Bring back the orphanage; an answer for today's abused children.

Bring Back the Orphanage

An answer for today's abused children

April sat on the witness chair clutching a Cabbage Patch doll. Her blue eyes blazed with hostility. In clear, precise language, accurately relating dates, times, and places, this ten-year-old girl described the repeated acts of sexual abuse to which she was subjected by her stepfather for two years. The incidents occurred in the presence of her mother. She said that her maternal grandfather had tried to kill her stepfather but his shotgun misfired. When called to the witness stand, the grandfather, an old wino, mumbled incoherently. The mother, who has an IQ of 72, was unable to say more than "yes" or "nope" or "I dunno" in response to questions. April has an IQ of 146. No one knows the identity of her natural father.

This trial lasted four days. It was heartbreaking and distasteful. But the aftermath was frustrating and appalling. I convicted the stepfather of statutory rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor and sentenced him to 19 to 38 years, the maximum the law allowed. I could not convict him of rape because April had not resisted. As she explained, the guidance counselor at school and the family therapist to whom the stepfather had taken her told her to obey her father, that he knew what was best for her. Even with time off for good behavior and the eagerness of the parole board to make room for new convicts, the stepfather will probably remain in prison until April is 18 and, I hope, can protect herself.

But what will become of her in the important remaining years of her childhood and adolescence if she lives with her retarded mother and drunken grandfather? After sentencing, I began a long, fruitless quest to have April placed in a safe and suitable environment. I implored every public and private agency involved in child welfare to find her a suitable home. I was told it was impossible. There was a shortage of foster homes and insufficient funds. Moreover, it is the policy of both governmental and private agencies to keep families together. The child's caseworkers assured me that April's mother was receiving counseling. But no amount of counseling will increase the mother's intelligence or alter her promiscuous habits.

Tyrone was beaten so severely by his father, Robert W., that the neighbors called the police. Robert is a prize-fighter trainer. He repeatedly struck Tyrone with a doubled-over electric cord. A doctor at the hospital where Tyrone was treated testified in court. He described several deep, bloody wounds on the eight-year-old boy and presented X-rays of healed fractures and a diagram of the youngster's body showing the location of more than 70 scars of old and recent beatings. Robert testified that he was just "disciplining" a bad boy. Tyrone's evil conduct was wetting the bed.

"Robert is not a criminal," his lawyer argued. "He was just reprimanding his son." The prosecuting attorney recommended family counseling and probation rather than prison. Whether Robert was in prison or not, Tyrone would have to live with his mother, who had testified that Robert was a good and loving husband and father and Tyrone was incorrigible. Again, no agency would even attempt to find placement for Tyrone. The family should be kept together.

Tony has no scars. Neither of his parents was arrested. They came to court voluntarily in a custody battle. They were divorced when Tony was four years old. He is now nine. The father tells Tony his mother is a whore, an evil woman. The mother tells Tony his father will kill him, his stepfather, and his half-brother. Tony twitches and stammers. He has attempted suicide twice. He is failing in school although he is a brighter than average child. Neither parent will consent to his hospitalization and no psychiatrist would give a professional opinion that Tony's mental health was endangered by remaining with his mother and stepfather. Without such evidence, I could not order the institutionalization of Tony. The rights of the family cannot be violated.

I gave Tony a paper and pencil and asked him to write a story while he was waiting in the anteroom during my conference with his parents. Tony wrote: "Dear God, Please help me."

These are but a few of the thousands of abused, neglected, and homeless children I have seen during my 16 years on the trial bench in Philadelphia and when I was a practicing lawyer. These children are white, black, and Hispanic. Some are brilliant, others mildly retarded. They range in age from newborn to 16 and 17 years. What they have in common is that all desperately need a safe, permanent home.

My experiences are not peculiar to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, this is not a local problem but a national epidemic. Thirty states reported increases of more than 50 percent in child abuse between 1980 and 1985. The National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse reports that in 1986 at least 1,300 children in the United States died from neglect or abuse. In 1986, 2.2 million cases of child abuse were reported nationally. It is likely that ten times that many occurred but were not reported, although every state has a law requiring doctors, hospitals, and others who suspect child abuse to report it and protects them for doing so. Undoubtedly, 1988 will see an even greater number of mistreated children as teenage pregnancies, drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness, and economic and housing problems escalate.

