I’ve written repeatedly, that rather than legalized child abandonment, there could, and must be other more constructive ways of dealing with these situations.

Earlier this month, in After almost a decade, Mississippi “safe haven” legalized child abandonment scheme still fails, I wrote:

Child abandonment in other parts of the world is understood to be tangled up in a knot of social and psychological issues:

• poverty
• immigration and fear of deportation
• domestic violence
• underage parenting
• already parenting multiple children
• cultural and individual shame
• desperation
• fear of rejection
• dissociation

to name just a few.

These are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Here in America, child abandonment  is treated as a form of false binary

• either one uses the legalized child abandonment programs (which strip parental rights and in many cases the child’s identity) but it affords the “affirmative defense” against prosecution (though prosecutions in some jurisdictions are still certainly possible)
• or they abandon outside the program and are instantly branded criminals and potential murderesses (or murders)

No acknowledgement of the complexities involved or the societal infrastructures or mental health services necessary to support these families is made.

If one has come to the point of abandoning a child, it’s either avail yourself of the legalized abandonment system (and) or criminal charges, your “choice”.

Neither of which even begin to address the root issues that drove said person or persons to the act of child abandonment.

Naturally some turn up alive, others turn up dead.

Fear of women committing neonatacide is what was utilized as justification for legalizing child abandonment, and those who advocated for these laws offered them as a “solution” assuring politicians the days of dumpster babies would end.

Now all 50 states and DC have the laws on the books, but the dead babies just keep on coming.

All at the cost of the human rights of the kids who are legally abandoned and the direct cost to the health and potentially life of women who attempt to deliver in secret hoping to legally abandon.

Thus we come to today’s news, see Woman gets 10-20 in baby’s death from the Detroit Free Press.

Emily Portellos, 30, received a sentence of 10-20 years in the death of her newborn daughter.

Judge Daniel Ryan pointed out the sentence was half of what the prosecution asked for, noting that the father of the child, Robert Murphy, and his mother Marilyn Murphy, both disagreed with the prosecution’s request for a longer sentence.

The Murphys spoke on Emily’s behalf and sat with members of Emily’s family, and hugged and embraced after the sentencing.

Clearly, Emily’s case is complicated:

Christos said Portellos is not mentally retarded, but does have a learning disability and testimony showed she had difficulty making decisions under pressure, a point Ryan seconded in his verdict.

Shipping her off to jail for 10-20 years isn’t going to help anyone.

The prosecutor, leaning heavily on archetypical bad mothers, argued Portellos killed the baby out of personal  “selfishness”:

…out of fear of her mother’s disapproval and shame in the eyes of a conservative Greek Orthodox community.

The defense argued the death an accident:

A Wayne County jury took four days after a two-week trial to convict Portellos of second-degree murder and child abuse. She had been charged with first-degree murder for the death of the child on Oct. 15, 2008, in her bedroom in the home she shared with her mother and brother.

Defense lawyers countered that Portellos did not realize she was pregnant and that the child most likely bled to death through an unclamped umbilical cord.

The baby was found wrapped in towels in a garbage bag in Portellos’ blood-smeared room.

From there, it only got more complicated:

Weingarden said Portellos had to be aware of her pregnancy, especially since she had given birth before. That child was immediately given up for adoption.

The prosecutor, Lora Weingarden, then proceeded to co-opt the “voice” of the dead baby, arguing that Emily should be imprisoned throughout most of her remaining fertile years, thus stripping her of her reproductive capacity as punishment perhaps not merely for this child’s death, but in some sick version of two strikes and you’re out.

Weingarden said she was speaking on behalf of the dead child. Weingarden had argued for the longer sentence that would keep Portellos behind bars almost through her childbearing years, and would send a strong message not to kill babies.

“Most of all we ask you to do justice for this baby,” Weingarden said.

As I just finished writing earlier this month:

American society recognizes other extra legal acts more as “cries for help” or circumstances under which services rather than jail time are warranted. But child abandonment remains this all or nothing binary of a “non-bureaucratic placement” entry into the adoption system via the “safe haven/baby Moses laws” or a one way ticket to jail.

Perhaps that’s because this is viewed not merely as a women’s crime, but of the very act of women negating “women’s essentialist nature.” After all, what could be a greater crime in a hypernatalist culture such as modern day America than a woman perceived to be rejecting her “maternal instincts?”

It doesn’t matter that the perception is so often completely at odds with the details of the realities women who abandon face.

Is it any wonder then, that a female prosecutor argued the case?

Had a male prosecutor gone after Emily he could have been perceived as a bully, cruelly hounding her. A female prosecutor, on the other hand, could take on the role of the “good” woman chastising and accusing a “bad” woman; a ‘murderess who had been given another chance’ and that having resulted in a dead baby.

If neonatacides are societally viewed in America as the very act of women negating “women’s essentialist nature” then who better to argue for the harshest penalties than another woman?

The prosecuter then becomes an appropriate model of womanhood in the eyes of the state, not a woman who feels solidarity or empathy with the woman on trial, but one who stands uniquely poised to demand as cruel a sentence as this hypernatalist culture can contrive.

off_with_her_head

Nope, not “off with her head,” it’s ‘off with her ability to (hopefully) ever bear  a child again!’

When a female prosecutor co-opts the dead baby’s “voice” more than merely invoking the presence of the victim, she also retains inherent to her as a woman an embodiment of (potential or otherwise) maternal nature itself.

Outside court, Weingarden said she is disappointed by Ryan’s decision: “The sentence doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the crime.”

“I hope young women don’t take this as a license” to emulate Portellos’ actions, believing they will face a potentially lenient sentence, she said.

Some days it’s hard to even fathom the complete and utter stupidity flowing from certain people’s mouths.

Does Weingarden genuinely think for one minute other young women will read about Emily’s 10-20 year sentence and say to themselves,

‘Cool! I think I’ll go out and get pregnant and see if I can deliver a baby and have it bleed out, only to leave it wrapped in towels in a garbage bag in my blood-smeared room! After all, she got off so easy, I’m sure I can too! Nothing to worry about, I’m peachy-keen.’

While small town America can indeed get pretty boring on any given Tuesday night, somehow, I just don’t think there are girls sitting around their rooms concocting plans to come up with dead babies of their own so as to ‘only’ spend 10-20 years in prison.

Can anyone tell me with a straight face that other young women will run out to go enjoy their “license” in this manner?

The women who find themselves at the center of these cases don’t set out to end up in these circumstances because they court watch to see what kind of sentence they’d be likely to get,  or for some sick version of fun.

They find themselves here more often than not when they’ve found some point beyond the ends of their ropes.

Rather than pointlessly locking them away for decades, we as a society need to do better by them.

Перевести на русский

The big news tonight is that Russia has put a freeze on all US adoptions until Russia and the US can come to an agreement on terms relating to those inter-country adoptions, (most likely adding additional follow up for Russian children, who remain Russian citizens after adoption) and sign a treaty to that effect.

To those of us who have been following the circumstances leading up to this suspension over the course of years now, none of this comes as a surprise, particularly since Russia had come right up to this brink in the last major US/Russian adoption related incident, (see my posts on Dmitry Yakolev.)

To understand the process by which things came to this critical point, one first has to understand the broader context.

Marley Greiner/Bastardette has been tracking some of the Russian adoptee murders and other forms of abuse, such as the high profile case of Masha (”Allen”) who was adopted by pedophile Matthew Mancuso on her blog “NIKTO NE ZABYT — NICHTO NE ZABYTO/Nobody is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten. A memoriam for Russian adoptees abused and murdered by their forever families.”

Be certain to see her overview Cases: Forever Family, Forever Dead.

Scrolling back through the posts and cases provides a great deal of background to how this level of frustration and anger has built over time.

Also be sure to see her overview of the consequences (and lack thereof) to the adoptive parents, The Russian Adopted Dead: a review of killers and sentences.

I have also done a scant few posts about some of the Russian Adooptees: Masha, Dennis Uritsky here in Maryland and somewhat more in-depth coverage of essentially the last major international incident concerning American adopters of a dead Russian adoptee, the sad death of Dmitry Yakolev/ Chase Harrison.

