To get readers up to speed, first a little history:

Ron has done a number of posts on CARE’s crap, including his latest, in which he nails the sappy overwrought emotionalism CARE is employing:

BB Church vs CARE, Nikfa and THE Adopton Institute, with one hand tied behind my back…

Marley also has a number of posts on her California Adoption Reform Effort tag, including her latest about the content of the CA bill itself:

CALIFORNIA: I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! BAD BILL HITS THE BOARDS!

While you’re there, be sure to note Maryanne’s comment on Marley’s piece:

maryanne said…

I am mad as hell! I am a member of the CUB Board and we were flat out lied to to get us to support CARE’s bill. We were told in an email from Jean Strauss that they were going to introduce a clean bill, with the proviso that it “might” have to be modified somewhere down the road. This clearly not what happened; CARE did not even try to introduce a clean bill, but came out with this travesty.This group deserves no support from anyone who cares about adoptee rights.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:45:00 AM EST

If this is how the bill’s “supporters” are interpreting current events, I’d say CARE has a rocky road ahead of it.

The full text of CA AB 372 as introduced can be found on the California Open page.

Read it and judge for yourself, but simply put, it is not by any stretch a clean open records bill.

As Marley pointed out in her latest piece CARE felt the need to add this disclaimer of sorts to their webpage concerning the bill:

(a word about reading a bill: Legislative language, and the language of statutes, can be confusing. The language is based upon existing legal code which encompasses thousands of pages that are all interrelated. The chane that we are requesting will allow adult adoptees over the page of 18 access to their original record of birth. The text herein is written by the legislative counsel for the California Assembly and is written for lawyers, not for lay people. What’s important is that it cretes a legal right for adult adoptees to get their birth records.)

In other words, it’s a nice little condescending pat on the head, saying essentially, ‘there, there all you adoptees, it’s in legislate-ese, just TRUST US, it doesn’t mean what you thought you read, see? It’s now a “rights” bill, trust us!’

Which of course is ultimately not what it is. This is not a rights bill, this more of the usual conditional psuedo-access predicated upon desires and whims.

Again, Bastards buying that old “trust us” line, I’ve still got that old CARE bridge on the wrong coast to sell ya … .

Bastards have every reason to begin asking the hard questions when someone begins selling us the just “trust us” line in relation to legislation.

These are people’s real lives CARE is being so CARE-less with. The consequences of getting it wrong means real people left behind, screwed over, and trapped behind walls of lack of access.

In Ohio, I’m precisely that class of “left behind” Bastards. Had I been born just a few years earlier, or perhaps a few years later, my chances of actually gaining access to my authentic records would be quite different, but as it stands now, purely due to a “political compromise” I’m locked into those middle, and fucked over, years.

Messed up legislation has real world consequences to those bargained away.

And that is precisely what the CARE bill does, set up a new and damaged system going forward. If their bill were to pass Bastards would be left begging judges for scrubbed of identifying information (unless such is deemed necessary to assist in establishing a legal right) copies of their paperwork.

It says so right there in the CARE bill:

The name and address of the natural parents shall be given to the petitioner or requester only if he or she can demonstrate that the name and address, or either of them, are necessary to assist him or her in establishing a legal right. In all other cases, that information shall be redacted from all records and information provided, including a copy of an original record of birth.

CARE’s pre-emptive answer to such is of course, another pat on the head, ‘there there, you just don’t understand it, TRUST US!’

Trust people who have the unmitigated gall to write such into a bill and then try to proffer it off as a bill that “creates a legal right for adult adoptees to get their birth records”?

Like hell!

Yes, by and large I’m pointing my readers to others writings on the CARE-tastrope, in part because

• Ron himself is a California adoptee (as well as his previous work with California Open)
• and Marley in her Bastard Nation work as a “9-year member of CalOpen Partners” is also in a position to have something to say here.

Both of them not only have something to say about this monstrosity, they come from places to know of what they speak.

What I have to say is mainly in support of the good work they’re already doing.

