Last night, I watched “Wild Rescues” on Animal Planet TV. A family of four pilot whales had beached themselves off the coast of Florida, and 100 people a day volunteered to stand in waist-deep water to hold the enormous mammals up off the ocean floor so they could heal, so they wouldn’t lie down in the mud and suffocate. They did it for weeks, until the whales were able to survive on their own.
Two weeks ago, 6-year-old Kayla Rolland was shot and killed by a first-grade classmate. The child who fired the gun found it at “home,” which happened to be a crack house where a second gun and drugs were found. The boy lived there with an uncle who was supposed to be caring for the child after the boy’s father went to jail and his mother was evicted.
Immediately after the killing, there were some perfunctory expressions of pity and a resurrection, now almost reflexive, of the gun debate: Kids shouldn’t have them; guns should have safety latches; schools should have metal detectors even for kids who are 6 years old.
But where were the 100 volunteers — before or after the tragedy? Where were the people who recognized this boy’s misery, who would hold him so that he might heal, so that he wouldn’t suffocate from neglect?
Amazingly, there has been very little public outrage about the child neglect in this story, other than a finger-wagging condemnation of the boy’s parents and uncle for allowing him access to guns and drugs. And that is frightening, because this is a story about neglect. The gun is merely a prop, an attention-grabbing finale to an epic tale of mistreatment and pain.
The easy response, the knee-jerk reaction that temporarily quiets that nagging feeling that the world is intrinsically unsafe for our children, is to assign blame. We can point at those bad parents, who obviously screwed up, and then feel good, because we are better parents. We do not allow our children to roam free in a crack house in a bad neighborhood.
The distance we put between ourselves and those people is created out of a lie that prevents us from getting angry enough to do anything about child neglect and abuse. We can dismiss the abusers as criminals, and we might even convince ourselves that there’s nothing we can do to keep them from hurting their children.
But we can’t escape the fact that the way their children are raised affects our children, too. If we understand that rescuing pilot whales is, ultimately, an act of self-preservation, why can’t we make the connection with our own species?
We are letting abuse happen. Children are abused and neglected because we are unwilling to spend the money on programs to prevent it, and because we look away when we see a kid who is hostile and violent or extremely withdrawn — two classic signs of a kid who is being hurt.
We are surprised and horrified when we hear about the worst cases: the child locked in one room for several years, the father who poured gasoline on his daughter and set her afire in the desert. But it’s hard to conceive of how this applies to us, until something like the Michigan shooting grabs the headlines.
I am amazed and I am devastated by what people don’t know, or don’t want to know, about child abuse. Around 1 million children are known to be abused or neglected in this country each year. Yet people are shocked when I tell them the things I see as a child advocate: broken bones, fractured skulls, cigarette burns, belt marks across a 4-year-old’s face, sexual abuse of a 3-year-old, a 1-year-old in a coma because of abuse.
As I confront these things, it’s not the physical injuries that startle me; it’s the look in these battered children’s eyes. They don’t want to look at me; they don’t want to trust me, or any adult. They don’t see the world as safe or peaceful or interesting. They see it as terrifying.
And I see it as terrifying, too, because there are so few people invested in ending child abuse and helping to heal the victims. We criticize Child Protective Services for not investigating reports or for dropping the ball, but every year in state legislatures across the country, child advocates struggle to get funding for more and better-trained CPS workers — and fail. There are not enough foster families, social workers and volunteers to work with these children because it’s a tough job and dollars are scarce. We have not made this a national priority.
And while these needs are monumental, they still address child abuse and neglect only after it happens. Even if we could drum up money for more and better people to identify and address the effects of child abuse, it would do little for prevention. We need to find out why it happens — a bigger question with a much more complex answer.
Poverty, youth and lack of education are big factors in abuse and neglect, as are drug abuse, parents who were victims themselves and those moments of insanity and rage that every parent feels from time to time. None of these are issues that can’t be addressed through better emotional, educational and financial support of parents and children. Parents need help in dealing with whatever demons are plaguing them. By helping them, we spare their children.
In every case I’ve seen, a little help in just one area probably would have made the difference. In Michigan, this little boy’s mother was evicted and his dad was in jail, which meant the kids went to live with their uncle in a crack house. I wonder what would have happened if someone (the landlord, a neighbor, a friend) had looked into where the mom would go after being evicted and what was going to happen to the kids.
Where is our passion for other human beings? Why does it seem easier to lavish it on pilot whales? We need to identify with the parents who hurt, or might hurt, their children. We need to find the courage to say, “What do you need? I’ll hold some of the crap you’re carrying so it doesn’t get too heavy for you.”
