A REAL MOM IN SCHMIDT'S SHOES WOULD GIVE UP HER PARENTAL RIGHTS

District Judge Don Mosley guaranteed that 13-year-old Brittney
Bergeron will get her wish and won't be returned to her mother's
custody against her will.

Tamara Schmidt is going to prison to serve at least four years of a
12-year sentence for child neglect. Her husband, Robert, will serve
at least two years of a 10-year sentence.

Mosley's tougher than expected sentence Tuesday, whether
intentionally or not, made moot Family Court Judge Gerald
Hardcastle's previous decision that efforts should continue to
reunite Brittney with her mother. With mom in prison, reunification
efforts screeched to a halt.

In January 2003, Tamara Schmidt's two daughters were the target of a
knife attack by a pair of Utah siblings. Beau Maestas, then 19, said
he was angry about being sold salt instead of meth by Schmidt, so he
and his sister Monique decided to exact revenge on her daughters.

Lives changed that night in a Mesquite trailer. Kristyanna Cowan, 3,
was killed. Brittney, 10, became a paraplegic. Beau Maestas, now 21,
pleaded guilty to murder and faces a possible death sentence.
Monique, now 19, plans to go to trial.

The vivid images of Brittney trying to protect her baby sister from
the knives are hard to erase. Brittney had 20 knife wounds.

In the public's eyes, Tamara Schmidt was culpable for leaving her
daughters alone at home while she went gambling with Robert Schmidt,
her then live-in boyfriend. Both are former meth addicts.

On the Bad Mama list, Schmidt ranks right up there -- although, if
there is a pecking order, she does not sink to the depths of
depravity of the mother charged with murder for letting her
2-year-old daughter, Adacelli Snyder, live in filth and starve to death.

Many people believe Schmidt lost her moral right to be Brittney's
mother on the night of the attacks. But that's not the legal
standard. Although efforts were made to terminate her parental
rights, Hardcastle said that under the law, he had to reject that
motion. He ordered county officials to resume efforts to reunite
Brittney with her mom, despite the girl's testimony that although she
loved her, she didn't want to return to her care because she didn't
feel safe with her based on their past together.

Brittney now lives with a foster family trained in caring for
medically fragile children and wants them to adopt her.

There were buckets of tears at the sentencing. Robert Schmidt wept
and said that even though he wasn't their father, he loved them and
wished he had been the one who had died that night. He insisted, "I
never put them in harm's way." (Obviously, that wasn't true.)

Tamara Schmidt sobbed copiously. "I made the worst mistake in my life
when I left those girls home alone," she said. Actually, her worst
mistake was mixing motherhood with drugs.

For Mosley, it was all about the drugs.

Those girls weren't left alone so that the Schmidts could go to
prayer meetings. They were alone at 1 a.m. so that the Schmidts could
gamble and sell drugs. Despite their claims that this was not a drug
deal gone wrong, Beau Maestas has told authorities that's exactly
what it was and that all his dealings had been directly with Tamara Schmidt.

Mosley said the case is a flagrant example of "how this narcotics
thing is destroying our society." Then he handed down the two
sentences. Tamara Schmidt's four-year sentence was harsher than
recommended by Parole and Probation; her husband's two-year sentence
was lighter.

Parole and Probation had recommended a 2 1/2-year minimum for both Schmidts.

But that might have put Brittney in the predicament of being 16 and
once more dealing with whether she should be in her mom's custody
until she reaches 18.

Whether a deliberate consideration or not, with his longer sentence
for Tamara Schmidt, Mosley blocked the reunification effort, keeping
Brittney in the foster home where she wants to be.

Brittney deserves that consideration.

Hardcastle will probably be asked to reconsider her status in light
of the sentencing. It would be an act of kindness on his part to let
the foster family adopt Brittney and allow her some stability in the
life that was nearly lost to her.

Or Tamara Schmidt could make it easier on everybody and decide to
surrender her parental rights, which would be an act of love.