With that as backgrounder, we then come to the events of the last 24 hours.

Start with this lengthy video segment from Russia Today,

Clearly, each and every system in place to prevent such failed one by one, falling like dominoes.

After the 11 hour flight from DC back to Moscow he was brought to the Russian Education and Science Ministry Thursday afternoon by a man who had apparently been paid $200 by the adoptive mother to meet the boy’s United Airlines flight when it arrived. He had been adopted a mere 6 months ago.

While it’s unclear what Artem had been told about the trip, we have details such as these beginning to emerge:

The online website Gazeta.ru said the child had almost completely forgotten how to speak Russian during his time in the United States, and answered questions posed to him in his native language in English. He said his adoptive grandparents were “good” but his mother was “very bad”, claimed the website. During his time in the US, he had been given a new name – Justin Hansen.

Allegedly he was told by his adoptive mother, from Shelbyville, Tennessee, that he was going on an excursion to Russia and would return home to the US in a couple of weeks. “His adoptive mother beat him and pulled him by the hair,” said Pavel Astakhov, the Russian president’s human rights ombudsman. “Reminding him of her makes him cry.”

At the orphanage in the far eastern town of Partizansk, where the child lived before he was adopted, teachers denied that he had psychological problems. “He’s a smart, clever kid,” said Svetlana Glukhovtseva. “He took in everything we taught him very well.”

Anyone with a shred of empathy can sympathize with the betrayal he must have felt upon realizing that far from some kind of “excursion,” his new “forever mommy” had decided to ship him off as if taking the boy to a returns department.

The Russian media is running with the “returned purchase” meme and I’m convinced, it’s a very valid analogy. They, like many of us Bastards, recognize the American adoptive mother is attempting to pass Artem off as nothing more than ‘defective merchandise’, and are furious at the callousness of her these actions.

There have been promises of an investigation here on the American end to see whether or not any laws were broken, I can only hope such would take into account not merely the actions of these individuals, but the entire system that enabled this human rights travesty.

Children are not objects.

They should not be treated as such.

They should not be purchased, nor purchase-able.

Artem was not treated as a family member, he was treated as little more than an allegedly ‘broken item’ shipped back to the manufacturer.

Now that he’s back in Russia, the Russian media are reporting he will likely go back into the child welfare system after first receiving physical and psychological examinations and some counseling. The language barrier alone may make him feel all the more isolated in his home country.

Bastardette blogged about Artyom Saveliev / Artem Saveliev /Artem Justin Hansen’s flight last night,  LEAVIN’ ON A JET PLANE: RUSSIAN ADOPTEE DUMPED ON PLANE, SENT BACK TO RUSSIA

Throughout the day today, she has posted several updates:

First an initial update that includes a variety of images relating to the case: Artem’s official adoption listing profile on the Russian government website prior to the adoption, and “after pictures” both with his “Forever Family” adoptive Mommy, Torry Ann Hansen and upon arrival back in Russia at the Domodedovo Airport. Bastardette also includes the image of the note that was sent with Artem on his journey to the ‘returns department.’

ARTEM SAVELIEV/ARTEM JUSTIN HANSEN: A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Later on, she added a second update about the Renton Washington agency that placed him, WAPAC, World Association for Children and Parents. WAPAC is Council on Accreditation (COA) accredited and a Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS) and National Council for Adoption (NCFA) member. Earlier today, the Russian government suspended WAPAC’s Russian operations.

She also points out the possibility that Torry Hansen may have been elligible to adopt the boy at a greatly discounted price at the time.

As WAPAC was in Washington State (and ultimately responsible for the placement) and the Hansens live in Tennessee, there have been some questions as to who did the home study.

See Bastardette’s post:

SAVELIEV/HANSEN AGENCY IDENTIFIED: WORLD ASSOCIATION FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN

I don’t have video up at the moment, but Bastardette also appeared on Russian Today this afternoon to speak about the case. Other American adoptees are also speaking out about this case.

In this link’s video segment you get a feel for the American Home the boy was placed into.

Meanwhile on the American end, pieces such as this are appearing attempting to put forward a bit more of the adoptive Mother Torry Hansen and Adoptive Grandmother, Nancy Hansen’s perspective on the incident:

Russia threatens to suspend US adoptions after woman sends 7-year-old boy back to Moscow alone

The article also contains preposterous nonsense such as this from adoption industry lobbyists, NCFA, desperately trying to maintain Russia as a sending country:

“Child abandonment of any kind is reprehensible,” said Chuck Johnson, acting CEO of the National Council For Adoption.

NCFA associated individuals have been key to how the baby dump laws, (often call “Baby Moses Laws” or “Safe Haven” laws) legalizing child abandonment came to pass here in the United States. For this latest incarnation of NCFA to decry child abandonment is for them to deny their own organizational history!

But clearly there’s another, more pertinent reason NCFA and JCICS are issuing releases and working hard behind the scenes on this case right now, even above and beyond their desires to keep Russia a “sending country”, WAPAC is one of their own.

Neither NCFA nor JCICS mention that WAPAC is their own member agency (see here and here), as they desperately run around try to sell the it’s an “isolated incident” line, pretending that this latest outrage is not situated firmly within a vast pattern of ongoing history of cases pertaining to what Russian adoptees have suffered at the hands of their American adopters: abuse, starvation, beatings, murders, being adopted by a pedophile, left to die in hot cars in summer, and now sent back alone on an international flight.

“Isolated incident” my ass.

Go see this piece from CNN in which the adoptive granmother claims she was following online instructions from a lawyer:

Nancy Hansen, the Tennessee woman who put Justin Hansen on the plane in Washington, insisted she did not abandon the child, but was following instructions from a lawyer she found online.

and

When the lawyer she found online advised her the adoption could be reversed, Hansen booked the flight and paid the fee for a steward to escort Justin through the airport, she said.

She hired a driver in Moscow she found online to pick the child up from the Moscow airport, she said. She found “safe references” for the driver online, she said.

She then prepared a letter for Justin to present to Russian officials, which included a photo of the driver, whom she identified as “Arthur,” she said.

and we hear from the agency, World Association for Children and Parents for the first time:

The Seattle-based agency which Hansen said her daughter used to coordinate the adoption said it found out about Justin’s return only Friday.

“We were alerted to this situation by our branch office in Moscow, Russia, and are shocked and saddened by this turn of events,” said a spokeswoman for the World Association for Children and Parents.

In the 1 percent of the cases where the dissolution of an adoption has been needed, the agency “has always supported and worked closely with [adoptive] parents to assist the child in moving into a new adoptive family,” she said.

See this comment left over on Bastardette’s blog by an anonymous commenter for more details.

***

Children of the Corn
A new blog in support of Repealing legalized child abandonment laws and chronicling the Nebraska dump law case study.

Reporting, Theory, and Opinion on Legalized Child Dumping in Nebraska

***

As Marley Greiner (who blogs the Daily Bastardette) and I were both detailing the Nebraska disaster, we came to the conclusion that combining our shared blogging of the history into one common resource would be helpful to others researching the still unfolding mess. She and I both support nothing short of full repeal of all legalized child abandonment laws.

Our posts to date have often overlapped and referenced one another, going forward, we will likely each bite off separate pieces to tackle, or write from different angles about the same set of events.

For example, I am relying on her reporting this evening about the two latest teens who when taken to a Nebraska hospital ditched their dumper and ran-

BORN TO RUN! TWO ESCAPE SAFE HAVEN MOM

Children of the Corn will be the repository for our interwoven coverage from here on.

To be perfectly frank, I was honoured to be invited to join her. She and I are old friends. we have both spent years working, researching, and writing in support of adoptee rights and about the seemingly unending abuses kids and parents have endured in the name of what often passes for child welfare both in this country and internationally.

I’ve linked across to her coverage many times, but she’s long overdue a proper introduction for my readers here.

(This is one of my favourite older pictures of her.)

Marley’s background in American history brings a wealth of experience to her adoptee advocacy work.

As does her time spent abroad. As but one of many examples, her careful research and chronicling of the deaths of so many of the Russian adoptees, NIKTO NE ZABYT — NICHTO NE ZABYTO, Nobody is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten, is an incredible resource.

