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

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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.)

***

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.

As always, Bastardette has done important work in laying out the basics of her death and the circumstances surrounding it across two posts she did earlier,

“SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS.” ANOTHER DEAD BABY

and

JESSICA SCOVIIL UPDATE: GRANDMOTHER CALLS FOR BROKEN SYSTEM TO BE FIXED

I’ll let readers explore those rather than reiterate the work that Bastardette has already done.

The “system” failed Jessica completely.

The fact that she was almost returned to her parents two weeks before her miserable death is salt in the wound.

I also want to be sure readers follow across to Lainie Petersen’s blog entry, Taking Away Parenthood: Jessica Scovil and the Media’s Use of the B Word, about how Jessica’s parents are now being (wrongly) referred to as “birthparents” (see the media piece below) and how the underlying ASSUMPTION is that once a kid enters foster care their parents have lost parentage to them. This is not only factually incorrect, but it says a very great deal about those utilizing such terminology. Over and over again we see people presuming “guilty until proven innocent” in relation to those who lose their children to the foster system.

Keep such, incorrect linguistic assumptions in mind when reading articles such as this, Birth parents want foster mother charged

Jackson County sheriff’s detectives are waiting to decide whether to charge Osborne, who lives on Georgia Highway 334 near Nicholson, until they receive the results of toxicology tests, said Chief Deputy David Cochran.

An autopsy performed at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab in Decatur confirmed that Jessica died from heat stroke.

“The next step, I guess, for the parents, is to talk to the district attorney and to ask him to move forward with charges on this case,” said Crandall Heard, attorney for Jessica’s birth parents, Robert Scovil and Evelyn Carter. “That’s all they can do as they work to get through this.”

Allow me to add my own voice to those of Jessica’s parents, Wendy Osborne should absolutely be charged. It’s the only way a thorough investigation will take place.

An obituary for Jessica can be found here, Jessica Scovil.

Perhaps I’ll write more as the words begin to come.

***

Перевести на русский
***

This post is an update to an ongoing series of posts I have made about the death of Dmitry Yakolev/Chase Harrison and the agency that placed him, European Adoption Consultants (EAC). EAC is one of the largest international adoption agencies in the world and the top agency in Russia and Guatemala.

Russian law requires officials be kept up to date by the placing agencies of the disposition of the children placed through them with regular updates for the first three years. In the aftermath of Dmitry’s death, the Russian Federation Ministry of Education and Science opened an investigation into EAC for their apparent failure to report his death immediately.

Dmitry is the the second Russian child EAC had placed who died apparently as a result of actions by their adopters. Logan Higgenbotham was killed by her adoptive mother in 1988. You can read my previous posts about Dmitry and EAC by clicking here (read from bottom to top, as entries are in reverse chronological order.)

***

Yesterday EAC added the following announcement to their webpage:

August 6th, 2008

EAC is proud to announce that we have received confirmation from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation that our accreditation will remain intact and valid. Our staff is honored to be allowed to assist you in completing your forever family.

Their text box about Dmitry and the situation has also changed since it was originally posted, it now reads:

To our EAC Families and Friends

It is with deep regret that we acknowledge the unfortunate loss of one of our own. Chase (Dmitry) Harrison, adopted from Russia 03/2008. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family in this time of sorrow.

Originally, it had read:

To our EAC Families and Friends

It is with deep regret that we acknowledge the unfortunate loss of one of our own. Chase (Dmitry) Harrison, adopted from Russia 03/2008, died on July 8th. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family in this time of sorrow.

We are currently assessing the situation and continuing to work with the Russian Federation on this matter.

As additional information becomes available we will keep you apprised.

I commented upon the original content in my blog post, Dmitry Yakolev/Chase Harrison and European Adoption Consultants, late week update saying at the time:

I find this a rather stunning statement in light of the circumstances.

It makes no mention of how Dmitry died, nor that his death apparently occurred as a result of actions taken by his foster father, Miles H. Harrison, (I’m still looking for confirmation, but it appears the adoption itself was still been in process.) His foster father is currently facing charges of manslaughter for his role in Dmitry’s death.

The EAC statement makes it appear Dmitry simply up and died, when it’s relatively clear (we are still awaiting final autopsy results), that Dmitry died as a result of the actions of a man who had apparently gone through EAC’s approval process to adopt him. This is not merely a case of Dmitry being one of EAC’s “own”, Miles Harrison was also apparently one of EAC’s own.

The statement also says nothing about, nor even acknowledges that there may be an investigation into EAC for having apparently broken Russian law requiring Russian authorities be notified of Dmitry’s death in a timely fashion. (News of his death reached Russian authorities days after the fact. The officials at the Russian Embassy learned via the media.)

Nor is there any mention of EAC’s current status in regard to whether or not they are still accredited to do Russian adoptions.

I have been unable to find any further confirmation of EAC’s claim that they will be maintaining their accreditation through news sources, any statement from the Ministry of Education and Science, or any source other than the agency’s own webpage announcement.

The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation’s english version website sheds no light on the matter.

To date I have no sources stating the Ministry’s investigation into EAC has concluded.

So for what it’s worth, we have EAC’s say so, nothing else.

Finally, I also want to point readers towards Bastardette, as she blogged this before I had the chance, see her piece, Moo! European Adoption Consultants stays in Russia.

The following is a brief introductory paragraph I’ve evolved to include with this series of posts about Andrea Curry-Demus’ Hypernatalist obsession:

Andrea Curry-Demus is a womyn with a history of abducting other womyn’s children, in one of her prior attempts she resorted to stabbing the child’s mother. She pled guilty in 1991 to aggravated assault and reckless endangerment and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison. In August 1998 she was paroled and began serving 10 years of probation.

