Blogger Note:
The title of this article is the craziest title possible. It's been known to many of us caught up in the CPS Racket that CPS incapable of seeing REAL trouble when there is REAL reasons to suspect a parent my harm their children, now we have a public statement that they were blind to those very things.
CPS - Here's some hints:
When a suspect moves to another state shortly after his wife disappears, the wife is likely dead!
When a parent is suspected of murdering their wife, the suspects children are likely to be in danger!
When children are in CPS custody, it is your job to make sure that they are safe from harm at anyone's hands - including their father, the suspect in his wife's (the children's mother) disappearance and possible murder!
Questions for CPS:
Why were vistis allowed to take place at this suspected murderers home?
Don't you have supervised and monitored visitation facilities in Washington state?
If not - perhaps you should put some in place.
If you couldn't see the red flags in this case (which were waving high and wildly), how are you able to claim anyone may be abusing or neglecting their children or are a danger to their children in some way?
Whatever happened to your so-called risk assessment garbage?
Are you people blind?
#FAIL!
---
By Brooke Adams
Puyallup, Wash. • As Washington authorities revealed new details about how Josh Powell killed himself and his two young sons in his home, a child welfare spokesman on Monday said there were no red flags that would have barred the visit.
One caseworker from Foster Care Resource Network of Tacoma had supervised all of Powell’s visits with his sons Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5. Those visits initially took place at the network’s office and then, beginning in November, at Powell’s home.
"From the children’s administration point of view, Mr. Powell was not accused of any child abuse or neglect," said Thomas Shapley, senior director of public affairs for the Washington Department of Social and Health Services. "There was no indication of threats to the children or any suicide ideation. This caught everybody by surprise."
Chuck and Judy Cox — who received temporary custody of the boys last September — said Monday the system failed their grandsons and needs to be changed. In light of recent events, it would have been appropriate to suspend Powell’s court-ordered supervised visitation, Chuck Cox said.
Powell learned in a Feb. 1 custody hearing he would not get his boys, back until at least July. The judge also ordered him to submit to a psychosexual evaluation and polygraph test regarding sexually explicit images found on a computer in his West Valley City home in 2009.
"I thought visitation should have stopped until they got that sorted out," Chuck Cox told The Salt Lake Tribune. "We were very afraid something like this could happen, as were the social workers and police. There were too many warning signs that were known, but due to the legal limits [the signs] couldn’t be acted on."
Cox added: "It’s sad that visitation was at his house, which allowed him to set up this whole thing."
The boys were removed from Powell’s care after their paternal grandfather, Steve Powell, was arrested on voyeurism and child pornography charges. Prosecutors said they needed to determine what, if anything, Powell knew about his father’s activities. Powell and his sons had lived in Steve Powell’s Puyallup home since 2010.
Shapley said if his department had received any indication the children were in danger or that Powell was unstable, there are protocols the department could have gone through to postpone visits.
There was nothing, he said.
"We were always on course to have the children returned to him," Shapley said. And while a judge here ordered new tests for Powell, there was no interruption in visitation.
"We were proceeding as per court order," Shapley said.
Police have said Powell planned out a gasoline-fueled fire that took his own life and the lives of his sons Sunday as the boys came to his home for supervised visitation. Shapley said the boys ran into the home and Powell locked out the caseworker, who called 911.
Shapley said he agreed with Washington police that if Powell "was intent on committing this heinous crime, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could have stopped him" no matter who was there or where the visit took place.
One national child welfare expert agrees Washington authorities acted appropriately.
"Unless you expect a caseworker to have 20/20 hindsight or the ability to read minds, no, there was no way to see this coming," said Richard Wexler, director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform based in Virginia. "If they couldn’t imagine it, I don’t know how the court could."
And while the Coxes had fears about what Powell might do, they never imagined he might act during a supervised visit with his sons.
"I had no idea he would be able to get away with dousing the place. Who possibly would do that? Sure, we were concerned about it, but not to go out that way," said Chuck Cox.
The Coxes had felt okay about visits at Powell’s newly rented home for the sake of the boys.
