Foster Parent Allegation - States need to do something now!

They had a heart for those with less. The couple who had two of their own biological children wanted to give back. So they went to foster child training. They were certified and then sort of let it go because many of the stories they heard were disturbing. To the credit of the state they attended training in, no punches were pulled and counselors/social workers shared the toughest and some of the ugliest from bedwetting by older kids to firesetting to sexual deviation. Marty and Mary didn't really want to subject their children to such and so they simply marked the experience off as educational.

Only months after the training, a close friend of Marty and Mary brought a concern to them about children who were being neglected in their biological home. The friend was very concerned for two at-risk girls especially. Marty and Mary listened and couldn't put down the fact that they might be the ones to help out since they were eligible foster parents.

Long story short, the two girls were pulled from their family and placed at Marty and Mary's home. They were a decade older than Marty and Mary's children and in high school. Marty and Mary poured out their heart to them and helped them through their issues and made them a part of their life. They thought about adopting, but the children didn't need it for their security, they were treating Marty and Mary as parents and family after only a few months.

Years have passed and both foster daughters have attended college and have degrees and are moving forward in their lives. Marty and Mary have always been strict in their home life and as the foster daughters get out in the world, some of their habits are of concern to Marty and Mary. The oldest foster daughter is asked to leave as she refuses to acknowledge a home curfew and other rules which Marty and Mary have always maintained. For now, we'll just call the oldest Betty. Betty is very bitter and leaves and estranges herself from the family. Barbara, the youngest continues to stay home and soon meets someone she believes will be the love of her life. Barbara is engaged and announces this to Betty, who is estranged.

Betty is very jealous and now some of the tough parts of Betty surface. You see, Betty has been passed over (in her mind) by her sister's ability to find a companion before her. She is jealous and envious and filled with rage. Betty reacts by jumping onto the Internet and advertising herself as "available". Betty refuses to be Barbara's maid of honor because she doesn't want to go to the wedding where Marty and Mary will be (even though it is a small one in the home). Betty remains estranged and bitter.

Five years pass and Marty's biological daughter Suzie has finished college and has now announced her engagement. Marty suggests Suzie ask Barbara to be her maid of honor. Barbara and her husband are over for dinner and Suzie poses the question expecting a yes and excitement and joy regarding the announcement of her engagement. Barbara's response is negative and she and her husband make a quick exit. The Marty and Mary household is flabbergasted. They ask themselves over and over, "Did we say something wrong?". What is the problem?

Two weeks later, Marty is summoned to the police station and is informed that a restraining order has been taken out against him! The order was filed by his eldest daughter. He doesn't know what to do. He is shocked and dismayed. The order is examined and questioned and a judge throws it out. A few weeks later, Marty is informed a second restraining order has been taken out against him and this one now by Betty! He goes to court to fight this just as the first and the judge will not even think about dropping the issue. Marty finds out there are 12 counts in addition to the order accusing him of sexual crimes committed over 15 years prior.

This story is true. What most people are never informed of, is that foster children are not stupid. They are very street savvy and the system actually hurts and destroys more children than it helps. Most children are abused more in the foster care system than they were prior to being pulled from their homes. They are most often abused by other foster children who are veterans and damaged by the system. Pulled from home to home in a shuffle of low budget money passing maintenance type behaviors, social workers simply pull, drop and move on. They are referred to by the little ones as "child grabbers". They are overworked with too many case loads and they are undertrained as the average life of a social worker in the public system is 6 to 12 months. They are simply managing chaos with no power to do much more than swap children amongst at-risk foster care homes. Now for the good stuff - Foster parent allegations are placed by foster children on an almost daily basis as a means to get out of a place the child doesn't like and move on to another "home". When an allegation is made, the foster child is immediately pulled and "protected". In most cases, any other children are pulled from the home and biological children of the foster family are also pulled from the home. Google "foster parent allegations" and read the horror stories.

