“Adopted Russian Boy Rejected by U.S. Mother Adjusts in Foster Care”

Taken from: http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/adopted-russian-boy-rejected-u-mother-adjusts-foster-110037054–abc-news-topstories.html

April 13, 2012

Artyom Saleviev’s mischievous grin quickly fades when asked about the five months he spent in the United States. ”I do not want to talk about this,” he said quietly, as he looked down at the floor. Asked if he would ever go back he said nothing and emphatically shook his head no.

In 2010 Artyom made headlines around the world after his American adoptive mother Torry Hansen put the then seven-year-old boy back on a plane to Russia alone with a letter that said she didn’t want him anymore.

Artyom’s new foster mother still cannot believe what happened to him. ”It’s inhumane,” Vera Egorova told ABC News in an interview in the home where she cares for him and several other children. Artyom is her 17th foster child. ”He should have been accompanied by adults and not just sent like a package by plane with his documents. It’s bad. As a woman and a mother I could have never done this,” she said.

The case sparked outrage in Russia and the government froze adoptions to the United States while it sought assurances that Russian children would be properly cared for by their adoptive parents. An accord was finally reached last year and the Russian parliament may soon ratify it in the coming weeks.

In the meantime the world has seen very little of Artyom since he was the scared little boy being whisked away by authorities. Russian officials say he spent time in a hospital and in various institutions before finally ending up here, at an orphan colony in the suburbs of Moscow. Now nearly ten years-old – his birthday is on Monday – Artyom remembers only a few words of English. ”My name is Artyom,” he said sheepishly without looking up from his Legos.

He’s perhaps small for his age, slim, and soft spoken. Like many boys his age, he enjoys watching television, playing with his toys, and horsing around with friends. He also seems to like showing off to the camera. When ABC News filmed him playing on the playground he immediately climbed to the top of the jungle gym and jumped off into a pile of snow, but not before glancing over to make sure the camera was rolling.

Ms. Egorova says he has taken to calling her “mama.” She says he’s struggling at school and is prone to acting up in class, but she attributes that to the trauma he experienced and the class time he has lost as a result. Egorova says she has seen none of the “psychopathic” issues that Torry Hansen wrote about in her letter which caused her to reject Artyom. She says many foster children are traumatized by what they have experienced and Artyom is no different. ”We did a lot of tests and visited several specialists and they say there are no disorders,” she said.

A U.S. court last month ordered Torry Hansen to pay child support for Artyom’s care. A hearing has been set for May 17 to determine how much she will pay, which will depend on her income level and how much it costs to take care of the boy in Russia. A lawyer representing Artyom visited Russia this week to meet him and to determine how much money to request, as well as to ensure that it will reach him.

Ray Stoner, an attorney for the National Council for Adoptions, says he’s confident the judge will give them what they are looking for. He hopes no other child will ever share Artyom’s experience. ”What we’re trying to assure is that something like this never happens again. And that there’s a consequence to what Ms. Hansom did. And that send an important message on behalf of all parents,” he told ABC News. ”This is an issue that transcends America, or Russia, this is just the way that children should be treated in any civilized society,” Stoner said.

In the meantime, the top Russian official for adoptions, Children’s Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov, said he expected no further delays for American families hoping to adopt a Russian child. ”There are (sic) not any artificial obstacles for this process,” he told ABC News.

Ms. Hansen was unable to be found for comment, despite efforts to locate her.

“The Gang Rape of a Latina 6th Grader, and a Horrific Community Response”

I know this article is from last year, but I had never heard about this incident until today. Thought I’d share it with you all. It demonstrates the (corrupting) power of media, the pervasiveness of racial and gender stereotyping, and the debilitating nature of rape culture for girls and women.  A depressing but powerful and thought-provoking read. 

***

Taken from: http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/03/cleveland_texas_gang_rape_horror.html

March 14, 2011

Until last week I had never heard of Cleveland, Texas, the small town where an 11-year-old Latina was gang raped, allegedly by 18 black males ages 14 to 27.

But since The Houston Chronicle told the victim’s storywith compassion and a New York Times piece subtly blamed her; since various news outlets have essentially tried and convicted the suspects with a widely circulated mugshot collage; since Houston New Black Panther leader Quannell X sacrificed the victim in his zeal to raise questions about the police investigation; since Mujeres Unidaschecked Quanell X; and since white supremacist Web sites are partying about this tragedy like it’s 1799, tiny Cleveland, has become a major example of how not to deal with rape in our communities.

