Juvenile Law
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Juvenile Court By The Honorable Helen C. Wallace Co-Chair Juvenile Law Section Montgomery County Juvenile Court
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veryone is different, yet the same. We all have unique life experiences. My life has shaped who I am and what kind of judge I am learning to become. I was born in South Africa under apartheid. Apartheid was institutionalized, systemic segregation that existed from 1948 until the 1990’s. I was born in 1972, and lived under that regime until we left for the United States in 1979. My early life experiences taught me that people can be relegated to a life of poverty and servitude by the happenstance of their birth and the color of their skin. The irony is South Africa is a diverse country, with people of all different persuasions. There are 11 official languages in South Africa today. I grew up with sights and smells and languages and laughter of all different kinds of loving people. We ate Indian curry, American burgers, British scones, African bobotie (lamb casserole) and biltong (dried beef ). South Africa’s previous government’s reaction to diversity is what triggered its downfall. Differences were not celebrated nor honored. Instead, people were arbitrarily ranked for privilege with the only determining factor being the color of one’s skin. I witnessed my parents try and change apartheid from small individual actions to more systemic ones. Eventually, as many 26
Dayton Bar Briefs April 2020
others before them had, they decided the United States was the best place to raise their four daughters, and we arrived in Ohio in 1979. Eight years later we obtained our legal United States citizenship. Not many people realize that the process then was not too different from that described in the hallways of Ellis Island. I remember being tested for all kinds of medical conditions that could prevent us from being granted citizenship. I felt so lucky and privileged to be healthy and qualify as a United States citizen. It is something, like many other things that we fight hard for in life, which I will never take for granted. I am proud to be an American. I love our country and believe what makes us great is our diversity and constant striving for equity and equality. When I was elected as Montgomery County’s first female Juvenile Court Judge, it felt like life had been preparing me for this opportunity all along. I came to the bench with a very real understanding that all children do not get an equal education. From my own personal experiences as an immigrant and a mother, to those as a prosecutor and a guardian ad litem when I was a practicing private attorney, I learned that many children are unable to proficiently read. Some don’t have any books
at home, or an adult who can teach them to read. I have the ability to create programs to try and change this lack of equity. One of my early initiatives was to build “book nooks” in several areas of the Court. These book nooks are filled with donated children’s books that can be taken home by any person. We have found our generous Dayton community to be a never-ending source of free books for our children. All I did was put a resource together with a need. I aim to keep making these connections for our children and families as often as possible. Following my suggestion, our Court now offers children neuropsychological evaluations to help determine what may be preventing a child from progressing in school and engaging in positive social behaviors. Many of our children are four to five grade levels behind in reading. Of the 184 youth attending the Court school during 2018, three out of four youth (or 75%) tested between a third and seventh grade reading level. The average age of the students, however, is around 16, or tenth to eleventh grade.
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