None-the-less, being a left behind Bastard myself, who has petitioned the court for my records repeatedly, let me tell you, I at least hold out hope that if the judge were to actually sign off on allowing me my own paperwork, it would at least be complete, not routinely redacted by law.

CARE is thus taking a bad situation and ultimately making it worse, setting up NEW roadblocks. This is not merely a bad bill, it’s actively counterproductive.

Living as I do on the other end of a not altogether dissimilar process in Ohio, let me be the first to tell you, “compromises” that create new obstructions and make the already bad situation worse are no answer.

Last Friday, December 5th, 2008, the SECA web-page finally went live. (http://www.stopdumpingkids.com/)

SECA, short for “Stop Encouraging Child Abandonment,” is a concept that has been a long time coming.

From the first of the legalized child abandonment laws passed in 1999 until now, efforts to repeal and stop the dump laws have suffered from a lack of an alliance dedicated to focusing primarily on the issue.

Before SECA, responses to dump laws had been piecemeal, portions of existing organizations’ broader missions. Over the years numerous organizations have opposed and testified against the legalization of child abandonment, and individuals have contacted legislators and worked against legalized child dumping. But, there had been no one place dedicated to dismantling the evolving child abandonment infrastructure.

Thus, SECA has finally been created.

Stop Encouraging Child Abandonment works toward nothing less than the full and permanent repeal of laws that legalize child abandonment.

We feel it is not the proper role of any government to encourage child abandonment as policy.

We approach this work firmly grounded in a human/civil/identity rights perspective. We support kids, women, and reproductive autonomy.

The need for SECA had become apparent over the past nine years, but the child welfare crisis in Nebraska with its law legalizing the abandonment of older children finally made it clear to the broader public, a formalized response to legalized child dumping is necessary.

Since the beginning, the consequences of such laws have been clear to those of us “in the field.” With bills rushed through state legislatures and policy and legal criticisms by and large dismissed, the general public simply never had reason to even think about the consequences of “safe haven” laws. Most people had never heard the voice of a kid who had been legally dumped. They had never seen the desperation of mothers and families utilizing the legalized abandonment laws.

Nebraska changed everything.

Nebraska’s older kid dumps, and the state’s eventual age down of eligible dumpees from 18-year olds to those 30 days and younger has solved nothing. It has merely attempted to put off dealing with the inevitable consequences “safe haven” laws create until the infants abandoned under the new law grow old enough to speak for themselves.

The child welfare abandonment disaster across the United States, legalized everywhere except Washington DC., is far from over. It is just beginning.

Out of that context, SECA was born, not so much a formal organization, for now more of a collective voice of allies, organizations, bloggers, and individuals among others working together towards the repeal of the dump laws.

If you are interested in working against the legalized child abandonment laws, or already are, SECA can serve as a resource in that work.

We can be contacted through the SECA contact page.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

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

October 13th-

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

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

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

and

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

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

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

(She has since been returned to her home.)

October 14th-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 15th-

Omaha World Herald-

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

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

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

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

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

October 16th-

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

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

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

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

and Children Taken from Mother Who Abandoned Son.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oct 17th

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hint, no kid ever NEEDS to be abandoned.

Also note,

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

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

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

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

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

October 18th-

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

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

Well, mission accomplished, eh?

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

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

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

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

This boy is dumped alright.

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

* FINALLY-

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

They need an end to legalized abandonments.

And they need it now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

More of the same, but with a new twist.

Quotes taken from Attempted Safe Haven Case:

…a 34 year old mother showed up at Bryan LGH West 11:15 Monday morning to drop off her 15 year old daughter under the state’s safe haven law. The woman told officials the daughter was a run-away and she couldn’t handle her behavior. The woman also told police she was worried for her young son when the girl was home and had begun filing paperwork to make the girl a ward of the state, but it was taking too long.

Once again, we run head long into one of the real reasons behind these child dumps, going the usual route just takes too long for some. Apparently it’s just too darn hard to get rid of a kid.

