Florida is a fucking backwards mess by design, Part #8472635

Florida blames mothers when men batter them - then takes away their children

Her memory of the midnight attack was muddled, but her battered body bore the story.

Purple bruises peppered her arms, legs and chest. Blood dried on her busted lip. Dark, swollen skin circled her bloodshot right eye. Hospital scans confirmed her ex-boyfriend’s attack had inflicted internal trauma too.

Now, hours later, he was in jail and Leah Gunion was home again. Concussion-weary and tender, she tucked her toddler back into bed and sat down to nurse her infant son. An 8 a.m. knock at the door disrupted her first moment of peace.

A woman waited at the threshold. Her polo shirt bore the insignia of the Florida Department of Children and Families. Thinking she was there to help, Leah let her in.

For the next six weeks, Leah would battle the state for custody of her children, though DCF investigators never suggested that she injured her kids. They didn’t accuse her of using drugs or failing to provide for her boys’ basic needs.

But she had lost consciousness from being beaten and strangled, briefly leaving her children unsupervised. They ordered Leah to never be alone with her children, or risk losing them.

[…]

The Florida Department of Children and Families, dependency courts and community-based nonprofits that deliver services to foster children and their parents are tasked with protecting vulnerable kids and keeping their families together whenever possible.

Yet in defiance of widely accepted best practices, Florida aggressively removes children from parents - most of them mothers - who have been battered by an intimate partner, a USA TODAY investigation found.

DCF considers exposing children to domestic violence a form of child abuse and holds victims responsible when their kids witness it. While other states have moved away from that approach, DCF cited domestic violence as the reason it removed more than 3,500 children from biological parents in 2018, an increase of nearly 1,400 from 2013. It is the primary reason for 25% of removals this year.

Literal, codified victim blaming.

EDIT: Apparently that nice extra indented H at the start doesn’t paste over properly, so…