A 7-year old boy who screamed to passers-by for help when sheriff's officers dragged him to a court-ordered visit with his father was sent to a shelter for problem children when he wouldn't go along.
The boy will be placed in a foster family if he doesn't go through with a two-week, court-ordered visit, Morris county Superior court Judge Herbert the judge decided yesterday.
The judge ruled that the visit, the first unsupervised one in nearly two years, would begin on Sunday. If the boy refused to go with his father, the judge said he would be taken from his mother's custody into foster care.
The judge ordered the boy to the shelter last Friday night after he refused to cooperate with officials who pleased with him to go with his father. The boy said he feared his father would abuse him.
Four sheriff's officers forced the boy into his father's car when he would not go willingly after the hearing. He then would not buckle his sea5t belt and yelled to passers-by for help.
The officers took him back to the courtroom, where the judge told him to go to the Morris County youth Shelter in Parsippany, a facility that usually serves adolescents with non-criminal social problems.
Sometimes drastic cases require drastic measures, the judge told the Star-Ledger of Newark. Court rules allow judges to place juveniles in shelters when they are involved in a family crisis situation, the judge said.
The boy's parents were married in 1988 and divorced in 1994, but judges in Somerville and Newton were unable to resolve the question of visitation. The matter was transferred to the judge in January 1996.
The boy's mother contend her exhusband was abusive to her, and she believes he also poses a threat to the boy, the judge said, the boy's father says his former wife "programmed and brainwashed" their son into believing his father would harm him. The judge said a court-appointed psychologist recommended that the judge apply a "get tough" approach to the boy, and said the boy's fear of his father was unfounded. Psychologists also do not believe the boy,'s claim that he can remember his father shaking and squeezing him when he was an infant, the judge said.