"Anything that would make them feel better, have a better life, we were for it," Chuck Cox said. "We were just doing everything we could to make them happy and have as normal a life as we could with their mom gone."
Wexler called Sunday’s deaths a tragic anomaly and said the most important lesson to learn is "not to try to learn lessons from horror stories because it will then result in hundreds of kids being kept needlessly away from their parents."
The department is conducting an internal review and will also begin a child fatality review, which must be completed in six months or less, Shapley said.
"We do want to see if there are things that can educate our practice going forward," he said.
Source http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53458296-78/powell-child-shapley-cox.html.csp?page=1
CPS corruption hurts and destroys families worldwide. Please use caution posting about CPS here or anyplace on the internet. For your protection, using your full, real name and precise location is not advised. CPS has eyes everywhere and CPS is notorious for taking what people say, twisting it, embellishing on it and then using it against them in CPS "investigations" and at court proceedings.
Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
Friday, February 10, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
More Missouri babies die as laws, oversight lag
BY NANCY CAMBRIA
After their first child was born prematurely and died, Lily Rieger's parents wanted to be as cautious as possible with their second baby girl.
Lily's parents checked out 11 child care facilities, six of them licensed.
The centers felt too antiseptic and institutional. So they focused on home day care providers and interviewed five.
They went with Jennifer Winkler of Eureka. She was warm and friendly and had two young children. She didn't have a child care license, but that didn't seem to be important in a home day care. The parents felt further assured because two St. Louis County police officers sent their children to her house for care. "They looked like a normal, typical family," said Lily's father, Bill Weishaar, of their decision to hire Winkler. "But nobody ever told me you take a great risk in putting a baby in somebody's hands when there is no second adult around."
Last year, Lily's parents joined a growing list of those whose young children died from violence or preventable accidents in Missouri's vast array of unregulated home day cares.
In October, the Post-Dispatch profiled more than 40 deaths from 2007 through 2010, pointing to what many child advocates now regard as one of the greatest safety issues facing children in the state: lax standards and oversight of home day cares.
Now, state records show that even as momentum to address the problem builds among legislators and prosecutors, the deaths continue. Preliminary statistics for the first seven months of 2011 indicate Lily was one of at least nine children to die last year in child care for reasons not clearly linked to an illness.
On July 29, Lily's father dropped off his happy 13-month-old with Winkler. Lily was airlifted that afternoon to Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center in need of emergency surgery to control swelling and bleeding in her brain. She was taken off life support two days later.
Though doctors never told the parents they suspected Lily had been shaken, her mother, Kara Rieger, said they didn't have to. Doctors explained that Lily's brain had been torn from the tissue that anchored it to her skull, causing it to slosh from side to side.
Winkler, who is in jail awaiting trial, has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder and fatal abuse of a child. Her attorney could not be reached for comment.
A CALL TO ACTION
The nine deaths reported in child care in 2011 are an incomplete tally. The state's child fatality review system may not have a final report until next year.
But the latest deaths continue a pattern the Post-Dispatch uncovered in a six-month investigation last year. Seven of the nine reported deaths in 2011 were in unlicensed home day cares, where caregivers are not required to have any training, need not adhere to safety standards and have little or no oversight.
The Post-Dispatch previously reported that 41 of 45 deaths in child care in the prior four years occurred in unlicensed home day cares. The newspaper's investigation showed Missouri has some of the weakest child care regulations in the nation, allowing the bulk of Missouri children to enroll in unregulated day cares.
In the most egregious cases, the investigation found children died in day cares where providers repeatedly defied enrollment laws. In one of those fatality cases, a provider was attempting to care for eight children under the age of 2.
After years of inaction on legislation seeking to deter deaths in child care, this year may be different.
"It's starting to generate more discussion among the constituencies that drive what we do," said Sen. Scott Rupp, R-Wentzville, the 2012 Senate sponsor of Nathan's Law and Sam Pratt's Law — two child care safety bills that have languished in past sessions. "I've had the president of the Senate ask if someone was dealing with this, and we said we were."
