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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Posts
    2

    Default Children Left Unsupervised in a Pool

    My question involves child abuse or neglect in the State of: Florida

    I am seperated and the children's father was having the children spend the night every other weekend, but I have not let him see them overnight since their father left our 9 and 3 year old in the water (kiddie pool) at a water park and left the children without adult supervision and he went and rode the adult slide twice and left them aprox 20 minutes alone. my 9 year old was the one that told me about it. my 9 year old did say their was a life guard their but they were changing shifts. either way they were left alone.... i called the park to verify their rules they said that no children under 12 is allowed to be unsupervised and that their workers and lifeguards are not responsible for the saftey or care of the children..... this i fugured.... its common sense

    Anyway i contacted the sherriffs dept and they said to contact a lawyer or dcf because they could not help me because it happened in a different county. i contacted a attorney who told me not to call dcf and that she would get an emergecy hearing. that got denied and our court hearing is not until end of year due to overload at court house.... in the mean time the children's father only sees the children with me their at places where there are other people their for accountability. now the father wants to see them alone again and i am having a hard time with him (he has an anger problem and their was domestic violence in the past). my question is do you think i should just go ahead and contact department of children and family and have them take care of it since our court date will not be months away.... i just want to make sure the kids stay safe... what do you think i should do?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    2,773

    Default Re: Children Left Unsupervised in a Pool

    Quote Quoting answer8
    View Post
    My question involves child abuse or neglect in the State of: Florida

    I am seperated and the children's father was having the children spend the night every other weekend, but I have not let him see them overnight since their father left our 9 and 3 year old in the water (kiddie pool) at a water park and left the children without adult supervision and he went and rode the adult slide twice and left them aprox 20 minutes alone. my 9 year old was the one that told me about it. my 9 year old did say their was a life guard their but they were changing shifts. either way they were left alone.... i called the park to verify their rules they said that no children under 12 is allowed to be unsupervised and that their workers and lifeguards are not responsible for the saftey or care of the children..... this i fugured.... its common sense

    Anyway i contacted the sherriffs dept and they said to contact a lawyer or dcf because they could not help me because it happened in a different county. i contacted a attorney who told me not to call dcf and that she would get an emergecy hearing. that got denied and our court hearing is not until end of year due to overload at court house.... in the mean time the children's father only sees the children with me their at places where there are other people their for accountability. now the father wants to see them alone again and i am having a hard time with him (he has an anger problem and their was domestic violence in the past). my question is do you think i should just go ahead and contact department of children and family and have them take care of it since our court date will not be months away.... i just want to make sure the kids stay safe... what do you think i should do?

    EXTREMELY IMPORTANT:
    What is the EXACT wording of your EXISTING visitation order?

    If you have an existing visitation order- does your attorney know that you are denying visitations, and if your court order does NOT specify SUPERVISED visitations, does your attorney know that you are only allowing supervised visits?

    Other than the water park incident, what other proof do you have that Dad is placing the children in danger?

    The fact that an emergency hearing was not granted speaks volumes about the water park incident, if that is your only basis.

    IF you do have a court order for visitation that does not order supervision, and your attorney is aware that you are willingly refusing to obey that court order- you really need a different attorney. Unless you have some extremely compelling evidence of Dad always palcing the children in danger, it's very possible that YOU could be found in contempt for not obeying the court order.

    As for contacting DCF- again, unless you have ALOT more RECENT proof of Dad endangering, you should not call based on only the waterpark incident, if you do you will only be making things worse for yourself in court.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Posts
    2

    Default Re: Children Left Unsupervised in a Pool

    Quote Quoting Xena
    View Post
    EXTREMELY IMPORTANT:
    What is the EXACT wording of your EXISTING visitation order?

    If you have an existing visitation order- does your attorney know that you are denying visitations, and if your court order does NOT specify SUPERVISED visitations, does your attorney know that you are only allowing supervised visits?

    Other than the water park incident, what other proof do you have that Dad is placing the children in danger?

    The fact that an emergency hearing was not granted speaks volumes about the water park incident, if that is your only basis.

    IF you do have a court order for visitation that does not order supervision, and your attorney is aware that you are willingly refusing to obey that court order- you really need a different attorney. Unless you have some extremely compelling evidence of Dad always palcing the children in danger, it's very possible that YOU could be found in contempt for not obeying the court order.

    As for contacting DCF- again, unless you have ALOT more RECENT proof of Dad endangering, you should not call based on only the waterpark incident, if you do you will only be making things worse for yourself in court.




    I am recently seperated so there is no court or visitation order yet. I am currently trying to establish one and just filed my dissolution. I found out that the reason the courts said that the emergency hearing was denied and a temp hearing was put in its place toward the end of the year was because the children are currently residing me and in a safe envioronment and also the courts are so backed up that only if the children were currently living WITH a person and IN a place where they were in current danger they would then have a hearing asap.

    Additl. Info:
    The reason we recently seperated was because their father hit our 3 year old with a belt and left a mark that stayed there for 23 hours and he hit our 9 year old 10 times and threw our dog. He has in the past gone against doctors orders concerning the childrens care (when we were seperated a few years ago, which is documented) and in the past he has struck me too. Also, the last time they were with him when they went to the water park (that I explained about in my post) he never changed our son (only into a bathing suit) from the original outfit I dropped him off in. No shower and all the clothes I sent were still cleaned and he admitted to not changing him. Also, another time he did not feed our children lunch and did not feed one of them lunch or dinner (they called saying they were hungry and daddy fell asleep almost all day).



    I am just trying to be sure that either the courts or dcf (if I need to contact them) will order parenting and counseling class for their father to attend. This is my goal for the childrens saftey. The father does currently see the children, but leaving them alone with him right now is a saftey issue because he displays that he may need parenting skills to be sure they are properlly taken care of and safe.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Somewhere near Canada
    Posts
    35,894

    Default Re: Children Left Unsupervised in a Pool

    What are DCF doing about the physical abuse?

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    9,096

    Default Re: Children Left Unsupervised in a Pool

    Anything that happened during a previous separation really isn't all that relevant.

    The court will consider that it couldn't have been that bad since you took him back.

    Wearing the same clothes all day is not a crime.
    You will need more than a single story from a 9 year old.
    All these other actions... when you called the police to report them, what did they say?
    Do you have a copy of the police report?

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