***

Last night a tentative ID was released on the womyn’s body found in Andrea Curry-Demus’ apartment, it is presumed to be Kia Johnson, although confirmation via dental records is still pending.

Dead Mom is identified Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 20th, ‘08

A woman who was found dead in a Wilkinsburg apartment had been sliced open in the abdomen with a “sharp weapon,” the Allegheny County medical examiner’s office said yesterday. Her hands were bound behind her back with duct tape as were her feet.

The badly decomposed body of Kia Johnson, along with a placenta, was discovered Friday afternoon in the apartment of Andrea Curry-Demus, 38, who on Wednesday had appeared at West Penn Hospital with a newborn baby whom she falsely claimed to be her own.

Ms. Johnson, who was described as about 20 years old, 5 feet, 1 inch tall and weighing between 110 and 120 pounds, was identified by the medical examiner’s office late last night.

The exact cause of death has not been determined, but during a press conference yesterday afternoon, Medical Examiner Dr. Karl Williams said, “Clearly, it is a homicide.”

We also gain a clearer picture of why Andrea Curry-Demus was brought to the hospital Wednesday night with the baby via ambulance, the child, apparently cut from what appears to be his mother’s uterus, wasn’t fully stabilized at that point:

The baby, a boy, had a low heart rate and a low temperature when Ms. Curry-Demus brought him to the hospital, Dr. Williams said. But he recovered quickly. He is still at the hospital.

Baby cut from womb; woman’s body ID’d Pittsburgh Tribune-Review July 20th, ‘08

She was just 18 and due to give birth July 30. She may have been drugged, authorities said, when she was cut open last week and her unborn child taken from her womb.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office on Saturday night tentatively identified a woman found dead in a Wilkinsburg apartment — hands duct-taped behind her back — as Kia Johnson of Wilkinsburg, missing since Tuesday.

Other charges are likely to be forthcoming:

Other charges will be filed as the homicide investigation continues, Assistant Allegheny County Police Superintendent James Morton said during a news conference yesterday.

Johnson’s family (who had earlier been at the apartment waiting for news as to whether or not it was Kia, have now been notified:

The Medical Examiner’s Office said last night that based on circumstantial evidence, authorities believed the dead woman to be Johnson. The woman’s family has been notified, the office said. Dental records are expected to confirm their identification today.

There has also been a fair amount of speculation Kia may have been drugged to incapacitate her due to a lack of evidence of any kind of struggle:

The cause of death will be determined after other test results, including toxicology, are complete.

“We will be looking for any drug that might have helped incapacitate her,” Williams said. “There is not a lot of evidence of a struggle having occurred. There is some evidence that there were drugs at the scene.”

The Medical Examiner couldn’t say whether Kia was alive at the time or not, but he did point out the dependence of the then fetus (the proper medical term for in utero, until the moment of birth) on Kia:

The medical examiner said he couldn’t be sure whether the woman was alive when she was cut open, although the baby would not have survived long inside the mother after she died.

“There is a certain window of opportunity,” Williams said. “The baby is depending on the mother being alive.”

This article, similar to the one above discusses the state the infant was in when he arrived at the hospital:

The baby “was in some degree of distress when it arrived at West Penn Hospital,” but now “is apparently doing well,” he said. “The baby had some problems briefly to begin with — low heart rate, low temperature, probably from blood loss, and recovered very quickly with treatment.”

In previous articles we had seen some description of how Kia had been bound with duct tape and plastic, but this is the first mention I’ve seen of the plastic as having blocked her airways:

Her hands and feet were bound with duct tape, and a plastic material, blocking her airways, was duct-taped over her face, Williams said.

This article explains how police were able to rule out Tina Carter:

Fingerprints were used to rule out at least one person, a pregnant woman named Tina Carter whose family was concerned because they had not seen her in several days.

“I was just so happy that it’s not her,” said friend Rebecca Stevenson of Braddock. “Tina called at 11 last night. Until then, I thought it was her.”

Kia Johnson had apparently been close to her due date:

Johnson’s family, concerned for her welfare, spoke to investigators on Friday. The family said her baby was due July 30.

ME’s Office Tentatively ID’s Woman As Kia Johnson WTAE, originally posted on the 19th, updated on July 20th, ‘08

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office has tentatively identified the woman who hands and legs were bound with duct tape in a Pittsburgh apartment as 18-year-old Kia Johnson. The medical examiner will compare dental records Sunday to confirm the identity of the body.

Kia Johnson was apparently last seen Tuesday:

Friends of Johnson’s told Channel 4 that she is from the McKeesport area. They also said Johnson did not frequent Wilkinsburg.Johnson was last seen Tuesday while visitng her boyfriend in jail.

Police Chief Coleman responded to a question concerning the conflation of the two apartments as well:

Flies could be seen circling around the apartment all day and an odor was noticeable from the sidewalk below, but police said they didn’t find the body earlier because Curry-Demus’ sister led them to the wrong apartment at first, police said.

Channel 4 Action News asked Chief Ophelia Coleman if the police were misled and she said, “I think that to be true, yes sir.”

By way of confirming that the dead womyn had been pregnant at the time, Dr. Karl Williams, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner stated:

“Her abdomen had been opened with a sharp weapon. The uterus had been opened. The uterus appeared gravid, which means that there had been a baby there,” Williams said.

This article also contains the detail that the police have ruled out Tina Carter as the potential victim:

Speculation circulated that the body belonged to Tina Carter, a pregnant woman who was an acquaintance of the Curry-Demus, but police have ruled that out.

The investigation is ongoing:

A precise cause of death of the woman found on Thursday remains under investigation. Authorities are awaiting dental records to confirm Johnson’s identity.

“We’re working with the coroner’s office continually on this if it takes all weekend into all of next week,” said James Morton, assistant superintendent of the Allegheny County police.The medical examiner said they are also investigating whether the woman was drugged because they found no sign of a struggle.

