Marley/Bastardette has done a post on what can only be termed a nauseating diary and comment thread over on Daily Kos-

REVOLTING ENTITLEMENT BLATHER ON DKOS: “ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION IS NOT PERVERSE”

Bastardette, my partner Mike Doughney, and I have a number of comments on the thread, though some of the posts on the thread have been blinking in and out of “hidden” status, due to rampant abuse of the dKos troll rating system.

In any case, much as there are a number of important points brought out by the few voices of saneity on the thread, I felt this comment I scrawled off was important enough to merit being moved over to BLC, as so called “Secrecy” is a term that needs to be addressed head on. I am writing in response to another commenter (beijingbetty, whose words appear in the quote boxes.)

“Secrecy”: Far more than mere cultural habit

Brent Wojahn/ The Oregonian

Friday May 29th Kylie and Tyler Gumm were murdered by their adoptive father, James Gumm, in Oregon before he turned the gun on himself.

While there are a fair number of stories covering the deaths, there’s been very little coverage of the fact that the children were adoptees.

Here are a few links by way of general backgrounder:

Ore. father who killed kids, self was upset over divorce

HILLSBORO, Ore. — James Gumm took his two young children to the Jackson Bottom Wetland Preserve in Hillsboro on Friday morning and shot them at close range, killing them, before turning the gun on himself, police said on Saturday.

The bodies of Gumm and his two children, 7-year-old Tyler Gumm and 6-year-old Kylie Gumm, were discovered by a hiker near the Otter Marsh viewing area shortly before 1 p.m. Friday.

A medical examiner confirmed Saturday that Gumm murdered the two children and then committed suicide with a 9mm handgun. A handgun was recovered from the area on Friday that was likely used in all three deaths, police said.

The investigation led detectives to believe the children had no idea they were about to be shot. They may have thought they were going on a dayhike, police said.

How does Hillsboro heal? Entire county touched by tragic Jackson Bottom shootings

This implication gets credence from an anonymous friend of the Gumm family, who was bothered no press outlet pushed the angle that Jim Gumm lost a lucrative contract engineering job recently, the first time he’d been out of work in his adult life.

“I am not making excuses for the guy, but going through your first job loss can really screw with you,” the friend wrote in an e-mail. “All of a sudden you are radioactive to all your former co-workers. If that is all you had developed as friends, you are screwed. Add a divorce on top of that, the guy obviously cracked.

“All this is just as much a casualty of the crash in the local economy as anything. It has put some folks in a very tough place. Some have no ability to deal with the stress.”

Schools Mourn Children Shot To Death

Funeral set for kids killed by father

Classmates of slain Hillsboro girl release balloons with messages

Also see Adoptive Parents: Not a Breed Apart? on Birth Mother, First Mother Forum for a Mother’s perspective on the way adoptive parents are often viewed by those on the “supply” end of the adoption equation:

When I surrendered my newborn daughter for adoption six years earlier, I believed that adoptive parents were a breed apart–dedicated, stable, educated, la crème de la crème. After all, adoptive parents spent many years and thousands of dollars to become parents; they were screened by social service agencies and courts. I thought it was ironic that the infertile made the best parents while those of us who could conceive were–at best–only marginally fit to raise our child.

Despite the perception, no amount of vetting guarantees a kid much of anything.

The sad truth is that it is a lottery, a game of chance, as John Sayles depicts in Casa de los Babys. Adoptive parents may or may not be June and Ward Cleaver. Like other parents, they may or may not divorce, suffer from alcoholism, become unemployed, or commit murder.

The only guarantee about adoption is that the child will have a different life. If parents want to assure that their child is reared in a safe, loving, nurturing environment, they need to do it themselves.

So, per my usual question, has anyone bothered informing these children’s original parents that they were murdered by their adoptive father? (If such is even possible at this point.)

Yeah, I won’t be holding my breath on that one.

No time to blog at the moment.

Go see the Daily Bastardette for details from today’s hearing on California AB 372-.

For once, it’s a bit of what could be good news,

CALIFORNIA AB 372 SENT TO SUSPENSE FILE

as Marley said,

The committee has until May 25 to retrieve it from suspension, but because of the costs involved, the bill is likely to expire there.

and

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to keep those cards and letters comin‘ kiddies!

The CARE-tastrophe continues unabated.

