In C.A.R.E.’s case, apparently the Brooklyn Bridge, as they for a time, could not be bothered to even find a picture of a California landmark bridge, instead they pitched their California effort with a picture of the famous bridge from New York!

But hey, good news, they’ve finally updated their page with a spankin’ new picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. (Welcome to California, C.A.R.E.)

Suffice it to say, reading through the C.A.R.E. materials and the public face of the effort to date, I am monumentally unimpressed.

Both Ron and Marley have been carefully deconstructing the materials as well.

For the moment, rather than reinventing the wheel, I urge my readers to carefully go through their takes on this latest CA non-grassroots (by their own admission) effort.

There’s plenty of writing that certainly could be done, tackling any given piece of it, such as the nonsensical notion of a “triad” in relation to such. Allow me to quote Ron here for but a moment (this is from his post If You’re a California Adoptee, C.A.R.E. Has Plans For YOU!)

Next is the Join page. After your name you may enter your “triad” position; “Adoptee”, “Birth Parent”, “Adoptive Parent”, “Birth Sibling”, “Support Person/Spouse”, and then six categories of adoption professionals. Six. If you wanted to see a graphic of why the “triad” is a trick on the natives, just let your gaze linger on that for a while… But then go to the meat, the “ask” as we like to say in polite politesse. To become a member you’ve got to pony up 85 clams. 40 if you’re a senior. Considering the times and the following-trend that are our unemployment figures they might want to consider a donor category for hobos… Agencies and the like are expected to give 200… This isn’t an “ask” designed to generate a lot a support, only the serious donors will feel welcome. Well, not that serious, if they were serious they’d have a category for $10K and over… I suppose at this point it’s fair to inquire if C.A.R.E cares about the support of California’s adoptees… They don’t have a portal for information gathering other than the Join page, for those uncounted unwashed masses who have time or energy to donate in-kind, so what C.A.R.E. really wants is cash.

I’ve certainly written and taught about how there is no triad, there is an adoption pentagon, or what Ron likewise has termed a “Five-legged Stool” but few things make the reality of such clearer than looking over an effort such as C.A.R.E..

Events in CA have gotten bad enough to pull BB Church/Ron back from his retirement into some bastard blogging, (damn good thing, too, his analysis is well worth the read!)

From BB Church’s FunHouse-

If You’re a California Adoptee, C.A.R.E. Has Plans For YOU! ( Friday, February 06, 2009)

The plot thickens: CARE’s email to its supporters… (Monday, February 09, 2009)

Does CARE care? Nope… (Monday, February 09, 2009)

Marley/Bastardette is also right on it having written a two-part post. See her analysis on the Daily Bastardette-

WE’VE SCREWED UP YOUR STATE, NOW WE’RE COMING TO SCREW UP YOURS: CALIFORNIA ADOPTION REFORM EFFORT– THE LETTER

WE’VE SCREWED UP YOUR STATE, NOW WE’RE COMING TO SCREW UP YOURS: CALIFORNIA ADOPTION REFORM EFFORT–COMMENTS

Undoubtedly we’ll be hearing more about this mess in the months to come.

Let’s just say there are plenty of darn good reasons the California Adoption Reform Effort (CARE) is NOT being linked in my right hand sidebar under the “Work for adoptee rights- State by State” heading, BUT California Open is.

Gee maybe it has something to do with the “No Compromise” sign on California Open’s myspace page… ya think?

Or perhaps the California Open promise-

OUR PROMISE TO YOU

WE LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND!

NO SELL-OUT!

NO RESTRICTION!

NO COMPROMISE!

Well, ok, all that and the California Open myspace page has such a nice picture of the Golden Gate Bridge.

***

Tragically, at the moment there is only one place in the United States that infants are protected from State enabled child abandonments, Washington DC.

Only there can every newborn rest assured that being dumped is not ok, not state encouraged, and never legal.

How could it have come to this?

Over the past nine years the dump laws have spread across the country like a cancer. State after state has fallen to the siren calls of the dump marketers, seduced by false promises of ‘no more dumpster babies’, or that these laws would become some form of a magical panacea, somehow “saving” both newborns and their mothers as well.

In state after state, in the period of time before the vote, a ‘dumped baby crisis’ almost always seemed to materialize. So legislators jumped to a reaction rather than a response, they rammed through dump laws with little understanding of the consequences.

Those most directly affected, the kids themselves, and (in most states) anonymous abandoners had no voice, no means to speak to their long term needs and what the law would do.

Anyone who dared raise a criticism or objection to legalized child dumping, often adult adoptees, child welfare advocates, and those who actually work with womyn in desperate circumstances were instantly painted as inhuman monsters who would rather find dead babies.

Likewise, in state after state legislators set common sense aside, lest they too be tarred as those wanting baby corpses, or as those voting for dead babies. Dump law opponents were given the usual set of “so when did you stop beating your wife” sorts of questions.

Unfortunately, the reasons for opposing legalized child abandonment are complex, nuanced, and rarely soundbyteable. Professional dump marketeers waving pictures of cuddly babies and making overly simplistic unburdened by evidence propagandistic arguments along the lines of (the compulsory pregnancy advocates’ line) “live baby good dead baby bad” shouted down voices of reason.

Never mind the fact that the mythical “dead baby” alluded to by the dump law advocates was likely never headed toward death in the first place. Yes, there are dead babies. But to claim the two poles are “safe haven” or dumpster misses reality.

The womyn with the wherewithal to utilize the dump law, who packs up her baby to drive him or her across town to the hospital is not the same womyn as the womyn who tiptoes over to the dumpster a few blocks from her apartment to deposit a trash bagged bloody bundle.

The hospital abandoner under other circumstances may have been able to connect with a program or a relative, or even a traditional (non state anonymized) adoption plan. She wants her kid to be ok. Trash bag abandoner on the other hand?

There remains no evidence what-so-ever that these laws reach her.

She is often in a crisis situation, sometimes has been in denial of her pregnancy, and in her panic is often merely her own version of just trying to make it all go away. She is in a severe mental health crisis, no amount of spending on PSAs is going to touch her right that moment. Up until the moment of birth she may not have ever acknowledged her own pregnancy. She’s not looking for a program, or to a law, or to a hospital with surveillance cameras all around, she’s looking for a T-shirt to mop up the blood before someone sees it.

Add in a rural component of having to go to a hospital where neighbors might see you, or other circumstances such as lack of access to transportation and the bottom line is state approved dump sites make a lovely fantasy, but they reach those who are open to such already. They’re not going to reach those who feel so trapped that they commit acts of desperation.

While dump marketers can trot out former abandoners doing their court ordered community service with their kitchen table organizations who on cue with give the soundbyte, “but of course I would have used the safe haven had I known about it,” hindsight is cheap and easy. Even cheaper and easier when you’re trying to get your judge off your back. They can only speak for themselves, not other womyn in similar circumstances. I don’t presume to know what they would or would not have done, but what I do know is that for some law or no law the desperation clearly continues.

Abandoned infants and dead babies have not disappeared with the passage of the 50th state’s dump law. Dump laws are never going to “clean up” 100% of the problem. In Nebraska, not a single one of the kids was facing down danger. That would be if anything a 100% failure rate, by the criteria of whether or not the law is protecting kids from immediate harm. Which means it’s all the more important to weigh carefully the harm dump laws cause.

(For example, here’s an important question that remains unanswered: prior to dump laws being passed were prosecutors often utilizing their discretion, but after a dump law is enacted are womyn being penalized much harder? Do these these womyn end up bearing the brunt of the state’s anger when the law fails to work? A scholarly study of the outcomes and sentences womyn have received both before and after dump laws would be a very useful thing right about now.)

Still, dump law marketers bemoan the lack of funding (often into their own programs) for ever escalating dump law publicity, and with each dead baby found they call for yet more funding, insisting that if only everyone was “educated” about their law the baby corpses would stop. Some state have even put ‘how to dump a baby’ programs into school curriculums as part of their ever escalating attempt to teach womyn how to abandon babies.

Dead babies must not serve as fodder for an ever needy marketing maw. Yet that’s exactly what has happened.

When it came to the state by state legislative battles, those who work with both kinds of abandoners, those with expertise, experience and yes adoptees themselves went unheeded.

Worse, as those most directly affected had no voice (in part by the very nature of the fact that an infant cannot politically advocate on their own behalf) legislators,, media, and others saw no down side to passing the laws. They saw no harm. They didn’t understand or refused to understand that the long lasting effects of the dump laws could actually cause lasting harm to the very people they were passed in the name of. The dump laws are short sighted.

Nebraska of course has IDed dumps, but in other states, abandoners are anonymous. This permanently strips the dumped kids of any genetic, social, cultural, or familial history. A dumpling can be “saved!” via dump law at age 1, only to suffer years later due to lack of genetic information such as breast cancer in the familial history. I’m loathe to make the medical argument as the issues therein are complex. That said, I think it is fair to say that shortsightedness is a hallmark of the dump laws, and that any definition of baby “saving” has to be carefully examined in the cold hard light of lifelong consequences of the state’s actions on/against such a vulnerable population.

