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(And I know it's not the point at all, but I did feel sorta sad for the sweet foster brother who has to sleep in the laundry room now. I know, I know. But still.)
Also, @4 - it was Ron, in Vegas. Or Bob ... She thinks his name was Bob.
And @3 ... no shame in feeling pity for William ... his life has been completely turned upside down. He will be richer for it later on in life, but he has been robbed of his childhood and his parents to some degree. You can see that he does feel lonely and replaced. It is sad, and it's totally fair to recognize that.
A very moving story. It evoked a wide spectrum of emotions from me. Thank you for posting it.
Hey Rush Limbaugh... why don't you invite Thom Yorke of Radiohead to celebrate your oxycontin?
I guess you and yours are about as ready to fight for "your shock" as I have received mine.
She took the plea. She was given two years of house arrest, plus probation. And 100 hours of community service. "
Bullshit.
Yeah, that's pretty horrible all right. The most extreme case of child neglect I've ever read about. Thank goodness for adoptive parents gay or straight.
I believe a plea bargin was reached because I think it is extremely difficult for courts to take away children from their natural parents. It really boils down to case extremes such as this one for children to be safe and cared for properly. Glad it panned out for Dani.
But yeah - I totally hear what you're saying. The older I get, the less I recognize my own thoughts.
I know it sounds silly, but it's one of those stories with the potential to permanently alter your perspective on life, you know, like seeing third world poverty with your own eyes?
Read it. Everybody.
But look. Whatever the standard for removing parental rights is, the determination is made by a judge and/or jury. And I'm having a hard time imagining a judge or a jury coming down on the side of the mother. Basically, if it is possible to do it, then it must be possible to do it in this case.
This is the strength and weakness of our justice system - it is run by people. People are not going to give this child back to her mother. Period.
I don't want to judge the lawyers without knowing more. But god damn, they really better have had a fucking good reason to let this woman off the hook. They do not extend that courtesy to criminals who are vastly, vastly more sympathetic.
* In some circumstances I know you can get a judge to give temporary custody to a doctor where the parents' religious convictions are preventing urgently needed care. But they give custody right back to the parents once the procedure is done. According to one of my law professors, the parents are almost always grateful that this is done (the kid lives, the parents don't lose the respect of their religious community, everyone is happy).
Amid all the praise for the adoptive parents, my great concern is for the son, William. Pink walls and "cotton candy dresses" for Danielle are all well and good, and it is indeed tremendous of them to take her in so warmly, but sending your son to sleep in a narrow laundry room? Even when he clearly is afraid of it and has to sneak out while the parents are fretting over their new daughter? This set off little red blinky lights in my mind
Of course you don't, because you're a delusional nitwit.
Are you really suggesting otherwise? Really?
I disagree with most of what you write, to be honest, but this is an over-the-top accusation against Dan and the "people like him" (whatever THAT means).
This situation is partially due to the legal system (drugs), partially due to what makes people in our culture twitchy (people tend to worry more about sexual abuse than about neglect and physical abuse, at least in the abstract), and partially due to the limited funding/ large workload of most child and family services agencies.
That being said, it's disturbing to think that the workers who saw the level of neglect they did in 2002 didn't remove the child from the mother's care. Either the funding at that agency was really low, so they had to prioritize even worse cases, or the workers had misplaced priorities.
What people like YOU apparently want is for children to remain in foster care, when there are perfectly wonderful, loving adoptive parents ready and willing to care for them.
I'm starting to think that you are a made-up troll by the Stranger staff to generate more hits, because no one could possibly be that dumb and still know how to use a computer.
We're all doomed.
Mr Herriman, these words, though they made me feel comforted to not be alone, still made me cry with how familiar they sounded.
However, I will say my anger at the woman based on the living conditions at the beginning of the article did turn to sadness at...I don't know what... the girl was failed by the system, but so, in some ways, was her mother. Some people aren't equipped for the caregiving that their genitals allow them to get stuck with and we need to do more to demand they grow up or give up
@30 - Yeah, it's interesting, on some level it's clear there's something deeply wrong with this woman and maybe she's more insane than criminally culpable. You never know what get left out of the story. That said, she sounds fairly functional, certainly functional enough to take care of herself, in a sense. So, barring seriously exculpatory evidence, I'm okay with treating her as responsible for criminal justice purposes.
and i feel sick now.
In other words brainiac, Through the constant use of his "Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father" posts Mr. Savage is bashing the nuclear family for the mere purpose of the advancement of his political agenda.
I think this is something pretty obvious to everyone that reads his posts.
I have a friend who works for DSHS & claims that the caseload for the average CPS caseworker will be increasing nearly 200%...and they can't do house checks on all the cases they have currently.