Just when you thought the mess out in California couldn’t get any stupider, AB 372 now apparently is projected to come with an 8 million dollar start up cost.

Yes, you read that right $8 million, even as California is in the depths of fiscal crisis and budget hearings. (It’s really impossible to pick any one link as any form of overview of the situation in CA, if you’re not familiar with the the budgetary crisis a simple websearch will turn of more than enough articles to get you up to speed.)

AB 372 as currently proposed is simply insane, completely fiscally irresponsible, and absolutely unwarranted.

Other states have achieved genuine open records legislation without a high price tag fiscal note attached. Now CA wants to give adopted adults (over age 25, no less!) an insulting half-assed ‘faint possibilities of maybe-access sometimes sorta’ AND couple it with an $8,000,000 price tag? Positively shameful.

Tomorrow morning the bill goes before the Committee.

Go read the Bastard Nation action alert, then make your calls and send your emails. If you’re in CA and can make the hearing tomorrow morning by all means, attend in person.

CAL OPEN/BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT- CAL AB 372. ACT NOW!

The author’s office has stated there is an $8 Million start up cost estimate attached to the bill.

Otherwise,

You can watch and listen LIVE to the hearing via the internet:
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Room Number 4202
9:00 AM (PST)
click here
(Click on Committee Room List)

You can find the full bill text, last modified May 7th, here

Also see the Bill Analysis

As well as the previous unanimous passage vote tally in the Appropriations Committee.

Rubber stamping AB 372 on through the committee vote is not an acceptable outcome.

Not acceptable to adopted people and our families, and not acceptable for California itself.

Show up, call and write to demand better.

As part of the Mother’s Day-a-palooza all over the net Sunday, Slate included a piece focusing on international adoption corruption with profiles of ten cases,

The Orphan Trade, A look at families affected by corrupt international adoptions.

As always, the article leads off with an assumption, that most couples would never willingly participate in the act of international child buying, an assumption I question deeply in some cases,

Who wants to buy a baby? Certainly not most people who are trying to adopt internationally. And yet too often—without their knowledge—that’s what happens with their dollars and euros.

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University report gets a quick mention as well.

Again, as I’ve mentioned before, the full report, “The Lie we Love” and accompanying materials are well worth spending some time with.

It also points out what many of us have been saying for years, that the industry comes into a country, does “resource extraction” pulling out as many kids as possible before a country closes down usually amidst various charges of fraud and corruption.

Then the industry moves on to the next country only to begin the cycle again. Sometimes countries that have closed down attempt “reforms” and reopen, though the corruption often continues. (Vietnam being a perfect example. This older post I did some time back covers a lot of ground and a lot of history pertaining to the “reopened” mess that led to Vietnam closing down yet again.)

Back to the Slate article,

When one country’s adoptions are closed down to regulate or stop the trafficking, the adoption industry moves to the next “hot” and under-regulated country. (For Americans, these are currently Ethiopia and, to a lesser degree, Nepal.)

Be sure to follow across to the slide show for the pictures and profiles,

Click here to read a slide-show essay about international adoption.

So this is the second Mother’s Day since I began blogging about adoption.

I’ve already said pretty much everything I needed to say in last year’s,

Mothers’ Day and my day

Since I first wrote that piece, it’s been another year of ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’

May 10th, 2009 marks another year of still only one phone call to make.

***

Sadly, Saturday slid out from underneath me due to other obligations, but, a bit late here, I wanted to also point out my post from last year pertaining to

“Birthmother’s Day” and a Day without Adoption

It too, covers the Saturday portion of these weekends, and deserves time and attention as well.

As to why “Birthmother’s Day” is in quotes? Read the piece, it’s simply not language I prefer to utilize.

Finally, lest this post seem little more than a poignant rerun, Lorraine Dusky (herself a Mother,) has a few choice words about “Birthmother events.”

In the spirit of letting Mothers speak for themselves, and NOT speaking for them or over them, here’s a link worth the read on a day like today.

What’s Wrong with Birthmother Events on Mother’s Day? Just about EVERYTHING

The entire piece is an important read.

While Mothers (of all stripes) react each in their own way to these weekends, I find these two paragraphs of Lorraine’s strong work most deeply mirror my own thinking about such.