Kids need long term answers, and at the very moment they are least able to protect their own interests (being a newborn and all) the state abandons it’s own role as acting on behalf of the child’s welfare, instead becoming a key participant in the abandonment process itself. If ever kids needed the state to step up and help them, it is when they are completely defenseless. But rather coming to the child in need’s aid, “Safe haven” states are central to the act of cutting access, information, and family away from the child permanently.

Let me make this as clear as I can, child abandonment is NEVER a good thing. It should not be enabled. It should not be held up as a positive outcome. It does lasting damage to everyone it touches, the kids most of all. Rather than working to stamp out child abandonment, the dump laws turn every last shred of child welfare best practices on their head, advocating womyn do precisely the thing that child welfare advocates have tried to prevent. Child dumping is always failure. It doesn’t matter if the name is prettied up, or if it’s done under the bright fluorescent lighting of hospitals, child dumping is evidence that things are really, REALLY broken.

Legalized child dumping does NOTHING to change those root causations, instead it is the state desperately trying to plaster over the place on the wall where the things that make us uncomfortable intruded, however briefly. ‘Sure she was in a desperate pregnancy with no money and no way to afford another child, but that’s “dealt with” now’. Not so much.

As state after state fell, caught up in the delusion that these laws were somehow going “fix” things, those of us who empathize with the kids knew that the consequences to the kids would become apparent, but only later, as every other state has only applied the law to kids much younger.

Nebraska short circuited that 18 year wait time while the dumped kids grew to age of majority. By passing the older kid dump law and by not making the dumpers anonymous Nebraska suddenly provided for the first time a sad window into the lives and circumstances of both the parents and guardians and the kids themselves. Nebraska is in so many ways a very special case due to the unique nature of its law.

But what it has shown us is precisely what those of us who have tracked dumps as best we can across the country (as most states laws make the dumper anonymous) have known for a long time now. Utilizing legalized child abandonment systems is often an act of desperation. These are people who by and large do not want to lose their kids, but feel trapped, and have nowhere else to turn.

Legalized baby dumping may happen as a result of poverty, or it may be utilized to cover abuse, domestic violence, or even incest. Dumping the baby makes the ‘evidence’ go away, but it does nothing to change the circumstances that lead to the act of dumping. Having dump sites available may actually function as a means to keep womyn in dangerous situations, as now instead of having to deal with a pregnancy and a child, the dump laws forms a means by which abusers can simply continue to hide everything going on.

The dump laws encourage womyn to hide and keep secret their pregnancies, avoid prenatal care, and deliver in secret, far from medical care, risking their very lives in the process. They bet their very lives, holding out hope that if they can just get the kid to a dump site no one need ever know.

With the American health care crisis, many womyn may not even be aware of what resources could help them through a pregnancy or keeping the child. Some may simply find themselves pregnant and panic not knowing how they would afford to give birth in a hospital, much less raise a child. Lack of information and economic pressures both perceived and real, may lead womyn into incredibly dangerous circumstances.

The States, rather than working to educate, destigmatize, and actually connect womyn with what programs and funding do exist, are instead maintaining the stigma and shame basis, insisting that it is better that a womyn deliver alone in secret and utilize the dump than access medical care and connect with existing programs.

The existence of the dump laws takes the pressure off the States to actually help families in need.

Just dump the newborn and go on back to your circumstances. The kid, (in most states) now stripped of all genetic, cultural, social, and family history, is a tabla rasa perfect candidate for adoption. The adopters get a kid with no history and no family of origin to come looking for him or her later. The State now that it has decoupled the child from any notion of their medical history can present the kid as “no known problems”, and collect their federal “adoption bonus” for placing the kid. And the kid themselves… well, they’re supposed to sit down shut up and be grateful for a lifetime that they weren’t dumpstered.

Which for some of the kids, if they turn out anything like other adoptees, begins to fall apart over time.

“Be grateful you’re not dead,” while the constant refrain used to shout down adoptee’s genuine concerns is ultimately a very poor excuse. Doubly so when one begins to look at whether or not dumped kids were ever really in danger in the first place. The Nebraska DHHS concluded that not one of the older kids dumped was ever in any immediate danger.
We have no determination of immanent danger for the anonymous states, but I would be willing to bet the parents and guardians who have abandoned the kids in other states loved them too, loved them so much that they turned to the final avenue they had open to them, which was of course just as in regular adoptions, sold to original parents as some sick form of gateway “to a better life for your child.” (See my previous dismantling of the “better life” marketing pitch here.)

Ultimately these laws betray the real long term interests of both womyn and children. The laws cause further harm, and prevent families from accessing genuine help.

Now as Nebraska legislators take up the law in the special session, they have before them a rare opportunity, a second chance to do what’s right.

Repeal the dump law, age it down to never.

Ensure that never again will a child be “legally abandoned” in Nebraska.

In short they have the opportunity to make Nebraska a real haven for kids and their families, a place where kids don’t fear going to the hospital because rather than hospitals being places of health and healing they have been transformed by legislation into the places parents go to get rid of their kids. Kids, of any age need stability and support, not uncertainty and abandonment.

While Nebraska legislators up for re-election ran their campaigns this fall, the kids kept pouring in. Kids after kid, and yet from the legislature, there was little more than foot shuffling and uncomfortable looks, coupled with promises of getting to it come January. While the legislators felt they could wait, Kids, speaking nationally here, can’t. They can’t wait another day for the doors to the Nebraska dumping grounds to be closed.

Aging down (dump law 2.0) just means older kids are off the hot seat, if they made it to age X (whatever Nebraska legislators ultimately decide) they’re in the clear. But for kids younger than the cut off date, whether 3 days or 30, or four months of even a year, the dump law “returns department” doors would remain open.

That’s a damn sad state of affairs.

In Washington DC dumping a child is never ok. Dumping a child is not legalized. It’s not enabled by the government, nor encouraged. ‘Child dumping 101/how to abandon a baby’ is not in the school curriculum.

When it comes to “safe haven” laws, DC is the only haven kids have left.

DC represents one last little island, surrounded by the rising tide of the normalization of child abandonment in America.

***

No blogger could begin to keep up with the mess Nebraska legislators have made. Instead, this post will focus on some of the raw sources dealing with the recent dumps. I’ll slide in a little commentary, but mainly I urge readers to go look at the articles and the videos in my links, they spell out a long sad story of failure. But then when it comes to the dump laws there’s rarely any good news, for the kids anyway.

Here is an Omaha World-Herald round up of many of the recent stories they’ve done relating to the dumps and the aftermath. Lots of links, well worth the read.

As but one example, see their Oct 9th story, Grandmother: Help, not haven, sought for boy which details how one of the kids abandoned was supposedly never intended to be such:

An Omaha grandmother says she wanted to hospitalize her suicidal 12-year-old grandson — not use the safe haven law — when she asked the boy’s aunt Sunday to take him to Immanuel Medical Center.

But instead of receiving help, the boy was placed in a foster home. He is scheduled to move to a group home this weekend.

And the grandmother has been ordered to show up in court next Wednesday for reasons she says she doesn’t understand.

That her grandson is considered a safe haven case is a “misunderstanding,” the woman said.

Regardless of the intent behind each and every single dump, one thing remains perfectly clear, Nebraska’s law is for the first time putting America’s catastrophically broken child welfare system on display while simultaneously putting a spotlight on many of the problems inherent to the legalized child abandonment laws. Additionally, due to the age problems unique to Nebraska’s law, this is all playing out upon kids old enough to remember every sorry detail of it.

But EVEN IF THEY COULDN’T, THE DAMAGE ABANDONMENT DOES TO KIDS, THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THEY WERE ABANDONED, AND THAT THE STATE ACTIVELY ENCOURAGED THEIR ABANDONMENT is still a lifelong betrayal. Child abandonment produces scars time doesn’t heal.

The dump laws make a mockery of any notion of child welfare best practices. Nebraska is merely the most visible and extreme example thereof. By creating the non-anonymous and aged-up version of the laws Nebraska put the full ugliness of the dump laws on international display.

Now that we begin to see the full horror of these legal atrocities there’s only one thing left to do, REPEAL them.

One by one, state after state, pull these abominations back out of the code.

Which brings us to the Michigan boy dumped by his mother in Nebraska, make that adoptive mother, because you see, he was an adoptee.

The Michigan to Nebraska dump was not only a ‘teach you a lesson’ dump, it was also a ‘returns department’ dump. An adopted kid, no longer wanted by his adopters.

Teri, left, and Terrence Martin of Southfield, Mich., the adoptive parents of a 13-year-old boy abandoned in Nebraska under that state’s safe haven law.

(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

I’m not going to get into every twist and turn of the Mess from Michigan, but I’ll provide a few links worth looking through.

October 13th-

Video from CBS 3 in Omaha (see * below)- Michigan Mom Drops off Son Under Safe Haven. While local news stations are calling it “safe haven crisis” Nebraska politicians still aren’t getting the message.