In a final report released this month, the new bipartisan House Interim Committee on Strengthening Missouri Families also recommended to House Speaker Steven Tilley the passage of Sam Pratt's Law and Nathan's Law in light of testimony that cited the Post-Dispatch investigation.
Those bills aim to tighten enrollment limits in unlicensed day cares, increase fines for rogue providers and give the state power to shutter unlicensed day cares that may be dangerous.
A St. Louis consortium of five child welfare and day care agencies has declared day care safety a top agenda item.
"Protecting the lives of kids is essentially the bottom line, and the state of Missouri needs to be compelled to ensure the basic safety and well-being of kids in child care," said Richard Patton, director of Vision for Children at Risk, the umbrella agency for the coalition. Patton said the Missouri Children's Leadership Council, a statewide coalition of child service agencies, also had made child care safety a top agenda issue this year.
SIMILAR ACCIDENTS
The latest deaths also point to an ongoing crisis centered on sleep safety in unlicensed care.
The Post-Dispatch investigation found that more than three-fourths of the deaths from 2007 through 2010 were sleep-related, most often in unregulated care where children were put down for a nap in unsafe conditions. Similarly, four of five suspected accidental suffocations last year occurred in unregulated homes.
Among them was Jordan Brooks, 4 months. He slept overnight at his unlicensed care providers' home in Ferguson in February because of inclement weather. Police and medical examiner records show that on Feb. 1, about 1:30 a.m., Jordan was placed on his abdomen on a couch by one of the caregivers.
Safe sleep experts say babies should always be placed in a crib on their backs for sleep.
The caregiver then fell asleep on the sofa with the baby. When the caregiver awoke three hours later, Jordan was not breathing. An official with the St. Louis County Medical Examiner's Office said the man rolled onto Jordan in his sleep, causing the baby to suffocate.
"I had no idea they weren't using a crib, and I definitely didn't know they were co-sleeping with him," said Jordan's mother, Ashley Brooks. She said she felt as if her son's death had been ignored.
Because reports on most deaths in unlicensed child care remain sealed from the public, parents seeking child care cannot find out whether a child has died in a specific provider's care.
Police records indicate Jordan's caregivers were investigated afterward by state regulators for possibly caring for too many children without a required license. But because no rule violation was found, the regulatory file was sealed. Under state law, unsubstantiated investigations of rule violations are not open to the public.
Brooks said the couple continued to run an unlicensed day care out of their home. They are still not subject to inspections or state safety standards.
MORE PUNISHMENT
The 2011 child care deaths — like those from prior years — show that the most dangerous day cares for children are homes in which providers defy rules by caring for too many children. Those rules require a license when caregivers care for more than four children who are not related to them.
The Post-Dispatch investigation found that prosecutors rarely charged providers operating without a license with a crime, even after a child died in their care, because the punishment was so lenient. State law currently allows a maximum $200 fine for a crime that's classified on the same level as a traffic ticket.
But in 2011, with increased scrutiny on illegal day cares, at least two such deaths led to criminal charges.
In one case, caregiver Cherie Kohenskey of Troy, Mo., was charged with second-degree involuntary manslaughter — the first time a serious felony charge has been brought against a provider in Missouri regarding an accidental sleep suffocation. The charges carry a maximum four-year jail term and $5,000 fine.
Parent Jody Haggard said Kohenskey assured her she would watch only four children for pay on July 21 when Haggard dropped her infant off at the home day care. Haggard's son, Levi, 2 months, suffocated later that day after being put down for a nap on his abdomen in an adult bed. State documents allege the caregiver was watching eight children unrelated to her, as well as two of her own.
Lincoln County Prosecutor Leah Askey said she didn't want to charge Kohenskey, but a grand jury did.
"The parents lost their infant son who was otherwise healthy because the day care provider had too many children in her care and wasn't adequately able to provide supervision," she said. "I certainly don't think she was malicious, but at the same time I do believe that child's life was lost and it didn't have to be."
Kohenskey pleaded not guilty. Her attorney declined to comment on the case, which is still pending.