A Thanksgiving Atrocity

For clarity’s sake, I’m recapping the basics of this monstrous, quickly changing case based on local news reports. The stories don’t identify the victim or suspects who are under 18 and rely heavily on police sources and documents. Prosecutors are under gag order; I have not seen the documents firsthand.

The assault took place last November, three days after Thanksgiving. According to a Houston Chronicle story, it allegedly began when a 19-year-old with prior drug convictions called the sixth grader and invited her to ‘ride around’ with him and two friends. The guys allegedly picked her up from her home on the outskirts of town and took her to a house in the Quarters, the economically depressed, predominantly black section of Cleveland.

At this house, the guys allegedly demanded the victim remove her clothes. She resisted at first but told police she relented when they threatened to get a crew of girls to beat her up and said they’d leave her in the Quarters without a ride home. After she disrobed, the males allegedly took turns raping her. At some point four more arrived. When a relative came home, the group—including the girl—snuck out of a back window. They decamped to a fetid, filthy abandoned trailer nearby and continued the assault. It’s unclear how many boys and men came to the trailer. What we do know: Some participants used their cell phones to videotape and photograph the rapes.

Over 50 percent of rape victims don’t report their attack; this child was no different. Her mother told the Chronicle that she’d suspected something was wrong when a picture of a man’s penis popped up on a cell phone the girl had borrowed from her father. Her assault came to light only after video snaked its way through the corridors of the girl’s middle school. A classmate told the principal. The principal called the police.

So far, 18 boys and men have been charged with the aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14. According to Texas law, any bastard who penetrated this girl—and any sorry-ass who stood around watching—is guilty of rape.

Seven of the suspects are in high school, including two basketball stars. One alleged assailant is the 21-year old son of a school board member. Then we have a 21-year-old who is already facing charges for another sexual assault and a 19-year-old with a pending manslaughter charge. The 27-year-old has already served time for selling cocaine and assaulting a family member.

The girl has reportedly switched schools and is in foster care after receiving threatening phone calls.

A Community Reacts—Poorly:

Cleveland has a population of 7,675 people. It’s 46 percent white, 28 percent Hispanic and 24 percent black. Now, if the media coverage truly reflects conventional wisdom among its 1,819 black folks, many in it don’t see what happened to this girl as an alleged gang rape but a case of consensual group sex gone wrong.

Relatives of the accused and a double agent ridiculously incompetent defense attorney James D. Evans III have focused on her ‘much older’ appearance, her ‘attention-seeking,’ rumors of a previous sexual history in the Quarters, her alleged aspirations of porn stardom, a Facebook page where the child reportedly bragged about sex, alcohol and drugs, and her mother’s neglect (not the father’s; never the father’s). In an interview on the local news, Anita Ellis Hancock, the mother of a 19-year-old suspect, exemplified this attitude. If you can’t watch the video, an alarming excerpt:

FOX 26: What did you do? Did you talk to your son?

Hancock: Yes I did. Yes I did. I said, ‘Baby, I’m your momma. You can talk to me.’ (The victim) said she was 17 years old and that’s what he told me.

FOX 26: But Anita, a lot of people would say, ‘This is an 11 year old child. Even if she lied, she’s eleven.’

Hancock: I understand that. I understand that. I’m not defending him. I’m not defending her. I’m not defending no child because if it were my child, I would feel the same way. My point is, where was her mother?

FOX 26: If this was reversed. If your son wasn’t your son, but you were the mother of this 11 year old, what would you do? What would you say? What is justice?

Hancock: First of all, I would know where she was. That’s the justice. Not knowing where your baby is is not justice. I feel like she should be accounted for not knowing where your baby at.

FOX 26: What lesson does you son need to learn?

Hancock: ID. Identification. This (holding up nametag and picture) is what you ask for baby.

FOX 26: So you’re going to tell your son, next time he meets a girl to ask for her ID?

Hancock: Identification.

Why This is Piss Poor:

Hancock’s words strike at the heart of a lethal double standard I’ve seen, hell, I’ve experienced too often in my community. I’m not picking on her; she’s trying to keep her son out of prison for 25 to life. But I believe she’s operating in a framework dangerous to her “baby.”

In this framework, girls of color are the predators, the fast-asses, the hot-asses, the hooker-hos, the groupie bitches, the trick-ass bitches, the bust-it-babies and the lil’ freaks who are willing to let dudes “run a train” on them. Too often let translates into, “she was rolling with a bunch of dudes” or “she showed poor judgement” or “she appropriated male-identified sexual bravado to fit in,” or “she’s a child who has been sexually exploited or abused.”