The video piece includes parts of an interview with State Sen. Brad Ashford:

We passed the law to protect Nebraska children. We didn’t pass the law to protect children from other states.

and

I don’t think it’s a crisis. I, again, it’s not a bad thing that children are being protected.

While Sen. Ashford may personally characterize being abandoned in the Nebraska’s ‘returns department’ as “being protected” there are at this point a number of kids who have actually been through the process who may have a bone to pick with him. Kids like this pregnant 14 year-old girl abandoned through the Nebraska system who had this to say about being dumped:

“I don’t want anything to happen to kids like it happened to me, …”

(She has since been returned to her home.)

October 14th-

Let’s start back here with New Details On Safe Haven Child From Michigan. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine,

… also says the state of Nebraska is not going to take in children from all over the country. He plans to work with child protective services in Michigan to send this kid back, while at the same time making sure the child is in good hands.

(Never mind the fact that the Nebraska law says nothing about ‘no out of state dumps allowed!’ The way the law is written it’s a free for all, anyone with physical custody can dump a kid, be that domestic or even international!)

The AP did a piece, the morning of the 14th, (this by way of WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan) Local Mom Abandons Teen in Nebraska. (Also see related video on upper right hand corner.) Once again, we see a kid not in any immediate danger-

There was no sign the boy was in immediate danger before he was abandoned early Monday, but an investigation into the boy’s situation was still continuing, Landry said.

A second piece, also from WXYZ, Michigan Mom Who Abandoned Son Identified.

KETV- Court Docs Reveal Story Behind Latest Safe Haven Case This piece goes into just a bit more detail about the ‘teach ‘em a lesson’ aspect of this dump and makes clear, the adoptive mother never intended to actually lose custody of him:

Martin told workers she would come back to get her son and now her son would know she wasn’t kidding.

As to the Judge’s comments in this piece, I don’t think loss family bonds should ever be the ‘cost’ of gaining access to support systems or mental health care. Everything he discusses in this piece can be done WITHOUT the state legalizing child abandonment.

October 15th-

Omaha World Herald-

Michigan boy left at Omaha hospital to stay in Nebraska – for now

and Michigan mother may have used safe haven law as lesson which includes:

“She told hospital staff that since local police were included she would just come back to get (her son), since now he would realize she wasn’t kidding anymore,” the affidavit says.

Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services officials confirmed that the mother had second thoughts about leaving her son. But once a child is left under the law and the state has taken custody, parents or guardians lose their right to make decisions about what happens to the child.

WXYZ, Michigan Mom who Abandoned Son Identified also see video.

October 16th-

KCBY (Oregon), Parents of Mich. boy left in Neb. lose custody.

Three Faux/Fox Detroit links, the first two are AP stories;

Court: Mom Who Abandoned Boy Can’t See Other Kids,

Official: Mich. Mom Neglected Boy She Left in Neb.,

and Children Taken from Mother Who Abandoned Son.

According to the video segment, on the third piece, the adopters were receiving (federal) adoption subsidies for the two kids to the tune of $900 a month. The adopters had apparently “tried for years” to get rid of their two adopted kids.

Note that once again, the adoption subsidies mess that I’ve already blogged about in relation to the dump laws is right in the middle of all this.

Also see, Michigan Prosecutors Don’t Want Mom to Use Nebraska Safe Haven Again

The grandmother said good-bye to the boy before his mother drove to Omaha. She left him Monday morning at the hospital with a packed suitcase and a ten dollar bill. Grandmother says, “She was taking him to a boys’ home that’s what she said a place to take boys with problems.” the grandmother says the boy’s been trouble and they tried to get help for years.

But the Michigan prosecutor found a report from 1999 accusing the mother of burning the boy with a curling iron. For some unknown reason, the state dropped the investigation.

This last bit is particularly important, it implies Michigan dropped the ball long before the dump in Nebraska. Which is to say, this may very well have been an abandonment that never would have happened had there been intervention back at the point where the adopted kid was accused of being burned by his adoptive mother.

All of which points back at the larger problems involved in follow up post placement for adoptees and how over and over again, these kids are simply left to suffer while the adopters collect the federal checks.

Oct 17th

AP by way of CNN- Parents who left teen under safe haven law lose custody

The report said Terri Martin told Nebraska officials that she took the boy there to “scare him,” yet she denied incidents of aggression.

It also said state records showed evidence that neither parent wanted the 13-year-old, who was adopted along with his 10-year-old brother.

AP by way of Faux/Fox Detroit, Court Grants State Temporary Custody of 4 Children

The report also cited a history of referrals to child-welfare officials because of reports of injuries to the teen. Carley is seeking to eliminate the Martins’ parental rights over the 13-year-old. The next court hearing is Nov. 7.

“We think there are some possibilities they could learn to parent the other three safely,” Carley said.

Nebraska has agreed to drop jurisdiction over the teen and let Michigan help him.

Yeah, that would be the Michigan child-welfare system that has apparently already failed him spectacularly. But right back in he goes, ’cause Nebraska doesn’t want him either. This is a kid who has been abandoned not merely by his adopters, but by every state tasked with helping him.

If there was an ongoing history of injuries to the kid, I ask again, what was the deal on his placement? If the adopters were receiving subsidies that would usually mean they took in an older child or sibling group or ’special needs’ kid out of the foster care system. If he was interacting with the system repeatedly due to injuries and burns, who was the person or agency responsible for keeping him with this set of adopters?

Just dumping the kid back into the broken Michigan system ‘disapears’ him right back in.

If Nebraska was at all serious about ’saving’ kids, they might not be so quick to hand over jurisdiction.

But that’s not what Nebraska’s dump law is about. Clearly.

Getting him and his siblings away from the adopters is one thing, getting him away from the system that sent him right back to those adopters after injuries and burns is apparently quite another.

Be sure to see the video piece related to this link, as there are many new details in it, including allegations of the boy having endured sexual abuse.

More video, (again see below *) New Details in Michigan Safe Haven Case, The piece details the adopters charged in Michigan with abuse and neglect.

They claim the boy was abandoned in Nebraska after being advised to do so by a therapist and that his adopters…

…tried to find him a new home again and again.

So once again we have a ‘therapist’ whatever that might mean and whatever qualifications that might entail, telling the guardians to use the dump law.

State Sen. Stuthman (the longtime supporter and sponsor of the Nebraska dump law) wants her prosecuted in Michigan to send a message to the rest of the country.

The ‘message’ of course being that no matter how broadly the Nebraska law was written, everyone involved is now shitting bricks at the prospect of hoards of dumpers crossing state lines to bring their potential dumplings to Nebraska. Gee, usually that’s the kind of thing one might want to think about BEFORE such gets signed into law.

So now we’ve got legalized child abandonment/ ’safe haven’ advocates like State Senator Stuthman trying to close the barn door long after the fact.

It’s important to keep in mind that Sen. Stuthman and other such advocates are precisely who and what got Nebraska into this mess in the first place, all based upon their blind insistence that Nebraska ‘needed’ such a law.

Hint, no kid ever NEEDS to be abandoned.

Also note,

… the court papers outline how the family tried to give back the troubled boy since he was four even going to the birthmother.

This is interesting as it means the adopters had some form of access to the original mother.

(Nebraska) DHHS News Release Safe Haven Youth Returns to Michigan

Also importantly, NPR has a five minute All Things Considered piece, Neb. Safe Haven Law Draws More Than Infants, along with links to past stories about the Nebraska disaster.

It goes into detail about some of the kids themselves reactions to being dumped, describing the extreme duress this law is putting some of the kids through.

October 18th-

Omaha World-Herald, Teen to go home, but state will have custody

Oakland County, Mich., prosecutors are seeking temporary custody of four of the 13-year-old’s siblings still living at home. Deb Carley, the county prosecutor, said an investigation found that the parents had neglected all their children.

Well, mission accomplished, eh?

Right back into the system that didn’t think his adopters were bad enough to warrant losing him prior to the dump.

But Nebraska understands the precedent that would be set by accepting even one out of state dump, so ‘what best for the kid’ be damned. Quick! Get ‘em on a plane!

I can’t wait to see what his next digs are going to be like, foster care? Group home? Think the siblings will get to stay together?

Yeah, well, somehow I doubt wherever Michigan decides to park him until he ages out will be making CNN anytime soon.

This boy is dumped alright.

Nebraska’s washed its hands of him and the odds of him finding ‘a loving adoptive home’ back in Michigan aren’t looking so hot.

* FINALLY-

I’m having some difficulty linking the individual videos, but you can use the search feature on the homepage of CBS 3 news in Omaha to pull up the video links, just search by the video segment names:

Michigan Mom Drops off Son Under Safe Haven 10/13/08 6:44pm

Michigan Boy Latest Safe Haven Drop-Off 10/13/08 11:48pm

Safe Haven Case in Michigan Reveals Child in Trouble 10/14/08 11:44pm

New Details in Michigan Safe Haven Case 10/17/08 6:55pm

***

I suppose the next question should be how many more kids, unwanted, adopted, or otherwise are going to be taken on 12 hour or more car rides to be dumped by those who have physical custody of them?

