IN RE CUSTODY OF A MINOR

The record supports the District Court’s finding that notice was duly given. The record does not support the contention that the District Court, in denying habeas corpus, did so in reliance on reports of social workers.

With respect to the right to counsel for the child, as distinguished from counsel for the parent, it must be remembered this is not a criminal proceeding, nor indeed any kind of proceeding against the child. However, the proceeding as a whole is one which deals with important rights, the natural right of parents to rear and educate their own children in the parental home and the natural right of the child to be so reared. The law will protect the child from parental neglect even as against the natural parent where necessary. The parent may, of course, be represented by couns el.2 The implementation of the child’s rights is complicated by the factor of a possible or potential conflict of interest with the parents where the issue is whether the child is receiving proper parental care and where the parents appear and deny any neglect. An inarticulate infant cannot formulate or assert any position. Public policy and the rights of the child require that if the charge of neglect is true the child be removed from the control of the parents. The purpose of the proceeding is not punishment of the parent but protection of the child. If liberty can be said to be restrained that is only an incident of, not the purpose of the removal. Such as it is the restraint or deprivation of liberty is essentially the kind of restraint which parental authority normally places on a child. Care and protection of an infant, to which he has a right, require a measure of restraint upon his liberty, normally exercised by his parents. The public authority stepping into control is simply a substitute for natural parental authority. 3 A parent, for example, might place a child in a private home, an institution, or a private boarding school and in effect thus delegate a measure of the parental control to others.

In the present situation the court has by operation of law transferred parental authority and control from the natural parent to a public authority. This is not a trespass on but a vindication of the child’s rights. We need not affirmatively decide whether the child is entitled to separate, independent court-appointed counsel in this case since the Juvenile Court process in effect makes the Director of Social Work of the Juvenile Court, who initiates the proceeding,4 the child’s counsel. The child is not denied but is affirmatively afforded not only legal counsel experienced in such matters but social and medical counsel as well. Conceivably a case could arise where conflict between the public welfare authority and the parents might lead the Juvenile Court to appoint separate counsel for the child but it is sufficient simply to acknowledge that possibility and leave treatment of that problem to the sound discretion of the Juvenile Court; the exercise of that discretion is always subject to review.

The judgment appealed from is

Affirmed.

EDGERTON, Chief Judge, dissents.

. He has been living at “Junior Village.” The annual report of the Department of Public Welfare for 1956 says that Junior Village “provides schools, recreation, social service, medical service, individual and group programs, food, clothing, and protection to the children * * * ” and that “The children placed in the institution during the year required shelter care because of marital discord in the borne, parents’ financial distress and emotional instability, death of parents, hospitalization or incarceration of parents, eviction, desertion by parents, fugitive from parents, breakdowns in foster homes and other institutional placements, and parental cruelty to children.”

. Cf. Arizona State Dept. of Pub. Welfare v. Barlow, 1956, 80 Ariz. 249, 296 P. 2d 298.

. The statute states the purpose of the law to be, “when such child is removed from his own family, to secure for him custody, care, and discipline as nearly as possible equivalent to that ■which should have been given by his parents.” 52 Stat. 596 (1938), D.C. Code, § 11-902 (1951).

. D.C.Code, § 11-908 (1951).