In another case, caregiver Michelle Brown was charged with false impersonation, after Macie Barton, 3 months, died in her home day care in Lee's Summit. The day Macie died, police and regulators documented six children, all under 2, in Brown's home. Court and regulatory documents also suggest Brown lied to police and parents about being licensed.
Brown could not be reached through her attorney. She pleaded guilty in September and was given two years' unsupervised probation.
The official cause of Macie's death was pneumonia, yet she had been to the pediatrician that morning for a follow-up on an ear infection and there were no health concerns. Experts in sleep deaths have said that traces of pneumonia in the lungs too often lead pathologists to rule the illness a cause of death when accidental suffocation is probably the cause. Macie died while napping for a long period in a swing, a sleep practice that experts in infant sleep death consider hazardous.
Barton said she was pleased that Brown must now serve two years of probation. But she's offended by the other part of the sentence: a $10 fine.
"Ten dollars, seriously? What's the point of even fining her then?" she said. "That is extremely insulting to me."
TRAGEDY INTO LIGHT
Lily Rieger's parents are waiting for justice for their daughter.
They think that Lily would be alive today had her caregiver received mandatory training that included information on the dangers of shaking a baby.
The parents said they came forward about Lily to remind others that much of what happens in unregulated home child care is seen only by the eyes of very young children.
Even after Winkler was formally charged and the death was reported in the media, Winkler was described by police as a "baby sitter," and not a day care provider. Weishaar said parents should know Winkler cared for at least three other children part time, in addition to her two young children.
But in Missouri, the distinction between who is an occasional baby sitter and who is a regular, home-based child care provider is often difficult to determine in state records, even in cases in which a crime against a child may have taken place.
There are no public files on Winkler with child care regulators. Under state law, Winkler was not required to register her child care with the state.
So it has fallen to Lily's parents to let the public know.
Source http://www.stltoday.com/news/special-reports/daycares/more-missouri-babies-die-as-laws-oversight-lag/article_086e3cb5-1d44-5512-a038-4d4c2ff70eed.html
After their first child was born prematurely and died, Lily Rieger's parents wanted to be as cautious as possible with their second baby girl.
Lily's parents checked out 11 child care facilities, six of them licensed.
The centers felt too antiseptic and institutional. So they focused on home day care providers and interviewed five.
They went with Jennifer Winkler of Eureka. She was warm and friendly and had two young children. She didn't have a child care license, but that didn't seem to be important in a home day care. The parents felt further assured because two St. Louis County police officers sent their children to her house for care. "They looked like a normal, typical family," said Lily's father, Bill Weishaar, of their decision to hire Winkler. "But nobody ever told me you take a great risk in putting a baby in somebody's hands when there is no second adult around."
Last year, Lily's parents joined a growing list of those whose young children died from violence or preventable accidents in Missouri's vast array of unregulated home day cares.
In October, the Post-Dispatch profiled more than 40 deaths from 2007 through 2010, pointing to what many child advocates now regard as one of the greatest safety issues facing children in the state: lax standards and oversight of home day cares.
Now, state records show that even as momentum to address the problem builds among legislators and prosecutors, the deaths continue. Preliminary statistics for the first seven months of 2011 indicate Lily was one of at least nine children to die last year in child care for reasons not clearly linked to an illness.
On July 29, Lily's father dropped off his happy 13-month-old with Winkler. Lily was airlifted that afternoon to Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center in need of emergency surgery to control swelling and bleeding in her brain. She was taken off life support two days later.
Though doctors never told the parents they suspected Lily had been shaken, her mother, Kara Rieger, said they didn't have to. Doctors explained that Lily's brain had been torn from the tissue that anchored it to her skull, causing it to slosh from side to side.
Winkler, who is in jail awaiting trial, has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder and fatal abuse of a child. Her attorney could not be reached for comment.
A CALL TO ACTION
The nine deaths reported in child care in 2011 are an incomplete tally. The state's child fatality review system may not have a final report until next year.
But the latest deaths continue a pattern the Post-Dispatch uncovered in a six-month investigation last year. Seven of the nine reported deaths in 2011 were in unlicensed home day cares, where caregivers are not required to have any training, need not adhere to safety standards and have little or no oversight.
