Brenda Sullivan has been sentenced to twenty years in prison for caging a seventeen-year-old adopted child.

I became aware of this when I saw the headline, ” Mom who caged teen son gets 20 years behind bars”.

I thought - ‘What kind of mom would do that?’ - and knew that this person was most likely NOT the real mother. I suspected it was a foster parent or adopter. And I was right.

It irritates me when the news agencies use headlines that indicate a foster parent or adopter was a real mother or father. But I often know by looking at the headlines when the abusers are actually child collectors who took children out of the child welfare system - to get adoption subsidy payments.

This woman also had 13-year-old twin boys. They said they had also been in cages.

Some “mom”.

Newsflash: Foster parents and adopters do not have the genetic affinity for the children they claim to parent. Some may do an adequate job, but there’s no true love like the love of a real parent for his or her natural children.

Source: Mom who caged teen son gets 20 years behind bars, an AP article published at CNN.Com.

…
Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

Lynn Paddock, 47, and her husband, Johnny, adopted six children from foster care. For people who adopt so many, I use the term “child collectors”. Now Johnny has divorced Lynn and she is on trial for suffocating four-year-old Sean.

Lynn Paddock is accused of suffocating Sean by wrapping him in blankets so tightly that he couldn’t breathe. She allegedly did this to keep him from wandering around in the hallways. She is also accused of using tape to bind another adopted child. She may stand trial for first-degree murder and child abuse at the same time.

Sean’s grandparents are suing the Paddocks and the social services agencies who placed him with her. Although my source article didn’t state it, I wonder if this is one of those cases where the social services agency refused to place the child with his grandparents. He was originally placed with an aunt and uncle, but was taken from them and sent to foster care. The article states, “The case has revealed flaws in the state’s child welfare system.”

Source: Adoptive mother to stand trial in son’s suffocation - AP article published in The Fayetteville Observer on May 19, 2008.

…
Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

Allison Newman’s mother wanted to recover from an addiction to crack cocaine, so she asked an acquaintance to watch her six month old baby temporarily. When Michigan social workers got into the act, the baby ended up in the home of Carol Poole, 42, a barren woman living in an expensive upscale home, who wanted children. She has now been convicted of murdering Allison when she was only two.

Allison’s grandfather, Kenneth Newman said:

• “She cracked that baby’s skull open, dressed her and put her to bed to die.”
• “People (child welfare workers) turned their heads because these people lived out in Canton and had a few dollars in the bank.”
• “There was evidence that Allison started being abused seven or eight weeks before her death. When Ann (the girl’s mother) went into rehab, the date to sever parental rights got postponed and Carol Poole realized she wasn’t going to get to adopt Allison. We think that’s when everything went bad.”

(Source: Doug Guthrie of The Detroit News - see link below.)

Carol Poole has now been convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 to 30 years in prison. She also got 10 to 15 years for child abuse.

Quoting from Guthrie’s article:

“During her trial, two workers at the Childtime Learning Center day care in Plymouth said they noticed scratches and bruises on Allison long before her death. They reported the findings to their supervisor, who was charged but not convicted of failing to comply with state law by reporting the injuries.”

During 2005 and 2006 three children died in Michigan foster and adoptive homes: Allison Newman, Issac Lethbridge, and Ricky Holland.

Source: Foster mother gets 20-35 years in prison for girl’s death - by Doug Guthrie, written for The Detroit News, published February 27, 2008.

Twenty years ago, articles like these were suppressed. But now the media lets us know when foster parents are accused of killing foster children. States can no longer cover up the murder of children they claim to protect.

I read about these tragedies often, but many times don’t write about them here. Not only is it a source of fear and depression for people who use this site, whose children are being held in the foster care system, but I honestly can’t keep up with telling you about all the on-topic articles that are published. For more about children killed in foster care, see In Memory of Children Protected to Death by CPS.

The latest news is that a two-year-old girl, Alize Vick, was killed in a foster home in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The foster parent, Jules Lynn Cuneo, 34, is accused of throwing Alize against a coffee table where she sustained a head injury. Instead of immediately rushing the child to a hospital or calling an ambulance, she put her in the shower and sprayed water on her, apparently in an attempt to revive her.

I don’t know if this foster parent is guilty of intentional abuse, or whether Alize was injured accidentally. Her first story was that she was bouncing Alize on her lap when the girl fell back and hit her head on the coffee table. Perhaps her decision to try to revive Alize in the shower was the most reasonable thing to do.