If Nebraska legislators think this is “not a crisis” perhaps that has more to do with it not being a crisis for them.

For the kids, they can’t wait until January for the Nebraska legislature to step up and begin to tackle (or perhaps if they have the courage, ‘undo’ to the extent they can going forward) the crisis they created.

They can’t wait while legislators hem and haw and contemplate the possibilities.

They need an end to legalized abandonments.

And they need it now.

To date 21 kids have undergone some form of abandonment in Nebraska, even if NE DHHS only formally counts 18 of them (link opens a PDF), (see my earlier blogging on the numbers game being played here.) That’s 21 kids who would not have had to endure the turmoil of being abandoned but for the short sighted and ill-advised actions of the Nebraska legislature.

At what point do they finally recognize their little social experiment is causing harm to the kids?

What will it take before legislators finally show some spine and put an end to the mess they’ve created?

Legalized child abandonment laws need to be REPEALED. Period. No state should ever be in the business of actively encouraging child abandonment.

The kids can’t wait another day, …another hour, …another minute.

Only Nebraska legislators hold the power to put a stop to this, it’s long past time they realized their mistake and worked to prevent further damage.

As for the 21 kids already enduring the effects of this legislation, they’ll be living with it the rest of their lives.

For each and every one of them, trust me on this, I think they’d be the first to tell you, it was absolutely a point of crisis.

A crisis they will be enduring the consequences of from now on.

***

Just a quick little post today.

By way of this WJZ-TV piece, Dead Girls’ Mother Was Investigated For Neglect, we find two new pieces of information.

First, a fund has been established to support the surviving seven year-old. Below are the only details on it I’ve been able to find so far:

Due to the outpouring of concern and well-wishes from the community, the Calvert County Department of Social Services has established a way for interested community members to contribute funds, toys, clothes or other appropriate items to support the recovery of the surviving child in the Bowman case.Those interested in contributing should send appropriate items and tax-deductible contributions to:

Calvert County Dept. of Social Services
c/o: Calvert’s Child
200 Duke Street
Prince Frederick, MD 20678

Secondly, we have Evon Keller, claiming to have made a complaint call on Bowman back in 2003. The article says the Bowmans were living “near Landover” at the time, which would be in Prince George’s County. Authorities apparently have no record of Keller having called.

Dennis Edwards reports a social worker visited Renee Bowman’s home earlier this year after an anonymous tip.

The children were ok, but their good health didn’t last for long.

The caseworker was dispatched to Renee Bowman’s southern Maryland home in January, an anonymous neglect complaint about one child was at the heart of that investigation, but the child was in good health.

Nine months later, police found the bodies of two adopted daughters in Bowman’s freezer.

“He couldn’t figure out what it was, but they weren’t treating the little girl right,’ said Evon Keller.

Although authorities have no record of her call, Evon Keller says she also made an abuse complaint against Bowman in 2003 when the family lived near Landover.

She believes that complaint, based on information from another neighbor, involved one of the little girls age 9 and 11 whose bodies were apparently moved in the freezer to Lusby.

Keller goes on to say:

“I wish I would have stayed on top of it because I probably could have saved that child’s life. She didn’t have a chance,” said Keller.

Beyond the scope of the article, I wanted to at least pose a very important question that I have yet to see anyone even ask, as to the other two girls, who did not survive being Bowman’s adopted daughters, is anyone giving any thought to their families of origin or potentially even other possible foster families they might have been with prior to be placed with Bowman?

Note that the the (still living) 7 year-old, and (now deceased) 9 year-old were apparently biologically related.

As many foster kids move from foster family to foster family through the years, and no identities have been publicly released, previous families may be unaware that their former foster daughter was one of these kids.

As for their (biologically related) family members and extended family, they too, are likely unaware their daughters ended up being adopted by Renee Bowman.

Notifying the families is the right thing to do.

There can be few fates worse than to go about your life assuming your child is still out there somewhere, only to find out later that your child has not only died, but died like this.

But then, how can a family demand justice and answers if they are never even informed of their child’s death?

I’ve done multiple posts within this 24 hour period so be sure to see the post beneath this one as well.

***

This is my fourth post following the horrific events in Maryland this past week, the grizzly discovery of two of Renee Bowman’s adopted daughters kept in a freezer in a Southern Maryland home and a third adopted daughter barely escaping with her life by jumping out of a window after being locked in and left alone. The brave 7 year-old showed long term signs of severe abuse.

My 3 earlier posts can be found by way of my Maryland tag.

As many new readers are finding my page via websearches, the short introduction is I’m an adult adoptee Bastard blogger, who lives in Maryland. If you want to know more, visit my about page, or simply explore some of the tags down the left side of my blog.

***

I don’t have a lot of time to put this post together, but I at least wanted to provide a few of the links readers may want to explore further.

This AP piece details some of the concerns surrounding the issue of outsourcing home studies and other aspects of the process. Lack of oversight on the private contractors has been an ongoing issue.

AP, by way of The Capital DC welfare agency questioned about adoptions after deaths October 1, 2008:

Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights, said the New York-based advocacy group has long had concerns about whether D.C.’s child welfare agency adequately supervises private contractors. The group brought a class-action lawsuit against the city nearly 20 years ago that eventually forced the child welfare system into receivership.

In July, Children’s Rights sought to hold the city in contempt for failing to make adequate progress. Lowry said work done by contractors was one of the concerns.

Wexler, of the reform group, said he worries that D.C. social workers might have been under pressure to hastily finalize adoptions because of payments — up to $8,000 per child — that state and local governments get from the federal government for adoptions.

Gerald said D.C. received an incentive award only in 2004, the year Bowman adopted the two younger girls.

While autopsy findings are not in yet, (and may not be for some time) we do have, by way of the Post, what Renee Bowman told police about how the two girls died.

Washington Post Starvation, Injury Cited as Causes of Girls’ Deaths October 2, 2008:

The Calvert County woman who is being investigated in the death of her two adopted daughters found frozen in her home told police that one child died of starvation and the other died after apparently falling backward, two law enforcement sources said today.

Also be sure to note this paragraph from the same article concerning the private contractor who did the initial home study (Board of Child Care of the United Methodist Church in Baltimore, a faith-based organization:)

The private agency that performed the initial study of Bowman’s application to become a foster parent, and eventually an adoptive parent, released a statement yesterday saying that its recommendations were reviewed by CFSA and Superior Court. The Baltimore-based agency, the Board of Child Care, has a $2.7 million contract to provide services to CFSA through Jan. 31.

Also see the Washington Post for More Tests Are Needed To ID Girls In Freezer October 2, 2008, which clarifies the series of moves, county to county:

“This is an unusual case where all of these girls had limited exposure to the outside world,” Baur said.

As detectives awaited further findings from the medical examiner, they continued to try to trace Bowman’s movements from Montgomery to Charles County to Calvert. The children were apparently in the freezer when it was moved to each location. Investigators have found no record of school attendance in those counties for the children, who would be 9 and 11, or for their 7-year-old sister, who was found wandering a Calvert street last week.

Here are two more pieces:

Gazette.net Initial autopsy of frozen human remains did not show cause of death October 2, 2008

AP, By way of the Baltimore Sun Girls in freezer had likely been dead for months October 2, 2008

WTOP radio is reporting that the remains are those of the two adopted girls, Sources: Remains in freezer are adopted girls October 2, 1:04pm

Authorities are confident the two young girls found in a freezer in a southern Maryland home are the adopted daughters of Renee Bowman, according to sources close to the investigation.

and

Sources say the girl’s names and photos will be released in the hopes someone may remember seeing the girls alive. Police say this could help determine when and where they died.

As I had mentioned in earlier posts, many neighbors were unaware Bowman even had kids.

See WJZ-TV 13 Dead Girls’ Mother Was Investigated For Neglect October 2, 2008

Montgomery County police say it’s almost as if the three adopted girls didn’t exist in to the outside world.

In the house where they believe two of them were murdered, neighbors say they don’t remember seeing children, and they were never enrolled in any Maryland school.

Neighbors in southern Maryland also say they didn’t ever see the surviving child outdoors.

We also learn that Bowman HAD been visited by a caseworker responding to an anonymous tip about her while living in Charles County (between her time in Montgomery and Calvert Counties.) The visit had not shown up in initial searches as Bowman was living under an assumed name in Charles County:

For a short time, Bowman lived in Charles County too, and Social Services is reporting it did respond to a complaint about a neglected child there in January.

They say when they arrived, the child looked healthy and the house clean.

and

Earlier this week, the state Child Welfare Agency said it had never been contacted about Bowman, but when they learned the 43-year-old woman did use an alias late Thursday, they did find that complaint about child neglect.

