Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Cover-ups, Span Over Four Decades In The Family Court System!

                      12/13/2022                                                  Show #70

Tonight's Guest Is Richard Ducote,
 
An attorney licensed in Louisiana (1978) and Pennsylvania
(2009), has been one of the nation’s leading child abuse/domestic violence litigators
and law reformers for 43 years. He received a B.S. in psychology from Tulane in
1974. Immediately following his law school graduation from Loyola in New Orleans
in 1978, which he earned while serving as a juvenile probation officer in the
Jefferson Parish Juvenile Court, he created a specialized program to provide and
train attorneys for abused and neglected children. That project, which developed the
Tulane University School of Law Juvenile Law Clinic, was one of only four in the
country nationally recognized by the federal government for its innovative court
improvements. In that project, he personally represented over 100 abused and
neglected children.

In Louisiana during the early 1980’s, he created a special project in the
Louisiana foster care system to free more children for adoption, and as an appointed
special district attorney in 19 parishes, he tried child abuse/ termination of parental
rights cases in 40 courts. Through his efforts in the courtroom, social service agency
offices, and the legislature, the Louisiana foster care system for the first time moved
hundreds of forgotten children into adoptive homes. In 1984, he began his
nationwide focus on complex child custody cases involving domestic violence and
child abuse. In 1991, he drafted for successful enactment the Louisiana Post-
Separation Family Violence Relief Act (La. R.S. 9:361-369), the first state law
barring abusive parents from serving as custodians, and forcing them to pay all costs
and attorney’s fees.

This law, which has been called model legislation by the Harvard
Law Review, has been replicated in many states and foreign