LEWISTON — A federal prosecutor believes Maine’s legal system should shrink parents’ rights to their children, forcing mothers and fathers to prove their fitness.

Margaret McGaughey’s reasoning is that too many children grow up abused, blinded by poor role models and cared for by parents who might be indifferent to their most basic needs.

“What would I do if I were queen for a day?” McGaughey said. “I’d change dramatically — completely around — the presumptions that operate in the judicial and social service systems so it is not hard or time-consuming to remove a child from an abusive home.”

She figures she’d limit parental visitation in cases where children were seized by the state, and she’d streamline the adoption process.

McGaughey outlined her ideas Friday at a Great Falls Forum lecture at the Lewiston Public Library.

She developed her ideas at work.

McGaughey has served as a federal prosecutor for the past 35 years. Her current job is as the appellate chief for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Portland. She regularly appears before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston to defend federal convictions and sentences imposed on criminal defendants in Maine.

As part of her work, she reads file after file of sentencing documents, including the biography of each person who is sentenced. Too many seem to have grown up in the same broken circumstances.

“After reading about 200, it began to dawn on me that they’re all the same,” she said. “It’s almost like there was a form somebody prepared and they just filled in the blanks.”

She began tracking the commonalities.

In most cases, defendants’ fathers left their mothers at an early age. There usually was some form of abuse — physical, sexual or verbal. Drugs were abused by many families, and education was dismissed as irrelevant.

And there was no religion.

“It instills moral values in early childhood,” she said. “Those values tend to stick with a person through their life.”

McGaughey said she doesn’t advocate for a particular religion; rather, she supports the kind of community and bonds that seem to accompany religion. It can keep some children from sinking into crime, she said.

Change is needed, she said. The alternative is letting another generation grow up without people to guide and nurture them, she said.

“I think forums like this are a place to begin change,” she said.

Maybe word will grow, she said. Maybe people will join her or the children’s cause.

“Children don’t have lobbyists,” she said. “There are many, many people who are looking for a cause to put themselves behind. And I think this is the most valuable cause anyone could adopt in our society.”

dhartill@sunjournal.com