The Maryland Department of Human Resources issued the following statement involving the case:

“Earlier this week, the Maryland Department of Human Resources (DHR) conducted a state-wide search of our data systems to determine whether our agency had ever received a child abuse, neglect or abandonment complaint regarding the Bowman family.

After learning yesterday that Ms. Bowman may have used a fictitious name while she resided in Charles County, we conducted an additional search of our records.

This additional search has uncovered that DHR received a single, anonymous call from a person reporting an allegation of child neglect.

This call resulted in a caseworker visiting Ms. Bowman’s home in January of 2008. During the visit, the caseworker observed the home to be clean and appropriately furnished but did notice a smell of mildew in the home. Dogs and cats were also in the home.

Ms. Bowman reported the smell in the home was caused by a water leak in her basement. The child was observed to be of appropriate weight and good health. Conditions in the home were adequate to meet the needs of the child. Based on these findings and observations no neglect was found at that time.

DHR staff will work with law enforcement and the state’s attorneys’ office as this complicated investigation continues.”

A second similar story can be found in the Baltimore Sun Social workers found no problem at Bowman home, October3, 2008, which confirms the name deception:

Bowman used a false name while living in Charles County, officials said.

It appears that Bowman moved from Charles County to Calvert County sometime shortly after the social worker’s visit, perhaps trying to stay one step ahead of entanglement with the system in any form.

***

Finally, perhaps somewhat separated from links bearing at least some resemblance to ‘news’, we find today’s Washington Post piece, Shopping On eBay As Girls Lay Dead, which begins to looks a hell of a lot less like actual news and more like the national tabloids. None-the-less, read the piece, it does contain some pertinent details, it’s a shame the writers, Petula Dvorak, Meg Smith and Ashley Halsey III couldn’t be bothered to write such into a real news story.

While titillating readers and appealing to Americans’ socially voyeuristic tendencies, detailing Bowman’s recent eBay purchases down to the clothing size, or her “love for the Internet — she had at least three e-mail addresses” (good grief! Utilizing three e-mail addresses is enough to tag you as somehow extraordinary? Oh please!) and her mention of “Dexter” as her favourite television show, the article completely misses the core fundamental aspect of the Bowman case when the authors ponder:

…fact-finding is unlikely to answer one of the questions that make the case so horrifying: How could a mother go on with life knowing that her daughters lay encased in ice in the freezer?

That aspect of course, being that Bowman was an ADOPTIVE mother, these were her ADOPTED daughters.

Whether or not that made it any easier for her to do what she did we may never know.

But what we do know is that unlike biological parents, Bowman went through a state-run (o.k. D.C, District run) vetting process, and was state approved to parent, not once by three times over.

That is what lies at the heart of this case, not irrelevant space fillers along the lines of “”I love to shop!”

(All of which is to say, articles focusing on eBay habits on page A-1 means it’s time for the Post to get its eye back on the ball.)

I’m doing two posts tonight, so please also be sure to read Adoption subsidies for frozen corpses, more on the Maryland nightmare for part II of my coverage. (This third post is coming almost immediately on the heels of my second post following the developing Maryland story. I cut this writing about today’s Washington Post piece off the bottom of my last post to cut down the length and try to maintain the continuity.)

For new readers, also be sure to go back to part I, Maryland- 3 adopted daughters; 1 beaten, 2 dead, frozen in freezer for 7 months to get up to speed

***

Wednesday’s Washington Post reveals more details in its most recent article, Girls May Have Been Dead More Than a Year, Police Say. This latest piece says Bowman may have moved to Prince George’s OR Charles County:

Renee D. Bowman, 43, who arrived in Calvert in February, “indicated” in an interview that the bodies were in the freezer when she moved out of her former residence in the Rockville area, investigators have said. Yesterday, authorities revealed that she left that area last October or November and then stayed briefly in Prince George’s or Charles County before moving to Calvert.

So we may still only be dealing with three counties.

The new article also reveals that Bowman on top of the misdemeanor conviction, Bowman had filed for bankruptcy and that the information may not have been included in the outsourced background check:

The case continued to raise questions about D.C. child welfare services yesterday, three days after the bodies were found. The D.C. Child and Family Services Agency recommended Bowman as a suitable adoptive parent even though she filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001, the year she adopted one foster child, and had just emerged from it in 2004, when she adopted two others. In between, she lost her Landover house to foreclosure.

Bowman, now jailed on child abuse charges, had also been convicted in 1999 of a misdemeanor charge of “threatening bodily harm” to a 72-year-old man.

“We want to know how did this person . . . qualify to become an adoptive parent?” said D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), chairman of the Committee on Human Services and a former social worker. “Is there anything we don’t know or should have known that would have prevented the adoption?”

Acting Attorney General Peter Nickles said he was not aware of the bankruptcy filings or the misdemeanor conviction and does not believe that the information was included in a home visit report generated by a private contractor.

“That was not revealed. At least, I don’t think it was revealed,” he said. “I’m not saying . . . that I’ve seen everything.”

Then again, as the contractor, Board of Child Care of the United Methodist Church, (yes, folks more faith based adoption entanglement) isn’t saying anything either, we may just be looking at finger pointing and ass-covering in all directions at this point.

According to the Post:

Thomas Curcio, president of the nonprofit Board of Child Care, the private agency hired by the city to evaluate Bowman, has not responded to phone messages seeking a comment on the case.

As details of the adoption process are kept secret by law, determining misconduct in the process becomes an incredibly complicated endevour.

Bowman’s adoptions were approved by a D.C. Superior Court judge after a background investigation by a private agency under contract with the child services agency. Records of the adoptions remain confidential under D.C. law.

Meanwhile baby-step reforms, as opposed to comprehensive systemic overhauls (which I spoke to in my last post) are already being contemplated:

The case is prompting discussion among child-welfare advocates in the region about developing a standardized protocol to ensure thorough examinations of prospective adoptive parents and increasing post-adoption monitoring. Most states and the District have no post-adoption monitoring systems, experts said.

We also get a glimpse of the DC scope of the federal adoption subsidies:

As of last month, 2,295 people who adopted from the District were receiving the tax-free federal subsidy of $800 a month per child, said Mafara Hobson, spokeswoman for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D).

And a snapshot if you will of Bowman’s recent work history:

A spokeswoman for Suburban Hospital in Bethesda said Bowman did secretarial work there from September 2004 to June 2006. She worked as a patient appointment scheduler at the Center for Ambulatory Surgery in the District from May 1989 to June 1993, then again from May 1998 to December 2000, according to a spokeswoman for the facility, which recently changed its name to MedStar Surgery Center.

Most importantly, the Post has dug out the details of the the incident that led to the misdemeanor conviction:

In 1999, according to D.C. Superior Court records, Bowman, in a vehicle, pulled alongside a 72-year-old man’s car and angrily demanded that he pay her for damages to her car caused during an earlier accident. The man, who was with a woman, quoted Bowman as yelling: “I want my $900. . . . If that [expletive] wasn’t sitting next to you, I’d whup your [expletive] right now.”

He said Bowman continued to follow him and threaten him that day, at one point saying she would “get the drug boys around the corner” to break into his house and beat him. Bowman received a 6-month suspended sentenced and was put on probation for a year.

The Post article also contains new details about Bowman’s boyfriend who has been questioned by the Police:

When the 7-year-old spoke with Calvert authorities Friday, she said her mother had beaten her, but she spoke kindly about a man she considered to be her father. He is not her biological father, authorities said, but her mother’s boyfriend.

The girl “thought the world of him,” Detective Sergeant Moore said.

Officials identified him as Joe C. Dickerson and said he was cooperative during an interview. They would not say what he had told them when asked about the bodies in the freezer. They said he visited Bowman at her home frequently but did not live there.

At yesterday’s custody hearing:

The 7-year-old was placed in the custody of the Maryland Department of Human Resources after a court hearing that was closed to the public. The girl remained in the hospital late yesterday afternoon, and she was scheduled to be placed with a Calvert foster family, officials said.

The Department of Human Resources said it had found no records of any child abuse or neglect complaints about this family.

***

Today more details are emerging. The Washington Post article, Md. Mother Jailed After Bodies Of 2 Children Found in Freezer, for example, contains a wealth of sad new details.

With Bowman in jail, charged with child abuse, and investigators working to piece together what happened, the case again shined a spotlight on the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, which recommended Bowman to a D.C. Superior Court judge as a suitable adoptive parent in 2001 and 2004. The girls had been wards of the D.C. government.

Secrecy in adoption is leaving many questions unanswered:

Yesterday, myriad questions about Bowman’s adoptions went unanswered as city and court officials in the District, citing confidentiality laws, declined to reveal details of a background check of Bowman that was performed by a private contractor. They said they were unaware of her 1999 misdemeanor conviction in the District for threatening to hurt someone.

We learn two of the girls, the surviving 7 year old and the 9 year old were biological sisters as well:

The missing children would be 9 and 11, officials said. They said the 7-year-old girl is a biological sister of the 9-year-old. All three were foster children of Bowman’s before she adopted the oldest child in 2001 and the other two in 2004, officials said.

