Posted on 12/22/2007 4:30:11 AM PST by Man50D
A homeschooling mom who fled her Carbon County, Utah, home because of a judge's threat to take away her children if they were not enrolled in the local public school district is preparing to answer the counts that accuse her of failing to submit last year's homeschool paperwork.
Officials with the Home School Legal Defense Association have confirmed they will work on the case involving homeschooling mom Denise Mafi.
The Home School Legal Defense Association, in association with prominent Utah attorney, Frank Mylar, has agreed to represent homeschooling mom, Denise Mafi, in her upcoming truancy prosecution in Utah's Carbon County Juvenile Court," the organization said.
"HSLDA senior Counsel James R. Mason stated that the attorneys are reviewing the facts and are preparing a vigorous defense to the charges," the group said.
As WND reported earlier, Mafi, who at that time had had counsel from a public defender, abandoned her home, furniture and other possessions to leave Utah and seek refuge in another state, where she plans to get her four children involved in a homeschooling program after the Christmas holiday.
At that time she told WND she would not return to Utah to retrieve her furniture and other items unless the threat of her arrest was removed. But she also confirmed she planned to be back in the state for a trial scheduled on Jan. 9.
Mafi told WND she and her children had packed up their essentials – clothes and homeschool materials – and spent more than 50 hours on a bus trip to an undisclosed part of the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
ping
Many homeschoolers live in states that require testing or paperwork at the end of each school year. Give them the paperwork, end of story.
If the law requires it, obey the law and give them what they want.
Unfortunately, I have known homeschoolers who didn't keep the required records, and more distressing, some of those homeschoolers weren't doing much in the way of schooling in the first place.
Most homeschoolers are conscientious...some are not.
The judge needs to be impeached, removed and his law license taken away for failing the public in such a gross manner. The mother has obviously been doing things right in the past and this over-the-top action by the judge shows what too much power in a single persons hand can do. Hillary loves this kind of power...so do most liberals...because they can not achieve this kind of power by legitimate means.
I don’t want this mom simply defended, I want the judge disbarred and jailed. What he did must be criminal on some level.
“If the law requires it, obey the law and give them what they want.”
Next time you might want to try reading the whole article.
She faxed the paperwork but didn’t keep the fax confirmation. Not a good thing for her to do, but it is a simple thing for the school system to verify that she is homeschooling without resorting to the nuclear option of truancy.
ping
This type of biased and slanted reporting disturbs me.
The mother did not is not a wanted criminal, and she did not "flee."
corrected:
A homeschooling mom who left her Carbon County, Utah, home because of a judge's threat
While of course she should file the needed paperwork, it does not rise to the level of a felon or wanted criminal breaking the law for say, a teacher screwing the school children.
There’s a reason I try to avoid National Enquirer, um, I mean WND articles. They do tend to slant the news and create sensationalizm. That said, the mom should have merely taken the paperwork down in person and handed it to the principal. But no, now this has evolved into taking the kids across state lines. Seems this mom is more interested in her own 15 minutes than her children’s welfare.
Thanks for the ping. I’ll watch this in the HSLDA news, which will eventually include complete information. It can be hard to figure out exactly what’s going on with WND as a source!
“That said, the mom should have merely taken the paperwork down in person and handed it to the principal”
From the article it seems as though the school escalated the system by referring her to truancy proceedings.
ping.
"From the article" which is my point concerning WND. In my work, I cover several school campus' and these situations don't suddenly jump from A-Z without going through B, C, D, E, etc. The parents are given every opportunity to rectify the situation. I also don't see a lot of other homeschool parents coming to her defense. It's all been one sided reporting.
I read that part, but it didn’t make sense, in fact the whole story has “holes.”
Once she learned the fax didn’t go through, why not just resubmit the affadavit...why get to the point where she had to consult a public defender who evidently counseled her wrongly.
Supposedly the judge is conservative about school curriculum (see the last couple paragraphs)..and this is WND who is reporting the story, so things can get sensationalized.
Fleeing the state, IMHO, doesn’t seem to have been the wisest move. Just enroll the kids in school until they work out the legalities...fleeing just makes the situation worse.
Having homeschooled for several (18+) years, I sort of understand what this family is going through. Our state home school organization recommends we send all documentation to any public official by certified mail with return receipt. We have a file of receipts going back to 1989. I do not doubt she did what she claims she did, but activist judges see us as guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around like it is supposed to be.
Seems to me that if the real issue for the school system is this "paperwork" that there never should have been criminal charges in the first place.
A simple phone call or letter from the school system regarding the missing paperwork would have resulted in the mother re-submitting it.
Once the charges were instituted and she produced the paperwork through her attorney, the prosecutor should have killed the charges.
Unless there is an ulterior motive on the part of the State...
“Once she learned the fax didn’t go through”
If you read the linked original story she didn’t know anything about not being in compliance until she went to court for an unrelated matter. At court they presented her with documents from the truancy proceedings, and at that time they threatened her with removing her children.
The school should be obligated to make more effort to avoid handing the situation over to truancy in these cases. Once it gets to the court it’s pretty much decided that you are guilty, regardless of the facts.
I agree with tax-chick in that I want to see what HSLDA has to say about it. WND is not very reliable. I didn’t like that this article reported that the family was in an undisclosed location 50 hours away. OK, so that would mean somewhere on the east coast. So much for the dramatic cloak and dagger routine.
This story has the stink of the truth on it in spite of WND’s reporting style. While some of my freeper friends may disagree with me on this point, I’m going to go ahead and make it: there tends to be a different system of justice in this country for those with limited means.
As for the economic situation that this woman is in, I suspect that she’ll find some level of charitable relief from fellow home educators.
Of course, you know that they actually always want MORE than the law actually requires, and they will press home school parents for more, setting up precedent for more legal requirements.
We have home schooled since 1982, and I have never submitted one shred of paper to any state government, nor will I. Merely acquiescing does NOT mean “end of story” anymore . . . it means the beginning of new stories, whereby the officials use the actions of the fearful and the submissive to intimidate the rest. “Why, don’t you know, the other home schoolers comply -— why don’t you(!) -— are you a radical or something?”
If the state doesn’t know how to educate my children, and so I home school, how does the state know how to evaluate any records I could submit to them? They don’t know how.
We have had the truant officers in our house. They have asked us how many days per year we home school. Our answer is always “365.” That’s because we HOME school, and home is our school and school is our home, and there are NO days that we are not teaching something to our children.
“I do not doubt she did what she claims she did, but activist judges see us as guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around like it is supposed to be.”
She didn’t have the means to provide for a defense, hence the public defender. She was toast but for the fact that WND caught wind of the story, and the fact that the home education community is real feisty.
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