The Post-Dispatch previously reported that 41 of 45 deaths in child care in the prior four years occurred in unlicensed home day cares. The newspaper's investigation showed Missouri has some of the weakest child care regulations in the nation, allowing the bulk of Missouri children to enroll in unregulated day cares.
In the most egregious cases, the investigation found children died in day cares where providers repeatedly defied enrollment laws. In one of those fatality cases, a provider was attempting to care for eight children under the age of 2.
After years of inaction on legislation seeking to deter deaths in child care, this year may be different.
"It's starting to generate more discussion among the constituencies that drive what we do," said Sen. Scott Rupp, R-Wentzville, the 2012 Senate sponsor of Nathan's Law and Sam Pratt's Law — two child care safety bills that have languished in past sessions. "I've had the president of the Senate ask if someone was dealing with this, and we said we were."
In a final report released this month, the new bipartisan House Interim Committee on Strengthening Missouri Families also recommended to House Speaker Steven Tilley the passage of Sam Pratt's Law and Nathan's Law in light of testimony that cited the Post-Dispatch investigation.
Those bills aim to tighten enrollment limits in unlicensed day cares, increase fines for rogue providers and give the state power to shutter unlicensed day cares that may be dangerous.
A St. Louis consortium of five child welfare and day care agencies has declared day care safety a top agenda item.
"Protecting the lives of kids is essentially the bottom line, and the state of Missouri needs to be compelled to ensure the basic safety and well-being of kids in child care," said Richard Patton, director of Vision for Children at Risk, the umbrella agency for the coalition. Patton said the Missouri Children's Leadership Council, a statewide coalition of child service agencies, also had made child care safety a top agenda issue this year.
SIMILAR ACCIDENTS
The latest deaths also point to an ongoing crisis centered on sleep safety in unlicensed care.
The Post-Dispatch investigation found that more than three-fourths of the deaths from 2007 through 2010 were sleep-related, most often in unregulated care where children were put down for a nap in unsafe conditions. Similarly, four of five suspected accidental suffocations last year occurred in unregulated homes.
Among them was Jordan Brooks, 4 months. He slept overnight at his unlicensed care providers' home in Ferguson in February because of inclement weather. Police and medical examiner records show that on Feb. 1, about 1:30 a.m., Jordan was placed on his abdomen on a couch by one of the caregivers.
Safe sleep experts say babies should always be placed in a crib on their backs for sleep.
The caregiver then fell asleep on the sofa with the baby. When the caregiver awoke three hours later, Jordan was not breathing. An official with the St. Louis County Medical Examiner's Office said the man rolled onto Jordan in his sleep, causing the baby to suffocate.
"I had no idea they weren't using a crib, and I definitely didn't know they were co-sleeping with him," said Jordan's mother, Ashley Brooks. She said she felt as if her son's death had been ignored.
Because reports on most deaths in unlicensed child care remain sealed from the public, parents seeking child care cannot find out whether a child has died in a specific provider's care.
Police records indicate Jordan's caregivers were investigated afterward by state regulators for possibly caring for too many children without a required license. But because no rule violation was found, the regulatory file was sealed. Under state law, unsubstantiated investigations of rule violations are not open to the public.
Brooks said the couple continued to run an unlicensed day care out of their home. They are still not subject to inspections or state safety standards.
MORE PUNISHMENT
The 2011 child care deaths — like those from prior years — show that the most dangerous day cares for children are homes in which providers defy rules by caring for too many children. Those rules require a license when caregivers care for more than four children who are not related to them.
The Post-Dispatch investigation found that prosecutors rarely charged providers operating without a license with a crime, even after a child died in their care, because the punishment was so lenient. State law currently allows a maximum $200 fine for a crime that's classified on the same level as a traffic ticket.
But in 2011, with increased scrutiny on illegal day cares, at least two such deaths led to criminal charges.
In one case, caregiver Cherie Kohenskey of Troy, Mo., was charged with second-degree involuntary manslaughter — the first time a serious felony charge has been brought against a provider in Missouri regarding an accidental sleep suffocation. The charges carry a maximum four-year jail term and $5,000 fine.