There are no records of the three girls having been enrolled in public school in three Maryland Counties Bowman has lived in:

Many neighbors near Bowman’s beige ranch-style home in Lusby and at her former residence in Rockville said they had never seen children at her home and were unaware that she had any. Authorities in Calvert and Montgomery County — and in Prince George’s County, where she lived for a time — said they could find no record of the children being enrolled in public schools.

More details are emerging of the abuse the 7 year old adopted girl endured:

Bowman was being held yesterday on charges of child abuse in connection with injuries to the 7-year-old. The girl escaped from her locked bedroom Thursday by jumping out a window, police said.

Bowman admitted beating the girl with a “hard-heeled shoe,” the sheriff’s office said. The girl told police her mother beat her with a white shoe to the point that it was covered in blood, officials said.

The child had “extensive open infected sores and open lesions,” several injuries to her feet and knees, and ligature marks and extensive scarring on her neck, according to charging documents filed in court.

Clearly if there was “extensive scarring on her neck” her abuse and neglect had been ongoing.

A second Post article details the search for evidence at the former residence in Montgomery County, see Detectives Scour for Evidence in Case of Dead Girls. It also reveals even further insanity, the freezer with the dead girls may have been moved not once, but twice:

Starks said Bowman left Rockville in October or November of last year. She lived in Charles County briefly before moving to Calvert, officials said.

The chronology, which differs from information made public yesterday, raises the startling possibility that the bodies of the children might have been moved not once but twice.

All of which sits firmly in the context of D.C.’s Banita Jacks case from earlier this year and the aftermath. (A snapshot of the Jacks catastrophic failure can be found in articles such as this CBS news piece from last January, D.C. Woman: “Demons” Possessed Slain Girls, it also dealt with issues of kids being in and out of school and lack of follow up to determine the children’s welfare. But then she’s a research topic unto herself.) The disastrous outcome led to ongoing work trying to clean up the mess that is DC Child and Family Services Agency (see articles such as this, Court Orders CFSA To Do Obvious: Get A Plan, from the Washington City Paper for example.)

The case has again shined a spotlight on the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, which recommended Bowman to a D.C. Superior Court judge as a suitable adoptive parent in 2001 and 2004. The girls had been wards of the D.C. government.

The child welfare agency came under fire in January after social workers failed to investigate reports of alleged child neglect by Banita Jacks, a Southeast Washington woman now charged with killing her four daughters in their home.

The Bowman mess also brings to the fore the issue of background checks being outsourced to private contractors:

…myriad questions about Bowman’s adoptions went unanswered as city and court officials in the District, citing confidentiality laws, declined to reveal details of a background check of Bowman that was performed by a private contractor. They said they were unaware of her 1999 misdemeanor conviction in the District for threatening to hurt someone.

In the midst of these remarkable circumstances, (DC) Mayor Fenty had this to say:

“It would be too premature, too irresponsible, to say someone along the chain messed up,” Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said at a news conference.

(Fenty has been busy covering his own ass in all this, pointing out repeatedly that the adoptions took place before he came to office.)

Again, rather than blaming individuals and saying any one given person let these girls slide, I think we have to look systemically. After the adoption, were there follow up visits? Were there supposed to be any? (Further down in this post I’ve come across a quote which seems to imply that once a child is placed, the job is in all meaningful ways ‘done’.)

Was it ANYONE’S job to ensure these girls were getting any kind of education? Were they ever enrolled in any school anywhere? Do kids who are not enrolled just fall through the cracks? Is anyone tasked with making sure they are in some form of schooling if they are not in public schools, or do parents just get to opt out completely and no one cares? (Further does that mean federal adoption subsidies can be given to parents who opt their kids out of education?) Apparently it’s no one’s job to make sure these girls were getting education of some kind, they’re not in county schools, but no one checks to see if they’ve moved to private, or homeschool? Do they just fall off the edge? If it’s not already, then it’s long past time for it be added to someone’s job description.

The article continues:

Authorities in Calvert and County – and in Prince George’s County, where she lived for a time — said they could find no record of the children being enrolled in public schools.

(I’m still trying to determine when were the Bowmans living in Prince George’s? Before or after their time in Montogomery? How many of Maryland’s twenty-three counties were touched by this case?)

Through all of this the moves, the lack of any evidence of these girls being given any kind of education, heck the lack of evidence that these girls were even still alive, the checks kept rolling in. Federal “special needs” adoption subsidies to the tune of $2, 400 a month. Yes, thousands of dollars without so much as ever asking, oh by the way, the girls are still alive, right?

Adoption subsidies for frozen corpses.

Keep up the ‘good work’ money, no evidence of post placement children required.

In Montgomery and Calvery Counties, just as I suspected, some neighbors were unaware Bowman even had kids:

Many neighbors near Bowman’s beige ranch-style home in Lusby and at the Rockville residence said they had never seen children at her home and were unaware that she had any.

Moving from Rockville/Aspen Hill in Montgomery Co. to Lusby in Calvert Co. Bowman claiming to be in failing health, apparently left a mess in her wake:

A few months before moving out, Bowman complained of back pain and said she had cancer, according to neighbor Shirley Knapp.

After Bowman moved to Calvert, the landlord complained to Howard Knapp, Shirley’s husband, about the mess that had been left behind. “They were pigs,” he recalled the landlord saying. “They trashed the house, and there was at least one dead cat in there.”

So again, I ask, in the wake of the adoptions, where were the follow up visits? Was the house in similar condition through the time the Bowmans lived there?

Today, (Tuesday), the autopsy for the dead sisters was scheduled. Details are likely to be forthcoming soon. In light of this paragraph from early on in the article:

The Calvert sheriff’s office said in a statement that Bowman told investigators the remains in the freezer were those of her older two adopted daughters. She told them she wrapped one of the children in a plastic garbage bag and the other in a rug, officials said.

I am GUESSING that the two girls may have died in perhaps separate incidents. Had they died at once, Bowman would have been more likely to treat the two bodies similarly. As one was in a garbage bad and the other in a rug, there’s the possibility that we could be looking at two separate events.

As for the final surviving daughter, forced to save herself, she’s apparently going into the Maryland system:

The Maryland Department of Human Resources will file a petition in court today to gain custody of the 7-year-old.

A third article in today’s Post, Woman Met Adoption Requirements, D.C. Officials Say details the adoptions of the girls and the “special needs” adoption subsidies Bowman was receiving:

D.C. officials said yesterday that Renee D. Bowman followed the proper procedures for adopting three children and passed the background check and home study required for adoptive parents.

“Based on my review of the evidence today, all that happened,” said Peter Nickles, the city’s acting attorney general. He said that as part of a federal program for parents who take in “special needs” children, Bowman received a total of $2,400 a month for the three girls.

The special-needs designation can mean that children are part of a sibling set or a racial minority group, have a learning disability or were relinquished to the state by their biological parents, among other things.

Despite a previous conviction a misdemeanor that was clearly pertinent, Bowman sailed on through the process:

The city’s adoption process involves an investigation into the prospective parent’s background and home life, a child-rearing class, interviews and other evaluations. The final approval comes from a judge in the Superior Court’s family division.

Bowman cleared the hurdles despite a 1999 conviction on one misdemeanor count of “threats to do bodily harm.” She was given a six-month suspended sentence and put on supervised probation for a year, according to Superior Court records.

D.C. officials said at a news conference that they were unaware of the case and did not know whether a misdemeanor conviction would prevent an adoption .

As the District had outsourced the background check, they are now claiming ignorance of the misdemeanor conviction. This brings us to our next question, how many other people were allowed to adopt with prior convictions and what are the implications for the children they adopted?

Worse, they admit, they don’t even know whether or not the conviction would have disqualified her, or whether the adoptions would have gone forward anyway had they known!

As I continue to say, SYSTEMIC problems.

Fortunately, we do at least get the name of the private contractor:

The private agency that did the background check, the Baltimore-based Board of Child Care, did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.

Which is to say they’re ducking this one and hoping attention goes elsewhere. That would be the Board of Child Care of the United Methodist Church. (Get yer ‘faith-based’ homestudies here!) The BOCC tries to be one stop shopping, providing everything from home studies to “all of the required post-placement services.”

Which brings us around to Adoptions Together, (yet another topic unto itself) from two directions, both the Post article with the quote below indicating that those with a misdemeanor conviction have gotten children in the past:

“Whenever there’s any kind of a criminal history, it’s always carefully evaluated,” said Janice Goldwater, executive director of the nonprofit Adoptions Together, which works with government agencies in the Washington region. “But there are people that adopt children that have misdemeanors.”

and by way of the Board of Child Care adoption page, which makes it clear Adoptions Together isn’t merely familiar with the broader DC adoption milieu, the Board of Child Care is in “partnership” with Adoptions Together:

The Board of Child Care is licensed as a child placement agency in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Through an established partnership with Adoptions Together, a comprehensive array of adoption services are available, including adoption counseling, home studies, assistance in the waiting period, full placement services, reunion services, and all of the required post-placement services.

