Strollerderby : Utah

Georgia Sex Offenders Must Turn Over Passwords "For the Kids"

JeanneSager — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:26:00 GMT

Ever notice the words "for the children" make you feel really guilty? Vote "yes" on a ludicrous school budget; it's for the kids. Get a dog even though daddy's allergic - it's for the kids.

I guess I'm supposed to feel good that the State of Georgia has told every registered sex offender to turn over their internet passwords, e-mail addresses and screennames.

The law that went into affect with the new year was written by State Senator Cecil Staton, who says it will "keep the internet safe for children." With sixteen thousand sex offenders in the state, I can't see how the move will do much more than tax the already over-worked cops now charged with plugging random passwords into the 'net to track people who might or might not be committing a crime.

Don't get me wrong; pedophiles deserve to be strung up by their toenails in my eyes. Touch a kid, and you're worth less than pond scum. But how does requring a sex offender to pass over the information he uses to get into his online banking account making the internet safer for kids?

With the move, Georgia becomes only the second state in the nation to require pedophiles turn over their passwords (Utah was first); although there are about fifteen that require usernames and e-mail addresses be reported. If they don't do it, they'll face probation violations and possible jailtime.

Providing usernames to the police seems feasible; it allows for a Google Alert anytime "likessexygirls" shows up in a kids chat room. But what does a password provide? Free access to their private e-mails with family that haven't the hint of criminality, a look-see at their bank accounts when nary a crime has been committed. Sounds like the Patriot Act at work here folks, the state searching for a reason to charge someone with a crime. I think they call those witch hunts.

The law actually stretches to all sex offenders - not just those convicted of acts on children. So sickos who raped someone who is over age (and is less likely to have an interest in child porn or contacting kids) are being forced to give up their privacy "for the children."

The law also requires they turn over everything. Everything. So the state is now going to be responsible for keeping safe financial information that, if leaked, could potentially make these sixteen hundred people easy prey for identity thieves. Do they have the security measures to protect that? Do they have the money to put them in place?

Then there's this tricky thing called the Constitution. Like I said, pedophile = pondscum. But what ever happened to "I did the crime, I did the time"? The sex offender registry is in place already to protect people - kids - from sex offenders. Their addresses, pictures, type of vehicle, distinguishing characteristics - are already available. It's a price they're paying for their heinous acts. Should they now pay with their right to privacy?

Image: WRAL

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New to Birth Certificate: Does Mom Have Chlamydia?

JeanneSager — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:35:00 GMT

So you thought picking the new baby's name was hard? If you plan on giving birth in Utah, you might want to brush up on your sexual and medical histories too.

The state is updating its birth certificate process after more than two decades - and they're adding a series of health-related questions - including whether Mom used artificial insemination, whether she asked for an elective C-section, even if she has an STD.

Shocked? Don't be - Utah is actually late to adopt this new survey, which was created by the National Center for Health Statistics back in 2005 (which is when I gave birth - so I never had to answer - nah nah nuh nah nah).

The state says the bulk of the questions will not actually go on the birth certificate. So you won't be registering Junior for kindergarten with a piece of paper that says "she had chlamydia." There's not even a legal obligation to answer.

Which kind of makes you wonder - can't they think of a better time to ask? Public health officials need good data, and answers are only as good as the questions asked. But an OB/GYN running down a medical history with his patient is going to get the same info - and he'll get it BEFORE a woman is exhausted from thirteen hours of labor or still doped up on painkillers from a C-section.

Making me even more skeptical: designers of the questionnaire admit they don't believe women accurately report their alcohol use during pregnancy. And they're going to be that much more eager to cough up the details with their baby out of the womb - and prime for grabbing by child welfare workers? Or that much happier to report they had an elective C-section so their insurance company can come running in to refuse to pay for it?

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Parents Must Give Adopted Son Back: Another Side of the Story

Shannon LC Cate — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

My fellow Strollerderby blogger, Jeanne Sager, reports this morning on the case of an American Indian baby adopted outside his tribe being ordered to be returned to the tribe by his adoptive parents at the age of six months.

