Strollerderby : foster child

Foster Mom Loses Job When Muslim Charge Converts

JeanneSager — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:26:00 GMT

A Muslim teenager's conversion to Christianity has prompted British officials to strip her evangelical foster mother of all responsibilities after ten years fostering kids for the government.

The woman, who has fostered eighty kids in the past decade, says she's being persecuted as a Christian. What's more - she says she tried discouraging the girl, now seventeen, from switching religions.

Not named because of legal reasons, the foster mother told the British Daily Telegraph that she offered the girl alternatives to living a Christian lifestyle, despite her own church-going practices. The caregiver attends an evangelical church and says family services was aware the girl had chosen to attend with her. They were OK with it, until the girl was baptised.

"I offered to take her to friends or family. But she said to me from the word go: 'I am interested and I want to come [to church]'," the woman told the Telegraph. Her case against the government - an attempt to regain her "job" as a foster mother (which did provide her income), is being funded by the Christian Insitute, which has charged the government with violations of both the girl's and women's right to religious freedom.

I'd tend to agree that a child of sixteen making a religious conversion is markedly different from a child of five or six (it's one reason I've always argued for baptism later rather than at birth). Teens have some sense of the gravity of decisions, and they're also relatively open to change. Teenagers like to make big decisions and take some control of their own lives. The fact that this girl had a troubled childhood, pushing her out of her home and into foster care, would understandably make her more willing to make a change in her life - especially one that would please a caregiver.

Does that mean the caregiver MADE her do it? Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe this could have all been avoided if the government either a. placed her in a home with a Muslim foster family or b. provided some means for the child to attend Muslim services, then checked up to see why she wasn't attending. At sixteen, she could have answered for herself.

She has answered for herself since. The girl is back with her own parents now and says she supports her former caregiver. She's staying a Christian, and she doesn't regret it.

So what do you think?

Image: BeliefNet

Dad Finds Daughter Abducted During Bosnian War

JeanneSager — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:01:00 GMT

It's been sixteen years since Muhamed Becirovic saw his family, abducted by Serbian soldiers at the start of the Bosnian war. But the Bosnian Muslim - now living in Germany - never gave up hope.

Now Red Cross workers, using DNA samples, have reconnected the father with one of his two little girls, now living with a foster family in Serbia. Senida was nine months when last seen by her father; she's now sixteen and goes by the name Mila.

She's also a Serbian. And a Christian.

She's known nothing of her father for the past sixteen years, nothing of his life or her heritage. Now she faces the biggest question of all - should she stay with what she knows? Or join her biological father in another country, taking on a new life?

It's the kind of story that tears at a parents' guts. Becirovic has rebuilt his life since losing his wife and two daughters after fighting broke out while he was working out-of-town, and ethnic Serbs took control of his hometown. By the time he finally got to his home, the building was demolished, his family gone. He's spent more than a decade and a half trying to find them, even if that meant discovering they were among the bodies dumped in the mass graves created during the Bosnian war. He's also since become a permanent resident of Germany, remarrying a German woman and fathering another daughter.

But a third daughter can't possibly replace his elder two. Finding Senida would seem like a dream come true.

But what of Senida? She's no longer a baby, and she says she doesn't want to move to Germany. “Of course I am very happy to have found my family and my roots. But at the moment it is all too much for me," she told the Sunday Times.

Is it fair for a child to be uprooted from everything that she knows? With the long history of the region, pitting Serbs against Bosnians and Christians against Muslims, it's hard to say how much of this child's biological heritage can really take hold over what she has been raised to believe. It's akin to a child raised evangelical Christian in America suddenly learning she's an Orthodox Jew - and her biological parents believe nothing of the born again, Jesus loving faith she's been raised to hold so dear. Doesn't nurture trump nature in this case?

By the time kids reach a certain age, biology can hold only so much sway in their lives. Heritage is more environmental and less what one is born with at sixteen. Not to mention the utter lack of relatable moments between father and daughter in this situation because of such a large chunk of their lives spent apart.

For the Becirovics, what should be one of the happiest days of their lives is fraught with confusion. Unfortunately, they're still a family torn apart by war.

Image: USIP

Dad Gives Away 500 Lobsters For Cystic Fibrosis Awareness

Teen Has Cancer and Lives in a Car

Parents Must Give Adopted Son Back to Native American Mother

More News About Missing Child Adam Herrman

Brett Singer — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:15:00 GMT

Jeanne first told us about the bizarre case of the little boy who has been missing since 1999, but the story gets even stranger with some new details.

Let's start with this one: it turns out that the person who tipped off police about Adam's decade-old disappearance may have been the daughter of his adoptive parents. To clarify: Crystal Herrman, the biological daughter of Doug and Valerie Herrman, may have called the police and told them that Adam, whom Doug and Valerie adopted, was missing. Crystal emailed KSN.com, the Kansas NBC TV affiliate, saying the following:

"We started this, which was hard against our own parents as we were not adopted. But we want more than anything to find the truth, answers and justice…We pray every day our parents will come forward. Do the right thing not only for what they already put Adam through in the past, but to make it right for him now."

KSN says that that last sentence implies that Adam was being abused, although it doesn't appear to explicitly state that fact.