This piece also includes a link to WTAE’s coverage of the Medical Examiner’s press conference that took place Saturday, and the raw video thereof.

Watch The Report From The Saturday Press Conference, as reported by WTAE Channel 4’s Tara Edwards

Raw Video: Medical Examiner Press Conference

This AP piece from earlier on yesterday evening, Still no ID for dead woman in W.Pa. baby mystery, July 19th, ‘08 also contained an interesting detail, this from the Medical Examiner:

Williams says the dead woman’s fingerprints didn’t show a match in a police database.

This Pittsburgh Tribune-Review piece, Wilkinsburg woman served jail time for baby theft, stabbing, also from July 19th, ‘08 is very much a profile piece on Curry-Demus:

Andrea Curry-Demus suffered at least three miscarriages and was desperate for a baby.

During the past two decades, she stabbed a woman in a failed attempt to steal her infant and kidnapped a baby girl from a Pittsburgh hospital, court records show. This week she told police she bought a baby boy from a woman she barely knew.

Once the baby is well enough, he’s be released:

The baby, who was unharmed, will be released to the custody of the Allegheny County Department of Children, Youth and Families.

In case it was not already clear, Curry Demus’ apartment is not in the ‘well to do’ part of town:

Outside Curry-Demus’ third-floor apartment Friday, a foul, pungent odor filled the hallway and flies swarmed behind the screen of an open front window. The odor wafted to the street below.

A neighbor, Taylor Hall, 19, who lives in the apartment beneath Curry-Demus, said he didn’t think to call anyone about the odor.

“This is the ghetto. Something always smells around here,” he said.

The quote below brings us back to how it came down to the media to call police about the situation at the apartment, and how it took time before police finally entered:

A dispatcher told a reporter who called 911, suspecting a body inside, that police would check the apartment. For several hours, however, no officer responded to the call.

Wilkinsburg police Chief Ophelia Coleman said at a news conference that police had already checked the building.

“We searched the apartment, and it didn’t look like anyone had been there for a few days,” Coleman said. “Nothing was out of place, and there was nothing to lead us to believe anything violent happened there, or that a birth happened there.”

(This was due to Curry-Demus’ sister guiding police to the wrong apartment, apparently directly across the hall from Curry Demus’ apartment when they searched on Thursday.)

But the following is the profile portion, I will quote at length:

A troubled life

The tragedies of Curry-Demus’ life are played out in court records that paint the picture of a woman so desperate for a child that she became pregnant for the first time at the age of 12. She miscarried that pregnancy at about four months and sank into a depression.

Eventually Curry-Demus, who has a limited intelligence level, according to court records, graduated from Peabody High School. She took a series of maintenance jobs at fast-food restaurants.

In 1990, at age 21, she miscarried a second time, losing the fetus at 7 months, court records state. She suffered “great physical and emotional trauma” as a result, and within months was under arrest for attacking one mother and kidnapping a second woman’s 3-week-old baby.

In the first incident, Curry-Demus befriended a woman who had just given birth at Magee-Womens Hospital, spending time at the woman’s house a day or so later. During the visit, Curry-Demus told the new mother she wanted to stay overnight, and when the woman balked, Curry-Demus attacked her with a knife and tried to steal the infant. The woman’s husband intervened, and Curry-Demus ran from the home.

The next day, Curry-Demus went to Children’s Hospital, where she befriended a 16-year-old mother who had brought her 3-week-old daughter to the hospital to be treated for meningitis. When the young mother went home for the night, Curry-Demus remained. When nurses weren’t looking, she snatched the baby and left the hospital.

The newborn was found with Curry-Demus at her home, unharmed, the next day.

Curry-Demus pled guilty to various charges stemming from both incidents. She was sentenced to 3-10 years in prison in June 1991 and sent to SCI-Muncy. She was paroled Aug. 31, 1998. She was ordered to serve 10 years’ probation after her parole.

Curry-Demus was examined by psychiatrists at the Allegheny County Jail Behavioral Clinic before she was sentenced. Records show she was diagnosed with severe depression, personality disorders and auditory hallucinations.

She told doctors she spent a lot of time thinking about her miscarriages and “kept hearing babies cry.”

Horrific and incredible a story as Andrea Curry Demus is, another new detail surfaces in this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article entitled simply, Body found in suspect’s apartment, July 19, ‘08. Just when you thought this couldn’t get any worse we learn about Andrea’s husband.

First, here’s a mention of Curry Demus’ apartment address:

Meanwhile, news reporters who visited her apartment building at 495 Ella St. notified police of a foul smell and swarms of flies in the apartment’s windows.

There is also a mention of the crowd scene at the apartment the evening before:

As investigators entered the apartment last night, a crowd of 40 to 50 people, many acquainted with Ms. Curry-Demus, gathered outside. Many had believed Ms. Curry-Demus’ claim that she had been pregnant.

“This is all too much mystery for me. I can’t even believe somebody could deceive you that long,” said close friend and neighbor Ivee Blunt.

Also at the scene were relatives of two missing pregnant women, wondering if their loved one was the victim.

Then get get down to the initial mention of her husband, Raymond Demus Jr (and their lack of children):

Ms. Curry-Demus recently married Raymond Demus Jr., according to neighbors on Ella Street. She had no children, they said.

She and her husband have extensive criminal histories and both were in the county jail yesterday. Ms. Curry-Demus has tried to kidnap babies in the past. Mr. Demus is facing rape charges. He is accused of molesting the daughter of his former girlfriend.

and further down in the article:

Her husband, Mr. Demus, 40, has a history of arrests that includes charges for firearms violations, assault, arson and drugs.

Last month, he was arrested and accused of routinely molesting a girl in North Braddock from 1997 to 2003, starting when she was in kindergarten, according to a criminal complaint.