Marley is a maintainer of memory.

To all this, add her ongoing work and years of experience as Executive Chair and Co-founder of Bastard Nation and it readily becomes clear why she’s the right person to team up with. BN has been one of the strongest most consistent voices against all dump laws, from the very dawning of them back 9 years ago. Year after year BN fought the dump laws, building in the testimonies given state after state, perhaps the most clear articulation of why the dumps laws must be repealed. She is also the creator of the Adoptee Rights News Blog.

It’s her passion and unflinching tenacity that makes this a natural pairing. She through the years has shown again and again her willingness to turn over the rocks, and not turn away at what she finds crawling about beneath. Her realistic view of the current state of child welfare and adoption is a vitally needed counterweight voice in opposition to the so often Vaseline smeared lenses the adoption industry, dump marketeers and others would prefer we all look though.

When legislators or media fall for the marketing, Marley has been there time and again, bringing forth the facts that undercut the lies.

She’s been more than willing to do the legwork and follow through to look at what the kids themselves are really experiencing; homelessness, being passed around in the endless circle jerk of referrals to nowhere, kids who end up living on the streets, abused, even murdered. (Herein of course, I’m speaking more broadly, not merely about Nebraska.)

Perhaps most pertinent to the Nebraska situation though, is that for a number of years now, since 2001, Marley has been the creator and sole editor of the Baby Dump News, “a weekly e-chronicle of newborn abandonment, infanticide, safe haven legislation, and related issues.” E-mailed out week after week, very little of the BDN is online, but the 2007 index can be found here.

Marley has been case by case, article by article tracking abandonments and child dumps for years. In short, she has been nose down in the details of the dump laws for about forever.

She is also a board member of and writer for the (Columbus, Ohio) Free Press. She and I both share interests as activists and researchers writing about issues of womyn’s autonomy and those would impose their interpretation of theonomy.

When it comes to the things kids are enduring, from denial of equality under law to state encouraged abandonment, she understands the critical importance of holding those responsible’s feet to the fire, as well as both looking and working systemically at how interlocking aspects of systemic structures are broken and failing kids and families.

In short, I’m damn proud to team up with her. Honoured actually, that she wants to place my work alongside hers.
I hope regular readers here will understand the vital contribution she has been making and continues to make, both in relation to the Nebraska situation and dump laws more broadly, but also in her many years of tireless work on behalf of all dumped kids sitting alongside her work on for adopted people and their families.

If there’s anyone who should be listened to at this critical juncture in the Nebraska process, it’s Marley.

All of this of course, is a mere thumbnail sketch. Marley is all this and much more. But mostly she’s got a wicked sense of humour, historical perspective, and a particular way with penning a poem.

This is the CotC announcement she has added to Bastardette tonight, feel free to pass it along to others who are researching the Nebraska mess:

Lauren Sabina Kneisly (Baby Love Child) and Bastardette are happy to announce the posting of our new blog: Children of the Corn: Reporting, Theory, and Opinion on Legalized Child Dumping in Nebraska.

Since we were both writing so much on the topic of Nebraska child dumping law, LB 157, we decided it would be a good idea to put our work together in an easy-to-access format. The blog is a repository of our Nebraska writing, in chronological order, since the first “legal” abandonment took place in September. It is intended as a resource for those researching so-called “safe haven” or “Baby Moses” laws, Nebraska LB 157 , adoptee rights activists, adoption reformers, child welfare advocates, bastards, legislators, the media, and those who are just plain disgusted.

We may occasionally add the work of another blogger or scholar. Over the next week or so we add more links and other resources.

We will continue to post our Nebraska blogs on our individual blogs as well.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN

http://cornkids.blogspot.com

please distribute freely!

***

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been busy the last week or so. While I’ve certainly still been following the latest twists and turns in the Nebraska situation, I haven’t had much time to actually write. Tonight is no exception.

I did however want to point readers across to two critically important pieces Marley has done on her blog, Bastardette:

CHILDREN OF THE CORN: NEBRASKA’S DUMPED GENERATION Saturday, November 01, 2008

and

MEET #25, #26, AND MAYBE #27–AND THAT PESKY 18- YEAR OLD: THE NEBRASKA FIASCO CONTINUES Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Since I last blogged on Oct 29th, even the official Nebraska DHHS count (link opens a PDF) has gone up to 27 kids dumped to date.

But as I’ve been pointing out for some time now, there are a number of situations under which kids have interacted with the law not tabulated in the official count. (Again see my earlier explanations, here and here, of some of those unoffical interactions.)

Marley pointed her readers at an important article, bringing up the plight of the self “havening” boy from Grand Island who has, sure enough, fallen through the cracks. As he was deemed “too old” and as he turned himself over, he is not counted among the official cases (He’s not in the Nebraska DHHS count.)

She saw the gap most recently when she housed the Grand Island teen, who in September, attempted to turn himself in at St. Francis Medical Center under the safe-haven law.

He was over the age of 17 and wasn’t turned in by a parent, so didn’t qualify to enter the Health and Human Services system, Schwan said.

He stayed in her home with Schwan and her family for three weeks, while Schwan tried unsuccessfully to find him placement in various community service programs.

and

Schwan said Grand Island’s safe haven teen was told to leave home by his mother’s boyfriend, had lived for more than a year with his grandmother in an area storage unit and has been in four high schools over the past four years.

“He just wants to finish school,” she said.

Kids like him need a safe place to go — even just temporarily, Schwan said.

The bottom line is, despite attempting to “safe haven” himself, he isn’t even listed among the cases.

Kid after kid is going through the system, some are counted, others like the boy from Grand Island are not.

Yet when legislators go to “fix” their broken law do you think they will even hear about the plight of these kids? They’re nowhere in the stats. They’re off the books. They may as well not even have every existed when it comes to the official stats in relation to the Nebraska legalized child abandonment law.

It’s come down to those of us on the outside to even remind people that kids like this are part of the history of the miserably failed child welfare social experiment in Nebraska.

Despite what the kids are undergoing day in and day out, Nebraska lawmakers and Governor Heineman apparently appear to feel no great urgency to try to deal with the mess of their own creation.

Instead they’ve offered up a ‘compromise’ a mere tweek to the law, offering it up as some kind of “solution”, (or at least a means of getting the attention to shift and die down.) Their inaction and lack of a genuine solution only continues to ensure the kids themselves are the ones who will suffer the consequences of such.

(By way a side notation for new readers, I’ve already explained how the plan to age down Nebraska’s dump law to infants 3 days old or less is no solution to the problem. I’ve taken to referring to such as dump law 2.0. From a genuine child welfare stance their short sighted “solution” is dead on arrival. Kids will continue to endure the harm all dump laws cause, but as the kids will be infants not teens they will be less likely to be able to vocalize the problems they will face until years later.)

***

As always, I continue to call for nothing short of full repeal of all legalized child abandonment laws.

With a little luck, I’ll be back to blogging in more detail very soon.

***

Ironically, just as the excrement really hits the fan, I find myself least able to carve out time for more than this bare bones blogging at the moment.

That said, I’ll write what little I do have time for.

Here are the latest sad additions to the Nebraska dump law casualty count:

• Oct 25th- 12-year old boy from Georgia
• Oct 27th- 15-year old girl
• Oct 28th- 17 year old boy and 15-year old girl.

To my count, this brings the total number of kids who have in some way interacted with the dump law to date, whether counted by Nebraska DHHS or not, to 28. (Again see my earlier explanations, here and here, of how I’ve reached this number.)

By way of providing some detail, Marley Greiner on her blog, Bastardette has been picking up some of the Nebraska blogging over the last few days, particularly relating to the GA abandonment:

Sunday, October 26, 2008

GEORGIA ON MY MIND: ANOTHER OUT-OF-STATE DUMP

Monday, October 27, 2008

GEORGIA ON MY MIND MORNING UPDATE

NEBRASKA SAFE HAVEN: HERDING CATS

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

ON NO! ANOTHER ONE! NEBRASKA FIASCO AD NAUSEAUM

No doubt she will have more as events unfold.

Then today, Nebraska’s Governor Heineman called for a special session (link opens a PDF) of the currently out of session legislature. (Note that some of these legislators would not be around in January when the regular session begins due to being term limited out.) The session is scheduled to begin Friday November 14th.

