posted
Here's a brief link from the BBC, but most of my quotes are from the New York Times article, which isn't linkable.
quote:A New Jersey couple, Vanessa and Raymond Jackson, have been charged with aggravated assault and child endangerment after their four adopted sons, aged nine to 19, were found severely malnourished.
At 19, the oldest was 4 feet tall and weighed 45 pounds. The boys' conditions were discovered when neighbors called the police because the 19-year-old, Bruce, was looking for food in the neighbor's trash at 2:30 a.m.
The boys had been locked out of the kitchen of the house in this blue-collar Philadelphia suburb and were fed a diet of pancake batter, peanut butter, and breakfast cereal.
A caseworker from the state Division of Youth and Family Services, the agency that oversees the foster care system, had visited the house 38 times in the past two years.
The caseworker, whom officials would not identify, resigned from the agency as the conditions at the Jackson household came to light. At least a 8 and as many as 10 employees of the Division of Youth and Family Services, including management and supervisors, face susupension and some could be fired depending on the outcome of the department's investigation.
Also living in the Jackson house were two girls, ages 5 and 12, whom the couple had also adopted from the foster care system; a foster daughter, 10, whom they were planning to adopt; and two of the couple's adult biological children- a son and a daughter. None of the children other than the four boys appeared to be malnourished.
The adopted boys lived in a state of constant want. They had lice, and their teeth were rotting because they had not seen a dentist or doctor for at least five years. They were homeschooled by the adults and not permitted to leave home often.
In marked contrast to the four boys, the three girls were well fed, went to medical appointments and took vacations with their parents. The girls were permitted to order Chinese takeout while their brothers starved.
Yet the boys seemed unaware of their plight. "The parents had essentially brainwashed the children into believing they had eating disorders," the prosecutor said.
Neighbors said they noticed the boys were small and thin, but that the Jacksons had told them they had medical conditions that kept them from growing properly.
Medical examinations of the boys ruled out any natural cause for their small stature. One boy, a 14-year-old identified only by the initial K.weighed 38 pounds when he was adopted in 1996. When he was removed on from the Jackson home on Oct. 10, he was 4 feet tall and weighed 40 pounds. After 13 days in the hospital he had gained 7 pounds.
The three younger boys have been released from hospitals and are in foster homes. Bruce the oldest remains hospitalized; doctors are monitoring a possible heart problem. The girls living in the house have also been placed in foster homes.
I've cut a lot of extraneous quotes and such out, but the main points are there. There isn't much to say about it, but there was also a case a few months back about a 7 year old foster boy who died in New Jersey. In the article there was talk of pressing charges against the state, and the obvious need for reforms with in the system.
Foster care seems like such a good idea. It is supposed to remove children from abusive and potentially harmful situations. Why doesn't it work the way it is supposed to? How might a better system be implemented? There are similar cases in varying degrees through out the social system. I need more time to come up with a coherent response of my own, but please post your reactions and if you have them solutions, or maybe you could just explain how this happens.
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posted
i would say there has to be a reason the social workers didn't report what was going on, and that's a place to start. who's giving them what to prevent them from doing their job? on the other hand, sometimes it seems that people in jobs like that get jaded or become detached and forget what their purpose is. i work in a hospital, and maybe i just haven't been here long enough, but i've been surprised many times at the seeming lack of compassion some of the staff has. there's more to that, but my point is that you've got to know what part of the machine is broken before you can fix it.
posted
1. The case described in the quotes is a Pennsylvania case
2. Your title is disingenuous, because it is not New Jersey's program that mistreated these kids, it is a few greedy individuals who used the foster and welfare programs to get money for practically nothing.
How could this have been prevented? Mandatory medical checkups for the foster children. Even then, however, mental abuse wouldn't be so easily found. So, is mandatory psyche evals the next step? No—it's preventing case workers like the one who resigned after the case came to light from walking around free. That piece of human waste not only deserves jail, but deserves to be mistreated while in there.
Anyway, I'm just a tad annoyed at your title, since it does not reflect the content.
