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The Child Protection eNewsletter

Nebraska promises to look beyond "safe haven" law to root causes...

There are a couple of ways law-abiding citizens can abandon children in Nebraska. TIME story here

Sometimes a desperate parent will tell a child that he or she is going to the hospital for something minor, like a rash–then in the emergency room, the child waits and waits, only to discover that the doctors are there but the parent has walked away for good.

Or unruly teenagers might simply be dumped at the ER door. "A parent will pull up and say, 'All right, get out of the car,'" says Lisa Stites of Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha.

In other states, laws that allow parents to leave their children at hospitals or fire stations are usually limited to newborns of a few weeks or months. In Nebraska, the law failed to define the word child. As a result, teenagers as old as 17 have been abandoned.

And not just one or two. Nebraska found itself facing an epidemic of abandoned children after the legislature passed a law in July that allowed parents to leave their children at a safe place, like a hospital, without fear of prosecution. It was one of the last states in the country to pass such legislation–but the law contained a large loophole by including children of all ages.

The legislature gathered on Friday in a special session to fix the safe-haven law. The day before, three more kids were abandoned at Omaha hospitals, bringing the total to 34 since mid-September, shortly after the law was passed. A 5-year-old boy was left by his mother on Thursday night; two teenage girls, 14 and 17, were dropped off earlier the same day. The older girl ran away from the ER before authorities could arrive. And a Florida man traveled from Miami to drop off his 11-year-old boy earlier this week.

But while Nebraska can easily narrow its statute, dealing with the underlying causes of abandonment is much harder, child-welfare experts say. "These parents had to be totally overwhelmed to do something like this," says the Rev. Steven Boes, president of Boys Town–the original safe haven of Father Flanagan fame, which happens to be headquartered in Omaha. Once upon a time, Depression-battered parents would buy bus fare for their children and hand them a sign that read "Take Me to Boys Town." Their counterparts today "are parents who have tried to navigate the system for years, and this is their last resort; these are parents who ran out of patience too darn fast and gave up too early, and everything in between," says Boes.

For each abandonment, there are just as many parents who arrive at a safe haven but, in the end, don't leave their child, says Courtney Anderson of the Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha. A medical social worker, she was on duty in the ER when some of the abandonments unfolded. "Some parents want us to threaten the child–they feel that would set them straight," she says. Some parents cry; others are merely angry. Some children begin to cry when they figure out what's going on, while others are hardened veterans of the foster-care system and "are used to these ups and downs."

Five of the children abandoned in Nebraska have been from out of state, but most are local. A majority of the children are older than 13 and have a history of being treated for mental-health issues. Nearly every abandoned child came from a single-parent household. In September, one father walked into a hospital and left nine children, ages 1 to 17. He reportedly told hospital workers that he'd been overwhelmed since his wife died a few days after their youngest was born.

Boes says one root of the abandonment problem is that there is simply not enough help for parents in crisis. In Nebraska, for instance, there are only six child psychiatrists in the entire state, he says. "It's a national problem ... insurance often won't pay after six visits–so if the kid's not 'fixed,' you're out of luck. States have a jumble of services. It's a puzzle with missing pieces."

State senator Mike Flood, speaker of Nebraska's unicameral legislature, introduced a bill on Friday to change the law to cover newborns up to three days old only. He expects a debate on whether to expand coverage for the first year of a child's life, which some states do. "We'll be looking at the bigger issues next year," he promised. "Mental illness, the behavioral-health workforce, caseworker loads."

Meanwhile, The Nebraska legislature's judiciary committee met in a special session on Monday to begin rewriting the law. TIME story here As the special session proceeded, some legislators defended the intent of the law.

While Governor Dave Heineman is pushing to limit the rewritten law to newborns of 72 hours, some lawmakers are saying that the abandonments have exposed an urgent need to fix gaping holes in the state's mental-health services, which they claim fail to assist families with little resources to help problem children.

Senator Annette Dubas introduced an alternate bill that would retain a safe haven for parents with kids ages 1 to 15 through June 2009 so that the legislature could address the broader issues come January. "Do not forget those struggling families," she urged her colleagues.

Some lawmakers were angered by what they see as a callous response from Heineman's administration–that state welfare agents appear to be accusing parents of too easily abdicating their responsibilities. "It's been very disturbing, how judgmental you've been," Senator Amanda McGill said to the state's health and human services chief, Todd Landry. "You've had plenty of time to make these judgmental statements to the press" but not to return phone calls from desperate parents, she said.