In March, the girl told an Allegheny County police detective that Mr. Demus would often abuse her in her mother’s bedroom while he watched pornographic videos, the complaint said.

Now 15, the girl recently told her mother, Mr. Demus’ former girlfriend, about the alleged abuse.

On June 25, Mr. Demus was held for trial on 10 charges, including two counts of rape, two counts of statutory sexual assault and one count of corruption of minors.

I’ll end with a link to many of KDKA’s video pieces from Saturday:

Officials Tentatively ID Body Found In Apartment KDKA in addition to the story be sure to view the additional video segments which can be found by accessing the “video library” at the bottom right hand of the player, then use the search function for these titles:

Autopsy planned for body found in Wilkinsburg Apt July 18, ‘08 8:13pm

Medical Examiner removes body from Wilkinsburg Apt 10:11pm July 18th,08

Wilkinsburg Police body found face down July 18th, ‘08 6:14pm

Body Found in Wilkinsburg suspect’s Apartment 5:47pm & 6:22pm July 18th, ‘08

Dr: Infant abductors show degrees of aggression July 18, ‘08 6:28pm

Medical examiner working to ID body of woman 7:20pm July 19th

Also of note in the article through, is the first mention of a kidnapping charge I’d seen:

Curry-Demus is now facing charges of kidnapping and endangering the welfare of the child. She remains in the Allegheny County Jail on $10,000 bond and awaiting a mental examination.

In light of new details about her time spent in jail (see below) I’ve modified my backgrounder introduction paragraph that I’m adding to these posts about Andrea Curry-Demus slightly:

Andrea Curry-Demus is a womyn with a history of abducting other womyn’s children, in one of her prior attempts she resorted to stabbing the child’s mother. She pled guilty in 1991 to aggravated assault and reckless endangerment and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison. In August 1998 she was paroled and began serving 10 years of probation.

***

So moving on to tonight’s early evening update:

In this recently updated CNN.com piece Woman’s corpse may be link to mystery baby (July 19th, ‘08) we learn Curry-Demus’ next court date is set for Thursday the 24th:

Curry-Demus is charged with endangering the welfare of a child, a felony, and dealing in infant children, a misdemeanor. Court records show that she was arraigned on the felony charge Friday and is next set to appear in court on Thursday. She is being held at the Allegheny County Jail, WTAE reported.

The baby is still doing well:

The baby is in good condition, a hospital spokeswoman said, and will be released to child welfare workers when he is ready.

We also get many more details on Curry-Demus’ two previous incidents of child abduction, her mental health history, and her own history of miscarriages:

According to court records obtained by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Curry-Demus became pregnant at 12 and miscarried four months later. She had a second miscarriage in 1990, when she was 21, the paper said.

Only a few months after the second miscarriage, Curry-Demus befriended a woman who had just given birth but later attacked her with a knife and tried to steal the baby, the paper said, citing the court records.

The woman’s husband intervened, and she fled, the newspaper reported.

The next day, she went to a hospital and befriended a woman who had brought her 3-week-old daughter to the hospital to be treated for meningitis, the Tribune-Review said.

When the woman went home for the night, Curry-Demus left the hospital with the baby. It was found at her home, unharmed, the following day.

In 1991, according to the records, she pleaded guilty to various charges stemming from both incidents and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, the newspaper reported.

She was paroled in August 1998 and ordered to serve 10 years of probation, the paper said.

Curry-Demus was examined by psychiatrists at the Allegheny County Jail before her sentencing and was diagnosed with severe depression, personality disorders and auditory hallucinations, the newspaper reported, citing court records.

She told doctors she spent a lot of time thinking about her miscarriages and “kept hearing babies cry,” the Tribune-Review said.

This piece also points out her prison term, something I first found details of and commented on after the update I wrote earlier this afternoon (specifically on this AP story from 2:31pm EST ).

The CNN piece concludes by providing two other similar recent cases:

Earlier this year, a Kansas woman was sentenced to death in the 2004 killing of a Missouri woman whose baby was cut from her womb.

Lisa Montgomery was convicted in October in the death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, who was found strangled in her Skidmore, Missouri, home. Stinnett’s womb was cut open, and her unborn child was missing. Montgomery was found days later at home in Kansas, where she was attempting to pass the baby off as her own.

(Note, “unborn child” is loaded language, and as such, terminology I reject.)

As mentioned above, the earlier full AP piece from 2:13 this afternoon provided a few other new details, for example, how the term “evisceration” was likely being utilized in the autopsy of the unidentified womyn:

The medical office would not elaborate on what was meant by “evidence of partial evisceration that included opening of the uterus.”

Pathologist Cyril Wecht, who previously served as the county’s coroner but did not participate in the autopsy, said evisceration means to cut into the abdomen and remove organs and tissues. “Obviously, they did so to get to the baby,” he said.

(Seems obvious, I know, but I’ve included it for clarity’s sake.)

While unnamed, we also learn of media attempts to contact her lawyer in the previous cases:

In the early 1990s, Curry-Demus pleaded guilty to charges relating to abducting a baby and stabbing a pregnant woman in a plot to steal her unborn baby, a newspaper reported.

The jail wouldn’t say whether Curry-Demus had an attorney, and a message left for an attorney who has previously represented her was not immediately returned.

and, as mentioned above the article also elaborates on the circumstances leading to those earlier charges:

In 1990, Curry-Demus, then known as Andrea Curry, was accused of stabbing a Wilkinsburg woman in an alleged plot to steal the woman’s infant.

A day after the stabbing, Curry-Demus snatched a 3-week-old baby girl from Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, according to court records reviewed by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The baby was in the hospital to be treated for meningitis and the girl’s 16-year-old mother had gone home for the night when Curry-Demus took the child, court records say. The baby was found unharmed with Curry-Demus at her home the next day.