Poor thing!

But instead of going ahead with the abandonment, an officer talked the woman down to ‘merely’ having the girl committed to the hospital’s psych unit:

A Lincoln officer talked with the woman and doctors at the hospital and worked out an arrangement where the girl was admitted into the hospital’s child psychiatric service instead of abandoned under safe haven.

I guess all these dump stats are bringing too much attention and heat on Nebraska, they’re down to one on one trying to talk dumpers into alternatives that keep the kids out of the state’s stats.

As I said in yesterday’s post Nebraska- two 12 year-old boys legally abandoned this past weekend, & ‘gaming’ the numbers “Baby Love Child” being a bastard based blog, around here I focus on the experience of the kids themselves, and my numbers are going to reflect the number of kids attempted to be dumped not necessarily NE DHHS’s ‘dump accomplished’ count.

The piece goes on to point out, this is not the first time the Lincoln (Nebraska) Police Department has stepped in to divert dump bound familes:

Casady says this is the second time LPD has helped a family considering using the safe haven law.

So I guess the real question is, statewide, how many other attempted dumps have been redirected and may be going unreported?

Has Nebraska finally begun to reach the point of attempted spin control, trying to keep dump bound guardians from actually completing the child dump?

Clearly Nebraska officials understand the official number count is being watched, (yes you can subscribe to their “Safe haven” webpage). The official Nebraska DHHS count does not include a kid left at unauthorized location (a police station), nor the 18 year-old who tried to “safe haven” himself. Nor will the official tally include cases such as this girl, who but for Lincoln police intervention would have been legally abandoned (kid #19 if all attempted cases are included.) so the question arises, is there now an active effort to keep the numbers down/more cases out of the state stats?

The real answer to legalized abandonment is to for Nebraska legislators to realize that “safe haven” laws are no answer to the real problems kids and families face and repeal the law. They have an opportunity to lead the way, learning from Nebraska’s experimentation with legalized child abandonment, and step back away from this irresponsible form of legislation, back into the realm of actual kid-based social support structures.

Am I holding my breath for full repeal? Unfortunately no.

Why? Because odds are good that rather than doing right by Nebraska’s kids and families and repealing the law, state lawmakers are instead going to go for a round two ‘dump law 2.0′, trying to monkey with the age requirements on legalized child abandonments, which will only end up screwing kids younger and less vocal (for the time being.)

Further, baby dump laws have dire consequences for womyn, encouraging them to hide their pregnancies, ecshew prenatal care, and give birth secretly (endangering their own lives) in hopes of being able to ‘make the problem go away’ via legalized baby dumping.

Nebraska has the opportunity to step up and say ‘no more, we don’t and won’t abandon children (and womyn) that way here’. It has an opportunity to take the leadership position of sending the clear message that in Nebraska at least, THIS state does not encourage child abandonment.

But odds are they’ll opt for what they see as the easy way out, and just go for the aged down version. The damage will continue.

And that’s the real shame, that not a single state is willing to buck the baby-dumping trend to say no, we don’t dump our kids around here.

It is legal to dump newborns in all 50 states.

To our shame.

Bastardette has also blogged about the latest attempted dump, MOTHER ‘ATTEMPTS” TO DUMP TEEN DAUGHTER IN OMAHA. I’ll just close with her wise words:

How much worse does this have to get before the legislature, stops husking corn, and repeals this travesty? No, the law doesn’t need tweaked or tightened-up or any other quaint-worded fix politicians want to throw about. The mass dumping of Nebraska’s children is the perfect consequence of what we have been saying would happen for the last nine years.

How many more kids have to be abandoned before states begin to listen?

***

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)

***

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

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

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

Nebraska legislators should be ashamed.

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

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

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

Kids are not legislative lab rats.

Kids deserve better than abandonment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Repeal them now.

Nothing less than full repeal.

***

Перевести на русский

***

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.

*********************

UPDATE

*********************

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.