Not surprisingly, I am not a fan of any “birth mother celebrations,” even if they were the brainchild of first/birth mothers themselves, as apparently some of them are. The Saturday before Mother’s Day is designated as “Birthmother’s Day.” Special gatherings of first mothers are planned in several states, I read. To all this I say, gag me with a spoon. I can not think of anything more depressing that getting together with other first mothers on the day calibrated to remind us of possibly the worst day in our lives…unless we were going to the theater, a super lunch, a day at the spa, or just getting together because we are friends.

This is the first year in several that I did not get numerous reminders to attend a Spence-Chapin gala in Manhattan, which I looked upon as a mawkish reminder of all that had been lost. I know a hasty email I sent offended at least one of the birth mothers involved in the planning. But I can not see how such a “celebration” for women who have relinquished their children–sponsored by an adoption agency–is anything more than a pat on the head for good service done, as in: You gave us product for our business. Thank you. Hey, have lunch on us, light a candle together, we share your pain.

What many don’t realize is that particularly for womyn who have never revealed their hidden status as Mothers, today may be a personal form of their own annually celebrated hell. For every Mother like Lorraine, boldly writing their truths, there are also other womyn locked in silence of a decades old secret.

I’m not sure any of the readily “visible”/above the waterline members (Parents, Adopted People, or Adoptive Parents) of the adoption pentagon go through this time of year completely unscathed.

Add in the bonus round “fun” of both families dealing with miscarriage or infertility and the lives of womyn such as myself, who are intentionally Childfree (not childless, but choosing a lifetime devoid of children of our own) and it becomes readily apparent, “Mother’s Day weekend” is fraught with emotional and systemic complexity and often unstated volumes worth of the reproductive biographical realities of all our lives.

What to Hallmark is so often reduced to inks and papers, to womyn ourselves is a weekend filled with so many of the “impolite” topics and conversations that form the very fabric of our lives.

Each year, over these weekends, whether I like it or not, my thoughts turn to each of us, each in our positions, each with their own stories to tell. I find so much of the landscape spread out before me profoundly disturbing and all too often tinged with genuine sorrow.

The court-appointed monitor’s latest report on D.C. Child and Family Services Agency points out

that the number of children being adopted out of shelters and foster homes has slowed. Between 2005 and 2008, adoptions finalized in the District dropped from more than 250 a year to fewer than 100, the report said.

The Washington Post published an article yesterday, Report Faults Extended Foster-Care Stays, detailing the agency’s (now in receivership, under court oversight) inability to move more kids into permanent adoptive homes:

“Progress in reducing length of stay in foster care and ensuring a permanent home for every child has been stalled,” Meltzer wrote in the report, made public yesterday.

The article breaks it down by the numbers:

Children spend too much time in foster care, according to a newly issued report by monitor Judith W. Meltzer. Of the 2,237 children in foster care in the District, the report found that 60 percent had been in the city’s care for 24 months or more at the end of last year, and that almost 600 had been in the system for five years or more.

This, despite adoption promotion as public policy and the interconnecting webs of financial assistance, tax credits, outright grants, and various other incentive programs I’ve spoken of here before. (Also see District of Columbia, here, as but one example) many of these kids seem bounced around endlessly, left to eventually age out.

The report found kids still being kept in forms of temporary care.

Meltzer, appointed to track the child welfare agency by a federal judge, found that too many children in foster care were being placed in shelters and other non-family homes or moved from one temporary home to another while awaiting final adoptions.

DC’s “answer” to the kids’ lack of permanency? Stepping up foster parent recruitment, perhaps in hopes that some might use fostering as a stepping stone towards becoming eventual adoptive parents.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and acting CFSA Director Roque Gerald launched a month-long campaign yesterday to recruit more District-based foster parents.

Unfortunately, recruitment of more foster parents sounds like slapping on another band-aid.

(Also be sure to note some of my definitions of “special needs” or “foster care” in this piece, as such should be kept in mind when one discusses foster parent recruitment.)

A.G. Nickles has been trying to get CFSA out from under court supervision for some time now.

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles defended the District’s efforts yesterday and said the agency is being more careful in reviewing cases and homes — a big reason why many children remain in foster care.

<biting sarcasm>

Gee, ya think?

Considering (to name just two cases I’ve blogged about recently) the high profile Banita Jacks case, and here in Maryland the equally high profile Renee Bowman case (the Bowman girls had been adopted out of and placed by the DC system) Yeah, I’d say carefully reviewing cases and homes and screening prosepctive adopters more stringently might not be the worst idea. D’oh!