Parent Jody Haggard said Kohenskey assured her she would watch only four children for pay on July 21 when Haggard dropped her infant off at the home day care. Haggard's son, Levi, 2 months, suffocated later that day after being put down for a nap on his abdomen in an adult bed. State documents allege the caregiver was watching eight children unrelated to her, as well as two of her own.
Lincoln County Prosecutor Leah Askey said she didn't want to charge Kohenskey, but a grand jury did.
"The parents lost their infant son who was otherwise healthy because the day care provider had too many children in her care and wasn't adequately able to provide supervision," she said. "I certainly don't think she was malicious, but at the same time I do believe that child's life was lost and it didn't have to be."
Kohenskey pleaded not guilty. Her attorney declined to comment on the case, which is still pending.
In another case, caregiver Michelle Brown was charged with false impersonation, after Macie Barton, 3 months, died in her home day care in Lee's Summit. The day Macie died, police and regulators documented six children, all under 2, in Brown's home. Court and regulatory documents also suggest Brown lied to police and parents about being licensed.
Brown could not be reached through her attorney. She pleaded guilty in September and was given two years' unsupervised probation.
The official cause of Macie's death was pneumonia, yet she had been to the pediatrician that morning for a follow-up on an ear infection and there were no health concerns. Experts in sleep deaths have said that traces of pneumonia in the lungs too often lead pathologists to rule the illness a cause of death when accidental suffocation is probably the cause. Macie died while napping for a long period in a swing, a sleep practice that experts in infant sleep death consider hazardous.
Barton said she was pleased that Brown must now serve two years of probation. But she's offended by the other part of the sentence: a $10 fine.
"Ten dollars, seriously? What's the point of even fining her then?" she said. "That is extremely insulting to me."
TRAGEDY INTO LIGHT
Lily Rieger's parents are waiting for justice for their daughter.
They think that Lily would be alive today had her caregiver received mandatory training that included information on the dangers of shaking a baby.
The parents said they came forward about Lily to remind others that much of what happens in unregulated home child care is seen only by the eyes of very young children.
Even after Winkler was formally charged and the death was reported in the media, Winkler was described by police as a "baby sitter," and not a day care provider. Weishaar said parents should know Winkler cared for at least three other children part time, in addition to her two young children.
But in Missouri, the distinction between who is an occasional baby sitter and who is a regular, home-based child care provider is often difficult to determine in state records, even in cases in which a crime against a child may have taken place.
There are no public files on Winkler with child care regulators. Under state law, Winkler was not required to register her child care with the state.
So it has fallen to Lily's parents to let the public know.
Source http://www.stltoday.com/news/special-reports/daycares/more-missouri-babies-die-as-laws-oversight-lag/article_086e3cb5-1d44-5512-a038-4d4c2ff70eed.html
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Can Adoption Lead to Child Abuse?
By Lisa Belkin
I have not been able to get four-year-old Sean Paddock, or 11-year-old Hanna Williams, or 7-year-old Lydia Schatz out of my mind. As Erik Eckholm reported in the New York Times yesterday, and Anderson Cooper discussed on CNN, most recently last week, the three children all died within the past five years, and they had several chilling factors in common.
Each of their deaths were brutal and agonizing: Sean suffocated; Hana, who was found lying naked in the muddy yard, died of hypothermia and malnutrition; Lydia showed signs of a brutal beating. In each case, one or both of their parents has been charged with their murder.
And in each case, those parents are said to have essentially punished their children to death, allegedly because they believed it was God's will. They are said to have been guided by the book To Train Up A Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl, which advocates beating children with rubber tubing, leaving them outside in the cold, and witholding food for days at a time in keeping with Biblical teachings. (No, I am not linking to it, out of sympathy with those who are petitioning sites like Amazon not to sell this particular book, which does not directly advocate the level of abuse that killed these children, but that appears to have been misinterpreted and misused by at least some of the parents who stand accused.)