Very sad, especially for the kids.
What Dan does support is expanding the rights of gays to adopt - whether he thinks they should raise those children in a nuclear or extended family is, again, not something I've seen him take a stance on.
So let's not be coy - you probably don't object to children being raised close to their grandparents, uncles, aunts, et al. You object to gay people adopting children. Dan's point, as I understand it, is that children are being failed by the system, and that gay people could help care for children who would otherwise not be raised in a loving, family environment. A single instance of the system (eventually) reaching a decent outcome does not do anything to disprove Dan's argument.
I wasn't surprised to find that out, but her low IQ is hardly the only issue. She's a barely functional idiot AND a self-centered narcissist. A fatal combination.
I will grant that the meme falls down a bit, because she was adopted by an incredibly wonderful family and is all the better for it, and these work best with those for whom the CPS/foster care/adoption system has failed, thereby begging the question "wouldn't a loving gay couple be better than this?" But this was a pretty remarkable read.
Loveschild, this one goes out to you: to quote Tolkien, "Troll sat alone on his seat of stone and munched and mumbled a bare old bone; For many a year he had gnawed it near, For meat was hard to come by." Munch and mumble, Loveschild, munch and mumble!
"since you think of yourself as smarter than me"
Should be "smarter than I."
"By 'people like Savage' I meant people like him who lie to use the bogus argument of look at what those parents are doing to make blanket statements about the nuclear family so that they can get their foot in through the adoptive system."
Rambling, incoherent. Get their foot in where?
In other words brainiac, Through the constant use of
Do not capitalize "through."
obvious to everyone that reads his posts
Obvious to everyone who reads his posts.
Of course should be: " "better off being raised by abusive heterosexual parent or parents or left to languish..."
By the way, I think I'm pretty in touch with the "average" American. I lived in a small town in the rural Midwest until I was 18, and still go back there regularly. I have close relatives who are evangelicals in Iowa, fiscal conservatives in Missouri, independents in Indiana, liberals in Maine, Libertarians in Chicago. And, I'm sure my experience is not unique to the commenters on Slog -- I know it's convenient for you to think that we all have lived in a liberal, latte-sippin' bubble all our lives, but it's just not true...
Here's one to consider: Washington Women In Need
As indicated by the name, it is not a children's charity, but the majority of their clients are single mothers, many of whom have fled abusive, often torturous, environments. WWIN provides grants to low-income women who need access to counseling, healthcare, and education. WWIN is completely privately funded - they receive NO government assistance of any kind. Every penny of the overhead is paid for by the organization's founder, which means that every penny donated goes directly into the grants for clients. The clients have near total control over their decision making, meaning they have their choice of care providers, schools, and courses of treatment. This is incredibly valuable to the clients who have felt many times before like they were being pushed anonymously through a system with no independence.
While this may not be exactly what we're talking about here, there are countless children who will benefit from their mothers taking back control of their lives.
WWIN is not affiliated with any religion or religious organization and their only prerequisite for assistance is an inability to pay. They are truly the nicest, most caring and welcoming group of people. They feel like family. Not to mention, they are extremely efficient and effective with the money they receive.
So there's my pitch - if any of you are looking for an organization to make a charitable contribution, either because you were inspired by this particular story and vince's suggestion or just because ... please consider WWIN.
www.wawomeninneed.org
If our founders had been "Real Americans" like you, our country, and its high ideals, wouldn't exist.
Bigotry, complacency, ignorance, and mediocrity are NOT American values.
" "since you think of yourself as smarter than me"
Should be "smarter than I." "
is incorrect, at least in modern idiomatic English (if we were talking about formal 18th-century English, you would be correct). But nowadays, "than" in a comparative sentence is generally considered a preposition, not a conjunction, and thus the pronoun that follows takes the objective case ("smarter than me," "taller than him"--not "smarter than I" or "taller than he").
Sorry for the pedantry.
Funny you should mention that since our founders were a minority. The more salt-of-the-earth types wanted the colonies to remain under British control.
Please help me understand your point. I hope both Julie in Eugene and I are misunderstanding you. Do you think it would be better for a child to remain in the foster care system if the only couple who wish to adopt the child is gay?
Thank you in advance for the clarification.
k
You recognize the issue, so I don't need to get into the fact that these "than [pronoun]" are actually short for "than [pronoun] [verb]."
So the bigger question is how English is to function. The way it ought to function is that you have an educated elite who use correct grammar (in a modern country almost everyone would be capable of using correct grammar and would be elite in this sense). This elite cadre preserves admittedly arbitrary rules that maintain the internal logic of the language. The mere fact that vulgar English drifts away from "correct" grammar would not make correct grammar outdated or irrelevant.