</biting sarcasm>

Also be sure to see my earlier post, Adoption subsidies for frozen corpses, more on the Maryland nightmare, which covers both cases and goes into some detail on the ongoing situation with the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency.

That said, fast-tracking adoptions for the sake of adoption promotion and clearing out backlog in order to get out of receivership (as some will push DC CFSA to do) is no answer either. (Not that there are enough prospective adopters waiting in the wings for these kids even if the District were willing to try to clear the books.) It’s readily apparent the damage just rushing through adoptions in any attempt to come off looking good can do.

Notions of ‘A Home, ANY Home’ cannot provide answers for these kids.

As the numbers show, many of these kids have been bouncing through the system over the course of years. They need stable situations with people that are at least familiar with, preferably comfortable with and well trained to handle some of the myriad of issues they’re going to be facing. The idea of ‘a family, ANY OLE foster family will do’ is just another a recipe for disaster.

At the Ethics and Accountability in Adoption conference over a year ago, conference attendees were ‘treated’ to the Ad Council’s (not the ‘good guys’ in my book to begin with) video clips from their prospective adoptors recuitment ad campaign.

The idea behind the campaign came from marketing research that showed people were hesitant to consider becoming adoptive parents due to the perception that one had to be “a perfect parent” or at minimum an extraordinary parent to consider adopting. So a series of ads marketing the concept of becoming adoptive parents were developed, each ending with the tag line

“You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent. There are thousands of teens in foster care who would love to put up with you.”

Down the righthand side of this page explore some of the video and radio “campaign materials.” Some useful examples include:

• Gift
• Consoling
• Band
• Phone
• Pink Uniform
• Foodie
• Questionnaire

(Though be aware, if you’re an adoptee who’s ever had an adoptive parent who doesn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, or who ruined something that mattered to you, such as a foodball uniform, or who thought giving you gifts that were more to their tastes than yours was appropriate, you may find looking at some of these somewhere between uncomfortable and infuriating.)

The real underlying messages of course, being that you can be an incompetent boob with no special skills or clue what-so-ever, but the State will still entrust even an idiot like you with a foster kid.

That, and apparently these kids don’t need the special, the extraordinary, or the best. Hell, from the looks of the ads, the prospective adopters don’t even need to display basic competence.

The ads carry the underlying message the kids should be/will be willing to settle for whatever human dregs that can exhibit a pulse that the state can scrounge up willing to take ‘em. Then be damn grateful for such every day of their lives, hideous sweaters and all.

“Couch” in particular makes it clear, the mere act of processing oxygen is apparently considered (in oversimplified government supported media portrayals anyway) enough of a demonstration of “parenting skills” to qualify one to get a hold of a kid. After all, the boy’s not white and he’s a foster kid, he should be damn happy someone bothered putting a roof over his head, right?

Wrong.

It’s pathetic. Through campaigns like this, the State makes it quite clear, it’s so desperate to get these kids off the books they’re broadcasting the (somewhat inaccurate) message any ditz or bozo can get a hold of one.

The clips of course, were designed to feed into a photolisting website. (I consider photolisting sites the Sears wishbook of adoption marketing. Or perhaps to appropriate a few lyrics, “How much is that Bas-tard in the win-dow…?” ) The underlying concept of marketing kids the way companies market other consumer goods is just another vile facet of of the ongoing commercialization of the child redistribution market.

Utilizing such tactics to market foster kids, a population already vulnerable to various other forms of marketing exploitation, merely plays on the kids own hopes and hunger for something other than being shifted around from staging area to staging area throughout the system.

For an example of a photolisting based stunt tactic see my earlier post, High speed photolistings, will the adoptions crash and burn? To quote that piece here briefly:

One of the problems with such, this notion all too often phrased as “anyone can adopt” is that that’s a phrase that very definitely comes from the perspective of the state trying to offload the kids. From the kids perspective, it can’t be a matter of just anyone, adopters need to be the ‘right’ someone. Doubly so in cases where kids come with ’special needs’ whether past abuse or health issues. These kids don’t just need a home any home, they need a home where they’re going to be ok.