In any case, another “protected” foster child is dead, and the foster parent is being held without bail. The foster parent’s two natural children have been moved to another foster home, along with Alize Vick’s younger brother, Anthony.

Sources:
Foster parent arrested in death: 2-year-old allegedly thrown against coffee table and suffered severe head injuries by Erin Emery, for the Denver Post. Published October 12, 2007.
New Details on Foster Mother Accused of Murder by Nicole Vandeputte for KOAA News. Published October 12, 2007.

A 78-year-old foster parent, Louise T. Andolina, apparently abandoned two foster children, ages 9 and 11, in the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut. She was arrested at 2:40 am on two counts of leaving a child unattended in a place of public accommodation.

This brings up all kinds of questions. At 78, why does she have a foster care license? Why would she think she can leave them unattended at a casino in the middle of the night? Is she sane and clear-thinking enough to take care of foster children? Should the caseworkers who approved this placement be arrested?

Source: Police Say Foster Parent Left 2 Kids Unattended At Casino published on September 3, 2007 on TheDay.Com in Connecticut.

Received in email today:

Please post to all groups and to your address books:

The tentative dates for DC RALLY 2008 is August 15-16-17

We are writing proposals for sponsorship for DC Rally 2008. We need a letter of intent outlining a collaboration from every organization that will participate in next years Family Preservation Festival to include in this proposal. The letters should include the involvement of your organization to educate your constituency on, Family Preservation, the repair and reunification of children under state care, ongoing assistance to disabled parents, gender equity and the importance of the relationships of children from divorce and separation, at DC Rally 2008. Each organization should outline its willingness to bring at least one bus load to DC next year. The letters of intent are done so that we can request the money for the buses and rooming to go to the organizations who are collaborating. We need all organizations included but those with a 501(c)(3) will be stronger because this will allow us to include the organizations in the work statement for the proposal. Those without a 501(c)(3) will be included and the dollars allotted will be paid directly to vendors from Three Sides to Every Story, Inc and Children Need Both Parents, Inc. but we need your letters of intent so that we can judge how much money to request.

Please contact me so that all organizations nationwide will be included and we can ask corporate America for the funds to provide transportation. This will be presented as an educational event.

The deadline for collaborating letters of intent is September 30, 2007. These letters should be on your organization letterhead and signed by an officer of the organization. There are no exceptions to the deadline they must be received by the close of the business day on September 30, 2007. Please email all letters of intent to childrenneedbothparents@msn.com

Minister Ronald E. Smith, CEO
Children Need Both Parents, Inc.
www.cnbpinc.org

Children Need Both Parents Online Store
www.cnbpinc.ispeedway.com
Check out our catalog

Note: Fight CPS will not be participating in the DC Rally / Family Preservation Festival though I support this effort and any other efforts aimed at bringing an end to child welfare family destruction. The reasons I won’t be participating: (1) Fight CPS isn’t an organization; it is a website only. (2) I live in California and don’t travel that far from home. (3) It isn’t something I can afford to attend. I wish all the best for all who are able to participate, and hope the events turn out better than expected.

.
This is an important message from Charlie Wittman of Advocates For Children and Families:

All:

I am talking to an attorney who may be interested in filing a class action suit re: pre-jurisdictional psychological evaluations and cps ordered psychological evaluations. In CA it is illegal to do a psy eval before the court obtains jurisdiction and the psy evals are to be used only to determine services for the family.

In most all cases in which i have talked to parents in CA and nationwide, the psy evals have been used as a evil tool to say that parents are incapable of parenting due to a mental disorder and then they lose their children. In most cases, the psychologists are from a court appointed pool of psychologists who are totally influenced by social services and are by no means impartial or scientific. Even when the “psychologists???” do their evaluations after jurisdiction, their reports are rarely true as they are filled with lies from social workers.

I am looking for persons who have had pre-jurisdictional psy evals, psy evals and psy evals which have been used to take your children. I need your name, address, email and a very very brief description of what happened in your case. I will keep these confidential and when and if the class action moves forward, I will contact you. We are going to start in CA and then move nationwide in a federal court action.

Send to theacf - at - hotmail.com and make sure in the title you put “My Psy Eval Problem”. Thanks much and I hope this stops this illegal activity and saves our children.