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posted
Um, it wasn't greedy foster parents. That couple in New Jersey had adopted the boys, and so, unless I'm really mistaken, weren't getting any money from the state to care for them.
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quote:The Jacksons received up to $28,000 a year from the state for their adopted children's care.
When you adopt "special needs" children, the government does continue to send you money for their care.
Now they've fired the social workers who were supposed to be checking up on these boys...
And it IS a New Jersey case -- this particular town in New Jersey they say is a "suburb of Philadephia" but they were definately living in New Jersey. It is the New Jersey Department of Human Services doing the internal investigation.
posted
Damn. I wonder if they were still getting money for the 19 year old. Ahh, the 28,000 figure was the peak, before the nineteen year old turned nineteen.
Strange. It would seem that the change in the law (which was encouraging states to get kids adopted faster) backfired. In order to get kids adopted, they started paying people to adopt them.
quote: The subsidy mirrors what is given to foster families and ranges from a low of $300 for a child under 6 who is not disabled to a high of $1,400 for an ill child, such as one with a feeding tube or on HIV drug therapy.
Oh, and is anyone else annoyed at how bad the reporting has been on this? I can find, easily, different weights, ages, number of home visits in the last two years, etc. that is reported as "fact" differently in different papers. It really makes it hard to figure out what is true and what isn't.
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posted
It is a New Jersey case---the suburb was Collingswood.
This makes me sick. No one noticed. No one at all. Not even the freakin' DYFS workers.
I think that child welfare services system needs to be funded better and revamped completely. Those workers get beans for what they do and they are expected to handle too many cases at the same time.
Last year, a seven year old boy was found dead of starvation, while his twin and 4 year old brother were malnourished. The boy had been dead for a week or more.
No one notices.
I agree with Leto. When I first heard about this case the idea of rolling them over hot coals sounded really good. And starving them. I can't imagine.
People are greedy and they will exploit even children for their own satisfaction.
posted
We all think this and get all outraged when events like this make the papers.
This kind of stuff happens on a slightly lesser level every day.
But our society does not value social services enough to fund it. We don't want higher taxes. People should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Social workers and teachers know that they get beans for pay when they choose their field, so they shouldn't complain about their pay.
We don't value our children.
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quote: But our society does not value social services enough to fund it. We don't want higher taxes. People should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Social workers and teachers know that they get beans for pay when they choose their field, so they shouldn't complain about their pay.
We don't value our children.
*nod*
We say we do, but we don't put our money where our mouths are.
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posted
Are you sure it wasn't greed, Kayla? Fostering kids is a good way to defer lots of costs and often get no-questions assistance from the state. Add to that the case workers who allegedly handled the evaluations (though obviously did not), and it points to someone going through ridiculous amounts of trouble at the expense of others for something.
I'm still waiting for Audeo's "coherent thoughts" on the matter, instead of just blaming the social system.
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posted
Leto, those kids were adopted, so they weren't fostering them, which is where I got confused. I didn't realize that New Jersey still paid people after they adopted kids. That just seems wrong to me, somehow. I understand it theoretically. They want the kids to be adopted and have a real family, but families would shy away from disabled children because of the cost. However, if they are adopting the kids and getting the same amount of money from the state, there's a problem. If you want the kid's check every month without the hassle of having a case worker stopping by to make sure you are actually using it for the kid, what a better way to do it than to adopt them. Not only do you get the cash, but no pesky social worker to make sure you're feeding them.
So, anyway, they were still getting state money, but they weren't foster kids and no social worker was checking on them.
[Edit: Duh, forgot to answer the question. So, like I was trying to say. In my first post, I didn't realize NJ paid people after they adopted kids. So, yeah, these people could have been in it for the money. What's weird, though is that the two girls they fostered and adopted, and I suppose the third girl they are currently fostering (or were fostering) and wanting to adopt, seem perfectly healthy and cared for.]
quote:I didn't realize that New Jersey still paid people after they adopted kids. That just seems wrong to me, somehow.
*shrug*
We get paid.