When we see a kid who’s being a pain in the ass, like the boy in Michigan apparently was, or who is too quiet and afraid, we need to stop thinking that it’s none of our business; we need to stop dismissing the kid as a brat or a freak, and find out what’s going on.
The Michigan shooting is a perfect opportunity for some good old-fashioned public fury and some private transformation. We need to confront the ugly reality of neglect and feel an urgency to address it, because it affects all of us. And then we have to make protecting children the most important thing we do.
We need to believe that all families are connected, and that we have a responsibility to other parents to be aggressive in reaching out to them when they need help, in making sure the services they need are there and in helping them be good to their kids.
It is easier — or at least no more demanding — than standing waist-deep in water with your arms around a whale.
Earlier this month, the parents of murderer
Jeremy Strohmeyer filed a $1 million lawsuit
against Los Angeles County and four county adoption
workers, complaining that the adoption workers
failed to inform them about his biological mother’s
history of mental illness.
Strohmeyer, 21, was convicted in 1998 for the May
1997 murder of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, whom he
had lured into a casino rest room while playing a
game of hide-and-seek. The murder was quick and
brutal. A security camera recorded Strohmeyer
entering the rest room with Sherrice and exiting
without her. He immediately confessed to his best
friend, and later to a judge.
He was sentenced to four life terms with no
possibility of parole. He has since recanted his
confession, but he lost his bid to withdraw his
guilty plea and take the case to trial.
At the time of his sentencing, the fact that
Strohmeyer was adopted became a huge issue for
public discourse, as talk shows debated whether
adopted children are more or less likely than
biological children to be emotionally unstable or
to commit heinous crimes.
I can understand why his parents are upset that the
adoption workers may have withheld information, but
I can also understand how it happened. Strohmeyer
was adopted at a time when matching the hair and
eye color of adoptive parents to birth parents was
the primary concern of many child welfare agencies.
Their priority was aesthetic: They wanted to make
sure the children wouldn’t look like they were
adopted.
Obtaining and recording insightful, relevant and
useful information about biological families was an
afterthought in those days, if it was considered at
all. Frequently, biological parents filled out the
family and medical history forms themselves, so
they would look as good (or as bad) as they wanted
to look.
If the adoption agency in Strohmeyer’s case knew
something particularly relevant, like, say, that
his birth mother had an obvious history of severe
mental illness, they should have mentioned it,
especially if the adoptive family had asked
specifically not to be given a child with that
background. But my guess is that the caseworker was
afraid that if she divulged what she knew, she
would never find a home for Strohmeyer. And in a
world where foster care is rarely as genteel and
nurturing as that demonstrated in the orphanage of
“The Cider House Rules,” it is a legitimate fear.
But the lawsuit obscures an eternal dilemma that
cannot be resolved in a court. Which one of us
knows what we’re going to get when we decide to
become parents? Did Kip Kinkel, who murdered his
parents and two classmates, arrive with a little
note tied to his umbilical cord that said “Warning:
This baby will one day try to kill you”? How
about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? Did they come
into the world with tattoos that read “Future mass
murderer”?
Of course this crosses over into the ongoing debate
about what parents should or should not have done
to prevent their children from turning into
sociopaths, and it seems that’s what the
Strohmeyers are getting at. In a sense, they are
telling us: “Look, we are not responsible here. If
we’d known that this child had a genetic
predisposition for mental illness, we wouldn’t have
adopted him, and you would never even know our
names.” The message is that they adopted this kid
by mistake, so, everyone, don’t look in their
direction and find fault.
It’s surprising that, having been parents for 20
some years, the Strohmeyers can look back and
believe that if only they had known what they did
not know, their lives would have been easier and
less expensive. We certainly can’t assume that
Jeremy wouldn’t have killed someone had the
Strohmeyers not adopted him. Nor can we assume
that he would have. I’m sure nobody told the
Iverson family that their daughter would be
murdered in a casino rest room at age 7, either.
But somehow, the Strohmeyers plan to tell a court
that, had they known that this child might suffer
from mental illness, they would have been spared
heartache and agony, and a million dollars to boot.
Did they somehow miss one of the most fundamental
laws of parenting — that there are no guarantees?
Sure, maybe they wouldn’t have adopted him, but
they could have adopted another child with no
history of mental illness and have had the same
outcome. Is a history of mental illness in one’s
biological past a prerequisite to becoming a
murderer? Or they could have adopted a child with
a sparkling genetic past who ultimately needed a
heart transplant, or who would become severely
injured in an automobile accident, or who would
become a drug addict. Isn’t this uncertainty what
everyone faces as a parent? Isn’t parenthood
frequently about heartache and agony?