Marty is now broke. He has had to hire a lawyer to defend him of all of the false allegations. You see Betty and Barbara were simply jealous of the wedding Marty was going to give Suzie. They had been passed over so many times, they simply wanted to make Marty's life miserable and hopefully disrupt the wedding. Little did they know that it would completely destroy Marty and his family life. Even though Mary is sticking by Marty, it's been hard. Marty's children are also sticking by Marty because they know in their hearts, that Marty is not capable of such horrific and heinous action. But the damage is now done. Marty's life will never be the same. The question of whether anything ever happened will sit over Marty by his peers for the rest of his life. His defense budget is all of his savings and all his equity of his entire adult life. Well into the six figures with no guarantee of "getting off". Marty will now have to wait and see and even if the judge throws it all out, the money is gone, the doubt will never be erased and Marty's life has now been ruined by a couple of teenage foster children who felt slighted because they couldn't have something that the biological child was granted.

Do you think you would foster older children after reading this story?

I was a foster child and I know the feeling of being passed over. It is not the fault of the children that they have these feelings. I place the blame solely in the hands of the system for placing a family at risk and not putting failsafes in place to protect against this type of action by a child. There are cases all over this country which deal with foster parent allegations. People are fighting for their biological children to be returned while they are now being abused by the same corrupt system that allowed Betty and Barbara to destroy Marty's family.

AMoms - Fractured Systems Corrupt

I'm amazed at how common it is that Amoms are so often dysfunctional and abusive. And the time frame where it seems to be so prevalent was post WWII in the baby boomer years. As an adoptee of older parents who had to have felt the peer pressure of the boomers around them, I'm sure this has a part to play. Did they simply adopt just to keep up with the Jones's? Little did anyone realize that adoption programs were not about the kids, but about the parents. Kids are an afterthought, parents are the ones with the money.

The history of one's Amom usually tells quite a story. My Amom's life went like this:

Youngest of 14 children born, 12 of whom lived to be at least 45 years of age.

Raised by older siblings most of her life on the farm.

Father was frugal and made his fortune by purchasing land of those ruined by the depression.

Father died very young - 60 - and willed all of his land and holdings to the first born son. The land and property was valued and close to 100 million dollars in the 1970s.

Her mother (birthed 14) lived to be 96 years old - 36 years past the death of her husband.

My Amother was the spoiled one and manipulated her mother into willing everything to her in her old age. She did this by inviting her mother to live with her during he later years. (She was resented by all of her brothers and sisters with the exception of a couple who were closest in age to her.)

She and her family put my grandmother in a nursing home right down the road from the multi-million dollar farms they owned and operated. She wasted away from 90 - 96 not knowing anyone once she was put "out to pasture". Yes I have a lot of resentment for putting people in nursing homes because it's yet again another form of fiscal convenience that equates to rejection.

My Amother was always self-righteous and spent enormous amounts of time justifying her position and proving that others were at fault. She claimed she was very well liked, but because all of her friends were politicians, you do the math.

My Amother was a perfectionist and took pride in tearing things down no matter the intent, the effort or the thought. Her greatest strength was in tearing down.

Though my Amother never ever told me, her marriage with my Afather was her 3rd. This was revealed to me at my father's military burial by one of my first cousins who was in her younger years when all this took place. Yes, she had been married early, only to end in divorce. Her second marriage was to a drug dealer in Kansas City, Mo in the 1940s and her family had to rescue her from this second husband when word got out that he was going to be arrested. A whole posse of family members went in and took her home. My Afather was a Marine and she and he married after only two weeks acquaintance for her third marriage. I cannot express how many times my Amom condemned divorce whenever it happened, especially in the famly. Talk about hypocracy! She was married 3 times by the time she was 24! Tell me there aren't issues with this woman!