The real bottom line is that ‘the buck’ appears to have stopped nowhere.

After placement, apparently the job is done:

“Once the court decides a family is fit, once it takes place, that ends the jurisdiction of the state or D.C,” said Mayor Fenty.

In other words, a clusterfuck of no one stepping up to the plate to say ‘damnit, someone somewhere in one of these systems needed to step forward to say it WAS their responsibility or their departments’ responsibility to ensure kids are still alive post placement’.

***

Lots of other factors played into this mess, communication between DC and MD, outsourcing of background checks leading to deniability, lack of follow up once a kid is placed, homeschool laws that place less scrutiny on families when a child is no longer in public schools (based on assumptions that the kids must be getting something somewhere else), adoption subsidies that go out whether the kids is provably alive or not, and as always, the lack of budget, time, personel, etc to do what really should have been done every step of the way.

To do what kids need to ensure their very lives.

The SYSTEM failed these adopted girls. It’s past time to start re-evaluating from the ground up.

Authorities said they found what appeared to be the bodies of two children in a “drop-in” freezer Saturday in the basement of Renee Bowman’s home on Buckskin Trail in Lusby. Sheriff’s deputies had been searching the house for evidence in connection with the alleged beating of a third child, age 7.

In a news release issued this morning, authorities said Bowman, 43, told investigators that she had adopted three daughters from the District. One of the girls was found a short distance from her home on Friday morning after escaping from a locked bedroom by jumping out the window, the Calvert sheriff’s office said.

Bowman allegedly told investigators that she had beaten that child. She also allegedly said the bodies found in the freezer were the remains of her other two daughters, and had been in the freezer at least since she moved to Lusby from Rockville in February.

The other two girls, who appear to have died in Rockville (Montgomery Co, MD, a DC area suburban county) would have been ages 11 and 9:

Authorities said the two dead children’s remains were encased in a block of ice, and their identities likely will not be confirmed until the ice melts and autopsies can be performed. They said Bowman told them the girls were born in 1999 and 1997, and adopted by her four years ago.

(Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum / September 29, 2008)

As for the seven year old who escaped with her life, she was a prisoner in her own adoptive “home”/hellhole:

The investigation began Friday, after neighbors on Pawnee Lane found the 7-year-old who had jumped from the second-story window of the house on Buckskin Trail, a nearby street in the same subdivision. The girl was badly bruised and apparently beaten, authorities said today. Neighbors alerted the authorities, who transported the girl to Children’s Hospital and opened a child abuse investigation.

Some time later, Bowman came to the sheriff’s office after learning deputies had found her daughter. According to investigators, “she confessed to beating the victim with a ‘hard heeled shoe.’ “

Authorities said Bowman told them the 7-year-old was rarely, if ever, permitted to leave the house. She was beaten “all over” and remains hospitalized, Evans said at the news conference.

Calvert authorities said there is no evidence that the 7-year-old was enrolled in Calvert County schools. Bowman does not have a criminal record and has not been accused of neglect or abuse in the past, they said.

Detectives obtained a search warrant for the house in an effort to find the shoe and other evidence. While searching the house, they found human remains in the freezer.

A copy of the Calvert County (Maryland) Sheriff’s press release can be found here in PDF format.

Naturally, the Baltimore Sun is also doing major coverage, Children’s remains found in Calvert Co. freezer:

Renee Bowman, 43, has been arrested on allegations that she abused her 7-year-old daughter, who was found walking barefoot on a neighborhood street Friday night.

The neighbor recounted today that the disheveled girl told him: “My mother just beats me. She just beats me to death.”

Authorities said the girl “showed signs of extreme abuse and neglect” and had fled her home Friday by jumping out of a second-floor window after she was locked in her bedroom.

Renee Bowman

The girl sounds like she barely escaped with her life:

Phillip Garrett, who said he found the 7-year-old walking on a gravel road early Friday evening with no socks or shoes, described his shock in seeing the girl. Her pink nightgown was muddied and her pigtails, fastened with pink barrettes, were matted.

Garrett, 21, was smoking a cigarette with his neighbor on his front lawn. He called out to her. “I said, ‘What’s wrong? Are you OK?’ “

According to Garrett, the girl answered, “My mother just beats me. She just beats me to death.”

Garrett, who was walking his cocker spaniel, Cocco, today as reporters from across the region descended on the rural area, described seeing the girl walking along Pawnee Lane, which intersects with Buckskin Trail. She told Garrett and his friend that her mother had “locked her out” of the house.

“She was very brave,” Garrett said. “She definitely looked like she had been through a lot.”

Garrett, who is a fashion designer and lives with his parents, said he embraced the girl, who stood stoically. He carried her into his neighbor’s home and called 911.

The girl told Garrett that she had not eaten in days, and he ordered a pizza. She requested pepperoni and ham, he said.

As they waited for about an hour, he said the girl told him she had stayed outside the whole night and had tried to knock on people’s doors but no one answered. The girl told him she attended school in Indian Head. While she never cried, she repeatedly expressed opposite emotions for her mother and father, Garrett said.

“She kept asking, ‘Is my mother going to be arrested?’” Alternately, she expressed love for her father, Garrett said.

“She was very protective of her father,” Garrett said. “He was the only one that cared. He was the one that took care of her.”

Of her two sisters, Garrett said, “She said her siblings had been beaten to death and one day, they just didn’t come back.”

The above is interesting in that it contradicts the Post article, saying that she did attend school, this will be an important contradiction to follow as whether or not she attended school may have determined much of her level of contact with the world outside the house.

In the wake of the adoptions, it looks as though these kids just fell through the cracks, no one checking to see if the girls were even alive. Had the 7 year old not gotten herself out, I think we can all guess what might well have happened. She, like her adopted sisters was on her own, left to fend for herself against her adoptive “mother”:

The girl is being treated a children’s hospital in Washington, said Moore, who declined to describe her injuries.

“She’s a hero for saving her own life,” he said. “I don’t know what would have happened if she stayed in that environment.”

And as we keep seeing in adoption abuse and murder cases, there are also animals suffering in the home as well:

Moore described the house’s exterior as typical, but he said that inside, it was “just pretty much a mess,” with four cats and a dog who all had severe cases of fleas.

A neighbor was quoted as saying she never saw the Bowman’s girls:

Nancy Sears, 60, who has lived in a home across from the Bowman residence for 18 years, said a woman and man moved into the home in February. She said a previous owner had put a new roof on the home and added vinyl siding a few years ago.

“I never, ever, ever, the whole time, saw any children,” Sears said. “No kids outside.”

Lusby is in Southern Maryland, about 50 miles from Washington DC.

I will be following this closely and will write more as more details emerge.

Maryland is my (ahem) ‘adopted’ home state. It is a study in contradictions, being both the wealthiest state in the nation but also a growing poverty rate, and a growing wage gap between the wealthiest and the poorest that is worse than the national average, a state of haves and have-nots with rich counties and poor counties. Despite the wealth concentrated in some areas of some counties, not everyone benefits, and these inequities spill over into other areas such as social services.

I have many questions about the process of these placements, how did the Bowmans adopt the three daughters and from where (other than the District, i.e. DC), public, familial or private adoptions? Did anyone ever follow up on those placements, checking in on those girls? Were they a sibling group or three separate unrelated adoptions? Etc.

Ultimately, did anyone have any responsibility to ensure these girls were even still alive post placement, or were these girls just left to the Bowmans to do with them what they would? Up to and including allegedly storing two dead adoptees in a freezer for seven months and allegedly nearly beating the third to death after starving her and isolating her from the outside world.

“Maryland, my Maryland” indeed!

On a more personal note, I’m rarely reduced to tears while doing this adoption blogging, I’ve spent the past year wadding through the murky swamps of adoption related abuse, murder, starvation, and unending cruelty, I’ve tackled the ongoing saga of how states have taken up the encouragement of child abandonment, dump laws as policy, and I’ve looked long and hard at the process by which children enter the international adoption trade, be that through child selling or kidnapping, or worse, but through it all, I’m usually more angered than saddened. But this, in my own proverbial back yard has been difficult to write. Not because it’s local, but because seven year olds in the wealthiest state in America have only themselves to depend upon. She was abandoned to an adoption that nearly killed her. An adoption that killed her two sisters.

I’ve spoken repeatedly in my blog about the need to do better by the kids.

How things like allowing parents to opt out of public schools creates a way for children to simply disappear.

At the moment, there’s a shadow of a 7 year old in a hospital not far from here who deserved a hell of a lot better. The existing SYSTEM failed her.

Whatever eventually happens to the Bowmans, we need to look at far more than one “family” and one house and instead work to create systems of prevention. Systems where the kids come first, not their abusers.

***

Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment law went into effect July 18th, 2008. 73 days ago.

The first two kids dumped in Nebraska under the new law, (over the weekend of Sept 13-14) a tween and a teen, were abandoned just over two weeks ago.

Over the past 16 days, 16 kids have been abandoned. (Yes including the sad case of the father who abandoned 9 at once.)

