This morning I opened one of my Google news alerts on the topic, “foster parents,” and found only two articles listed. Both are about men accused of taking advantage of the foster care system to exploit and abuse children.

Sadly, this is very common. In my years of scanning news articles for inclusion in my blog at FightCPS.Com, I’ve come across hundred of similar stories. The oddest was about a supposed foster mother in Pennsylvania who was actually a transvestite gay child predator.

One of today’s article alerts is about a 48-year-old man who has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for sexually abusing three boys. He denied the charges at his sentencing hearing, saying he would never harm the children he loved. Thirty foster children have lived in his home in Columbus Ohio.

Reference: Foster Parent Sentenced For Sexual Abuse

The other foster parenting article brought to my attention today by Google news alerts is about a 58-year-old Vermont man who is in jail, charged with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl living in his foster home.

Reference: Foster Parent Charged With Sexual Assault

Last week I was getting news alerts about a similar case in Florida. Next week it will be something else.

It takes no great wisdom to realize that the foster parenting system is a perfect opportunity for sexual predators to get solitary, unsupervised access to the children of others. And while many will say that the answer is to find better fosterers, or to screen them better, I have another solution: If child welfare caseworkers would stop detaining children on marginal neglect charges there would be fewer foster children out there being abused by strangers, with their parents not allowed to be nearby to protect them.

It was about six years ago that I received an email that I remember to this day. It was one of those things I’ll never forget. An Ohio mother who could barely write decent English wrote a long message to tell me that her 10-year-old daughter was being sexually abused by boys placed in the same foster home she was in. I don’t want to get into the graphic details of what she told me, but to be clear, there was visible proof and the child told her mother during a visitation what had being going on. This little girl had been removed from her parents’ home because she had a tiny eraser-sized bruise on her arm that her parents couldn’t explain. They had no idea where she got this small injury. For that, caseworkers took the child away from the home and family she loved and forced her into a foster home where she was abused much more severely than anything she’d ever experienced before.

A few years ago there was a Frontline two-part series about the death of a child in foster care, Logan Marrs. One part of the program featured a former foster child, Rose Garland. Her statement is worth paying attention to: “OK. Now, I know that there are good foster families out there, OK? But I also know that every foster kid that I have ever talked to, including myself, have been abused in foster homes. And I’m talking physically, emotionally and sexually. That may not be the case for every child, but it was the case for me.”

Reference: Failure to Protect - The Caseworker Files

Please, if you are a mandated reporter, an angry neighbor, a non-custodial parent, or any other type of person who might want to make a child abuse or neglect report, consider this. Is the child being abused so severely that risking fosterer abuse would be better? If not, let it go. I suggest being a friend and a neighbor, and helping the family directly instead of calling child welfare. Even if you hate the parents, do the right thing for the children involved.

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Some might think a couple who adopted eleven children out of foster care were philanthropists, but when you realize they got adoption subsidy payments of $4256 per month, it is hard to see mere kindness as a motive. And with so many children, a Norwalk, Ohio couple apparently didn’t know what to do, like the old lady in the shoe. So they kept some of the kids in cages made of wire and wood.

Last March a judge decided to terminate their rights to all eleven children, ages 2 to 15, after he determined that at least eight of them had been abused in the Gravelle home.

According to an Associated Press article dated February 15, 2007, Michael Gravelle said, “What do you do with these kids?” He said he prayed for an answer and built cages at the suggestion of social workers. His wife, Susan Gravelle, said the children were never confined as punishment. She claimed the cages were there to protect them. She said one of the children wanted to jump from a second-story window.

Two of the eleven children wrote statements that were read in court. A boy wrote about how grateful he was for his new fosterers. “Because of them I don’t have to steal food,” he said. “I can use the bathroom whenever I want. Never again will I have to sleep in a box.”

A girl’s statement read, “Mom, you walked around like you were God, then whenever you did go places you were Mother Teresa taking in the poor black kids that no one wanted.” She also said that the Gravelles “are grown adults who know the difference between right and wrong. So I ask that they get as much time in jail for as long as my siblings had to be in cages.”

A social worker and others testifying for the Gravelles said the children’s behavior improved because of the cages, which were painted bright red and blue, but the sheriff said the cages were urine stained and lacked pillows and mattresses. One boy claimed to have lived confined to a bathroom for 81 days, and an expert for the defense claimed this imprisonment helped the child.

In any case, the decision has been made. The Gravelles have sentenced to two years in prison because they adopted so many “special needs” children, that even with $4256 in adoption subsidy payments every month, they didn’t know what to do. Michael Gravelle said when they got into foster-adopting they felt “led by the Lord”. Perhaps if they hadn’t adopted so many kids, it wouldn’t have led to this.

References:
Judge denies pair custody of caged kids
Huron County duo’s lawyer calls decision ‘harsh,’ will appeal
Couple gets 2 years in ‘caged kids’ case
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