The revised version of the dump law, what I’ve been referring to as dump bill 2.0 would limit Nebraska’s dump window to infants three days old or younger.

I’ve already written repeatedly about how a 2.0 bill would fail to address the core problems inherent to all dump laws. Take this, from a post I wrote back on Oct 21 (Nebraska attempts to slam to barn door, only creating a new set of problems) when the “agreement” was initially announced:

As I predicted, Nebraska appears to have decided to go to dump law 2.0, the aged down version. Nebraska will still be encouraging child abandonment, just of kids too young to protect their own interests, or speak about the experience of being dumped for some years.

That does not mean these soon to be aged down dumps are less damaging.

Aging down still does nothing about so many of the core problems with the dump laws, parental rights being violated when one parent dumps and the other is out of the loop, the Indian Child Welfare Act violations, the real needs of families, and most importantly, the needs of the dumped kids themselves.

But aging down will ensure that 18 year gap between when a kid is dumped and when they hit age of majority, thus sparing the legislators, but not the kids.

If all the Nebraska legislators do is age down to version 2.0, they’ve sidestepped many issues of substance relating to the dump laws to do mere superficial tinkering, or as I put it, change the shade of lipstick on the pig.

The pig’s still there. It’s a ticking time bomb, that as more dumps happen under the new rules and the dumped kids grow older, a whole new set of problems are slowly going to become apparent, though odds are, just as in other states, they will be dismissed as ‘personal problems’ not problems inherent to the system the dump laws create.

For those of us who genuinely care about the state of child welfare in Nebraska, and want to see the state cease its encouragement of legalized child abandonment, we now appear to have just over 2 weeks to encourage Nebraska legislators to come to understand the inherent flaws in even an ‘aged down’ version of a dump law, and instead encourage them to embrace the full repeal position.

Nothing less than full repeal of Nebraska’s encouragement of child abandonment will help these kids.

It’s past time to detangle any version of a dump bill from what needs to be a second bill supporting access to for example increased access to mental health care and genuine support for families in crisis.

Repeal the dump law once and for all, then set about doing the difficult job of creating a genuine and meaningful safety net for kids and their families.

Entangling these two separate issues, legalized child abandonment and access to programs for families in crisis is a conflationary tactic. It is absolutely possible to get families in need real help without it ‘costing’ them their family ties or custodial rights. Decoupling the two actually increases the odds of people getting the help they need, as few families are willing to permanently relinquish their parental rights to help a child gain access to the system.

Falsely linking the two only enables child abandonment to continue, causing maximum damage, a lifetime’s worth of damage to these kids, all while riding on the good intentions of those seeking help.

As for the 2.0 infants, they will of course be facing a different set of issues, but will be no less abandoned, at the state’s encouragement. Their parents will also be in crisis, and no dump law is going to offer real solutions for them.

The Nebraska fiasco only exposed what lies at the core of any dump law: desperation and lack of options.

It’s past time to dump the dump laws and instead demand legislators roll up their sleeves and do the real work, building real structures towards prevention and crisis intervention.

Outsourcing Nebraska’s child welfare problems to “faith based” private agencies or “aging down” in a vain attempt to sidestep the issues the older child abandonments raise are not solutions, they’re not even band-aids.

Rather than trying to manufacture “new and better” ways of the state encouraging legalized child abandonment, the state should instead, be tackling the underlying problems that lead guardians to dump the kids in the first place.

As I keep saying, kids deserve better than abandonment.

Mere monkeying with age limits is no “solution.”

As an immediate measure, the legislature needs to repeal the dump law to prevent even further harm be done to still more kids and their families.

Then as a second step, they need to stop looking to whatever next ‘quick fix’ advocates and salespeople of various stripes would like to sell them on, and instead do the real work.

The kids are waiting, will Nebraska legislators step up?

***

So I’m behind but trying to catch up.

Tuesday another teen showed up at a hospital turning herself in under Nebraska’s “safe haven” law. Making this the second “self haven” case. See Teen Cites Safe Haven.

Tuesday night the teenage mom walked into the hospital after she says her mom hit her and kicked her out. The North High sophmore also claims her mom steals her welfare checks, meant for the baby. The teen’s mother insists she’s never abused her daughter or taken her money. “I shouldn’t have to explain my financial situation to anyone, even my child, as long as she got a roof over her head. She’s not neglected, she eats whenever she wants to, she take a bath whenever she wants to. Her job is to go to school and come home and take care of her child, now that she has a child,” says Portia Crawford.

Crawford claims this whole thing started over a fight with her daughter who wanted to go out for the night and leave her baby.

This is the second teen who has turned themselves in, the first was back on September 22rd, an 18 year old boy who walked into Grand Island hospital. He was turned away as too old for foster care and given a referral to services, whatever that entailed.

The news story continues:

A petition was filed to charge Crawford with neglect, her daughter is not protected under safe haven.

Welcome to the grand irony of Nebraska’s “safe haven” law, anyone with physical custody of a kid when dumping is protected under the law, but kids themselves trying to access help are not.

Neither of the two teens are being counted in Nebraska DHHS’s official dump statistics (link opens a PDF.) This is important, as clearly these self “havens” are falling through the cracks. As they simply fall out of the history, no one can get a handle on what’s been happening. They’re absolutely happening, but hidden.

The local news, for example knew nothing of the earlier instance. (Should we sooner or later expect yet a third “bizarre new twist” story when another kid does the same?)

No age is reported on the girl beyond “sophomore” and “teen,” but we can safely assume she would likely fall within the age range covered by the law.

The bottom line is these two have become invisible self “havens”. Ghosts in the machine.

Nebraska thinks these kids don’t count.

Perhaps most importantly, despite asking for help under the law, there is no “haven” on the other end for them.

Then Wednesday, another kid was abandoned at Immanuel Hospital in Omaha, a 17-year old boy.

See, Another Safe Haven Drop in Omaha

and

KETV’s New ‘Safe Haven’ Teen Has Criminal Record

Investigators said it appears to be a case involving a mother who decided she could no longer handle her teenage son.

and

According to juvenile court records, the mother told a social worker that her son “needed to be a state ward now.” She said she was exercising her right under the Safe Haven law.

Perhaps one of the more interesting details in the piece is the boy’s lack of educational history:

Omaha Public Schools said her son has never been enrolled in a district school, even though he lives in the district.

Whether this means the boy was home schooled or in a private school or simply never educated at all remains to be seen.

Once again, we have those actually dealing with the practical application of the dump laws unhappy with the lack of preventative structures long before a kid reaches a dump site:

“There needs to be a better way to address these issues,” said assistant Douglas County attorney Nicole Goaley. “I think there needs to be a preventive way to assist families in getting their children the resources they need without making them wards of the state.”

Naturally, per the title of the piece, the focus is also on the boy’s previous “run-ins with the law:”

Court records show the teenager in this latest case has had several run-ins with the law. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to marijuana possession and being a minor in possession of alcohol. Last year, he was charged with misdemeanor theft and failure to appear in court.

The boy is in temporary, emergency custody with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Service. His case will be heard in Douglas County Juvenile Court next week.

So let’s talk numbers again.

While the Nebraska DHHS count stands at 19 kids, as I’ve said before, this is a Bastard Blog so here, I focus on the experiences of the kids themselves in relation to the dump law. My count is well above 19.

Nebraska may not count for example, the kid left at the Police station as it’s not an authorized dump site under the law, but that kid himself is no less abandoned. To the best of my knowledge he’s still in foster care. He is every bit as dumped as the rest of the kids on the official tally, but not counted.

