Judge Rob Philyaw at Rotary
photo by Claire Henley Miller
Judge Rob Philyaw says most of what he does happens behind closed doors.
The Hamilton County Juvenile Court judge addressed members of the Rotary Club Thursday at the Convention Center to give an overview of Juvenile Court and how it serves the community.
He began by educating about the group called CASA (court appointed special advocates). Started in 1977 in Seattle, CASA made its way to Chattanooga about 30 years ago. The group works to obtain better information on the children Juvenile Court judges make decisions on.
Judge Philyaw said it is a citizen’s advocacy group that investigates things that are not completely discoverable – like custody of the child and child neglect – in order to help make the best decision for the child and give that child a voice.
Hamilton County has about 40 well-trained CASAs. Over the last 32 years, the judge said there have been over 1200 volunteers. Last year alone, CASA served 103 local families with no cost to the county.
The CASA crew makes for an excellent staff that truly cares about the children they help, he said before transitioning to the topic of ACEs (adverse childhood experiences). A child’s environment has the potential to impact that child negatively. ACEs play out in the form of a loss of a loved one, divorcing parents, poverty, and violence in the home.
“The architecture in the brain in childhood is so much more delicate,” Judge Philyaw said.
He explained how the first few years of a person’s life and experiences help formulate the brain.
“In those first few years of life, children’s brains are active…alive.”
He recalled two occasions since he has been judge where the babies in the courtroom had flattened skulls from sitting in car seats all day. The architecture of their brains was damaged, he said, from child neglect.
He urged Chattanooga as a community to find ways to buffer ACEs and help children who suffer from them to recover. We can’t control everything, he said, but some things we can.
Regarding Juvenile Court, the judge said, “It’s a busy place.
He has a staff of 99 people who he often tells: “No body goes to Juvenile Court because they want to. They go there because they have to.”
Because children and parents do not fondly anticipate Juvenile Court, Judge Philyaw regularly stresses to his staff their job to make the process efficient and personable. He said he works with people who truly care about what they are doing. “I’m very proud of my staff.”
He manages a yearly budget of about $7 million. Juvenile Court has seven full-time courtrooms that hear thousands of cases each year. The two main categories of cases are family law cases and delinquency cases.
Family law serves children of divorcing parents and children born outside wedlock, which happens to be nearly half of all children in Hamilton County, the judge said. Issues like visitation rights, custody, paternity, and child support come before Juvenile Court in family law cases, the ultimate goal being to reunify the family.
But when reunification is “just not possible,” Judge Philyaw is faced with the serious and grave job to terminate paternal rights. It’s the death of parenthood to help place a child in what foster care calls a “forever family.”
The judge defined delinquency matters as “anything that would be criminal if committed by an adult.”
In the state of Tennessee, one is an adult if he or she is 18 or older. Judge Philyaw said Juvenile Court treated juveniles differently than adults. The overriding charge is to reach and rehabilitate children who commit offenses without tagging them as criminals so they can learn from their mistakes and continue with life as law-abiding citizens.
Judge Philyaw said he does not sentence juveniles to confinement, but may send them to treatment facilities like Youth Development Centers. It’s not for everyone, he said. In some instances, if the child continues to reoffend, the judge may consider transferring that child to Criminal Court, thus stripping him of his minority to protect the public and reach that individual.
“We don’t save every child. We don’t reach every child,” Judge Philyaw said in closing. “But we live for those bright moment that we do.”