Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 4, 1990 TAG: 9004040348
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
"There's going to be a lot of finger-pointing," said Bill Pierce, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Committee for Adoption.
Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy last week filed a lawsuit alleging the adoptive parents separated the two young brothers they adopted in 1984, putting the older boy in a group home and forbidding him from seeing his 8-year-old brother.
The lawsuit filed in Circuit Court seeks visitation rights for the boys and $50,000 in damages for the child the couple gave up. The lawsuit refers to the child as Rick, not his real name, and says the parents - identified as Joseph and Pamela Doe - gave him back to the custody of the state because he hadn't "bonded" well with them.
A hearing will be held today in which Murphy will ask for a ruling on the request for Rick to visit his brother, Murphy said.
"It's every little boy's nightmare," Murphy said after filing the lawsuit. "Rick's parents told him they were going to put him into an orphanage and they did it. It's like telling a kid you're going to send the bogey man after him and then doing it."
"Mom and dad were talking about something, and they said they were going to put me up for adoption," the boy said in a tape recording made available by Murphy. "I thought they were kidding. They weren't."
The parents put Rick in the group home on Nov. 20 and got approval March 9 from Circuit Court Judge Walter Williams to surrender their parental rights to Williams.
The parents' attorney, Mary C. Martin, did not return a phone call Tuesday. Williams declined to comment on the case.
Ron Morman of the Springfield-based Child Care Association of Illinois said the case is particularly troubling because of the effects the parents' action could have on the child.
"We view it with a great deal of concern because the whole point of adoption is to help the child find permanence . . . to give him some sense of belonging, some sense of family," Morman said.
Murphy said Rick is now in a temporary foster home and blames himself for his new circumstance.
Officials at a number of adoption agencies noted that the boys in this case were not infants, but were older children adopted after their biological mother abandoned them. They said these children come to adoptions with problems, and it is important that they are matched with parents capable of coping with their particular needs.
Murphy, whose job as public guardian is to act on behalf of children such as Rick, calls the child a "normal kid" who has never been in trouble with the law.
Pierce said it "would be like malpractice to place a child in anything but" that type of home that best fits the child's needs.
But matching children to families is "an imprecise art," he said.
Agencies under the gun to place children rather than leave them in costly foster-care arrangements may take risks and place a child despite misgivings about the home, Pierce said, adding that they also can make mistakes.
by CNB