Curry-Demus pleaded guilty in 1991 to various charges stemming from both incidents and was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison. She was paroled in August 1998 and began serving a 10 years of probation, the Tribune-Review reported.

This Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article, Autopsy: Woman had uterus cut open from this afternoon (July 19th, ‘08), quotes Allegheny County Police assistant superintendent James Morton on how the police are approaching the case:

“What were are focusing on right now is to identify this young girl and then go from there with charges,” Morton said.

The medical examiner is trying to identify the woman with dental records.

The article also contains a number of pictures related to the story in a photo gallery.

I also wanted to backtrack a bit to an AP story I had missed from earlier this morning prior to the autopsy, Autopsy scheduled on bound body found at home of Pa. woman who claimed she bought newborn, (June 19th, ‘08). It too makes mention of her as having done (what appears to have been 7 years of) jail time:

…38-year-old Andrea Curry-Demus, who served time in the 1990s for attacking one mother and kidnapping a second woman’s newborn baby.

As of this morning, it was still unclear whether or not the dead womyn had even been pregnant, much less whether she had given birth or not:

Allegheny County Medical Examiner Dr. Karl Williams said the woman had been dead about 24 hours, but Williams said he could not tell if she had recently given birth. The autopsy was scheduled for Saturday.

Some blood was found near the body, Williams said, but he would not say if there were signs of trauma.

(Note, after the autopsy, the time of death was pushed back to having likely been dead two days before she as discovered, and of course, we now know she had indeed been pregnant.)

Prior to the autopsy details such as the womyn’s age were also undetermined:

The body found Friday was that of a black woman, but Williams said he couldn’t tell how old she was.

Apparently, as briefly mentioned above, an additional charge against Curry-Demus, “dealing in infant children”, (a misdemeanor) was also added:

Curry-Demus was initially charged Friday with one count of child endangerment. She was later charged with dealing in infant children, a misdemeanor, according to court records. She has been jailed until she posts $10,000 bond and undergoes a psychiatric exam.

The article details some additional family and friends’ reactions. As I had mentioned in my previous coverage, Curry-Demus had been presenting herself as pregnant at the time, and in the below we find her neighbor discussing the timing Andrea had spoken of in relation to her own ‘impending’ pseudo-’delivery’:

Stephanie Epps, 41, the suspect’s sister-in-law, said she had doubted the pregnancy.

“I just had a feeling that she wasn’t pregnant,” Epps said. “She would never let you touch her stomach and pregnant women let you do that. … I liked her and I still do like her.”

Ivee Blunt, a neighbor who also was at the shower, said Curry-Demus wanted her in the delivery room when she gave birth.

Blunt said Curry-Demus told her on Sunday night that she expected to have the baby the next day; but on Monday, she said, Curry-Demus told her she wasn’t ready to give birth.

Finally, adding to that ‘backgrounder’ file, see this piece, Police: Woman Cut Baby from Mother’s Womb, Taking Children Can Bring Sense of Identity, Self-Worth, Psychologists Say from ABC News back on July 2nd, ‘08. It details some of the psychology of womyn who commit crimes such as this against other womyn and how hypernatalist obsession lies at the core of such events:

A Seattle-area woman is accused of killing a pregnant stranger and cutting her live baby from her womb, one of several similar incidents that mental health experts say sheds light on the rare phenomenon of females with a pathological desire to obtain a baby at any cost.

The story and video go on to detail the recent case of Phiengchai Sisouvanh Synhavong:

As first reported by ABC News affiliate KOMO, Seattle, Phiengchai Sisouvanh Synhavong was arrested for allegedly binding Araceli Gomez’s hands and feet with yarn, removing her baby and stabbing the woman to death. Police say Synhavong later claimed that Gomez’s infant son, who survived the horrific incident, was her own.

In the last three months, two other women, in Illinois and Missouri, were convicted of similar crimes.

Ultimately, these cases often come down to desperate desire for a child, a fertility obsession of sorts:

Though the alleged crimes may seem incomprehensible, forensic psychologists told ABC News that some people who kill pregnant women and attempt to steal their babies may be motivated by extreme low self-esteem and a pathological desire to bear children.

“Unlike many homicides, in which a variety of different factors and influences make it impossible to generalize, the woman who commits this crime is someone whose feminine identity is very much wrapped up in her fertility,” said Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist and head of The Forensic Panel.

Such obsession with having a child can take on extreme proportions in a culture that teaches womyn that perhaps THE fundamental facet of their existence as womyn is their ability to have children (or lack thereof). In short there are both interpersonal and societal rewards for having children, and penalties for not, and some womyn in that context internalize such pressures to unimaginable degrees, leading to unimaginable actions:

Suspects generally suffer from psychosis or a severe personality disorder, said Joel Dvoskin, a forensic psychologist and assistant professor at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.

Having children also carries tremendous cultural importance, said James Garbarino, a forensic psychologist at Loyola University. “They perceive it as bringing to them identity and self worth and recognition in the community,” he said.

In these womyn, when they lack the child they so desire, the experienced ‘need’ for such can be translated into horrific actions, usually without any empathy for the victims. Their actions are entangled in both narcissism and obsessive coveting of other womyn’s children or even pregnancies:

“The most likely answers are that the person is actually psychotic or they just have such an extraordinarily extreme way of thinking about the world, that wanting something makes it theirs,” he said.

By way of backgrounder, I previously said:

Andrea Curry-Demus is a womyn with a history of attempting to abduct other womyn’s children, one of her prior attempts she resorted to stabbing the child’s mother. She pled guilty (roughly) 17 years ago to aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. She was sentenced to 10 years’ probation.