Landry argued that the state offers many lifelines and that services are available. "So all a parent has to do is call a hotline?" Senator Steve Lathrop asked skeptically. "What is the harm," he asked repeatedly, of allowing distraught parents to bring older kids in?

But the voices that appear to have won the day were those of the abandoned. "I'll be good–I'll be good, I promise," one child begged as the mother walked away, Ann Schaumacher of Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha told the judiciary committee. "It is not the right place for relinquishment to occur," she said of the ER abandonments. Some hardened adolescents show no emotion at all, she recalled, citing an older teen who was left by a mother who simply said, "I can't do it anymore." Said Schaumacher: "These children will never be the same, and that's the tragedy of this law." Schaumacher, like most hospital representatives, argues that the law should be limited to newborns and infants.

Near the end of a four-hour-plus hearing, Lyman "Scott" Wostrel gave a grown man's choked testimony of the experience of abandonment. His mother gave him up at 14, he said. "It doesn't matter what a person says. The action speaks: I don't love you. Any kid can figure that out," he said. Wostrel is urging lawmakers to limit the law to newborns. See also CNN video story here.

Nebraska lawmakers gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a new 30-day age limit for children who can be legally abandoned under the state's safe-haven law. AP News story here The age-limit measure advanced by lawmakers faces two more votes but doesn't appear to face any major obstacles. Gov. Dave Heineman has said he would support an age limit anywhere from 3 to 30 days.

Hilary Foretich speaks out...

Hilary Foretich, the little American girl brought to Christchurch two decades ago to grow up in hiding, is now a professional singer in Hollywood using her talent to speak for child victims of abuse. Hawkes Bay news story here

Foretich–now known as Elena Mitrano–was smuggled to New Zealand by her grandmother after her mother, Elizabeth Morgan, claimed during a tough custody battle that Hilary, 5, was being sexually abused by her father, oral surgeon Eric Foretich.

Dr. Morgan, a plastic surgeon, spent more the $1M fighting the original custody order, but Hilary was deemed too young to testify in court and the allegations were dismissed. Hilary's mother refused to force her to participate in unsupervised visits with her father, and was jailed in August 1987 for contempt.

But her daughter was already on the run with her grandparents, retired psychologists William and Antonia Morgan. They took the child on a 2-1/2 year-journey, eventually settling in Christchurch. During this time, Dr. Morgan spent 26 months behind bars, then secretly moved to New Zealand to live in hiding with her daughter.

When the child's location was discovered and became news around the globe, a New Zealand court gave Dr. Morgan sole custody, but the case was complicated by rulings from US courts. Dr. Morgan and Hilary returned to Washington in 1997 to be with the doctor's mother, but only after the US Congress passed the Elizabeth Morgan Act in 1996, allowing the girl to decide whether to see her father.

"She gave up everything, always believed me, never questioned me, and fought for me tooth and nail for years," Mitrano told the Daily Breeze, a Los Angeles newspaper. "I was living in a hell that no child should ever have to live in," Mitrano said. "It was inescapable. Either I was going to be saved or going to be completely destroyed. I survived, and I think that it made me really strong."

She still lives with her mother in Beverly Hills, but said that life after her return from New Zealand was hard. "During my late teenage years, I was feeling very, very lost, and I started doing drugs. "I definitely had some very dark days when I was a teenager." She struggled for more than 20 years to find her voice, but now at 26, uses it to speak for those who can't.

Her debut album, Rescue Me, was released in June and features a mix of upbeat dance tunes and soulful ballads. "No five-year-old should have to be terrified of one parent, and then lose the other one," Mitrano said. "But I was very fortunate, and I'm stronger for it. There are children who aren't as lucky as I had been, and I wanted to do something for them." See her website at http://www.elenamitrano.com/.

In other news...

State officials have taken into protective custody 20 more children associated with the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, alleging they had been abused and neglected. AP News story here The children–11 boys and 9 girls ranging in age from 1 to 17–were taken into state care Tuesday while hearings were being conducted on whether six girls seized in September should remain under state protection or be returned to their parents, Department of Human Services spokeswoman Julie Munsell said. The court order that authorized the seizure of the 20 children said there were allegations of neglect and physical abuse. Munsell would not detail the allegations. Alamo was arrested in September, days after his compound in Fouke was raided by state and federal agents. The six girls, between ages 10 and 17, were seized for their own protection. Alamo has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of transporting minors across state lines for sex. Alamo has preached that the Bible allows girls to marry once they reach puberty but has said he didn't adopt the practice. However, witness testimony and assertions from prosecutors indicate otherwise. The hearings this week are to determine whether the girls should be returned to their parents or be placed under continued care arranged by the state. See also vol6_iss58 and vol6_iss59.