So let’s go through my non-state approved count of dumped kids:

• 9/1- 14-year old boy dumped at an Omaha police station (not an approved dump site)- NOT COUNTED
  
• 9/13- 11-year old boy
• 9/13- 15-year old boy
• 9/20- either a 13 or 14-year old girl (conflicting accounts)
• 9/22- Self haven- 18-year old boy- NOT COUNTED
• 9/24- 9 siblings: 1-year old girl, 6-year old boy, 7-year old boy, 9-year old girl, 11-year old boy, 13-year old girl, 14-year old girl, 15-year old boy, 17-year old boy
• 9/24- 11-year old boy
• 9/24- 15-year old boy
• 10/5- 15-year old boy
• 10-5- 12-year old boy
• 10/5- 15-year old girl brought to the hospital by her mother to be dumped, police talk her into committing her to the psych ward instead (see my blog piece) – NOT COUNTED
• 10/6- 14-year old girl (Iowa) NE DHHS has her listed as 10/7
• 10/13- 13-year old boy (Michigan)
• 10/21- Self haven- “sophomore/teen” girl – NOT COUNTED
• 10/2- 17-year old boy

(Again, see my Nebraska tag for my previous writings about many of these.)

Which is to say actually 23 kids have either been dumped , are attempted dumps, or self “haven”ed, (only to find no haven there for them.)

On this blog at least I do my damnedest to ensure “nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”

As I said back on October 6th,

If there’s any one thing my blog tries to do consistently, it’s remember those so often forgotten or hidden in (or out of) the ‘official’ tabulations.

…

In Nebraska with its child-dump law the casualties to date have been kids. In states with baby-dump laws, the casualties are babies. Whether newborn or child, abandonment deprives these people of building blocks necessary to them, particularly later in life. The state should never set out to set up systems that intentionally deprives a subset of citizens of basic things other citizens not only have, but consider the bedrock their lives are based on.

No matter what pretty language child-dump advocates attempt to wrap their toxic legislation in, the bottom line is child abandonment is never good for kids.

As I’ve said so many times before, there’s only one thing to do a legalized abandonment law, repeal it.

***

So to attempt to do damage control in the wake of the child welfare mess in Nebraska, a new meme is being spun, that it was opponents of the bill who created this mess.

We’re seeing this from multiple directions now, including former Nebraska State Senator Chip Maxwell (R) who has moved on into his next career of sorts at the Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research lobbying against embryonic stem cell research. (Also see “You can be Pro Holiness and LOVE Stem Cell Research” here.) Yesterday he blogged about the Nebraska legalized child abandonment disaster, Safe Haven: We meant to do that.

He offers up legislators “meant to do that,” claiming they:

wanted the spectacle of teenagers being dropped off at hospitals under the safe haven law to highlight the difficulties families have in getting help for troubled teens

Let’s be clear here, genuine longtime opponents of the dump laws didn’t want anything to pass. We did not want any version of it going forward. We have opposed dump laws across the board. We tried to talk some sense into Nebraska legislators before they passed the “Aged up” version, as the law went into effect, and later after the dumps began. This aged up version was their creation not ours.

Nebraska’s unique dump law was not created due to any encouragement from us. This is a mess of their own making.

We oppose all dump bills, and have consistently called for their full repeal after their passage. See my comment the day after the went into effect and my first post on the Nebraska situation, in which I started off with:

It’s long past time for Nebraska to repeal the worst baby dump law in the country.

Some of us ourselves are adoptees. We know what abandonment can do to kids, younger, or older. We know what not having information about one’s origins means, in ways people with that information cannot fathom. We know what feelings of loss and be left or perhaps even unwanted do to kids over the course of a lifetime, we see such in the adoptee community all the time. It is precisely due to that understanding, and that empathy that we oppose all dump laws.

Never in a million years would I advise real kids actually have to go through the act of legalized abandonment just to make a point. It’s not ethical to play with kids lives that way.

I have a deep empathy with the kids and what they will endure. (Now some are already enduring.)

These 21 kids (see how I reached that number in my posts concerning gaming the numbers and the numbers spin,) and there may well be more by the time Nebraska legislators finally get around to putting an end to older dumps, are going to be dealing with the consequences of Nebraska’s failed experiment in child welfare law for the rest of their lives.

Under the aged down version, just like the rest of the country, a whole new class of kids abandoned at the state’s encouragement are going to be dealing with that for the rest of their lives. Estimates already run between 1,000 and 2,000 kids have been dumped nationwide under these hideous laws.

Do not for one instant attempt to hang these dumps around the necks of the very people who have fought these bills from the beginning.

Now as for Nebraska state legislators and their motivations regarding what they passed?

I honestly don’t know what the hell they were thinking.

But this was a legalized abandonment bill.

They wanted a dump bill, they passed a dump bill, and legalized abandonment advocates, far from instantly understanding the damage that the NE law was about to cause, instead crowed about getting their 50th state, claiming Nebraska as a victory.

If anyone is to blame for this mess, and the mess in the other 50 states, it’s dump law advocates, who in their short sighted race to pass these abominations, have created a lasting legacy of a legal mess and personal scars these kids are now stuck with.

As I said before:

Someone get these kids a lawyer, they’ve got one hell of a case.

***

Before even starting to write about this topic, keep in mind the disclaimer I’ve placed upon earlier writings I’ve done in relation to First Nations peoples and adoption:

To start from a personal perspective, I’m just a Bastard, a politically active adoptee.

Being legally prohibited from attaining my State sealed records, I have no idea what heritage cultural or genetic my biological family might contain, other than a quick glance in a mirror appears to indicate pretty clearly a hefty chunk of what would generally be termed “white” by sociological definition. The family history of those who adopted me has interwoven at times with First Nations peoples on both the American and Canadian sides of the border.

While my interest in this subject, yes at times does relate to aspects of ‘familial’ history, my primary interest in such is historical and political, speaking from both a Bastard perspective, as one who opposes forms and tactics of colonialism (religious, political, etc), and as one who supports indigenous peoples’ autonomy and demands for redress.

***

Ironically, the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA in relation to the dump laws was precisely what I had been intending to blog about, but hadn’t had the time to get to. Well sure enough, in Nebraska, we appear to have the first case(?) of an ICWA claim in the wake of a “safe haven” legalized abandonment.

…Channel 6 News found out Wednesday the Cherokee Nation based in Oregon may have a legal claim to raise the Staton kids because they are part Native American.

(Also be sure to see the video related to the piece.)

Why haven’t we had an ICWA dump related claim before now? Perhaps because in most states abandoners are anonymous and the abandoned kids are not old enough to answer questions relating to their genealogy.

(Again, ‘aging down’ will not ’solve’ these problems. Changing Nebraska’s dump law to apply only to infants would only create a new state-created ‘pocket’ in which to hide crucial information such as a child’s genealogical background, information vital to an ICWA claim. Adoptees in closed adoptions, such as myself actually know a great deal about that, as we have no means by which to determine any First Nations ancestry we may or may not have.)

While I have been working on a longer post about the nine kids Gary Staton abandoned back on September 24th, and the aftermath of that abandonment;

• how the kids have ended up at the heart of legal battles,
• having to make difficult choices between remaining with their friends at their school, or staying as a family unit with the other kids,
• how it has played out across multiple states,
• and how it has played out between family members and Nebraska Health and Human Services,

but for the moment I’m going to set that saga aside to focus solely on the ICWA angle.

Bastard Nation, The Adoptee Rights Organization warned about how the dump laws circumvent ICWA early on, pointing out that such laws:

Contravene sections of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) which give tribes first custody rights in cases of child relinquishment.

Bastard Nation has brought the issue up many times in testimony trying to stop the dump laws. State after state, in enacting their dump laws have disregarded their obligations under ICWA.

I have also pointed out that dump laws short circuit ICWA claims in my own previous blogging. (While this particular post I’ve linked is primarily relating to Canadian First Nations children, some of whom were later adopted by American couples, it’s an important read as backgrounder and context to the history of how First Nations children have been actively resettled into white families. Dump laws must be understood within the broader context of forcible child removal as a means by which to cut off Tribes’ futures.) Bastardette has also pointed out the ICWA violation in relation to Nebraska’s dump law.

As an aside, Shea Grimm in her search series has also written about ICWA’s pertinence to sealed records adoptees’ attempts to regain access to their own records, see her section Using The Indian Child Welfare Act in a petition. Unfortunately this often ends up in the catch-22 of having to first know about your Native ancestry to to gain the information relating to your Native ancestry. But then, there’s very little about adoption that is logical and straightforward.

