the ultimate goal in bringing these
cases is to really affect systemic
change to change the way that social
workers approach child abuse
investigations to change the way that
counties approach their obligation to
protect vulnerable children
and ultimately you know a lot of my
teenage clients when i come to them and
announce
that
i’m their lawyer and there’s going to be
a lawsuit on their behalf
there’s a question of
okay but i don’t really understand how
getting money at the end of the day is
going to fix the abuse that i’ve
suffered or how it’s going to help me
and
that’s a valid point if you’ve been
sexually abused for years
money doesn’t make up for that but what
i always explain to them is
it does not
justify what happened to you it’s not
going to make what happened to you
better but it can prevent it from
happening to another child
and the ultimate goal is to make it more
expensive for these counties to do
things wrong than to do it right
you know if their
defense is we don’t have enough social
workers we don’t have enough time
um
then you need to hire more social
workers
and
if you don’t if you keep you know
cutting costs in that way
uh it’s it’s going to be more expensive
for you to do it wrong by way of these
lawsuits
so the goal is for them to understand
that if they don’t put the children
first there’s going to be consequences