This double standard also renders black men and boys as victims of their own sexuality. They’re big-dick goon and goblin niggas just doing what niggas do when a smiling, or at least not-protesting young girl comes around. She’s 11? OK, but I didn’t know she was 11, so I didn’t do anything wrong, or violent, or exploitative or dangerous. My responsibility begins and ends with a request for ID.

My Takeaway, For What It’s Worth:

My next post will offer expert measured insights on how black men can help one another recognize and interrupt rape culture. For now, my suggested ground rules for people who believe they’re protecting black men and boys but actually enabling toxic sexual behavior:

• Adults should never participate in group sex with children. They shouldn’t be watching, taping or photographing it, either. Whether they’re arrested for it or not, they’ve committed sexual abuse.
• It should be inconceivable that a 14-year-old and a 27-year-old are sexually involved with the same girl. That is physically and emotionally dangerous for the girl; risky for the boy and criminal for the man.
• Men and boys should not have sex of any kind in a squalid, vermin-filled trailer abandoned since Hurricane Ike. If they do so, their families should be deeply concerned.
• Even if a girl says she’s 17—the legal age of consent in Texas—and seems sexually experienced; even if she seems open to making a video or down for a ‘train;’ even if her parents are oblivious and she seems vulnerable, raping her or watching it happen is a crime. No one deserves to be gang raped. No. One. Ever. If you find yourself trying to parse that one out, something is very wrong with you.

“Rare Disease Mimics Child Abuse and Tears Family Apart”

Taken from: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/parents-couple-died-murder-suicide-false-child-abuse-accusations-raise-awareness-article-1.1055353

April 3, 2012

William “Dave” O’Shell, distraught over charges of child abuse that were being leveled against him, snapped on June 30, 2008, killing his wife, Tiffany O’Shell, in their Henderson, Colo., home before taking his own life. Just a few weeks earlier, their green-eyed, 3-month-old daughter, Alyssa, had been placed in a foster home because x-rays revealed 11 broken bones and doctors assumed that she had been beaten.

But they were wrong.

On the same day as the murder-suicide, a doctor at Colorado Children’s Hospital suspected something else and was later proved right: Alyssa had a rare genetic disorder that caused her bones to fracture — one that authorities had confused for abuse.

Alyssa died of spinal muscular atrophy on Oct. 28, 2008, but the tragedy has rippled through a family and an aggressive social services system that is meant to protect children. Now, four years later after all lawsuits have been unsuccessful, Alyssa’s maternal grandparents are saying the tragedy could have been averted. ”We were looking for action. We could care less about the money,” said Paul Cuin, Tiffany O’Shell’s adoptive father. “We wanted someone to sit up and say, ‘This is wrong and we need to change things.’”

Cuin said there were no avenues for the O’Shells, both respected police officers, to plead their innocence. ”If our kids had some sort of outlet or grievance process or gone to someone, we would have a whole different story today,” he said. “The system has to change.”

A judge gave Cuin, 59, and his wife, Jackie Cuin, 50, custody of Alyssa after the death of their daughter and son-in-law, despite the objections of social services, according to a story first published in the Denver Post. The newspaper obtained medical, social services and police records in their investigation, as well as court documents on the Cuins’ lawsuits. ”They were wonderful parents,” said Paul Cuin, who is a supermarket manager. “We never had a single doubt in our minds [over whether] abuse was involved. We knew from the beginning, they loved that baby.”

They nursed Alyssa until her death and are convinced that if doctors knew more about SMA, the disease might never again be confused with child abuse. Spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, is a genetic neuromuscular disease characterized by muscle atrophy and weakness. It is caused by a mutation in the gene on the long arm of chromosome 5, which makes a protein that is important in the cells of the spinal cord and lower brain stem.

It is not always a death sentence, but those with the most serious form, like Alyssa, can suffer respiratory failure. The disease is the leading genetic cause of death in infants and toddlers, affecting as many as 10,000 to 25,000 children and adults in the United States, according to the SMA Foundation. ”It took seven months to diagnose my 12-year-old daughter, and my husband comes from a family of scientists and we live in New York City,” said Loren Eng, president of the SMA Foundation. “So few doctors are aware of the disease and it causes a wide variety of symptoms. It’s really an awareness problem.”

Dr. Darryl De Vivo, a professor of neurology and pediatrics at Columbia University, said SMA can “masquerade to some degree” as child abuse, “at least to the uneducated eye.” ”The nature of this disease is such that it allows the bone to be unduly susceptible to fractures in the normal handling of the infant,” he said. De Vivo added that with heightened awareness to child abuse, “people jump in and say guilty before being proven innocent.”