The First Nations Orphan Association is an important voice relating to issues of First Nations kids and adoption . Again, bear in mind such adoptions were often done within a context of non-consentuality. Large numbers of Native children were forcibly removed for adoption. ICWA was in part a response to those crimes committed. But now with the baby Moses laws/”Safe Haven” laws/baby dump laws, a new means of bypassing ICWA has been constructed, once again undermining Tribal rights.

The legalized abandonment laws continue that history of permanently removing children from their Tribal or genealogical heritage, far more so for the infant dumps than Nebraska’s older child dumps, as at least these older kids have perhaps some knowledge of their heritage. The dump laws provide an adoption intake path, wherein certainly for infants, questions of Tribal legal claims are never even raised, doing so in flagrant violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Tribes are not just ‘another player’ in the legal tug of war over kids, they are sovereign Nations. Cutting them out of the equation via the legalized abandonment laws is nothing more than once again creating a new way to circumvent their means to protect children’s identities and Tribal futures.

You want a four letter reason why legalized child abandonment laws must be REPEALED? ICWA.

Infant and anonymous dump laws are the bypass on ICWA.

Older child abandonments will only face ICWA challenges when Tribes have the resources and access to information to raise the claims, wrongly placing the burden of raising the claim on Tribes, rather than on the States who have obligations under ICWA.

Tinkering with age limits and other such details of these laws is not going to begin to deal with the fundamental flaws inherent to all dump laws.

Full REPEAL is the only answer.

***

While the hemming and hawing, contemplating potential changes to Nebraska’s disastrous child dump law continues, the raw numbers of kids that have now passed into the Nebraska system by way of the child dump laws continues to climb.

Yesterday, (Sunday) two more boys were legally abandoned at hospitals. One boy was dumped in Omaha, the other in Lincoln, abandoned by his 51 year-old grandmother who had only recently been granted custody of him.

A day of inaction by legislators can translate directly into a lost family for kids.

The dump law never should have passed in the first place. Now that it has, every day without full repeal is an opportunity for destruction. Destruction of families, of a child’s history, of community ties, the list goes on and on. Those who advocate slapping some duct tape on this law, or somehow think they can retool it merely continue the existing track record of harm. Dump laws are by definition, unfixable. Playing with age ranges for ‘little dumplings’ just changes how soon the victims of these laws will be able to be vocal about what was done to them.

The ongoing harm caused by Nebraska’s particular variation on the legalized child abandonment law is not a case of ‘unforeseen consequences’. Those who actually bothered to read the wording of the law understood it was a recipe for disaster.

Lincoln Nebraska’s Police Chief, Tom Casady is quoted as saying:

“I’m rather surprised that Legislature didn’t see this coming because I can assure you everyone at the Lincoln police department saw it coming.”

The notion that Nebraska legislators ‘didn’t see it coming’ while politically useful, particularly to legislators themselves, at this point appears to be patently false.

According to Sen. Vickie McDonald (a sponsor on the Nebraska dump bill) precisely this possibility, that older kids would be entering into the system under the dump law, was understood to be one possible outcome and was discussed among (at least some) Nebraska legislators. See Teens Dumped at Hospitals Under Safe Haven Law (Originally posted back on Sept. 25th) for the following:

But at least one lawmaker who sponsored the state’s safe haven law knew it could be an issue.

Sen. Vickie McDonald of St. Paul said, “We discussed the possibility of something like this happening, but we did nothing to address it thinking possibly it wouldn’t happen.”

Let’s be clear about this, it was discussed, and legislators “did nothing to address it” (emphasis added.)

Not altogether surprising, considering how some view the Nebraska dump situation as what the law was crafted to do, and thereby a positive outcome.

Easy for a term limited politician to spout off about, they’re not the ones who have to deal with the consequences of these dump laws.

With dumps laws now enacted in all 50 states, we as a nation find ourselves with states actively encouraging the legalized abandonment of children.

Speaking as a former child who (to the best of my knowlege anyway, sealed records being what they are) passed through the child welfare system, and as an adopted adult, I find this state of affairs revolting. It is a societal and legal abandonment of those least able to defend their own interests.

While the fretting continues in comments and columns around the country, real kids are day by day being dumped. They will live with the consequences of such for the rest of their lives. Even if they are eventually reunited with family, undergoing the process of legalized abandonment is not something they’re likely to forget, nor fully forgive anytime soon.

Most of those proposing anything at all be done about this sorry mess are advocating Nebraska’s dump law be brought in line with other baby-dump laws across the country. Which is to say, they don’t want victims of these laws who can go on the evening news and tell people what it feels like to be abandoned. They would rather the laws affect those too young and too voiceless (physically, politically, etc) to defend their own interests.

Baby-Dump laws are about pushing the consequences of such horrendous legislation down to those too young to even begin to fight back. As I mentioned in that earlier post, prior to Nebraska upping the age limit, the oldest of the legalized abandonment kids, from Texas, the first state to pass the then called “Baby Moses Laws”, would today be approximately nine years old. The 18 year lag between being dumped and reaching age of majority is more than enough time for the legislators who created the mess to go on about their lives, the direct consequences of such never touching them.

So by way of updating the Nebraska scope of the problem to date, Bastardette has put together an invaluable timeline/roster/status tally (updated to the below in this, her most recent post):

Here’s the revised dumpee roster:

September 1: Male 14–left by mother at Omaha police station. Currently in foster care.

September 13: Male 11–left by grandmother–another report says mother–at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha; currently in foster care and partial hospitalization.

September 13: Male 15–left by guardian aunt at Bryant Medical Center West, Lincoln.

September 20: Pregnant female 13 left by mother at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha. Returned to mother.

September 22: Male 18, turned himself in to hospital in Grand Island; too old for foster care, but can receive services.

September 24: 9 siblings, 1-17 (left by father, Gary Staton, at Creighton University Medical Center ER).

• female, 1
• male, 6
• male, 7
• female, 9
• male, 11
• female 13
• female 14,
• male, 15
• male 17
• An 18-year old sister who does not live at home was not abandoned. All these children are now in foster care and several relatives have requested custody Background checks are underway here and here. Go here and here for video of home and neighbors.

September 24: Male 11–left at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha.

September 24, Male 15–left by guardian uncle at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha; uncle plans to relinquish guardianship.

October 5: Male 12–left by guardian grandmother at Brian LGH West, Lincoln

October 5: Male 12–left at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha

Note that this comes out to 18 kids, not the “16″ the papers are now using based off the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services list of cases to date (link to a PDF). The Sept. 1rst police station dump is not being counted as police stations are not authorized dump sites, none-the-less, for the kid involved it most certainly was an abandonment. The other case not being counted in the ‘official’ list of cases to date is the September 22, 18 year-old male who turned himself in in Grand Island.

Being a Bastard based blog, I base my count on what the kids themselves are experiencing, I’ll note if they are dumped at a non-authorized site, but I feel it’s important to remember those dumped, even if left off the State’s official tally. It was no less a dump for the 14 year-old boy (Sept. 1) just because he was left somewhere other than a site mandated by the Nebraska law, he is no less abandoned by his family, no less in foster care as a result of the dump law than any of the other kids. Ask yourself this, had the Nebraska dump law not passed, would his mother have abandoned him at the police station?

If there’s any one thing my blog tries to do consistently, it’s remember those so often forgotten or hidden in (or out of) the ‘official’ tabulations.

To date, we’re talking about 18 kids who would not have undergone the abandonment process were it not for the reckless and destructive passage of Nebraska’s falsely named “safe haven” law. Legalized abandonments are not “safe havens” for kids, they’re just a new and less paperworked point of entry into an already overburdened child welfare system.

Nebraska, like the other 49 states has gotten into the dreadful business of making it easy for those with custody to rid themselves of kids, and in so doing it fails those kids, disregarding both their longterm needs and ultimately their short term needs as well.

This is just another form of (already) failed social experimentation with the lives and relationships of kids hanging in the balance. The longer dump laws stay on the books, the more kids become part of the legalized abandonment experiment.

In Nebraska with its child-dump law the casualties to date have been kids. In states with baby-dump laws, the casualties are babies. Whether newborn or child, abandonment deprives these people of building blocks necessary to them, particularly later in life. The state should never set out to set up systems that intentionally deprives a subset of citizens of basic things other citizens not only have, but consider the bedrock their lives are based on.