When my children (both adopted) were babies, one of the most common questions strangers would ask us is "can her real mother take her back?" Setting aside the problematic word "real," what annoyed me most about this question was the evidence it gave me that the population generally buys into the myth that adoption--especially domestic adoption--is a dangerous game in which tentative families are made, then torn asunder willy-nilly by impetuous birth mothers "changing their minds" about their adoption decision.

The fact is, in spite of the high publicity cases like the one Jeanne shares with us receive from the media, real adoption disruptions are incredibly rare. In the Utah case, bad adoption law met the Indian Child Welfare Act, met questionable adoption agency practice met complicated race politics for a perfect storm.

For one thing, Utah allows a woman to sign away her child for adoption only 24 hours after giving birth. Adoption ethicists disagree over how much time should be required to pass before allowing terminations of parental rights to be signed, but none I've read think 24 hours is anywhere near long enough. And it is the shortest time in any state in the U.S. Not enough time was allowed, in this case, for the mother to make her decision.

For another thing, the Indian Child Welfare Act, like it or not gives the tribes jurisdiction over placement of tribal children for adoption. The agency the prospective adoptive parents used ought to have apprised them of the legal risk they were taking in accepting this baby as their own before the tribe had ruled on the decision. It should have been made clear to them that this could happen and they should never have been led to believe the case was closed until the case was...closed.

As for race politics, people can argue about it until we all explode--it shouldn't matter what race the adoptive parents are as long as they are fit parents versus Indian children should be raised within Indian communities at all costs--and we will never settle it. Because in transracial adoption--as in all adoption--paradox abounds. The fact is that while it is true that love has no color, people do. And race matters.

I'm the white adoptive mother of Black children and our love for each other "has no race" as they say. Of course I can love them and they can love me as fiercely as any mother and children ever loved each other in the history of humanity, but that is a completely separate issue from what they need as people of color in what is still a white dominant society. Plenty of research suggests that transracially adopted children grow up isolated and alienated and unsure how to be adults in their own skin. As a transracially adoptive mother I watch and listen and read and work as hard as I can to prevent my children from having this kind of experience. I think I can learn from the mistakes of the past and the pain adult adoptees share and do a better job for my kids. But this is not a simple matter of love.

The Native American tribes have special consideration in adoption and were an exception to the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act (making racial consideration in adoption placement illegal) because of their special legal status as sovereign and because of an ugly history that included taking away tribal children as a form of real, intentional cultural genocide. Because of this, transracially adoptive parent though I am, I think that exception is reasonable.

Finally, I know that the mother in the Utah case had a serious drug addiction and had been declared unfit to raise her older four children. The baby in question was born drug-addicted. But having a disease like addiction does not automatically render women deserving to lose their children forever. Plenty of women can and do get clean and get their children back. The trouble is that people in power would rather take children out of sick families and sick communities than support those families and communities and help them heal. Putting our resources behind those kinds of efforts is in the best interest of children--both for their immediate survival and for the long-term health of their culture.

For part two of this debate, see:

Defending the Indian Child Wefare Act

Indian Child Welfare Act: Bad for Parents?

Boy Injured Car Surfing on Mom's Ford

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:54:00 GMT

This is one of those awful stories in which parents did something so reckless that you want to mercilessly berate them--but you can't because they have already learned their lesson the very hard way.

In this case, a Utah mother discovered that car surfing is not the best way to bond with your kids. The mother of a 8-year-old and a 10-year-old son routinely let her kids take a ride on the outside of her Ford Expedition while she drove around the block at about 5 mph. The kids would stand on the running board, and hold onto the sideview mirror and the handles inside the car.

This was all fun and games until her son took a fall as she went over a speed bump. He had to be flown to a hospital, where he was treated for critical head injuries. He is now in stable condition. His mother has been charged with child abuse.

As horrible as this accident was, it could have been much worse. A report from 2000 found that nearly 500 people were killed car surfing over a five-year period.

