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Sunday, June 22, 2003

By Barbara White Stack, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Sheila Demshar requested a protection from abuse order last week so that her grandson, DJ Porter, wouldn't have to see his mother again.

Demshar, who has full legal custody, contends the boy's mother is driving past her house in McKeesport and yelling threats at the 10-year-old.

The boy's mother, Vida Porter, who is Demshar's only child, denies it. She says she shouts, "I love you." A recovering drug addict, Porter is trying to regain custody of DJ, but says her mother is interfering with court-ordered visits.

After caring for DJ off and on all of his life, Demshar got custody three years ago, using what was then a fairly new "grandparents rights" law.

The 1996 statute gave grandparents like Demshar a way to circumvent child welfare agencies such as Children, Youth and Families when the grandparents were caring for abused or neglected grandchildren.

Instead of reporting the situation to CYF and hoping a caseworker would place the youngsters in foster care with the grandparents, the law gave grandparents the right to ask a judge directly to give them custody. They could do it if they'd served as a parent to the child for a year or if the parents mistreated the child.

The 1996 law may ease the path to custody for grandparents, but it also forecloses to parents, grandparents and children protections built into the CYF system.

Under the "grandparents rights" law, no one is assured legal representation, parents don't get help resolving their problems and grandparents don't get the assurance that parents won't return years later demanding the child.

As early as 1996, Philadelphia lawyer Cathryn Miller wrote about the law's shortcomings, describing it as an "end run" around the CYF system that was intended to protect the rights of all the players.

Demshar hired her own lawyer when she sought custody. But her daughter could not afford one. In the CYF system, poor parents and all children are given free lawyers.

Now the tables are turned on Demshar. She's no longer employed and can't afford a lawyer to fend off her daughter's attempt to regain custody. Porter, by contrast, is being represented by Lisa Standish, of Kowall & Standish, Downtown, who took the case at a reduced rate.

If the case had been in the CYF system, the agency might have tried to terminate Porter's parental rights before she filed to regain custody last year. When a parent is terminated, CYF almost always asks the person caring for the child to adopt. That would be Demshar in this case. Termination would have protected Demshar from any attempts by Porter to get custody back.

In the CYF system, a caseworker would have helped Porter find stable housing and get into a drug treatment program. Instead, Porter did that on her own.

CYF also would have set up at least two visits a month between Porter and her son. Porter contends Demshar kept her son from her and wouldn't even accept her phone calls. Demshar says Porter never tried to visit until recently.

Porter, at 29, says she has turned her life around. She has been clean for 18 months. She has a 13-month-old baby, James Marvin Porter. She has a place in Clairton, all set up to accommodate DJ.

Demshar says it's too late. She says DJ is bonded to her and is afraid of Porter. He's doing well in school and a half-dozen sports and musical activities.

While Porter faces the protection from abuse hearing next week, Demshar faces contempt of court because DJ walks out of scheduled visits with his mother.

Family court judges routinely hear these disputes between divorced parents. The 1996 law added grandparents to the mix.