Messages like ‘anyone can adopt’ are recipes for disaster. ‘Special needs’ kids don’t need to be shipped off into a new situation filled with abuse or even sexual abuse, they need a home conducive to helping them, and yes, that does often mean finding special people. That’s part of the deep problem with the foster system mess. Every kid placed, no matter where, is counted as a victory because the condition for declaring victory is numeric, quantity not quality.

I find even a brief exploration of the site’s (child) search feature akin to deciding whether one wants to shop online for a pair of red leather pumps or brown slingback sandals.

Unfortunately, as the Post article hints, Jacks and Bowman are but mere dust on the tip of what may be a massive iceberg, a situation CFSA is likely too overwhelmed to begin to handle.

The agency came under increased pressure and scrutiny last year after Banita Jacks, a Southeast Washington woman, was arrested on murder charges in the deaths of her four daughters. The girls’ bodies were found by federal marshals in January 2008; in the aftermath, the agency was flooded with hundreds of reports of abuse and neglect.

The organization that sued on behalf of the kids, (which led to the receivership in the first place) also spoke out after this latest report was issued.

Children’s Rights, the national advocacy group that filed the court case, is fighting efforts by the Fenty administration to end the court’s oversight. The child welfare system was put in receivership for five years before being placed back under the District’s management in 2000, with the court setting benchmarks for changes. A hearing in the case is set for tomorrow before U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan.

“The federal court has found time and again that D.C.’s abused and neglected children and vulnerable families are entitled to a level of care and service that the District is still simply failing to provide,” Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights, said in a statement yesterday.

“The city basically said they have done all they’re going to do, and enough is enough. But that’s not what the court order requires and that’s not what these children need,” she said in an interview.

Back in February, as noted in another Washington Post article, CFSA Is ‘Not Ready,’ Judge Says, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan (who will be the Judge at today’s hearing) expressed similar sentiments.

The judge also reflected on the 20 years he has been involved in the case. He said the District made great strides and “a couple years ago, the agency was on its way out” of court supervision.

But when Banita Jacks was found living with the decaying corpses of her four daughters last year, the agency was flooded with reports of abuse and neglect. Hundreds of cases piled up, social workers were crushed by huge caseloads and almost 25 percent of the frustrated workforce walked out.

The agency “fell back to 20 years ago,” Hogan said.

As for DC’s foster kids? In theory at least, they’ll be placed with people who have to jump through at least a FEW more hoops than merely snoring on a couch.

It’s May and that means it’s National Foster Care month. The DC campaign materials can be found here. Glance through the 15 page “How Foster Parenting Works in DC” booklet available on the site. Pre-service training is 30 hours with 15 hours annually to maintain a foster license. CPR and First Aid classes are required and there’s a home study (see page 7.)

An article from two days ago about the initiative can be found here. Immediately, I noted the goals of the campaign and the hoped for numeric scope of the campaign.

Mayor Adrian Fenty says it’s the older children in the system who desperately need foster homes the most. “We want to keep brothers and sisters together while in care, open our homes to young people who have disabilities and accept kids in short notice in emergency situations.”

In the next 18 months, D.C. Child and Family Services says its goal is to place 60 young people into licensed foster homes.

While this may move a few of the kids out of temporary situations such as shelters (if indeed, such were a goal of the campaign, but hey even one kid moved out of a shelter and into a foster family is a victory for that kid) the problem of kids left to long term foster care remains central to DC’s children’s services woes.

See the Bastard Nation Action Alert-

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT– NO ON TEXAS: SB 499/HB 4470

for details.

Texas Action Alert- Emergency

Texas Senate Bill 499 & Companion House Bill 4470

We have an emergency in the Texas State Legislature. Probably one of the worst combination of so-called “adoptee rights bills” in history are on their way to crushing any chance of adoptee’s ever achieving equal access to birth certificates, now and in the future.

The action alert includes the contact names, numbers, and addresses.

I’m late getting this up. Marley’s got details on the unanimous vote. See her post,

IS THAT ALL THEIR IS? CALIFORNIA AB 372 PASSES OUT OF JUDICIARY

CalOpen and Bastard Nation (along with a number of individuals) stood firm, and submitted testimony refusing to leave anyone behind, working against the disastrous bill.

Here’s Marley’s rough run down of who testified at the hearing (in this case “proponents” means those supporting the bad bill, “opponents” meaning those unwilling to leave anyone behind):

Witnesses: I missed a couple of proponents, but think I got all the opponents. Names may be misspelled in some cases.