Today, adoptive families can specify what they will
and will not take in a child, with respect to
family history or current disability. It’s rather
like ordering a pizza: “I’ll take a blind,
wheelchair-bound child with moderate retardation,
but hold the autism, deafness and crack addiction.”
As coldly selective as it sounds, a policy that
allows adoptive families to say what they can and
cannot handle is a good idea. It helps to prevent
adoption disruption (when the adoptive family sends
the kid back). To the extent that an adoption
agency knows about a particular health issue, it
makes sense to have it on the table. In abuse and
neglect cases, for example, the family can be sure
that the child receives needed therapy for
attachment and bonding issues, anger management and
developmental delays caused by the abuse.
But in the Strohmeyer case, that’s water under the
bridge. Even as adoptive parents, these people are
in the same situation as the other parents of
murderers. They have a kid with problems. To me,
this is more about the extraordinary task of
parenting, and the surprises — some terrible, some
wonderful — that come with it than it is about
adoption or what the Strohmeyers should have been
told.
We’d all like a heads up about what might be coming
our way. Will your husband leave you when you’re
old? Will your child outlive you? Will you get
cancer? Will you win the lottery? Even if we have
some early indicators — he seems like a faithful
guy; you’re an overprotective mom; people in your
family have cancer; you never buy lottery tickets
– they don’t really tell us the truth about what
will happen to us or to anyone else.
The Strohmeyers could have safely assumed that
Jeremy was probably not born into ideal
circumstances. There probably aren’t many perfectly
healthy, sane, well-adjusted, non-drug-addicted,
loved and supported, emotionally stable,
well-educated, well-funded, gainfully employed,
unabused mothers over 18 who decide to give up
their children for adoption.
An adoptive family should, at a bare minimum,
assume that the mere fact that the mother carried a
baby for nine months, while facing the decision
about whether or not to relinquish the baby for
adoption, would cause a little stress in the
pregnancy. And who knows what sort of effect the
stress of making such a monumental decision will
have on the developing baby?
Besides, this assumption of risk really isn’t any
different from what biological parents face. When
you get pregnant, you don’t know if your child will
arrive healthy and happy or will only appear
healthy and happy until a genetic inclination to
violence or psychosis kicks in and your bundle of
joy is suddenly a burden of worry and fear.
The only difference for the Strohmeyers is that
they believe they have someone to blame. They
should have known — someone should have
told them. Yet I can’t imagine that if they win
their lawsuit and the adoption agency acknowledges
the screw up, it will bring the closure that the
Strohmeyers are probably seeking.
Likewise, I can’t imagine that they would have been
happier if they had never had Jeremy as a son. I
have to believe that they have joyful memories and
photo albums filled with proof of happier days. I’m
sure nobody promised them that, either.
Today I watched a woman give up her child.
By “watched,” I mean that I sat in an agency
conference room at a table with the mother and her family as she signed the papers to
relinquish her child to the state. There was no scene like you might expect — the caseworker
tearing the child from the mother’s arms, the mother collapsing to the floor in hysterics as her
child was carried away. No, the mother sobbed silently as she signed four copies of a series of
papers that said that she would no longer have any rights whatsoever to her child.
As much as
I’ve wanted this for the child, it was distressing to witness — an event so packed with meaning,
yet plagued with the familiar trivialities of buying a car or a house. The caseworker read each
page out loud before allowing the mother to sign. After she signed, the mother slid the paper
down the table for me and an agency employee to sign as witnesses. The notary sitting next to
me then stamped and dated each page.
One of the pages had a place where the mother could
write down any thoughts or sentiments for her child. She breathed deeply and then started to
write. As her pen scratched across the page, she started to shudder and tears streamed down
her face. Her mother, sitting next to her, put her arms around her and pressed her head into her
daughter’s hair as she wrote: “I love you very much and I never wanted to stop fighting for you.”
Two signatures and a notary stamp
later, it was done.
As the child’s Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), I’ve been very
involved with this family for the past year. Still, I felt like I was
witnessing something intensely private, and as I signed and dated each page,
I felt like my presence was a violent intrusion into one of the most sacred
areas of family life.
The child, now 17 months old, was placed in foster care when he was 3 months
old as the victim of violent abuse. While the mother was not accused of
inflicting any injuries on the baby, she had failed to protect him. She didn’t
take him to the hospital when he was injured, and when Child Protective
Services finally got involved, the baby had complete or partially healed
bone fractures throughout his body. He also had a scar on his leg from a
cigarette burn. His injuries were so severe that, for his first three weeks in
foster care, he was carried horizontally on a pillow.