Much attention has been paid to the religious pieces of a this tale. Less noted is that each of these children joined these families through adoption. Sean was born in the US, as were his five adopted siblings. Hana was from Ethiopia, as was her adopted brother (their parents had six biological children as well), and Lydia was from Liberia (there were two other adopted siblings among the family's nine children.)
Is this merely grisly coincidence? Or is there something about the adoption dynamic that makes violent abuse more likely?
One possibility is that adoptive children -- particularly those who spend their earliest years in an orphanage or shuttling from one foster caregiver to the next -- are more likely to suffer reactive attachment disorder, which are essentially the inability not only to bond, but to feel. The effects are not just psychological, but also physical, with evidence these children can have elevated levels of the hormone cortisol, which increases their tolerance for pain. Some speculate that spanking a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder can spiral out of control quickly, because it takes abusive levels of pain before the child actually feels it and responds.
This cycle is the talk of a handful of adoptive parenting websites, and, in particular, it has been discussed often on Why Not Train a Child, which is dedicated to warning parents about the dangers of the Pearls' book. There an anonymous commenter there, who describes him or herself as knowing the parents of Hana Williams personally, speculates:
Initially, I think their intentions for adopting were "good" (although I am uncomfortable with the idea of adopting children solely because you are religiously motivated to "rescue" them). I don't think they adopted Hana and her brother so that they could have some children to torture and abuse. However, I believe they made a huge assumption that these kids would respond to their methods just like their own biological children did. They expected Hana and her little brother to assimilate into their family, and most likely ignored their culture, how they had grown up (customs, beliefs, etc), and most importantly, the trauma that Hana and her brother had gone through in their childhoods. These kids just weren't acting like their biological children. Instead of taking a step back and getting professional help, they decided that they would continue to follow the Pearl method, but continued to up the ante, because these kids were NOT succumbing to being "broken".
Adoption can save a child and create a family. It can also come with complications that biological parents are far less likely to face. All children are vulnerable, but adopted children are more so, because the very fact of their adoption tells of a shakier start in life. They deserve more of our protection. In at least three cases they did not receive it.
Source http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-belkin/adoption-spanking-childabuse_b_1081617.html
I have not been able to get four-year-old Sean Paddock, or 11-year-old Hanna Williams, or 7-year-old Lydia Schatz out of my mind. As Erik Eckholm reported in the New York Times yesterday, and Anderson Cooper discussed on CNN, most recently last week, the three children all died within the past five years, and they had several chilling factors in common.
Each of their deaths were brutal and agonizing: Sean suffocated; Hana, who was found lying naked in the muddy yard, died of hypothermia and malnutrition; Lydia showed signs of a brutal beating. In each case, one or both of their parents has been charged with their murder.
And in each case, those parents are said to have essentially punished their children to death, allegedly because they believed it was God's will. They are said to have been guided by the book To Train Up A Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl, which advocates beating children with rubber tubing, leaving them outside in the cold, and witholding food for days at a time in keeping with Biblical teachings. (No, I am not linking to it, out of sympathy with those who are petitioning sites like Amazon not to sell this particular book, which does not directly advocate the level of abuse that killed these children, but that appears to have been misinterpreted and misused by at least some of the parents who stand accused.)
Much attention has been paid to the religious pieces of a this tale. Less noted is that each of these children joined these families through adoption. Sean was born in the US, as were his five adopted siblings. Hana was from Ethiopia, as was her adopted brother (their parents had six biological children as well), and Lydia was from Liberia (there were two other adopted siblings among the family's nine children.)
Is this merely grisly coincidence? Or is there something about the adoption dynamic that makes violent abuse more likely?
One possibility is that adoptive children -- particularly those who spend their earliest years in an orphanage or shuttling from one foster caregiver to the next -- are more likely to suffer reactive attachment disorder, which are essentially the inability not only to bond, but to feel. The effects are not just psychological, but also physical, with evidence these children can have elevated levels of the hormone cortisol, which increases their tolerance for pain. Some speculate that spanking a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder can spiral out of control quickly, because it takes abusive levels of pain before the child actually feels it and responds.