This afternoon’s brief tragic update includes the results of the autopsy on the as of yet unidentified womyn’s body found in Andrea Curry-Demus’ Wilkinsburg apartment. For details, see Woman in W.Pa. baby mystery partially eviscerated, AP, (July 19th, ‘08 1:05 PM EDT)

The autopsy on the woman involved in a baby mystery showed partial evisceration that included her uterus being cut, authorities said Saturday.The body was found Friday in a Wilkinsburg apartment of another woman who showed up at a hospital with a newborn she falsely claimed was hers.

The body “was in a state of moderate decomposition” and appeared to have been dead for about two days before it was found, Allegheny County Medical Examiner Karl Williams said in a statement Saturday.

The woman’s hands and feet were bound with duct tape, and her face was covered with a plastic material that had also been secured with duct tape. A placenta was recovered at the apartment.

Investigators were trying to determine the woman’s identity, how she died and whether she was the mother of the baby that Andrea Curry-Demus, 38, of Wilkinsburg, allegedly told police she obtained for $1,000.

Also:

It wasn’t clear if she had an attorney.

***

Перевести на русский

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(For new readers, please see my earlier two pieces; *Updated* The death of Dmitry Yakolev/Chase Harrison and the Russian announcement; 2 agencies accreditations pulled & a 3rd under investigation and Dmitry (Dima) Yakolev/Chase Harrison and the 3 agencies; new details emerge to get up to speed.)

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Update- This is one of a series of posts about Dmitry’s death. Please follow my Dmitry Yakolev tag to read more.

***

Thanks to the ongoing research on Dmitry’s case over at Pound Pup Legacy, by way of this small article, Adoption agencies shut after Russian child dies in U.S., (from back on the 12th,) we finally find an image of Dmitry:

The image appears to have been first published in this article, Russia bans three adoption agencies following baby’s death in the U.S. on the 11th.

By way of news articles update, the Baltimore Examiner, published this piece yesterday, U.S.-Russian tensions rise over infant’s death, about how Dmitry’s death has fanned the flames of the already tense U.S./Russian ongoing adoption situation:

But Chase’s death has spread concern among Russian officials that Americans aren’t regulating and keeping tabs on the parents who adopt children from Russia.

The article then goes on to repeat the claim that European Adoption Consultants has been banned.

The earlier Moscow times article, originally published on the 15th, says EAC has not been banned, but are being investigated by the Russian Education and Science Ministry.

The actual current status of EAC continues to be unclear in light of conflicting news reports and no statement (that I’ve come across anyway) mentioning the current status from EAC, the U.S. State Department, nor Russian Authorities.

To date the one statement I’ve come across, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement, deals only with the investigation into Dmitry’s death, not the banning of Cradle of Hope Adoption Center and Family and Children’s Agency, nor of an investigation into EAC.

I will continue to try to find a clarification of the Russian position on EAC.

The article goes on to state:

Russian officials claim the adoption agency didn’t alert the government within the legally required time of Chase’s death.

As a result, Russian officials said, European Adoption Consultants Inc. and two other unnamed companies have been banned from Russia.

A spokesman for EAC declined to comment Tuesday, saying that the company is still trying to figure out what action the Russians have taken.

and

Calls to the U.S. State Department were not returned.

The United States and Russia already have a dicey past over adoption. In 2006 a Manassas woman was convicted of beating her Russian-born adopted daughter to death.

By way of blog updates, Bastardette brings us Damage Control: Dmitry Yakolev/Chase Harrison which points readers across European Adoption Consultants current brief front webpage statement about Dmitry’s death:

To our EAC Families and Friends

It is with deep regret that we acknowledge the unfortunate loss of one of our own. Chase (Dmitry) Harrison, adopted from Russia 03/2008, died on July 8th. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family in this time of sorrow.

We are currently assessing the situation and continuing to work with the Russian Federation on this matter.

As additional information becomes available we will keep you apprised.

I find this a rather stunning statement in light of the circumstances.

It makes no mention of how Dmitry died, nor that his death apparently occurred as a result of actions taken by his foster father, Miles H. Harrison, (I’m still looking for confirmation, but it appears the adoption itself was still been in process.) His foster father is currently facing charges of manslaughter for his role in Dmitry’s death.

The EAC statement makes it appear Dmitry simply up and died, when it’s relatively clear (we are still awaiting final autopsy results), that Dmitry died as a result of the actions of a man who had apparently gone through EAC’s approval process to adopt him. This is not merely a case of Dmitry being one of EAC’s “own”, Miles Harrison was also apparently one of EAC’s own.

The statement also says nothing about, nor even acknowledges that there may be an investigation into EAC for having apparently broken Russian law requiring Russian authorities be notified of Dmitry’s death in a timely fashion. (News of his death reached Russian authorities days after the fact. The officials at the Russian Embassy learned via the media.)

Nor is there any mention of EAC’s current status in regard to whether or not they are still accredited to do Russian adoptions.

Bastardette, in her comment thread on the same piece also points readers at a 2008 “Business Spotlight” profile piece of Margaret Cole’s European Adoption Consultants in the Bay Village Ohio Community Advocate entitled Uniting Orphaned Children with Loving Parents:

European Adoption Consultants, Inc. is presently one of the largest international adoption agencies in the world, and the top agency in Russia and Guatemala.

As I pointed out earlier, Dmitry is not the only Russian adoptee European Adoption Consultants has placed who has died due to the actions of their American adopters.

Logan Higgenbotham had also been placed by EAC and killed by her adoptive mother, Laura Higgenbotham in Vermont in 1988. (She pled no contest to a charge of involuntary manslaughter and received a 1 year prison sentence after having intentionally slammed 3 year old Logan’s head into a wall.)

Marley’s/Bastardette’s “Memoriam to Russian Adoptees Murdered by their Forever Families,” NIKTO NE ZABYT — NICHTO NE ZABYTO, (Nobody is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten.) contains further information about Dmitry and Logan.