Last summer, after spending some time in jail awaiting trial, the mother had
pleaded guilty to failing to protect her child, and received lifetime probation
and a no contact order. After months of struggle in juvenile court, she finally decided that it would be best for the baby, whom she
hadn’t seen in over a year, to relinquish her rights. Her own mother, the
baby’s maternal grandmother, had been refused by the state for placement of
the child, due to a long history of failing to protect her own kids from
abuse and neglect.
At some point, it must have become clear to the mother
that to fight any longer would only keep the child in foster care so long
that he might never be adopted.
After the mother signed the consent papers, she had a final visit with the
baby. The state requested special permission from the mother’s probation
officer to allow the visit, since the no-contact order was still in place.
I carried the baby into the conference room and put him on the floor. He
was clutching a sippy cup full of milk and looked around at all the people,
eyes wide. In addition to her own mother, the mother had brought her new
husband and her teenage brother and sister. The baby looked from face to
face and then shuffled back to me. I gave his mother a bag of Cheez-Its,
and she tore it open. The baby hesitantly walked over to her, got a
Cheez-It and returned to me. The grandmother reached for a large
Toys “R” Us bag behind her. “Look here! See what I have?” She pulled out a
Fisher-Price tricycle. Tempted, the baby toddled over to her.
His mother observed him cautiously at first, reaching out to stroke his hair
as he toddled by, straightening his sweatshirt when it rode up on his
stomach. She asked questions about his health, and his grandmother asked
whether he was talking yet. The next hour was filled with more gifts,
occasional shyness, laughter and baby babble. At one point, the baby fed
each of us a Cheez-It.
He seemed to put us in order by how often he’d seen
us in the past year. First me, then his grandmother, who had received regular
visits, then his aunt and uncle, who he’d seen twice in the past year, and
finally, his mother. “Oh look! He gave YOU a cracker!” the aunt said
enthusiastically when he gave one to his mother. Eventually, the baby was
tearing around the room, playing with each of his new toys, laughing and
interacting with everyone, occasionally looking at me as if to say, “This is
OK, right?”
After an hour, the caseworker said it was time to say goodbye. The
husband, aunt and uncle left the room, leaving only the mother, the
grandmother, the caseworker and me. The grandmother picked up the baby,
hugged him tight and kissed his face vigorously several times. He giggled
and pushed away, wanting to be put on the floor.
She passed him to his
mother, who held him over her newly pregnant belly, and tried to hug him.
He looked to me, giggling. She turned him to face her, tears again
streaming down her face, and said, “You be good. I love you. I love you.”
She hugged him tight, and he giggled and looked away. She pressed her head
against his and hugged him again, and then returned him to her mother and
said, “OK.” Her mother put him on the floor, and he toddled to the door.
The mother and the grandmother called after him, “Bye-bye.” The caseworker
opened the door and he raced out.
The caseworker had told the mother that if the visit became too emotional,
she would have to cut it short to prevent the baby from becoming upset or
afraid. So although the mother cried openly while signing the consent
papers, she stifled her tears during the visit until she said goodbye.
I don’t know what was going through her mind during all of this. She must
have prepared herself for the fact that he was unlikely to recognize her,
and that he might not even want her to hold him. She might have been
thinking about what could have been — her new baby, her new husband and
this baby, a happy family. She might have remembered when her own mother
relinquished custody of her so that she could live with a relative in a
different state. She might have worried about whether the state would take
her new baby.
As we have gradually come to learn, the meaning of the word “family” is
fluid. When this mother signed all those papers, she made sure to check
every box that would enable her child to find her, to contact her, to know
everything about her. She enabled his future adoptive family to contact
her, to send pictures and to coordinate visits if they desire.
At the same
time, she understood that she might never see this child again. His new
family could change his name, keep their own identity a secret, and he might
never try to find her. But she brought presents, held her tears, held him
tight and told him she loved him anyway, even if the goodbye was forever.
The way she cared for her baby, or failed to, resulted in her losing him. I
expect she will live with that loss for the rest of her life. She will
probably see flickers of the son she gave up in her new baby, in children on
the street and in the mirror. Throughout the year, I have doubted whether
she was or would ever become capable of being a mother, with all that that
word entails.
But today, in one of the worst situations a
mother could be expected to endure, she did the right thing. She gave her son a chance to
have a permanent family, and she loved her son all the way through saying
goodbye. And in those moments, I saw the mother she is capable of
becoming.