The stipend is not considered a bribe to adopt undesireable children. My children are not undesireable. Rather, it is a compensation for the fact that special needs children run up bills that other kids don't. (For example, recently Banana's insurance turned down a prescription for an antibiotic, because she had had a similar prescription too recently. Sorry, but my kids get sick more than many other people's kids do.) They also receive other benefits from the government.
Am I in it for the money? Well, to put it in perspective, the stipend I receive per child is roughly one ninth of my work income--and I am a teacher. I understand if you feel that we should be receiving this stipend, but the stipend certainly does not make it worthwhile for anybody to go into this "for the money," because the added expenses of having a special needs child easily outweigh the couple hundred bucks a month.
People don't abuse and malnourish kids for the money. The people who do this do it because they are depraved.
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posted
Oh, I'm not disagreeing with that Megachirops. But in New Jersey, they get up $1,400 per kid with a disability, though at $28,000 a year divided between 4 kids, it seems to work out to a little less than $600 a month per kid a month, or $2,300 a month.
Also, my son is disabled, but I don't get money for him. Why should you get money because you decided to adopt a disabled kid and I don't because I gave birth to him? You see what I mean? I'm not begrudging you what you get, or anything. I'm happy for you and your kids. I'm glad someone cared enough to adopt them. I'm glad they have a loving home. It was just the repressed Republican coming out in me.
People starve children because they are depraved. They also take foster kids (or adopt them) for the cash and starve them because they are depraved. It's not an either/or situation.
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posted
Kayla, in New Jersey, taking kids in can get you assistance benefits from other state-sponsored programs. I mentioned those case workers for a reason—"parents" can be depraved, but the odds on this case being just as simple case of people being depraved with no underlying motive is slim. Since there has been precious little given out to the public about the particulars of why these case workers lied and why at least one of them skipped out before the case was found leads me to believe there was something going on. I've seen it happen before with others who both adopted and brought in foster kids, and almost every case was a petty version of greed.
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posted
Kayla, if you give birth to a child that is disabled, that is unfortunate.
However, if I am adopting a child I will try to adopt one that is healthy. This leaves the state in the costly bind of having a lot of expensive kids to take care of.
So they decide to give a little money to the adoptive parents to convince them to adopt a special needs child instead of a perfectly healthy, low maintenance one. This saves the state money in the long run.
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posted
Dan, I don't disagree. I was commenting on Mega's quote.
quote: The stipend is not considered a bribe to adopt undesirable children.
Seems to me that you are agreeing with me. It is a bribe that ends up being win/win/win. State wins, kid wins and the adoptive parents don't go completely broke taking care of the kid. However, Mega knew what he was getting into. I, on the other hand, had no reason to believe that I would have anything other a healthy child. The repressed Republican in me says that if he couldn't afford the upkeep on a disable child, he shouldn't have adopted her. However, the rational side of me thinks it's great that people are adopting disabled kids and that the state helping out isn't a bad thing. That said, if people are going to adopt disabled kids and still receive money from the state, social workers should still be involved, even if less so than normal. If they don't want the social workers involved, they can refuse the state money to take care of the kids.
Leto, you do realize that the social workers that came into the house were there checking on the 10-year old foster daughter, right? They boys had been adopted and weren't under the supervision of the social workers, though through the adoption process for the 10-year old, they were to have spoken to all family members. But, their main responsibility wasn't the boys.
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posted
Their main responsibility was to have spoken with all of the family members, as well as at least a couple relatives or neighbors as a reference. In other words, they overlooked some very specific things to get the child into custody.
Are you seeing what I'm getting at?
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posted
My own thoughts are much more emotional than coherent which is why I refrained from posting them initially. I've been following the story over the last week in the New York Times, and I have to say that I don't particularly care for their style of reporting, but that's neither here nor there, but I've also found out a few facts about the kids involved.
