Mother fights for custody of at-risk children

In horrifying detail, prosecutors described how three children, trapped in the back seat of their mother’s car, screamed for help before they drowned in four feet of water in an Illinois lake while their mother and her boyfriend escaped unharmed.

Amanda Hamm was convicted of child endangerment and served five years in prison for watching her boyfriend carry out a plot to drown her 6-year-old, 3-year-old, and 23-month-old children in 2003 because they interfered with the couple’s relationship and his sex-and-drugs lifestyle. He was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence.

The mother married and now, under the name Amanda Ware, is fighting to gain custody of three children — ages 5, 3, and 1 — she had after leaving prison. They were taken away by child protection authorities last year after a doctor recognised Ware as the former Hamm.

A Cook County judge will decide whether the children of Amanda and Leo Ware were abused and neglected, even without evidence that they were physically harmed.

“This is a scary problem for all the people involved... but most of all for the judge who has to decide whether to send these children home,” said Bruce Boyer, director of the Loyola University child law clinic in Chicago, who is not involved in the case.

“What’s so difficult is that the likelihood of something going wrong may be low, but if it does, the consequences are so high.”

Under the legal concept of ‘anticipatory neglect’, the court is not required to wait until a child is harmed before intervening if someone has harmed or endangered a child in the past, Boyer said, adding that such findings are not unusual in child welfare cases. On the other hand, parents cannot be disqualified for custody solely because of their past if they prove that they are capable parents.

However, prosecutors and child protection authorities told Judge Demetrius Kottaras last week that, although none of the three living children have been physically harmed, there is direct evidence of current abuse and neglect. That includes domestic violence by Leo Ware against his wife and others, substance abuse, and Amanda Ware’s failure to follow treatment for mental illness, which created an injurious environment for the children.