Family Court Judge Warren H. Jolly was always a courageous fighter. He was an Air Force fighter pilot during World War II. After the war He attended law school but was called back into active duty during the Korean War. He later became the Public Defender for Berkeley County fightingfor the rights of indigent defendants and then a Family Court judge. I had the privilege of appearing before him many times before he retired in 1988. If he had a fault as a judge, it was that he agonized over making decisions but not in one case of mine he presided over.
A young boy was caught performing a sex act on another boy in the school lavatory. The school reported the incident to the police, which in turn called child protective services. The boy was removed from his home, his father and uncle accused of child sexual abuse, and his mother left devastated. It was his mother who hired me to appear with her at the emergency removal hearing in the Family Court.
The child protective services case worker testified, when forensically interviewed, the boy said he got up in the morning and his father had anal intercourse with him. Then, after breakfast, his uncle had anal intercourse with him. Then, later that day, his father and uncle took him to a motel where their friends had anal intercourse with him. I prefaced my cross examination of the case worker with an admission I didn’t know anything about anal intercourse, but I didn’t think it was even physically possible for a young boy to engage in anal sex with so many grown men over the course of one day. To my utter amazement, the case worker testified, “Oh, we don’t believe what he said happened happened but, because he said it happened, we believe something must have happened.” I didn’t think that rose to the level of probable cause to believe the boy was in imminent danger but, this was only a temporary hearing, and the presiding Family Court judge ordered that the boy be placed in a foster home pending a hearing on the merits.
The mother didn’t believe what the case worker said had happened and was determined to fight on to get her son back. She felt she had no choice but to request the father vacate the marital home. He complied but took his financial support with him leaving her in dire financial straits. We were waiting for a hearing on the merits to be scheduled when we were summoned back to court for another temporary hearing because the boy was acting out in his foster home. The new Family Court judge assigned to hear the matter accepted the case worker’s recommendation that the boy be placed in an industrial school for boys.
I’m not sure the ink was dry on the judge’s signature to the new placement order when we were called back to court for yet another temporary hearing. This time because the boy had broken out the windows at his new school claiming he’d been sexually molested by one of the counselors at the school. Again the Family Court judge hearing the matter accepted the case worker’s recommendation the boy be transferred to a special program for emotionally disturbed children in the upstate.
The law requires that a hearing on the merits in removal cases must be held within thirty-five days. Thankfully, we drew Judge Jolly as the judge for our merits hearing. The mother and I sat at counsel table waiting our turn as the case worker reviewed the case history and how it was the boy ended up camping in a teepee outside of Walhalla, South Carolina, where he was learning to control his anger issues. As Judge Jolly sat listening to the testimony, his complexion and facial expression got darker and darker.
Judge Jolly had gone bald in his later years and had a comb over. From time to time on the bench, as he listened to testimony, he would rub his hand through his hair disturbing his comb over. As he became more and more disturbed by the case worker’s testimony, his hand started rubbing his head harder and harder to the point where his hair was starting to stand up on end. Seeing this the mother, leaned over and whispered in my ear almost in tears, “Oh, my God, is this clown going to decide my son’s future?” I thought to myself Judge Jolly was looking like a circus clown the way his hair was sticking out but I whispered back, as best I could, the mother should be patient because Judge Jolly was a good judge and I was confident he would do the right thing.
Perhaps sensing the mother’s anguish, all of a sudden Judge Jolly banged his gavel to stop the case corker’s testimony and announced, “That’s enough! I’ve heard enough. I don’t care what happened in this boy’s home, it couldn’t possibly be any worse than the abuse DSS has inflicted on him since he’s been in your custody. Case dismissed.” It hadn’t even taken the length of the case worker’s testimony for Judge Jolly to decide this case.
The mother was so happy she started crying. She’d lost her husband but had gotten her son back. She and her son were both crying when they reunited in the hallway outside the courtroom. I remained friends with the mother and represented her on other matters as the years passed by. When I asked after her son, she told me he was all grown up, had finished cosmetology school, had his own salon, and was healthy, and happy. With a proud smile she asked, what more could a mother ask? She admitted he was gay but said she’d accepted him with all the love in her mother’s heart.
Too often there are no winners in the Family Court but this case was an exception because of an exceptional judge. Judge Jolly was a courageous fighter who had the courage to buck the system all too willing to define homosexuality as deviant behavior instead of a natural fact of life.
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