Evidently two of the boys had fetal alcohol syndrome, and the other two boys (including the oldest) had been removed from their birth families because they were being starved. The parents told outsiders that they boys had an eating disorder, and the parents seemed like such decent people that no one thought to question the fact that that a 19-year-old, who had no disease, was only 4 feet tall. The boys also were not taken to a physician so there was no medical professional to realize that the boys were treated so poorly. The Times had printed a family portrait that was taken not to long ago, and if I hadn't known about the abuse and the ages of the boys it would be easy to not know there was abuse occurring. What I'm trying to say is that it is unfair to lay the blame on neighbors and outsiders. Even a social worker would not have been responsible for the adopted boys and was most likely assigned to the family because of the foster daughter they had, and if she had not been in contact with the family from the beginning it would have been easy to be decieved by the lies they set up.
I would say that all of the blame lies with the family members. The parents are primarily guilty, but the adult children living with them, and even to an extent the adopted and foster daughters should have been aware of the problem and reported it. There is no excuse for this happening as long as it did. As to why the parents treated the children this way, it doesn't make sense to attribute it to greed. Whatever the amount of money they recieved for caring for these children it was not enough to justify their actions, and what makes it more apparent it wasn't greed was the opposite treatment of the adopted and foster daughters. If they were truly just trying to make money they would have scimped on all the children not just the boys. The only possible motivation is cruelty. It takes an aberrative personality to treat anyone or anything this way and it's clear that this applies to the parents of this family.
How could this have been prevented? Well if they are recieving money for these kids and that money is intended to help cover excess medical and other unusual costs for disabled children, then there ought to be a mandatory once a year check up for all these boys. I am sure that any doctor would be able to tell the condition these boys were in and action could have been taken sooner. I'd also recommend psychological testing for potential foster and adoptive parents, though I think that in a case like this one they may not have shown anything adverse.
What should be done with the parents? All of their natural children are adults, so to begin with any children in their care ought to be removed from their care, as they have. They should not under any circumstance be allowed to take care of children in the future. I would recommend a psychological evaluation for both of them. As I said before only an aberrant personality could inflict this type of punishment on another human being, and it may well be that they are insane themselves and may benefit from psychological care. If, however, they are sane, as I suspect them to be, but are simply cruel individuals I would recommend lengthy imprisonments for both. They deserve to be punished. I would argue that the way they treated these boys was worse than killing them. They ruined any chance that they may lead normal lives, and made their lives in these past years a living torment.
As far as what should happen to the boys, well there really is no option. They'll go back to the foster system. I would say that cases like these are the rare exception and that the majority of foster parents are kind people that can offer a home for these children. I worry most about the oldest, because I am sure that at his age he will be sent to a group facility where he will be taken care of. For him there is no hope to recover and regain a normal life. It is also disheartening to realize that each of these children will be sent to different homes, but it is infinitely better that each should find a good home, than that they all live together in misery.
I'm sure that we'll here more about this in the months to come. I already mentioned that mandatory yearly physical check-ups ought to be implemented. I believe it would be difficult though not impossible to hide the signs of abuse from, especially long term starvation like this case, from a doctor, unless that doctor were grossly incompetent, but that's a different story. So if there were to be any one change to the way New Jersey went about it's social care for children it wouldn't necessarily be more visits by social workers, though those are important, it would be a mandatory medical evaluation to be sure that these kids are healthy.
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posted
I'm sure they are, I don't live in NJ, so I can't say for certain, but I was suggesting more intensive ones, or if they don't exist then the implemenation of psychological testing. However even the best of these tests are remarkably fallible. I doubt they would have been able to tell with people such as these who had already raised apparently healthy children of their own and had no apparent history of abuse.
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quote:Even a social worker would not have been responsible for the adopted boys and was most likely assigned to the family because of the foster daughter they had, and if she had not been in contact with the family from the beginning it would have been easy to be decieved by the lies they set up.
A social case worker for cases like this is trained to notice signs of mistreatment and abuse. The boys were eating trash, pieces of wood, and dust for nutrients. Their behavior, to have gotten to such a base level of sustinence-gathering, would be noticable to even the untrained eye. Family portraits are one thing, personal observation is quite another.
quote:As to why the parents treated the children this way, it doesn't make sense to attribute it to greed. Whatever the amount of money they recieved for caring for these children it was not enough to justify their actions, and what makes it more apparent it wasn't greed was the opposite treatment of the adopted and foster daughters.
