Family Court Judge Warren H. Jolly was always a courageous fighter. He was an Air Force fighter pilot during World War II. He attended law school after the war but was called back into active duty during the Korean War. He later became the Public Defender for Berkeley County fighting for the rights of indigent defendants befdore he became 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 the boy said in his forsensic interview he got up in the morning and his father had anal sex with him. Then, after breakfast, his uncle had anal sex with him. Then, later that day, his father and uncle took him to a motel where their friends had anal sex 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 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 responded, “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 wasan’t so sure and 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 undoubtedly held in place by hairspray. 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 in this case, 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 poor 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 struggled to keep from laughing because Judge Jolly was looking a might clownish 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. She acknowledged he was gay but said she’d accepted that with all the love in her mother’s heart .When I asked how he was doing, 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?
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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