No matter what pretty language child-dump advocates attempt to wrap their toxic legislation in, the bottom line is child abandonment is never good for kids.

Some days I feel like I’m down to stating the obvious.

***

Once again, I end my post by asking for what I really want, an end to legalized abandonment laws. Nothing short of full repeal, in Nebraska and across the nation.

Because there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ legalized abandonment law.

Every abandonment is a failure.

Kids deserve better than abandonment.

***

Finally, I have LOTS more writing about the Nebraska situation I’m trying to get to. That said, the situation is evolving far faster than I could ever blog it.

In the mean time go over and read some important posts on Bastardette. She is doing a tremendous job of writing about the dump laws from her own angle, (I’ve ’starred’ “*” her recent Nebraska related posts):

* NEBRASKA FIASCO CONTINUES: 2 MORE DUMPED AT HOSPITAL (October 6, 2008)

* NEBRASKA FIASCO: BASTARDETTE GETS A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH NCFA’S TOM ATWOOD ON NEBRASKA TEEN DUMPS AND ‘SAFE HAVEN” LAW (October 6, 2008)

CALIFORNIA: THE TERMINATOR TERMINATES “SAFE HAVEN” BABY DUMP EXPANSION AGAIN (October 2, 2008)

“A LITTLE HAYWIRE:” BABY DUMP PUSHER TRIVIALIZES ABANDONERS AND ABANDONMENT (Sept 30, 2008)

* “I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO HAPPEN TO KIDS LIKE IT HAPPENED TO ME” NEBRASKA ABANDONMENTS REACH 16 (Sept 28, 2008)

* BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME: NEBRASKA DUMP FIASCO (Sept 26, 2008)

WARNING AUSTRALIA: SAFE HAVENS COMNG YOUR WAY? (Sept 24, 2008)

***

It’s long past time for Nebraska to repeal the worst baby dump law in the country.

Fortunately pencils come with two ends, one of which is for erasing mistakes.

As of Saturday, Nebraska has become the ‘legally dump your teen!’ capital of the United States.

This past weekend exactly what many of us who have opposed Nebraska’s “baby safe haven” law had predicted unfortunately came to pass. (This is yet another of those circumstances wherein I just don’t want to be right.)

Less than two months after the law went into effect, kids over the age of ten were dumped. In separate incidents, the first two kids dumped under Nebraska’s new law were two boys, one age 11, the other age 15, both were “(baby) safe havened” at Nebraska hospitals.

Clearly “Baby safe haven”, in Nebraska at least, is terminology gone null and void. While baby imagery abounds from the insipid little ducky on the safe haven Nebraska myspace page to the smiling youngster’s faces on the National Safe Haven Alliance page or their signs,

the latest unsmiling dumpees faces are instead, those of tweens and teens. (But then, it’s kinda hard to get a teen’s head held cutely in the palm of a hand… .)

Last July, Nebraska’s insane dump law went into effect, allowing anyone having physical custody of a “child” (up to age 19, one hell of a redefinition of “child!” and how in the heck does one ‘have custody’ of a 18 year old anyway?) to legally abandon said “child” at specified drop off sites.

Those of us who have opposed dump laws from back in the days of the nation’s first, (in Texas under then Governor Bush, then called a “baby Moses law,”) were quick to point out that Nebraska’s dump scheme would inevitably, sooner or later, result in teens and pre-teens being dumped, likely by ‘overwhemed’, or “economically disadvantaged” adults. Well, sure enough, less than two months in, guess who shows up at the hospitals as Nebraska’s first dumps?

Meet Nebraska’s newest ‘precious little dumplings’, via an article entitled Unruly juveniles given up under ’safe haven’ law out of Monday’s Omaha World Herald,

The 2-month-old law was used twice Saturday, both times by people leaving misbehaving adolescents with whom they could no longer cope.

An 11-year-old boy was dropped off Saturday afternoon at Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha. A few hours later, a 15-year-old boy was left at Bryan LGH Medical Center West in Lincoln.

Both boys are now in the custody of the State Department of Health and Human Services.

Which is to say neither of these dumped kids were ever in any danger of being killed by those who had custody of them, the usual superficial justification for baby Moses laws nationwide. No kids lives were saved by these dumps.

These were nothing more than ‘good-riddance’ dumps, dumps that finally cut to the core, saying far more about those dumping the kids, and the state that enables such, than about any of the pretenses any of these laws are enacted under.

Now, where do you suppose the idea to dump at least one of the two kids came from? Why a ‘helpful’ “counselor” of course!

The aunt said that the boy had behavioral problems and that a counselor had suggested that she take him to the hospital under the safe haven law.

This is what happens when dump laws get woven into the fabric of ’support’ services. Can’t deal with the 15 year old you have legal custody of? No problem, just get rid of him, Nebraska will be happy to take said kid off your hands.

One really has to question the credentials of any “counselor” whose ’solution’ to dealing with a teen with ‘behavioral problems’ is to legally abandon the kid, legally relinquishing all custody of said child. Really think about that, the ‘counselor’s’ ’solution’ was to say ‘get rid of the kid once and for all.’ The Aunt went along with the advice. Just how was the ’safe haven’ law presented to her? Was it sold similarly to how many parents have lost children to adoption, as merely a ‘temporary break while you sort things out’?

Reporters on the ground should be asking the basic questions about the string of events that led to the kid being dumped. To date, though, I don’t see that anyone has.

One of the more troubling aspects of the dump laws nationally has been how the information is presented to the prospects, be that via ‘counseling’ or as ‘how to dump a kid’ get woven into school curriculums.

Both of these dumped kids are now ‘fine examples’ of what Bill Pierce, the (now deceased) former head of, and founder of the National Council for Adoption (NCFA) and early baby Moses law advocate, once referred to as “non-bureaucratic placement(s)”.

The kids get dumped, but unlike traditional terminations of parental rights and potentially eventual adoptions, in the cases of dumped kids, parental rights are simply cut without any of the usual ‘messy paperwork’ or waiting periods to slow the process.

(Now these boys being less than desirable adoption fodder, what with being termed ‘unruly juveniles’ and all, odds are pretty slim they’d be finding a new adoptive home within the week. Young, cute, and perhaps less verbal dumplings on the other hand, are in high demand, with phone calls coming in wanting to adopt almost from the first mention on many local newscasts.)

As for NCFA itself, it is an industry trade group and lobby founded in 1980, as a direct reaction to the 1979/1980 Carter administration’s Draft Model State Adoption Act (DMSAA) which had called for restoring records access by adoptees to their own adoption records. NCFA was created very specifically by industry interests to derail and defeat the open records provisions of the DMSAA.

Similar to NCFA’s reactionary founding, Pierce and NCFA became early promoters of baby Moses laws in the wake of Oregon’s historic Measure 58 (passed in 1998, tied up in legal challenges until 2000), the statewide referendum that restored records access to adult adoptees, as a strategic means of circumventing the open records victory.

After all, how can one have open records when there are no records to get? Baby Moses laws ensure that children, particularly newborns and infants, are relinquished in a ‘paperfree’ manner, and made available almost immediately for fast track adoptions. Nebraska’s law goes further, allowing for those in possession of “children” up to age 19, to abandon them.

To quote the Bastard Nation position piece on legalized abandonments,

Bastard Nation believes that it is no coincidence that Safe Haven laws have been enacted just as the efforts of Bastard Nation and other adoptee civil rights activists have begun to overturn archaic state laws which seal our records from us. One prominent sealed records lobbyist wrote recently that “disappearing privacy rights” [records access] “has led most States to pass Safe Haven laws so that women and their babies have a life-saving option of anonymously taking a baby to a hospital or other safe place.” Safe Haven laws, we believe, are simply a tool to codify secret relinquishment and adoption.