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Перевести на русский

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This piece has been retitled. The text below remains as was originally posted July 14th, 08, however the update below, posted on the 15th contradicts some of the information I had available to me on the 14th. Please read down through.

This is one of a series of posts about Dmitry’s death. Please follow my Dmitry Yakolev tag to read more.

***

(I am somewhat ‘late’ blogging this, but particularly as there has been so little print media about Dmitry’s death, I thought it was important to be as thorough as I could be in blogging the story.)

21 month old Russian adoptee Dmitry Yakolev, renamed Chase Harrison by his adopters, died a miserable death in Herndon, Virginia last week. His adoptive father “forgot” about him; after failing to drop Dmitry off at daycare, he drove on to work, parked, and went in to the building, leaving Dmitry in the back seat in his child safety seat. Many hours later, around 5pm, a coworker noticed something through the SUV’s tinted windows and alerted the office receptionist. Despite attempts at CPR on the unresponsive child, he could not be resuscitated.

(Among the many questions this raises, I am not the only one puzzled that the day-care center apparently did not call either parent to determine Dmity’s whereabouts when he failed to arrive.)

Temperatures on Tuesday (July 8th) in the area reached 91 degrees. Inside the SUV, where the windows had been left rolled up, temperatures may have ranged from 131-172 degrees (according to estimates by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.) Dmitry, still strapped in, apparently slowly roasted to death over the course of hours. It is unclear exactly how many hours he was alone in the vehicle. An autopsy was scheduled for late last week to make a final determination on cause of death.

It is recommended that placing a stuffed animal or similar in the passenger seat alongside a driver, or to place a purse or briefcase in the back seat when adults have a child in the back seat may help them focus on remembering the child and their wellbeing. Children left in vehicles in summer are certainly a far broader problem than confined to those who adopt, there have been multiple instances just in Virginia in the last week.

However, the extent to which focus, time, and effort, have gone into adopting a child, as well as this having been mere months after Dmitry came to America also raises questions. If an adoptive couple has waited for and worked so hard to finally get a child, should that make any difference in how much they are aware of and focused on said child after he ‘comes home’? Should children newly brought to the country, or adopted be somehow less at risk of being forgotten under circumstances such as these? Clearly, not in Dmitry’s case.

According to this Fairfax Times article, Dmitry’s adoptive father, Miles H. Harrison, (49, of Purcellville, Virginia), has been charged with manslaughter but not served, as of last Thursday as he had apparently ‘collapsed in shock’ after realizing he had left the child. The maximum sentence he could receive on the charge would be ten years.

This (Friday July 11, ‘08) Washington Post article, Father Whose Son Died in Hot Car is Hospitalized, has a few more details:

Harrison, 49, was taken to Reston Hospital Center after Chase was discovered, then to the Herndon police station to be interviewed by detectives. Harrison collapsed again at the station, and was returned to the Reston facility before being transported to an undisclosed private hospital, said Herndon Police Lt. Jeff P. Coulter. Coulter said police are to be called when Harrison is ready to leave the hospital.

“If he needs some short-term treatment to get stabilized, I would not interfere with that. I can certainly understand that might be in order given what’s occurred here,” Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh said. “There’s no rush. If he needs treatment he should get it, and then he will face what he has to face.”

Harrison’s wife, Carol, was questioned by detectives at the Herndon police station about an hour after Chase was found, Coulter said. She was interviewed about background information and “what went on during the day,” he said, adding that the investigation will seek to answer what happened “leading up to that day, what all has taken place in these people’s lives.”

Dmitry was the Harrison’s only child.

Further down in the Washington Post article, Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh explained the reasoning behind the manslaughter charge thusly:

Morrogh said the decision to charge Harrison with manslaughter followed an impartial look at the facts. Murder was out because there was no intent, he said. While states have a hodgepodge of practices on whether or not to charge in such cases, doing so seems appropriate here, he said.

“From where I sit, I have to enforce the law, and the law places certain requirements on people when it comes to many things, especially with children,” Morrogh said. “It’s just such an emotional thing, and rightly so. As a parent myself, I can’t imagine. It’s just a tragedy all the way around.”

The Harrisons were still in the state mandated six month supervision period required for international adoptions after Dmitry came from Russia three months ago.

Unfortunately, his death is only the latest of a number of Russian children who have died due to the actions of their American adopters, something those of us living in the broader DC metropolitan area may have some awareness of considering the recent sentencing of Samuel and Donna Merryman for the death of their Russian born adopted son Dennis Uritsky this past April (see my blog post about such here.)

There has been an ongoing history that forms the context into which Dmitry’s death has fallen internationally as well, Russian adoptions have come to the brink, in the aftermath, stricter rules had already been placed on agencies working in Russia. Frustrations with the number of Russian children who have died post adoption were already running high.

The Russian reaction to Dmitry’s death has been swift.

The Friday Washington Post article detailed the Russian Embassy involvement:

Yevgeniy V. Khorishko, press officer for the Russian Embassy, said consulate officials are “trying to figure out the details of this accident.”

“We are in contact with U.S. officials in this case,” Khorishko said. Russian officials are also working to determine whether the boy still had Russian citizenship, he said.

Also on Friday this RIA Novosti article hit, Russia bans 3 adoption agencies following baby’s death in U.S., which I’ll quote several paragraphs from:

Three international adoption agencies, including one that failed to inform Russia of the death of a baby in the U.S. this week, have been banned from operating in Russia, the country’s adoption authorities said on Friday.

and

The Russian Education and Science Ministry’s adoption commission said in a statement: “The agencies to be banned from working on the territory of the Russian Federation include a representative office that violated the requirements of Russian law on swiftly informing us of the death of an adopted child.”

and

The incident had been expected to prompt new calls in Russia for tighter controls on adoptions following several other scandals, notably the killing of a two-year-old girl from Siberia by her adoptive mother in the United States. The woman, Peggy Sue Hilt, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in May 2006 for beating the child to death.

