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Leving team rescues little girl from dangerous environment
A loving father of a 7-year old daughter was told that his little girl was living in dangerous and unsanitary conditions in another state. Frightened for his daughter’s safety, Dad turned to attorney Jeffery M. Leving, founder and president of the Law Offices of Jeffery M. Leving Ltd., for help. Shortly thereafter, he travelled to Chicago and met with the Leving legal team.
He reported that his little girl lived with the mother in Indiana, and he recently learned some very disturbing things about the mother and the environment where his little girl was living. He said he was told that both the mother and her live-in boyfriend were engaged in criminal activities, some of it occurring in the mother’s residence, and that the mother was being investigated by local police, according to court documents.
Leving will talk about the case, modified for broadcast, on the Dads Rights Legal Hour, 9-10 a.m. CDT Saturday, Sept. 4, on Power 92.3 FM.
Further, dad said that the little girl was living in unsanitary conditions. Later, dad said he found out that not only was the mother’s residence dirty, with garbage left all over the place, but also, his daughter did not even have a bed to sleep in!
The Leving legal team jumped into action, went into court, presented the evidence, and argued that the environment the little girl was in exposed her to a substantial risk of physical, moral and mental harm. They argued that the little girl needed to be removed immediately from that environment and placed in dad’s care, and that dad should be allowed to take the child with him to his home in Arizona.
The judge agreed with Leving. The judge entered an order granting dad the relief asked for. Dad soon returned to his home in Arizona with his little girl, where she is thriving in a safe and healthy home with her loving and protective dad.
“This was a very important victory which rescued a vulnerable child from an unsafe environment, according to court documents, and may have even saved her life,” Leving says. “I often proudly say that my firm’s legal team holds each client’s child in the safe palms of our hands, and we take that responsibility extremely seriously.”
Leving said that his No. 1 priority is keeping children safe. “Tragically,” he said, in Chicago, “we not only have a coronavirus pandemic – we also have a violence epidemic. Our children are getting shot and killed in their homes, on the sidewalks, and in cars – completely innocent victims of criminals who have guns and poor aim.”
Leving has practical solutions to the violence epidemic. “Here’s what we can do right now to change the environment that gives rise to these shootouts that end up killing our children:”
- Engage fathers in relationships with their children, as Leving discussed with President Barack Obama when Leving served on his National Finance Committee and President Joe Biden was then his Vice President. Fathers are children’s best protectors. This is the No. 1 solution that Leving sees for many social problems. One of the reasons he dedicated his legal career to helping disenfranchised fathers and children is because too many fathers were being cast aside as worthless, while academic and popular literature on child-raising shows that fathers are essential. “Father absence is the No. 1 predictor of crime in America, and has been for decades,” says Leving. Children who spend time with their dads are less likely to become victims.
- Take care of our people. “There are offenders who may not have engaged in criminal activities if they once had hope and opportunities as children but instead were cast aside,” says Detective Wayne Halick. Attorney Maureen A. Gorman with the Leving legal team adds: “We need job training so everyone can find self-worth and respect in life and in a job that’s important to them. We need blue-collar jobs that pay decent wages, and we need the kind of health care system that provides help for all people with psychological challenges.”
Many Chicago neighborhoods have a mix of poverty, fatherlessness, despair, and policing that’s perceived by some as a combination of insufficient, indifferent or overly aggressive. Any one of these, once they reach a certain threshold, can expose a neighborhood to danger, with children particularly vulnerable.
Leving says his concern for children is that they have a bed to sleep on in a heated home, food to eat so they don’t go to school hungry, a warm coat, and a father who loves and protects them. He says it is “stunning” how many children in Chicago lack one or more of these basic necessities, without which they may be destined for poor health, poor academic performance, and a life of deprivation and crime victimhood.
We have to look at the big picture, says Leving: fathers, economic opportunity and mental health are the long-term remedies. Leving acknowledges that there is a cost to what he proposes, “but we are the richest country in the world. We can afford to do this, and can’t afford not to. The safety of our children should not be a luxury.”
(Jeffery M. Leving, a nationally renowned matrimonial attorney and advocate for the rights of fathers, has been named one of America’s Best Lawyers by Forbes Radio. He is the author of Fathers’ Rights, Divorce Wars and How to be a Good Divorced Dad. To learn more about Jeffery M. Leving and the latest updates on this case, follow him on Twitter and Facebook.)
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