Murphy is the Cook County (Ill.) public guardian, the court-appointed lawyer for 31,000 abused and neglected children. He’s also a self-righteous crusader. Last year, campaigning to rein in one “family preservation” program, Murphy sent every Illinois legislator color autopsy photos of a little girl scalded and beaten to death after caseworkers taught her family new disciplinary skills. It’s a loner’s life, poring over murder files and railing at fellow liberals who think the poor can do no wrong. ‘A lot of people hate my guts," Murphy shrugs. “I can’t blame them.”
His views on family reunification changed because child abuse changed. Drugs now suffuse 80 percent of the caseload; sexual and physical assaults that once taxed the imagination are now common. Murphy believes that most families should be reunited but that child-welfare agencies waste years trying to patch up dead-end families when they should be hurrying to free children for early adoption. Murphy, 55, blames such folly on bleeding hearts like himself, who once lobbied for generous social programs without working to curb welfare dependency and other ills. Now children of troubled families must pay the price sometimes with their lives. “We inadvertently pushed a theory of irresponsibility,” he says. “And we created a monster-kids having kids.”
To Murphy’s critics, that smacks of scorn for the less fortunate. “He’s a classic bully,” says Diane Redleaf of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, who represents parents trying to win back their kids. “Thousands of poor families are not torturing their children.” Redleaf has drafted legislation that would force Murphy to get a judge’s order each time he wants to speak out about a case. That would protect children’s privacy-and give the system a convenient hiding place. Murphy will fight to keep things as they are. His is the only job, he says, in which a lawyer knows that his clients are truly innocents.
