Thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove, Flappr, The Other McCain, The Daley Gator and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links!  And be sure to check out my latest guest editorial over at RedState.

PJMedia’s Megan Fox has an important story.  You should read this.

Jennifer Williams will face a jury in the wrongful death lawsuit brought by Cynthia (Haynes) Randolph on behalf of her deceased daughter Mikaela Haynes, a 13-year-old embroiled in Missouri’s family court nightmare who took her own life rather than go back to the father who sexually abused her. Williams, an attorney, was assigned to Mikaela as her guardian ad litem (GAL) during the vicious court battle her family suffered trying to get away from her convicted sex-offending father, Charles Haynes. Haynes is currently serving a seven-year sentence in a Missouri prison for the forcible sodomy of Mikaela’s step-sister, Melissa.

Charles Haynes was credibly accused of that crime when Williams ignored all evidence of his abuse and placed Mikaela in the care of his 90-year-old mother, who gave Haynes full access to Mikaela. After unsuccessfully trying to alert doctors, judges, DFS, and others in authority that she was being sexually abused, Mikaela learned on Nov. 23, 2018, that her GAL, Williams, would seek Haynes’ probation on Nov. 26, 2018, which would guarantee that Haynes would not be sentenced to serve a prison term. Fearing ending up in Haynes’ custody after sentencing and being sexually abused again, Mikaela took her life. PJ Media covered that story thoroughly in several parts in the linked articles here, here, and here.

One member of my family (I won’t give details) has some experience with that guardian ad litem system as well, and it’s a shitshow in her location, too.  The incentives run in all the wrong directions; it’s in the GAL’s financial interest to string family problems out longer and longer, and I’m willing to bet that more kids have simply aged out of the system than have actually seen any resolution.  That’s precisely what happened in my family member’s case.  Fortunately there was no physical or sexual abuse involved, just emotional abuse, but the GAL deliberately (in my well-informed opinion of the case) prolonged the issue, to keep those sweet bucks flowing.

Read Megan’s story, and read the previous ones.  If this case doesn’t piss you off, you’re missing something.