Parenting Pre-Teens: Kids Put In Juvenile Detention For Not Having 'Healthy' Relationship With Their Father
In a bitter family feud that included allegations of abuse and fear of parental kidnapping, an Oakland County family court judge in Bloomfield, Mich., ultimately ordered a divorced couple's three children to a juvenile detention center for refusing to have lunch with their father.
The Tsimhoni family was in Oakland County’s family court for a hearing on supervised parenting time when Judge Lisa Gorcyca ordered the three kids to have a “healthy relationship” with their father. The children, aged 14, 10, and 9, refused and were, in the words of Gorcyca, in “direct contempt,” so she found them guilty of civil contempt and ordered they be held at Children’s Village, a juvenile detention center, possibly until they are 18 years old.
"Your father has never been charged with anything," Judge Gorcyca said in the courtroom transcript. "Your father’s never been convicted of anything. … You, young man, have got it wrong. I think your father is a great man who has gone through hoops for you to have a relationship with you."
The oldest son, however, disagreed, citing his father's violent nature toward his mother in the past. After apologizing to the judge, the Detroit Free Press reported, he said: "But I do not apologize for — for not talking to him because I have a reason for that and that's because he's violent and he — I saw him hit my mom and I'm not gonna talk to him."
The kids have been separated from each other and both of the parents, Omer Tsimhoni and Maya Eibschitz-Tsimhoni, who have been denied visitation privileges. There doesn't seem to be a reason why this is the case, because Eibschitz-Tsimhoni's lawyer spoke out and stated that her client was encouraging her children to talk with their father, which the judge acknowledged in the transcript but also accused the mother of brainwashing her children against their father.
While the children were sent away by the judge, there is no indication in the transcript that shows that the father spoke up so that the children would not go away. The children have been required to go through psychiatric therapy while at Children’s Village and were ordered to be kept as far away from each other as possible. They’ve been held in detention for two weeks and don’t have a hearing until Sept. 8.
Now the children will be forced to live with troubled or neglected children who may have committed serious crimes. As children entering into their teenage years, they will try to make sense of a complex world, especially amid their parents' divorce. This can cause behavior that is unusual for a child, especially if the child feels victimized in some way. According to the American Psychological Association, part of that is not yielding to parental authority, which can make parents angry. There might be a necessary reason, whether that is aggressive or runaway behavior that may need outside help, though it cannot replace the importance of good parenting.
“No matter how bad the divorce gets, I think the court should not punish the kids for that,” Eibschitz-Tsimhoni, the mother of the children, told Fox 2.