11, which imposed mandatory sanctions for kids who commit severe crimes. I'm not. I don't think it's ever a good idea to leave the discretion in the hands of one side or another. With Measure 11 you're leaving the discretion on the side of the state and the prosecutor. The discretion ought to be with the judiciary, which is unbiased. I've seen kids at 12 or 14 who I wish I could remand at the adult court. I absolutely believe they are hardened criminals. But you have to allow judges the discretion to make that decision based on how they see individual children, how they know the kids. You obviously still have a lot of passion. What will you do after retiring? I'll clean my house, alphabetize my spices, color coordinate my socks--all the things I haven't had time to do. I'm an avid gardener, so I want to get my garden in shape. I really have the things in mind that retired people have on their minds. On the other hand, the longest I've ever stayed at home is three months. I probably won't last long. I have too much energy. |
