Toddler may be returned to sex-offender dad

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The childs father, Thomas Joseph Briere, pleaded guilty in January 2002 to raping a 22-year-old developmentally disabled woman incapable of giving consent, court records show. Briere also pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with her 16-year-old sister and was sentenced to one year in jail and four years probation.

 

"Generally speaking, parents have a fundamental right to parent their kids. That would include child molesters," said James M. Owens, assistant county counsel for Los Angeles County, who handles foster child custody cases. "They don't automatically have their parental rights terminated just because they've been convicted of a sex crime…. If it's statutory rape of a 17-year-old, that may not make someone unfit to parent an infant."