Nebraska legislators should be ashamed.

Speaking as an adoptee coming from a sealed records state, I have no way of knowing whether I was abandoned or spent time in foster care of not, but what I do know is that kids, particularly minors are going to internalize this and live with the Nebraska’s legislators’ social experimentation for the rest of their lives.

At least one story over the past few weeks pointed out that a counselor working with a dumped kid said the hardest part was for the kid to understand that this wasn’t their fault.

Kids are not inanimate objects. Kids are not things to try a policy out on and if it doesn’t work, leave those directly affected to deal with their (state created) ‘personal problems’. Only to head back to some mythic drawing board to ‘tweek’ these laws and try again, as if do-overs don’t matter. Dump bill 2.0 is not going to fix the problems inherent to any dump bill. It will only to subject the next batch of kids to the next bad batch of legislation. The kids can’t walk away from the consequences. Subjecting them to this unnecessary level of trauma is unconscionable.

Kids are not legislative lab rats.

Kids deserve better than abandonment.

If Nebraska abandonments are primarily going to be used as a state mediated way to plug families into support systems, (which should not be faith-based non-profits), then cut out the abandonment step. Make access to genuine support available long before things escalate to the point of child abandonment.

Do not put kids through this emotional ordeal, (nor ever even possibly,) require parents surrender the parental rights to gain access to help.

No state should be in the business of actively encouraging child abandonment, ever.

And yet today that’s precisely where we stand. All 50 states shamefully abandoning all basis of best practices in child welfare, adoption, and genuine concern for the kids as actual individuals and instead telling parents the answers to their problems lies in abandoning their children.

Yes, in time I will get to other posts, filled with links and details and quotes and all that important stuff, but for this one singular moment, this is a post without citation. This is a post purely about expressing rage.

What Nebraska legislators have done in their mad rush to pass SOMETHING is fuck over 16 kids.

It’s past time to stop. What they have done is fundamentally wrong. How many more kids are going to have to endure these political schemes?

These were parents who needed access to services, but not at the cost of even potentially losing their children. Not at the cost of putting any child through this. The ‘cost’ of linking up with what support may or may not be available must not be a kid wondering why ‘mommy doesn’t love them anymore?’ (Enough so as as to abandon them at a designated dump site.) The assumptions in that are all wrong, but the scars are real.

‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy’ in reality, if these past two weeks are any indication, often loves the kid fiercely, but in the end, feels they have no other alternative than to utilize the dump law.

Child abandonments are evidence that the ’system’ is failing these families.

When a child is dumped it is no ’save’, it is evidence that the system didn’t work, so much so that someone felt this was all they had left.

Dumps ’save’ nothing for these children. They break trust. The trust between parents and children and between citizens and the state.

Nebraska can do better. All 50 states can do better.

Child abandonment is evidence of a severely broken system. Passing the hard effects of that down to children, those least able to cope with such is nothing less than a cowardly shirking of duty. It is the ugly admission that some people feel the problems are simply ‘too big’, and rather than tackle them, they leave kids to deal with the consequences, personally, as best they can.

Dump laws are intrinsically bad for kids. They are intrinsically harm based.

It’s time to stop mumbling about the possibility of coming up with ‘new and improved’ ways for the state to encourage child abandonment and instead realize that there is no such thing as a ‘good’ child abandonment law.

Child abandonment is never a ’success’, it is nothing to be cheered, let alone promoted.

Every Child dump is evidence of things gone horribly wrong, of broken systems, of desperation, of regret, and of the state failing its families and children.

Now that we’ve seen the raw face of legalized child abandonment, and what it does to kids, be they 18 or infants, it’s time to strip these abominations out of our states.

Repeal them now.

Nothing less than full repeal.

These ‘tugs’ are nothing if not ironic as I’m no longer a part of ARD, per my resignation from it back in May.

But since it’s the day after and the ARD page isn’t linking to the coverage, I’ll link across to the two articles so far.

In other words, I suppose I’ve been reluctantly talked into doing what people apparently count on me to do. That said, though, I’ll likewise do what people also count on me to do, analysis. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Let’s be clear from the outset, I was not there, I have no firsthand knowledge. I do have some reports, but I’ll focus on the media pieces currently available:

This New Orleans Times Picayune Article, poorly entitled Protesters seek to change laws sealing birth papers came out today, July 23rd.

It mentions “about 60 protesters” took part in the march from Lafayette Park to the Ernest N. Morial convention center.

The ‘adoptee sound bytes’ sounded like this:

For Galliand Adams, Louisiana’s law makes the search for her biological history “incredibly frustrating.”

“I have no idea who I am, and there’s just a big void there,” she said.

Fortunately, Michelle Edmunds was on hand and managed to get at least a bare bones explanation of what open records really are, that made it through into the article:

Other protesters said the laws amount to discrimination.

“This isn’t about searching and reunion. This is about our rights,” said Michelle Edmunds, who came from Canada to join the march.

Unfortunately, this is still pretty bare. I don’t lay such at Michelle’s doorstep, instead, I view it as a lack of educating the reporters on the issues over a period of time leading into the event. Poor articles such as this could have been avoided.

Naturally, to counterweight even such bare bones adoptee demands, the reporter used a quote from the National Council For Adoption (NCFA) (an industry lobby made up of member adoption agencies in Virginia). Their soundbyte, as always co-opting the authentic voice of mothers sounded like this:

“We’re not opposed to open adoption or open records. We’re concerned about the right of privacy for the birth mother,” said Rodney Huey, spokesman for the National Council for Adoption.

“A birth mother, for whatever reason, decided at one point to have her own confidential adoption, and that (confidentiality is) what she was guaranteed,” he said.

For NCFA, which was founded in part to maintain the sealed records system to say they’re not opposed to open records is shall we say, pretty darn interesting. Perhaps we should remind them of this soundbyte the next time we find them lobbying against our open records bills in the states.

In short, a pretty lousy piece. Which is clearly a result of a lack of familiarity with even the basics of what we’re talking about. Use of the term “birth papers” makes it clear, this is turf the reporter clearly hasn’t learned even the basic lingo of. Again, all of which could have been avoided with some work in the run up to the event.

Supposedly there is some photography that went with the article, but it appears not to have made it through to the online edition.

Secondly, perhaps ever so slightly more in keeping with the original history of what was then called the Adoptee Rights Day, the State based focus, Adoptees in New York held their own small event piggybacking on the N’awlins event. This was no doubt to draw attention to the NY bill, still stuck in committee for the third year running.

This was covered in a July 22nd article (yesterday) entitled An emotional call for change there is also video that goes with this piece.

The article explains that they met in the local library:

Local adoptees and birth mothers joined together in the genealogy section of the main library in Downtown Rochester this morning. It’s a place many of them have done research to find their birth parents.

Which then visually tells the audience this is about search and reunion, the article goes on to mention medical records as a possible justification for opening the records:

“It’s strictly to find out your heritage, any birth concerns you might have, any medical problems you feel, (or) if you want to know your ancestry,” said Jeff Hancock, 43, who found out he was adopted just 15 months ago.

Search, reunion, and medical history are all interpersonal issues that are chronologically second (for some people, for others they simply want their papers and will never search, never enter reunion, and never ask parents for information about their medical histories, which of course adoptees would only ever get if the parents consent) to the initial demand that state confiscation of our records must end.

I’ve written extensively about this here on my blog, but this post from June 7th in particular, ARD- Another from the “I hate being right” category- the ‘messaging’ disaster, went into how I was concerned these types of nonsequitor arguments would take center stage in ARD. Again I really hate being right.

This is what happens when adoptees do not have open records 101. They find target settings that undermine the core of the message, that this is ultimately about equality under law.

Medical records simply are not an open records argument. The sooner everyone learns that, is the sooner we can start doing the real work.

They both call it a civil rights issue, and then place themselves into a search venue. A garbled message at best.

In the end, the search and reunion meme wins out and becomes the focus of the article.

Speaking from a purely pragmatic standpoint, our arguments need to be based on both the legal and legislative realities. We’re not going to withstand legal challenges to open records legislation on “But I want to meet my Mommie!” You withstand legal challenges based on how we as a class of people are receiving inequitable treatment under law. We are singled out, and systems created to treat us thusly must be dismantled.

All of which points out how in many ways, serious educational work to get even adoptees on message needs to take place long before an ‘action’ phase is initiated. After all, how the hell are adoptees going to get the media around to what the landscape looks like and what language is appropriate when half the time adoptees themselves don’t even know?

In closing, I am the only one who finds it incredibly ironic that the only print media coverage available online yesterday was about an ARD related event in New York?

<Shakes head, and sighs.>

***

Update

***

I finally got around to digging out the photos. You can find the Times Picayune’s photo gallery here.

Clearly my messaging disaster concerns about those Gladney-120th-anniversary-protest signs “State enforced genetic secrecy kills adoptees” were well founded. Sure enough, guess what was on hand.

Matthew Hinton / Times Picayune

So much for messaging.

<Sigh.>