This is elaborated upon in Bastard Nation’s 2003 piece, RESPONSE TO UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: “SAFE HAVEN” LAWS ARE CAUSING PROBLEMS NOT SOLVING THEM,

While these programs and campaigns can take on a life of their own, their impetus in large part has come from conservative and highly influential adoption lobbyists such as retired National Council for Adoption President and CEO Dr. William Pierce who for over 20 years has opposed identity rights and records access for adult adoptees. It came as no surprise to us, then, when Dr. Pierce, complaining about “disappearing privacy rights in adoption” wrote last year that Safe Haven laws are a direct response to the successful movement to overturn outdated sealed records laws in the US.[1]

(Footnote , 1 William J. Pierce, “European Court of Human Rights may overturn French law that promised women confidentiality in adoption,” Extra! October 9, 2002, (url to the citation off the now dead IAVAAN.org site) Dr. Pierce is also the Director of the Richard C. Stillman Foundation for Adoption which has given modest grants to the pioneering Baby Moses Project in Texas and AMT Children of Hope Foundation Infant Burial Fund, a Safe Haven powerhouse in New York State. 990-PF Form, IRS Return of Private Foundation, 2000, 10; Activity Report, The Richard C. Stillman Foundation for Adoption 1996-1999, 10)

Bill Pierce always viewed his baby Moses laws work as crucial to and within the broader context of his anti-abortion work. In short he viewed adoption as a zero-sum-game way of working against abortion. (Pierce was a Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute, heading their office in Washington, D.C.) He was also the first national vice president of ‘Democrats for Life’ one can still find a few mentions of his position in places such as this for example.

(All of which is to say, abortion access supportive individuals and organizations who have been misled into supporting baby Moses laws under the false application of the label “privacy’ take note, the real push for such, and ultimately beneficiaries of such laws are NOT those who support abortion access.)

The termination of parental rights via dump takes on important dimensions in at least one of these two Nebraska cases, as the 15 year old was dropped by his Aunt. While the boy’s mother may be dead, the father may still have held some parental rights at the time of the dump,

The 15-year-old was dropped at Bryan LGH off by his aunt, who became the child’s legal guardian after the boy’s mother died. Landry said HHS had helped facilitate the guardianship but did not have an active case.

As for the 11 year old, he was apparently an adoptee, who due to Nebraska’s insipid law, ended up in more or less a ‘returns department’ when his adopters no longer wanted him,

The 11-year-old boy was left at Immanuel by his adoptive mother, who said the boy had some behavioral problems. He had moved here from out of state and had been adopted by relatives. Landry said that HHS had helped the original state with the adoption but that the case is no longer active.

So there you have it, don’t like the kid you adopted? No problem, Nebraska now has a ‘warentee period’ of up to 19 years, wherein dissatisfied adopters can simply dump the no longer desirable child.

‘Fortunately’, the policy applies equally to biological children. No longer want the kid you popped out? Nebraska is your dream destination.

But should we really have expected less than the single most extreme “baby Moses law” in the country from Bill Pierce’s home state of Nebraska, final stop for somewhere between six and seven thousand kids on the orphan trains, the 75 year long (eugenic) child redistribution scheme, and a state where Boys Town is a major tourist destination?

Nebraska had held the proud distinction of having been the final hold out state, the last of all fifty to enact these deplorable bills that circumvent all notions of best practice. In part, precisely because Nebraska has had such a long history with and awareness of forms of child welfare experimentation. With a mere nine years between the first bill in Texas through to the final state to fall, Nebraska, the gutting of traditional child relinquishments was complete, nationwide.

What we have to show for that sorry mess is a 15 year old dumped, as but the latest of a wave of nationwide relinquishments, usually done at least in theory if not in practice, “anonymously” thereby creating a whole new set of ‘legally abandoned’ potential and actual adoptees.

The Nebraska bill had been stalled, until the original provision, limiting the age of the potential dumpee downward towards newborns was changed to the current abomination.

State Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he had not anticipated that many older children would be dropped off when he agreed to remove the age limit in the original safe haven proposal.

Other articles such as this from the Daily Nebraskan, Safe haven law raises abandonment concerns shed further light on the thinking, (or lack thereof) at the time,

Arnie Stuthman, a Nebraska state senator from Platte Center, Neb., proposed the bill. He said including older children in the law wasn’t in the original bill, but he “compromised” and added the provision in hopes of preventing child abuse.

Before the bill passed, objections were raised.

The Nebraska Children’s Home Society, ( see for example, this PDF from their web page, and this article, NE Children’s Home Society opposes safe havens) and Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization has tirelessly fought baby Moses laws both in Nebraska (see BASTARD NATION’S SUBMITTED TESTIMONY: OPPOSITION TO NEBRASKA LB 6–SAFE HAVEN 1/19/07) and in state after state.

Perhaps more importantly, go read Marley Greiner’s (The Executive Chair of Bastard Nation) personal blog Bastardette, and her series of posts about precisely this inevitability. Ms Greiner has been tracking Baby dumps (via her personally published “Baby Dump News: A Weekly Chronicle of Baby Abandonment”), and working against the scourge of baby Moses laws/baby dump laws nationwide with Bastard Nation for years now.

Keeping in mind that Nebraska’s baby Moses law took effect July 18th, 08. She saw what was coming and Cassandra-like tried to warn of the new law’s likely effect. Unfortunately her warning fell on the deaf ears of those either convinced that Nebraska’s impending child welfare disaster was either a good thing, or never going to occur.

NEBRASKA”S NEW BABY DUMP LAW: BETTER THAN RITILAN Friday, February 29, 2008

NEBRASKA SAFE HAVEN LAW: TIRED OF YOUR KID Thursday, July 17, 2008

HEGEL SMILES: NEBRASKA’S NO FAULT DUMP Saturday, July 19, 2008

Also be sure to glance through some of the Bastard Nation materials on babydumps, it’s become positively ‘quaint’ to look back on the days when the fear was that with increasing age windows on dumps, oh horror, TODDLERS might be dumped!

See, as but a few examples,

BN’s position on Legalized Baby Abandonment,

BN’s early statement on Legalized Abandoment Laws from back in 2000,

the BN action alert on such also from 2000

BN opposing the raising of dump ages back in 2004 in this piece, entitled Oh No! Toddler Dumps!

Marley and BN warned over and over of how Pierce’s perverse dream of ” non-bureaucratic placements” and demand for ever rising age limitations would sooner or later result in abandoned teens. Within nine years of the nation’s first dump law(1999) that dark future is here, now. We’ve moved from the legal possibility to an actual “legally abandoned” 15 year old.

While tween and teen dumps may elicit unwarranted ’shock,’ and may even bring Nebraska lawmakers back to revisit the bill (See the Sept 15th AP piece, 2 boys left at Neb. hospitals under ‘haven’ law, in which State Sen. Stuthman and others are quoted as being “open to revisiting the legislation”) the unseen and often unvoiced full horror of the law is that it intentionally encourages legalizes child abandonment AND effectively works to short circuit the fundamental identity rights of adoptees.

The full consequences of which cannot be given first person political voice until the first generation of legally dumped kids reaches the age of majority. The consequences to these kids are dire, if often rendered invisible for the time being.

There is no ‘going back to the drawing board ‘that can ‘fix’ a baby Moses bill, they are to their core harmful to those least able to speak on their own behalf.

There is only one adoptee or kid/eventual adult centered possibility of what to do with legalized abandonment laws, dump them.

Anything less than full repeal only perpetuates the ongoing disaster.

***

Here are a few other raw sources on the Nebraska Teen and Tween dumps over the weekend,
AP Two boys abandoned under Nebraska’s ’safe haven’ law 9/15/08

The 11-year-old is still at the hospital and the 15-year-old is in an emergency shelter until the courts figure out who will have custody.

Woman Dropped Off 15 Year Old Boy At Safe Haven KLKN

They say the child had no sign of physical abuse so no charges will be filed.

But there are many who feel the law is problematic and say this case only solidifies their concerns.

The executive director of the Nebraska Children’s Home Society, Karen Authier, issued a statement saying:

“This child is old enough to know what’s happening to them, it’s a big concern and we believe there are better solutions.”

Health and human services also released a statement today saying, in this case, this is not what the law is intended to do, it’s for children that are in immediate danger.

11- and 15-Year-Olds Left at Separate Hospitals Under New Safe Haven Law

This piece contains two video segments (See left column)

Lincoln police tell Action 3 News the 15-year-old’s mother is deceased and the father’s whereabouts unknown.