This cycle is the talk of a handful of adoptive parenting websites, and, in particular, it has been discussed often on Why Not Train a Child, which is dedicated to warning parents about the dangers of the Pearls' book. There an anonymous commenter there, who describes him or herself as knowing the parents of Hana Williams personally, speculates:
Initially, I think their intentions for adopting were "good" (although I am uncomfortable with the idea of adopting children solely because you are religiously motivated to "rescue" them). I don't think they adopted Hana and her brother so that they could have some children to torture and abuse. However, I believe they made a huge assumption that these kids would respond to their methods just like their own biological children did. They expected Hana and her little brother to assimilate into their family, and most likely ignored their culture, how they had grown up (customs, beliefs, etc), and most importantly, the trauma that Hana and her brother had gone through in their childhoods. These kids just weren't acting like their biological children. Instead of taking a step back and getting professional help, they decided that they would continue to follow the Pearl method, but continued to up the ante, because these kids were NOT succumbing to being "broken".
Adoption can save a child and create a family. It can also come with complications that biological parents are far less likely to face. All children are vulnerable, but adopted children are more so, because the very fact of their adoption tells of a shakier start in life. They deserve more of our protection. In at least three cases they did not receive it.
Source http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-belkin/adoption-spanking-childabuse_b_1081617.html
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Another CPS Failure - CPS: Custody of 1-Year-Old Is "Temporary"
By Randy McIlwain | Tuesday, Aug 23, 2011 | Updated 8:23 PM CDT
Naim Muhammad is charged with counts of capital murder in the drowning deaths of 3-year-old Elijah and 5-year-old Naim. Police said Muhammad killed his sons hours after abducting them while they and Kametra Sampson, his estranged girlfriend, were walking to school Monday morning.
Muhammad allegedly tried to break into his Sampson's home to kidnap 1-year-old Jeremiah after kidnapping the older children.
Sampson's brother, Brandon Turner, and his girlfriend Keosha Smith fought to keep Jeremiah away from him.
CPS said it had concerns about the safety of the children.
"We have been involved with the family before, and most recently starting in January, because of the domestic violence that was going on between the parents that was putting the children at risk," CPS spokeswoman Marissa Gonzalez said.
She said the children were not abused in the prior domestic disputes, but Jeremiah will remain in state custody until CPS can be certain Sampson's home is physically and emotionally safe for his return.
"There's so many questions about what led up to this very tragic incident, what's been going on with the family the last several days," Gonzalez said. "This is a temporary measure at this point and not something that's uncommon when this type of situation develops."
Gonzalez said CPS is working with Sampson to reunite her with her son. She said the agency would allow a family member to take custody of Jeremiah if he or she does not have a criminal record or prior history with CPS.
Source http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/CPS-Custody-of-1-Year-Old-Is-Temporary-128284723.html
Naim Muhammad is charged with counts of capital murder in the drowning deaths of 3-year-old Elijah and 5-year-old Naim. Police said Muhammad killed his sons hours after abducting them while they and Kametra Sampson, his estranged girlfriend, were walking to school Monday morning.
Muhammad allegedly tried to break into his Sampson's home to kidnap 1-year-old Jeremiah after kidnapping the older children.
Sampson's brother, Brandon Turner, and his girlfriend Keosha Smith fought to keep Jeremiah away from him.
CPS said it had concerns about the safety of the children.
"We have been involved with the family before, and most recently starting in January, because of the domestic violence that was going on between the parents that was putting the children at risk," CPS spokeswoman Marissa Gonzalez said.
She said the children were not abused in the prior domestic disputes, but Jeremiah will remain in state custody until CPS can be certain Sampson's home is physically and emotionally safe for his return.
"There's so many questions about what led up to this very tragic incident, what's been going on with the family the last several days," Gonzalez said. "This is a temporary measure at this point and not something that's uncommon when this type of situation develops."
Gonzalez said CPS is working with Sampson to reunite her with her son. She said the agency would allow a family member to take custody of Jeremiah if he or she does not have a criminal record or prior history with CPS.
Source http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/CPS-Custody-of-1-Year-Old-Is-Temporary-128284723.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)