Photo: Mochinbach/Flickr

Kids Open Lemonade Stand to Pay for Cat Surgery

Cole Gamble — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:00:00 GMT

When life hands you a lemon cat, make lemonade. A couple of kids in Utah are seeking to do little something more with their summer than play in the flesh-melting chlorinated public pool. They’ve opened a lemonade stand with a simple sign, “Buy a drink, help my cat.” In order to obtain the $700 needed to pay for a surgery on their partially paralyzed cat, Aspen and Skylar Granath are selling lemonade. Here’s hoping they make enough to throw in a robotic eye with laser beams.

Utah Boy's Brain 1, Antler 0

Matt Wood — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:24:00 GMT

Two things: first, look at that picture, and second, process this sentence about a five-year-old boy, "The antler went through his face and into his brain."

Connor Schick was on a camping trip with his family in Utah when he found some deer antlers. He tripped and fell as he ran to show his parents, and the antler punctured his face near his left eye and went all the way into his brain. I mean, look at that picture. The antler was so freaking huge, it totally comes out the the X-ray even.

After Connor fell on the antler, he sat up and pulled it out himself. I'm telling you, these people from Utah are tough. Remember Aron Ralston, the climber who cut off his arm with a pocketknife after it was trapped under a boulder? Yep, Utah. And apparently for little badass Connor, getting punctured by a deer antler is merely a flesh wound. Doctors decided he didn't need surgery, instead treating the injury with large doses of antibiotics until it healed on its own. "Get me out of here, Mom," he said as he left the hospital. "I saw a bear out there I want to strangle."

So you hear that, deer? You got nothing. No-thing. We'll take you in Utah, we'll take you in Colorado, we'll even take you here in Illinois. My brain, your antlers, going down.

Just watch the eyes.

Picture: KTVX, Salt Lake City

How Child-Proof is Your Daycare?

Karen Murphy — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 14:29:00 GMT

When I read this heartbreaking story about a little girl who strangled on the cord of a window blind at her daycare I immediately looked up at my windows. Which have miniblinds. That I installed. And every blind's cord is tied way up out of reach of my youngest, my four-year-old. Because you never know.

But we all have that kind of control in our own homes. We all child-proof. We check outlets, blinds, stoves. We lock up medications or put them out of reach. We keep our eagle eyes on, at least to the best of our ability. But what about daycare?

I'm not here to rag on daycare; I know it's a choice parents make for a variety of reasons. And I know too that the majority of daycares will have as stringent safety standards (or more so) than do our homes. They have to.

But I also know that there's going to be a percentage of daycare situations, a variety of situations, that don't adhere to every safety standard, for whatever reason. Maybe not out of negligence or ignorance. Who knows what the reason might be? Because in the end it's only about our kids and only about their safety.

So if I had a kid in daycare I'd be checking for things like window blind cords and all the myriad things that can be potentially unsafe. I'll be inquiring at my son's preschool, though. They're hypervigilant in his special-needs class but still, you never know.

And the parents of Abbigale Wentz know all about the You Never Know, and they're suing now to ensure no other kids in Utah end up wth the same fate as their daughter did.

Sticky Notes Warn Kids About Drinking Underage

Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:46:00 GMT

The health officials in Utah are distributing post-it notes to parents. These sticky notes have messages on them about the hazards of underage drinking and the parents are supposed to be putting them on bottles of alcohol that they have around the house.

This is supposed to stop kids from drinking underage?

That wouldn't have stopped me. It would have only encouraged me to steal. In fact, I would love to get my hands on some of these stick notes right now. I would love to sneak into all my friends liquor cabinets and stick a note on their vodka that said At your age drinking is dangerous. They would be particularly hilarious at each of my friends 40th birthday parties. You know what else would be a riot? Putting them on my parents wine bottles. I'm going to call my friends in Utah and see if I can get my hands on some of these. I suppose I could make some on my computer.

But I digress. This crap isn't going to work. It is just a waste of paper. It might make things worse, like how those annoying Truth commercials always make me want a cigarette. Nice try Utah, but I don't think this is going to help anything.

Strollerderby : Utah

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Sticky Notes Warn Kids About Drinking Underage