It also puzzles people as to why there are petty crooks who steal what basically adds up to less than they could earn with a regular job. However, that's judging from a viewpoint of reason that cannot be attributed to those who exploit others for even the most mediocre of gain.
quote:If they were truly just trying to make money they would have scimped on all the children not just the boys.
Maybe in your mind. However, it makes total sense to someone who was abused as a child and watched three other children grow up in the same house with no abuse.
quote:The only possible motivation is cruelty. It takes an aberrative personality to treat anyone or anything this way and it's clear that this applies to the parents of this family.
And if their whole personal justification for the mistreatment was to lavish the girl with plenty? In case you can't quantify the motivation for that, it falls under greed.
quote:How could this have been prevented? Well if they are recieving money for these kids and that money is intended to help cover excess medical and other unusual costs for disabled children, then there ought to be a mandatory once a year check up for all these boys.
Just to inform you, for pretty much any state-level assistance programs I know of, there is a six-month meeting required.
quote: am sure that any doctor would be able to tell the condition these boys were in and action could have been taken sooner. I'd also recommend psychological testing for potential foster and adoptive parents, though I think that in a case like this one they may not have shown anything adverse.
The behavior of the boys was enough to alert neighbors once they saw them. The behavior was enough to alert authorities into deeper investigation once alerted. Had there been either competent case workers or ones who did their job from the start (instead of falsifying documents), this would not have happened.
quote:I'm sure that we'll here more about this in the months to come.
I am convinced that we will not, just like all the other cases in the same vein.
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posted
Icky -- being certified that you're not nuts... by Florida? You really think that means something?
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quote:In Florida this is mandatory*, as are background checks, home inspections, and completion of a parenting course. Is this not the case in New Jersey?
Same here, including at least two follow-up inspections, usually six months apart.
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When people steal such small amounts that they could easily earn as much by working a short time, that indicates to me that the problem is not greed, though greed may be an element in it. Rather, that's a sign to me of some more deeply rooted issues. Similarly, a couple who would bring children into their home in order to scrape together a pittance only by completely neglecting the needs of these children has some more fundamental problems that simply greed. I'm not sure that we're really in disagreement here.
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posted
Megachirops, let me elaborate on what I mean by greed when I attribute it to this case:
I mean that to the case workers as well as the parents, what was more important than the welfare of the kids was the getting them into homes. This applied not only to the girl's case workers, but also to the boys'. Indeed, the misdirected priorities that caused the "parents" (I use the term loosely) to neglect the boys in lieu of the girl is definitely over-the-top insane, but that deviant behavior is rooted in a twisted form of greed. While the money was a pittance to pretty much any given middle-class worker, it doesn't change that when/if checks came in, they were in substantial chunks. Chances are high that they were also eligible for other assistance, considering the neighborhood they lived in (I live close enough to know), and wouldn't put it past them taking advantage of that as well (normally, behavior like this is compounded by other similar behaviors). My statement about greed has less to do with some get-rich-quick scheme and more with a misproportionate allocation of priorities with money as a major factor.
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I understand momentary rages when children are just frustrating to the extreme (it happens, and when you need to walk away and gather your thoughts, you just do). I understand depression and the inability to stay involved meaningfully with a child.
I don't get deliberate cruelty. I don't get it with respect to pets, and I don't get it with respect to kids. It really is unfathomable.
(I know this doesn't further the discussion at all, but I'm still unnerved by this story, days after having first read about it.)
posted
ClaudiaTherese, I am too. It makes me ill to think I could carry around a young man just a couple of years younger than myself. It makes me ill to think that these four boys' combined weight was still less than my own (they weighed 136 lbs all together, I stand at 5'9" and weigh 139, and I'm skinny).
It makes me ill to think that the caseworker, when following the case of they 10 year old girl, did not notice the condition of the other boys.
It makes me ill to think that these boys have starved over years and no one else noticed.
What makes it even worse, is that the "parents" did this purposely, for whatever reason.
It's just sad. I live in New Jersey, too, not very far from that area. There are a lot of sick people out there in this world.
I really don't know what else to say. (edited for semantical error)
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