At the other end of the spectrum is pure "anything that is understood as English is good English." By taht standard, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this sentence. Not one would mistake "taht" for anything but "that."
You are advocating a middle ground in which the elites change the rules at times. I actually believe in a middle ground too, but mine would be more rigid than yours. I would split infinitives only occasionally. I would preserve the use of the subjunctive mood as distinct from the indicative. I would demand that verb and subject match in number ("none of them are ready for the game" is fucking wrong).
And certainly I would not treat "than" as a preposition. That is preposterous. It defies the basic internal logic of the language. We use it as a conjunction all the time, and the formulation we are discussing is merely a special instance. You can't go changing its part of speech in particular cases to indulge idiots (i.e., non-elite). If you do so, you will make a procrustean bed indeed, and then the English language will have to lie in it.
I am excited and looking forward to this weekend I am excited because I have been invited to a friends house they have 2 kids one is 3 the other is a newborn. So I get to go construct a railway on the floor with the 3 yr old, he has many trains so it usually gets out of hand in a good way. I also get to see the new born for the first time.
This is one thing I have missed out on, not because I am gay, it just never happened but I have always wanted kids. I helped raise my younger sister and both of my nephews. Ya I was changing diapers at 10 and sitting watching TV bottle feeding them. Now my nephew is 36 living in the south of France with his wife and when we get together it is all about cooking a good dinner and hanging out over drinks. All the influences and nurturing early in his life produced this amazing person that I realize I had a major part in bringing up, he himself has told me this and so has his mom, my sister.
We can have such an impact on kids and it is so great to see the result years later it all starts with something as simple as just getting the opportunity to go play trains on the carpet.
We can blame the people who "tried to do the best they could" with low IDs.
Shut the fuck up. It's the individual parents' responsibility, not society's.
"In Hillsborough alone, 600 kids are available for adoption."
Thank god no queer parents will ever adopt them!
http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/FactOve…
This woman didn't treat her child like that because she's mentally retarded, she did it because she's narcissistic and cruel. Her IQ never should have came into it, because there are many mentally retarded people out there with children, and they're not neglecting them.
So hopefully this won't start a mass hysteria for people to be IQ tested before they're allowed to have children. Being a good parent isn't about that, and this woman OBVIOUSLY didn't have what it takes. She is a monster and I feel no sympathy for her, I think she should have been locked away for the rest of her life.
Not sure exactly what you mean, but in this world we will never be able to assign all blame/responsibility to either indivuals OR society, because the two are inseparable and interdependent. Society relies on individual parents to do the best they possibly can without excessive interference, but there will always be a need for society's oversight and intervention because there will always be some incompetent or abusive parents, just as there will always be some insanely greedy mortgage lenders and peanut producers. Sure, you can blame this mother for every horrible fact of this child's life, but society had and has a responsibility to children like Dani. Society is us. The government is us. It does take a village.
At least the child didn't die, as has happened in a few cases over here in the UK (anyone interested google "Baby P"), and now has a chance at some modicum of a life.
At least that's what I've been given to understand, and those the terms in which I would defend that understanding.
My pedantry is bigger than your pedantry. :P
I'm not a lawyer, but spent many years as a foster parent, including adopting several of my foster kids from the system. The over-riding thought is supposed to be "what is best for the child." In this case, getting the parental rights terminated quickly so that the adoption could move forward is in the child's best interest. Non-voluntary terminations can drag out for many months, if not years. Meanwhile, the child languishes in foster care, the potential adoptive parents (who may or may not be the foster parents) are kept hanging, and the courts and the child services agencies are burdened with yet another case in their overwhelming stacks.
Should the mother have been locked up for this blatant neglect of a child? Probably. But if Dani can be moved into a permanent loving home and start getting the treatment she needs, then foregoing the incarceration of the mother is justifiable.
Please stop posting child abuse stories. There is allot of bad shit in the world, and I for one, need a break. I understand why you post these stories, but we need a break for a while.
The comments in Slog are often mean spirited, angry and sad. I think the readers could really benefit from reading about things that are less heavy on soul-searing child abuse horror.
Please, for a little while, post something good, because I can't keep reading the slog when it makes my heart ache.
Exactly. Saying "smarter than me" is actually correct.
It's never a good idea to attack the grammar of a poster in an attempt to undermine them when you can attack the content of what they're saying directly.
Loveschild is obviously a moron. We need both loving gay and straight couples (or perhaps even singles--worth looking at) to take these poor children with no homes. There are always more children than families willing to take them, and there shouldn't be a law prohibiting loving, educated, stable people from adopting.