The Colorado case began in on June 16, 2008, when Tiffany O’Shell noticed that Alyssa cried when she lifted her right leg. The baby was referred to Children’s Hospital of Colorado, where x-rays revealed fractures, but no bruises or abrasions. ”We pleaded with the doctor at Children’s Hospital and social service to look for something else other than child abuse,” said Paul Cuin. “They should have waited and not jumped to conclusions.” Elizabeth Whitehead of Children’s Hospital Colorado said the hospital would not comment “on alleged child abuse cases, past or present.”

Child protective services took Alyssa immediately and placed her in a foster home. Her grandparents were ruled out as guardians because Jackie Cuin had spent time babysitting the child and was considered a suspect.

SMA Broken Bones Looked Like Abuse

The O’Shells had one supervised visit with Alyssa, according to Paul Cuin. The baby turned her head away from her parents several times and authorities interpreted that as confirmation of abuse. Dave O’Shell became a chief suspect when he admitted that he often held her by the legs upside down — which he said made the baby smile, according to the Post.

Cuin said the signs of SMA were evident in Alyssa, “but no one saw it” until the baby’s foster mother took her to the doctor because she was failing to thrive.

A pediatrician at Children’s Hospital noticed the classic symptoms: the baby’s thumb turned inward, a “bell-shaped” stomach and “frogs legs” that wouldn’t straighten, according to Cuin. Alyssa’s breathing was labored and she struggled to hold her head up. Suspicious, the doctor called for genetic tests, but no one alerted Alyssa’s parents, according to Cuin.

“If they had had a little bit of hope,” Cuin said, “this all would have been different.

On July 9, the results confirmed SMA, and on July 11, a caseworker called the Cuins’ lawyer. The O’Shells had been dead nearly two weeks. By July 16 the Cuins went to court and a judge granted them custody. The Cuins defend their son-in-law against abuse charges, but are still struggling to understand why he murdered their daughter. ”David was a very stable individual,” said Cuin. “It shocked us. But I fully understand the pressures he was under.” Cuin said O’Shell had lost all hope, told by his lawyer that he would go to prison and lose not only his daughter, but his wife, his job and his military status. If arrested on felony abuse, he would have had to raise $50,000 bail. Two days before the murder-suicide, O’Shell told his wife he was “going to shoot people” so police would have a reason to arrest him, according to the Denver Post. He became increasingly despondent.

One June 30, the couple was scheduled to meet with lawyers and a criminal investigator about the abuse charges. Jackie Cuin tried to call her daughter but got no answer. She went to check on her at the house, but was too afraid to enter, calling her husband. Paul Cuin found the bodies: Tiffany, who had been shot in the head twice, was covered in blood in bed. Dave’s legs were sticking out the bedroom doorway. ”I haven’t forgiven him,” said Cuin. “And I don’t know if I will ever be able to.”

Cuin and his wife now live day-by-day, and their awareness campaign is what keeps them going. ”We don’t want the kids’ death to be in vain,” he said. “We want something good to come of it.” ”I don’t have a problem at all with social services coming and taking a child and doing an investigation,” said Cuin. “There is a need for this service. There are bad people out there and kids need to be protected.”

“But the system did the opposite,” he said. “It tore a family apart.”

“Illinois Catholic Charities Loses Fight To Exclude Gay Couples From Adoption”

Taken from: http://www.ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=9271&MediaType=1&Category=26

August 21, 2011

An Illinois judge has ruled the state can deny Catholic Charities state funds to run its foster care and adoption services. The state decided after four decades against renewing contracts with Catholic Charities in Joliet, Peoria, Springfield and Belleville.

Catholic Charities policy turns away openly gay parents. The issue became heated in June when a civil unions law that recognizes gay and lesbian couples approved last December went into effect. Noting the teachings of the Catholic Church, which defines marriage as a heterosexual union, Catholic Charities told the state that it could not accommodate prospective foster parents in a civil union.

The foster care and adoption agency argued it was exempt from the law under its religious protections clause. The state, however, argued that the law’s religious exemptions only apply to clergy who refuse to officiate at civil unions.

Sangamon County Circuit Judge John Schmidt ruled against Catholic Charities on Thursday. “No citizen has a recognized legal right to a contract with the government,” he wrote. But Schmidt’s ruling narrowly focused on whether the state violated the property rights of Catholic Charities when it refused to sign new contracts and avoided the religious freedom issue.

Catholic Charities has about 2,200 children in its care. The group said it would likely file an appeal.