Around 120,000 Russian children were adopted both in Russia and abroad in 2007, a 6.4% increase on 2006, according to the Science and Education Ministry.

(The child Peggy Sue Hilt murdered, mentioned above, was two and a half year old Nina Hilt/Viktoria Bazhenova.)

To date, I have only found the single article mentioning three agencies were essentially booted out last Friday, and unfortunately, the article fails to give the names of any of the three. (I will continue to search for more details.) While such usually would be ‘bigger news’ here in the States at least, there’s been scant mention. Other than on a blog here and there, it’s gotten very little public attention.

In short, under Russian law, when an adopted child dies, the agency is required to notify Russian authorities. One of the three agencies that have since been banned failed to live up to its obligations as part of doing adoptions in Russia. As for the other two, Russia halting their in country operations may or may not have been in any way related to this latest incident.

As the reasons are unknown at this time, I will focus upon the agency that failed to notify Russian authorities of Dmitry’s death. The article quoted above leads to another set of questions. As the agency appears not to have given notice at all (”one that failed to inform Russia of the death”) were they attempting to keep Dmitry’s death from his country of birth, possibly in an attempt to protect their own accreditation to do business there?

Russian authorities appear to have done what they could, kicking the agency out, but then, Russian law requires an agency inform them if a child dies. Not every country has such a requirement.

Other than losing the ability to do business in Russia will there be any other consequences to the agency that failed to report?

Further, what of other countries the agencies do business in? Will they in any way be informed that the agencies lost their Russian accreditation, in one case for failing to comply with Russian law by reporting and adopted child’s death?

So who then, are the three agencies (including the one that failed to notify?) Well, by way of at least one of those three, over on Bastardette’s comment thread here, Niels of Pound Pup Legacy pointed readers at this page, by way of citation in a comment that contained in part, the following:

The adoption agency involved in the placement of Chase Harrison (Dmitry Yakovlev) was European Adoption Consultants, Inc.

Which would be European Adoption Consultants, 12608 Alameda Drive, Strongville, Ohio 44149.

Be sure to see their Russian program here, which flatly states “The referral process for infant boys is quick right now”, their Russian program news page, and their FAQ under the question “Q: Is EAC licensed to do adoptions in Russia?” The “Returning Home to the USA – Russia – Word Document” off this page lays out some of the follow up visits etc expected after a Russian adoptee has ben brought to the States. Finally, this link, view the letter, will take you to a confirmation letter to EAC informing them of their Russian Accreditation (English version is on page 2.)

Their basic intake application forms, both online (click the “apply online” link on this page) and printable, ask questions such as the religious affiliation of prospective adopters and essay questions such as “Briefly explain how you intend to raise your child with religious/moral values”or “Please describe the child that will complete your “forever family”.”

Further down in the same comment thread E. Case pointed out that European Adoption Consultants had previous placed another Russian child, Logan Higgenbotham (in Vermont back in 1998), who had been killed by her adoptive mother, Laura Higgenbotham. (She pled no contest to a charge of involuntary manslaughter and received a 1 year prison sentence after having intentionally slammed 3 year old Logan’s head into a wall.)

Marley/Bastardette has blogged twice about Dmitry’s death;

Another Russian Adoptee Dies: Chase Harrison

and

Russian Updates

She has also created and maintains an online “Memoriam to Russian Adoptees Murdered by their Forever Families,”"

NIKTO NE ZABYT — NICHTO NE ZABYTO

(Nobody is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten.)

Each of the dead or murdered Russian adoptees I’ve mentioned in my blog post (Dmitry Takolev/Chase Harrison, Dennis Uritsky/Dennis Merryman, Logan Higgenbotham, and Viktoria Bazhenova/Nina Hilt) are also memorialized on her site with details about each child and their deaths; photographs whenever possible, some links to media coverage, and importantly, where known, those who did the children’s homestudies and the agencies responsible for the placements are also named.

In Dmitry’s/Chase’s case, in addition to the more general profile, she has a few important details listed:

Chase was adopted from the Pechora City Children’s Home, Psov area; in the US 3 months. Home Study: Adoption Connections, Falls Church, Virginia. Social Worker: Christine Hessinger. Adoption Agency: European Adoption Consultants, Strongsville, Ohio.

I’ll end by quoting a few sentences from a comment Bastardette made on her own blog here:

Dima’s adoption was not yet finalized. He was a Russian citizen who died of neglect (accidental or not) at the hands of a person who was deemed “responsible” enough to adopt someone else’s child by the Russian and US governments and a prominent …adoption agency.

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UPDATE

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July 15th, 08

See Bastardette’s blog entry from 9:51 last night:

ANOTHER RUSSIAN UPDATE: DIMA YAKOLEV/CHASE HARRISON

I’ll quote the crucial bits:

The English language Moscow Times reported four hours ago that European Adoption Consultants, contrary to earlier news reports in RPC News and Gazetta, has not been banned from operating in the Russian Federation.

and

The agency, however, is under investigation over its failure to immediately report the death last week of Dmitry Yakolev (adopted name Chase Harrison) in Virginia. The Moscow Times also said that the accreditation of two other agencies, The Cradle of Hope Adoption Center and Family and Children’s Agency has been withdrawn over failure to keep the Russian Education and Science Ministry informed on the well-being of adoptees placed by them as required by Russian law. Vladimir Kabanov, head of the ministry’s adoption department denied that the agencies were connected to the Yakolev/Harrison case, saying they are guilty of separate violations.

I’d strongly advise reading her entire piece.