My Amom had cancer in the 1950s which included a complete hystorectomy. For obvious reasons, they could not have kids. But get this, they didn't even have sex as the consequences of the major operation prevented this! They slept in twin beds and never had an intimate moment again! Now what social worker in their right mind would approve adoption for a couple that didn't have relations, were in their third marriage and were in the military being transferred every 3 or 4 years from military base to military base and then off to war (my afather was in three wars)! And they had been married for 19 years at the time of the adoption. No kids for 19 years. The good life for 19 years at the ripe age of 43, how are they going to settle down and have kids? A 4 year old and an infant? The "chosen" family only lasted about 5 years (including a stint in Nam by my Afather) and it blew apart. My amother was too much for my afather to handle and he found someone who he could love and spend time with that didn't bitch and nag and find fault with him at every juncture.

When an older child (older than one year) suffers loss via rejection or abandonment, they need time and attention. They carry the weight of the world on their shoulders because they don't have the vocabulary to articulate what's going on inside them. It's like being an animal that is sick and cannot talk. All they can do is lay their head on your lap and hope you'll spend time with them until they get better. My Aparents didn't even come within a foot of each other. There was no affection, no love, not sentiment, no nothing. Their idea of love was putting food on the table and a roof over your head and clothes on your back. Any responsible agency or social worker will use this very fact to separate the "wannabes" from the serious prospective adoptive parent(s).

So in summary, adoption is all about the influence of money and has very little to do with the children. It's a fault of our entire system. The agencies are out to make money, the parents are out to keep up with the Jones' and the state wants to get more kids placed so it can brag about the success of the "chosen" adoption programs. When it's about these types of motives, it's no mystery why the adoptees are the losers and take the abuse. This isn't true with all states. In the state of Massachusetts, they use the foster system to build budgets. Budgets are allocated by the services needed for the children. The administrators figured out a long time ago that the more needs a kid has, the more budget they can get to play with. This is why nearly 90% of all foster kids in the American system are classified with some form of ADD or ADHD! The therapist gets more counseling time, the directors get bigger budgets and the pensions and salaries grow and grow and grow. The kids are put on drugs and it's so much easier to run the group homes and the foster homes when the kids are drugged. Once again, we're back to money being the motive and not the kids.

Adoptee Secrets = "Unwanted"

This post is in response to Gwen's recent chat about "secrets". Secrets are simply the triggers to the term "Unwanted"

There is nothing more powerful than the want for acceptance in the life of an adoptee. The fallout from rejection and loss varies, but the reality is clear - it all stems from rejection (whether spoken or unspoken). Self-esteem becomes bipolar in nature as one goes from acceptance of temporary praise to condemnation of one's entire life. Every adoptee I've ever known suffers from PO or performance orientation and then they go into this funk when they start to compare their lives to others. If you claim you don't, then you're simply lying to yourself.

After rejection, one desires friendship via performance (humor, sports, academia) and then performs unordinary acts of behavior to prove to one's self that rejection is imminent once someone shows interest. It took me 15 years to get over the performance oriented method of doing things and to look at life as it is and not how it is wished. When I came to the realization that life is playing the hand you're dealt and not wishing it were different or better, things looked up. You just have to find a table where a pair of 2's might win or you're a damn good bluffer. I learned that if people liked me for what I did, stay the hell away! I found a whole new type of friend who simply liked me for who I was and not what I could do for them.

In my early 20's, I learned the power of forgiveness and let everyone off the hook including myself. I began to look at life from a fresh point of view and gave up pointing the finger at anyone. My relationship with my amom never came back, though I made a special trip from Massachusetts to Missouri for a 15 minute conversation with her to aske her forgiveness for all the things I did as a child to cause her grief. Though she did not forgive me, I walked away clean. This may sound cruel, but one cannot demand forgiveness and I had learned years before that she was never one to forgive. But I had to forgive to get the weight off my back and after being away from home for nearly a decade, I had learned that I wasn't the "bad" abnormal person my amom had portrayed me as for my entire upbringing. I no longer considered myself "unwanted".