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian engineer who kept his daughter locked in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children by her, has been charged with murder and slavery, according to a charge sheet. The Times online story here Fritzl, 73, is accused of treating his daughter, Elisabeth, 42, as a sex slave, keeping her locked in a nuclear shelter beneath his house in the town of Amstetten, where he repeatedly raped her. He is also charged with rape, incest and false imprisonment. One of the incest children, a baby boy called Michael, died three days after his birth in 1996. The murder charge was brought, prosecutors said, because Fritzl did not seek medical help for the child, who had severe respiratory problems. "As a father, he killed the newborn by purposely refusing to provide the necessary help of third persons despite recognising the life-threatening condition of the baby, thus causing the child to die," the charges read. See more at vol6_iss33, vol6_iss34 vol6_iss35, and vol6_iss57.

Police raids have revealed an alleged network baby "farms" or "factories" in Nigeria, forcing a new look at the scope of people trafficking in the country. news.com.au story here At a hospital in Enugu, a large city in Nigeria's southeast, 20 teenage girls were rescued in May in a police swoop on what was believed to be one of the largest infant trafficking rings in the west African country. The two-story building on a dusty street in Enugu's teeming Uwani district now stands deserted, shutters down. Neighbors had long found something bizarre about the establishment, where there was virtually no activity during the day, they said. The doctor in charge, who is now on trial, reportedly lured teenagers with unwanted pregnancies by offering to help with abortion. They would be locked up there until they gave birth, whereupon they would be forced to give up their babies for a token fee of around 20,000 naira ($170). The babies would then be sold to buyers for anything between 300,000 and 450,000 naira ($2500-$3800) each, according to a state agency fighting human trafficking in Nigeria, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

A New York City woman was sentenced to at least 40 years in prison for doing nothing as her battered and malnourished 7-year-old daughter lay dying. MSNBC News story here Nixzaliz Santiago received more than a decade longer in prison than her husband, who was accused of delivering the fatal blow after the child, Nixzmary Brown, was caught stealing yogurt. Rodriguez, who was Nixzmary's stepfather, is serving 29 years on a manslaughter conviction, while Santiago was convicted last month of manslaughter, assault and other charges that increased her prison time. Some jurors cringed and wept when shown grim crime-scene photos from the room at home where Nixzmary was bound to a chair, starved and forced to urinate in a litter box. She was so malnourished when she died that she weighed only 36 pounds–about half the weight of an average girl that age. The case, coupled with a series of other high-profile deaths of children known to the agency, sparked public demands for reform of the city's child welfare agency. City officials responded by bolstering the corps of caseworkers. See more at vol6_iss5, vol6_iss12, vol6_iss26, and vol6_iss60.

A nationwide review of child protection in the UK has been ordered after a mother duped social workers into believing that a series of brutal injuries that led to her son’s death were accidental. The Times online news story here The 17-month-old child, known as Baby P, died despite 60 visits by health professionals and social workers from Haringey Council. Baby P was sullen and shaven-headed and covered in bruises and scabs when he died in the dirty, flea-ridden house in August last year. His fingernails and the tips of his fingers had been torn off and he had been hit so hard in the face that one of his teeth was found in his stomach. He had been on the child protection register for nine months and had been seen twice a week on average by social workers or health visitors. Social workers involved in the case of Baby P were persuaded repeatedly by his 27-year-old mother that his appalling injuries were the result of falls and other accidents. Bruises, scabs and other infections were covered up with chocolate smears and nappy cream. The social workers were not aware that a violent boyfriend had moved into the house and believed that the baby was a victim of neglect, not abuse. Rather than take him into care, they assigned more support staff. When the child died, two days after being seen by a pediatrician, he was found to have eight fractured ribs and a broken back. The 32-year-old boyfriend and a lodger, Jason Owen, 36, were convicted at the Old Bailey yesterday of causing or allowing his death. The mother had admitted previously the same charge.

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