Proponents: Stephanie Williams (CARE) Sarah Burns, (AAC/CUB,) Cal Assoc. of Adoption Attorneys. Jean Strauss, Tom Martin, Cheryl Cook, Jean Strauss, Tom Martin, Cheryl Cook, CA Alliance Child Family Services, Jim Dunn, Jennylee Balantine, Karen Vedder, Bonnie Burnell, Kristina Cook, Rachel Smith, John Smith, Bruce Reeves,

Opponents: Joe Wood CalOpen) , Linda Franklin, Laurel Ehrichs, Jean Ulrich (CalOpen) , Laurie Dunfield-Baker, (”adopted citizen”), Burt Brosnan, Imogene Speed (adoptive mother, Kathleen Cox.

Also be sure to read through the BN testimony opposing passage,

BASTARD NATION TESTIMONY AGAINST CALIFORNIA AB 372: LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND!

The bill may be out of committee, but this is still far from over.

That, and sadly, C.A.R.E. still has plenty of time to make their already badly botched bill even worse.

Yesterday Hyacinth Beverly Morgan of Silver Spring, Maryland (Montgomery County) entered a guilty plea to second degree child abuse.

The story is not getting a great deal of attention, but the Morgan case was the first of two similar cases in Maryland within four months of one another wherein adopted girls who had been allegedly locked in, deprived of food and beaten, managed to extract themselves from the horrendous situations they found themselves in at the hands of their adopters.

The Morgan case was from back in June ‘08, the second similar case was the Renee Bowman case from Lusby, Maryland in September ‘08. Renee Bowman’s seven year old adopted girl managed to climb out her window as well, and sought help. Her two adopted sisters, Jasmine Nicole and Minnet C., were not so “fortunate,” they were found stashed in a home freezer, long dead of asphyxiation, carried from Montgomery County to Calvert County when Bowman moved.

While the Bowman case has received a great amount of attention, no doubt due to the grizzly details of the case, (and the two dead adopted girls, as opposed to the “mere” abuse in the Morgan case) I am not finding a great deal of material to cite in relation to the Morgan case. Here are a few pieces I have managed to corral:

AP- (via Washington Post) Md. Mother Pleads Guilty to Abuse of Adopted Daughter,

Montgomery County police say that in June, Morgan tied her adopted daughter naked to a bed and beat her. Police also say the victim claimed that the 47-year-old mother locked her in her room without enough food. The girl eventually escaped through a window.

Officials say that on June 15, the girl flagged down a car and asked to go to a nearby McDonald’s. She was later treated at a children’s hospital.

Pound Pup Legacy has a copy of a local Fox/Faux news piece from last June

Note particularly,

Detectives say that their investigation led them to the girl’s adoptive mother, 47-year-old Hyacinth Beverly Morgan of Silver Spring. Morgan was arrested and she now faces charges of first-degree child abuse, first-degree assault, second-degree child abuse, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and false imprisonment.

Neighbors who live near Morgan’s Silver Spring home say she has spent the last decade building what appears to be a daycare facility which never opened. It’s a three-story treehouse with jungle gyms, playhouses, and even a bird coop that neighbors call an eyesore.

Here’s the Montgomery County Police blurb from last June, Police Make Child Abuse Arrest in Silver Spring, and a copy of the police press release from last June announcing the arrest.

Sentencing for Hyacinth Beverly Morgan is set for July 10th by Circuit Court judge Durke G. Thompson.

As for Renee Bowman, here’s a recent overview article updating readers on the status of the case* from the Washington Post. In October, she will face the charges in Calvert County,

Bowman will first face charges in Calvert. In October, she was indicted there on attempted murder and other charges in the alleged abuse of her surviving daughter, according to court records. She is scheduled to be tried Sept. 28.

Thereafter, she’ll be brought to Montgomery County,

After the criminal charges in Calvert are resolved, Bowman will be brought to Montgomery to face the murder charges, McCarthy said.

***

(* Just be sure to note my earlier commentary on the Post’s focusing on aspects of Bowman’s shopping habits as ongoing evidence that the Post would far rather focus upon Bowman herself as an example of a screwed up individual rather than directly address the issue of the screwed up system. Focus on Bowman’s eBay habits serves as a distraction from the real issues at the core of the case… writing such into the ongoing narrative is not news.)