There's more: a woman described as "a former relative, who says she remains close to one of Valerie Herrman's sisters," told KSN that Valerie recently said, "They can dig up the whole state of Kansas, they'll never find a body." The Herrmann's attorney says that his clients are "worried" that they face murder charges, pointing out that there is no evidence of such a crime. He calls the Herrmans "good people," and claims the couple had no part in Adam's disappearance. The attorney has appeared on the Today Show, and also on local station KSN, stating that the Herrmans thought that Adam had gone to live with his biological father when he didn't come home after some time. Why they didn't call Adam's biological father and find out is a question that seems not to have been asked.

Lastly, Adam's biological father, Irvin Groeninger, gave an interview to KSN. He says that he "lost" Adam once and can't lose him again, and just wants to know what happened. Here's video of the interview, which also has clips of the attorney.

It's nasty stuff. I suppose I'll say that I hope they find out what happened soon, since it doesn't seem likely that this story has a happy ending.

Source: KSN.com

Parents Wait a Decade to Report Missing Child

They Say -- Kids Who Skip Breakfast and Hate Mom Have Sex Sooner

Toddler Injured in Xmas Tree Fight Between Mom and Grandma

Wife Set Husband's Genitals On Fire, Charged With Murder, Endangering Life

Parents Wait a Decade to Report Missing Child

JeanneSager — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:24:00 GMT

A child went missing in 1999, and his parents say they feel "very guilty" they didn't report him missing sooner. You know, sooner than the other day . . . ten years after the tween boy went missing.

Well, you know, feel guilty, act guilty . . . At the very least, these people must be guilty of being bad parents.

Adam Herrman disappeared from his adoptive parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman's trailer park in the town of Towanda, Kansas, in 1999. A foster child placed in the the Herrmans' care when he was two, Adam (born Irvin Groeninger III) was adopted by them. By the time he was eleven or twelve (somehow, police haven't been able to pin down an exact age - making me wonder if there's an exact day he was last seen), the Herrmans say he was running away frequently.

But when he up and disappeared again, they apparently decided he was with his biological parents . . . or homeless.

And still, they didn't report him missing.

According to a CNN report, a "person" made a report to the Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Children's Unit that they were concerned about Adam Herrman. Police have since executed a search warrant at the family home, taking into possession their computer. They have gotten an answer, they said, to one of reporters' main questions . . . but they won't reveal which one.

Apparently it's not "what happened to Adam Herrman," because police said they don't know whether he's alive or dead. The Herrmans are not under arrest at this point, but their lawyer has said they "feel very guilty" and "rue" the fact that they didn't report him missing.

Of course, I can't help thinking of another missing Adam. Adam Walsh's parents went running to the cops because they loved their son and wanted them back, and their son is forever memorialized in the "Code Adam" alert for a missing child. Why wouldn't a set of parents (even those frustrated by a troubled runaway child) put out their own Code Adam for their Adam?

Usually, I try to stay away from the words "adoptive parents" because once an adoption is final, the adopting parents are simply parents in my book. But two people who let their pre-teen son go missing without reporting it to police? I'm not sure I can call them parents.

Image: CNN

Dad Gives Away 500 Lobsters For Cystic Fibrosis Awareness

Why Cops Should Let Casey Anthony Attend Caylee's Funeral

Son of America's Most Wanted Creator, Adam Walsh, Murder Solved

Man Says Drinking Breastmilk Cured His Cancer

Teenager Arrested For Kiddie Porn - The Pictures Were of Herself

JeanneSager — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:59:00 GMT

I'm not up on all the legalities behind child pornography arrests, I'll admit it. I've never had to know. But last time I checked, a child has to have been somehow objectified, right?

So how does a 15-year-old teen girl taking nudie pics of herself and sending them to her classmates qualify? I'd be calling in counselors for the teenager. Instead, Central Ohio school officials called in the police. Now the teen has been charged with illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material (a felony) and possession of criminal tools. That's right, she used herself. And then she possessed the evidence of it! Not only that, the high schoolers who received the pictures may face charges too! Because, well, they possess child porn too!

In Ohio, adults convicted of possession of child porn have to register as sex offenders - I'm all for that. But the judge in this case will have flexibility according to a spokesperson with the district attorney's office. OK, so she may have to register as a sex offender for, um, having pictures of herself naked? Please call the authorities. My daughter climbed out of the bathtub this evening and ran past the mirror. She stopped and made raspberries at it. Naked. She looked at herself naked. What are we going to do?

The worst part of all this is that this girl is a foster child. Which would point to a childhood that's already been disrupted in some way. Teen girls sharing their naked bodies with other kids usually suffer from low self esteem, and there are possiblities of everything from depression to an eating disorder. This, people, is what we call a child in crisis. Not a sex offender!

Child pornograpy is serious and seriously scary for me as a parent. But the fact that a child is naked and a picture is taken does not make it child porn - anymore than a picture of a woman breastfeeding is adult porn. Maybe money would be better spent keeping kids out of trouble than chasing down every picture of a naked kid.

Source: Az Central

Image: AdaptiveMobile

Ten-Year-Old Does 90 MPH While Adults Party In the Back

Should Computer Technicians be Mandated Reporters for Child Porn?

Why Jamie Lyn's Pictures Make Me Want to Buy a Printer

Five-Year-Old Catches STD From Dad's Towel?