Clerk oversight irks judge

A defendant in Santa Rosa County Dependency Court reports the Clerk’s Office turned her away when she attempted to file a Domestic Violence Injunction she was required to file in a dependency case regarding the custody of her children.

Janice Kendrick says the Department of Children and Families requested she file the protection order to keep her children away from their step-father who has an outstanding warrant for beating her.

In Santa Rosa County Circuit Judge Marci Goodman’s courtroom on Thursday, Kendrick stated to Goodman her reason for failing to obtain the Domestic Violence Injunction, or DVI.

“I went to file it and they asked me for his [the offender] address. I told them I did not know where he was because he left after I called the law. They told me if I did not have an address for them, they couldn’t do anything for me. I told them I had to have this done for court and they said they were sorry, without an address they couldn’t help me,” said Kendrick.

Goodman asked the Department of Children and Families officials present if this was something they were aware of.

DCF officials reported to Goodman they had “several people say the same thing. At first we thought they were lying or making excuses, but when you hear the same thing from several different clients, you start to make the connection that something is wrong, here,” says the DCF official present in court on Thursday.

Kendrick says, “When someone risks losing their children because they are being turned away from doing something DCF says they have to do to keep their children, it shouldn’t be taken lightly.”

“I am doing everything I am supposed to do. I left my husband who was beating me, I called the police to report what he did, and now my kids are dependents of the court. It’s no good when I can’t do what the court asks me to because of bad rules,” she says.

Judge Goodman called employees from the clerk’s office into the courtroom on Thursday to ask them about the reports of being turned away.
“It is my understanding that the clerk’s office has refused victims the right to serve a DVI [Domestic Violence Injunction] on perpetrators if they don’t have a mailing address for the offender. Is this correct?”

The employees answered Goodman saying, “This is the policy of the clerk’s office and we have always been told that we can not issue a DVI without a serving address.”

To which Goodman replied, “I don’t know why that is a policy, the person who enacted this policy is not an attorney so this needs to be addressed.”

The Chief Deputy of Courts Adair Cotton said on Monday afternoon that this has happened for the last couple of months due to inaccurate direction from a former supervisor who is no longer with the clerk’s office.

“This misunderstanding was brought to my attention a couple of weeks ago. That policy [of not taking DVIs without an address for the offender] has never been the clerk’s policy. Our policy is that we will take all DVIs. We will never turn down a DVI. This issue has been corrected and it happened unbeknownst to Mary [Johnson] or myself,” says Cotton.

Jennifer Crews is the Family Law Supervisor and she stated this had happened over the period of about six to eight weeks over the last couple of months. “An offender can’t be served with the DVI if we don’t have an address for them, but we can complete the filing process of the DVI.
Kendrick says she is happy Goodman addressed the problem.

“What if I had lost my kids over this? How would that be fair? I am glad the judge was fair and tried to make sure everybody did their job,” says Kendrick.