Charlie Wittman, Director, Advocates for Children and Families, TheACF, on
BOD of AFRA, CCHR Board of Advisors, theacf - at - hotmail.com ,
PO Box 10, Los Gatos, CA 95031, 408 395 6999 ACF Hotline
Main ACF WWW site: http://www.theacf.org
CRIN: http://www.crin.org/organisations/viewOrg.asp?ID=1774
AFRA: http://familyrightsassociation.com/
CCHR: www.cchr.org

(Posted with permission from Mr. Wittman.)

A New York based advocacy group called Children’s Rights is suing the state of Michigan in federal court on behalf of 19,000 foster children who may be endangered by maltreatment in the foster care system.

The Michigan Department of Human Services refused to provide documentation on sixty-seven foster children who died in state care there since 2004. At least three of those children were killed in state licensed foster homes. Circumstances regarding the other deaths are unclear as the state refuses to release records.

At a hearing on Tuesday, August 7, 2007 U.S. District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds ruled that an expert must be hired to assess the Michigan foster care system’s adequacy. The expert, Christopher Baird of the Children’s Research Center, will study 460 random Michigan foster care files

Judge Edmunds also ordered the state to release certain foster care documents by August 31, 2007.

Sources:
Court fight over Mich. foster care system set for Tuesday by Jack Kresnak, Free Press Staff Writer

U.S. judge names expert to assess Michigan foster care system, an AP article posted at WoodTV.Com.

I received this a few days ago from a mother on MySpace. She gave me her permission to publish this here:

“I am from Tuscolsa County, Michigan and I have been fighting CPS my whole life and I am only 23 years old. CPS got involved with my family when I was about 5 years old.

“CPS has harassed us for years and in 2003 I became a proud mother of a new baby boy. Of course CPS tracked me down again and took my son on May 19, 2004. CPS came to my home at 7:30 AM and ripped my son right out of my arms.

“I fought them so hard they placed me under arrest until they left my home, then the police officer said he was very sorry and that he never wanted to handle this kind of issue and he let me go, but he told me he was sorry and that he was only doing his job.

“Anyway, I was court ordered to follow the case plans to get my son back. I did everything I was told but I had a caseworker that didn’t like me because I would not play her game, so she worked against me and made up lies about how my son was scared of me, and how I was causing him to become sick. However that’s not true.

“My rights were then terminated December 5, 2005, just before Christmas. How sad. I later appealed my rights before the Michigan Appellant Courts and they agreed to follow the termination, so my rights are terminated, and I still keep fighting and will never give up hope, ’cause that is all I have. I love my son and I miss him so much. He’s my life!!!!!!!!”

Thank you, Lisa, for sharing your story with us.

I hope that Lisa’s son will be returned to her loving arms, and that someone who knows him will see this here and know that he is a wanted, loved child whose mother did everything she could to keep him.

An eighteen year old girl was abandoned in a St. Petersburg, Florida grocery store on July 4, about two hundred miles from her home. She said she’d been living with Judith Leekin for thirteen years, adopted from New York foster care.

According to an article at CNN.Com, Leekin, 62, falsely claimed that the girl had run away a year earlier. She tried to conceal eight other children and young adults, but police returned to her home and found out they had been hiding, on Leekin’s orders. The victims, ages 15 to 27, are suspected to all be adopted from New York child welfare agencies.

Leekin is unemployed. She lived off the adoption subsidy payments she got for those children - well enough that she owned two homes and several cars. A photo of one of her homes can be seen at the CNN website (see link below).

What we’re seeing is the tip of the iceberg. People have been adopting foster children they don’t love for years. What they want is the money associated with those children.

According to the article people who adopt special needs children can get up to $55 per day. That’s about $1650 per month per special needs child. With nine special needs children she could be receiving up to $14,850 per month, or $178,200 per year. Not bad for sitting home taking care of the kids. Of course these extravagant benefits aren’t available to the poor parents these children were originally taken from.

The CNN article stated,

“The adopted children said they had never seen a doctor or a dentist and had not been allowed to attend school or even leave the house.

‘These people have not received any formal education in the time they’ve been with her,’ Bartal said. ‘At times when they were restricted with handcuffs or zip ties, during the night, they soiled themselves because they weren’t permitted to go to the bathroom.’

“They were fed only noodles, and ‘they would have eventually starved to death,’ Bartal said.”

Leekin is now where she belongs - in big trouble with the law. She was arrested and jailed on 11 charges, including aggravated elder and child abuse.

Source: Police: Kids were adopted for profit, abused by the Associated Press, published on CNN.Com on July 30, 2007.