These deaths and thousands of cases of continuing abuse occur not because social workers are uncaring (although some are) and not because judges fail to treat child abuse as a serious crime (although some do) but because there are no places for these children to live. For at least the past quarter-century Americans have been captivated by two concepts that have become accepted public policy: deinstitutionalization and preservation of the family. Both are worthy goals pursued to unworthy ends.

I suggest that it is time for us to demand that government provide permanent, well-run orphanages for the more than two million abused children who are de facto orphans. It will be costly. However, we are spending billions in futile efforts to prevent child abuse, to find adoptive and foster parents, and to pay them for the temporary, uncertain, and largely unsupervised care of helpless children in foster placement. We are also paying for inadequate shelters for tens of thousands who spend their childhood in a limbo of uncertainty, waiting in vain for a home. There is a high statistical probability that many of these abused children will become delinquent teenagers and adult criminals. The money we save on their early care will be spent on "correctional institutions" later. If this is to be the decade of the child, we cannot ignore those in the greatest need, abused and abandoned children.

Therapy for rapists

At mid-century deinstitutionalization and the preservation of the family were appropriate responses to real evils. Many mental institutions had become warehouses offering little therapy and less chance of release. Commitment procedures were lax. Many families were glad to be rid of problem members, such as spouses who drank, forgetful elderly parents, and rebellious, nonconforming teenagers. Institutionalization was their first resort, not their last. Mental health experts embraced their mission of treating allegedly mentally ill persons with unbounded optimism, often against the patient's will and with little regard for their rights.

In the 1970s, the promise of quick cures for behavioral problems through psychogenic drugs, the spiraling costs of institutions, and a belated concern for patients' rights sparked the movement for deinstitutionalization. Between 1963 and 1980, almost 400,000 persons were released from mental institutions in the naive expectation that "community-based care" would adequately provide for them. But fewer than 800 of the planned 2,000 community treatment centers were established. The result has been an enormous increase in the number of street people, in the arrest and imprisonment of former inmates who are unable to function in society, and an overload on available resources.

The principle of deinstitutionalization extended to the field of child care, where it is a given that institutions are bad and that private homes are good. We cling to the notion that institutions for children are Dickensian places of evil and cruelty. However, even in Victorian times there were good orphanages. Leslie Thomas, who grew up in an orphanage established in the nineteenth-century by an English reformer, wrote a well-known memoir about his life there, This Time Next Week: The Autobiography of a Happy Orphan. After the death of his parents, Thomas spent ten years in this orphanage. He attended public school where he was prepared for his career as a writer.

In nineteenth-century America, almost every community had publicly supported orphanages resembling what we now call group homes. Children lived there and attended the local public schools until they reached adulthood. Anne Whitt Thompson of Gaithersburg, Maryland, wrote a letter to The New York Times in 1987 stating in part, "I lived in two orphanages and three foster homes growing up in North Carolina, and I can say nothing but good about my life in orphanages. We did not wonder where we would eat or sleep, because the orphanage was our home...." Girard College in Philadelphia was established in the 1800s as an orphanage. Many of its graduates became leading citizens, prominent in industry, government, and the arts. They look back on their days there as happy, secure, and fulfilling. This was a wealthy, well-run institution.

Of course, not all orphanages were like these. Before I went on the bench, I prosecuted the director of a church-sponsored orphanage where children were physically and sexually abused and another privately operated rural orphanage where children were hired out to work on farms like indentured serfs. The director pocketed the children's wages. There have been real evils in orphanages, but abuse and mismanagement are not peculiar to them, nor are such conditions inevitable.

In addition to deinstitutionalization, another belief that took hold in the mid-twentieth century was that mental health professionals and social workers should decide the adequacy of parents. This resulted in families on welfare being held to unreasonably high standards of parenting. Well-meaning psychiatrists and psychologists saw their role as determining the proper environment for a child. In an influential book published in 1973, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child, authors Joseph Goldstein, Albert J. Solnit, and Anna Freud wrote: "How, the question becomes, can the law assure for each child a chance to become a member of a family where he feels wanted and where he will have the opportunity on a continuing basis not only to receive and return affection but also to express anger and learn to manage his aggression?" This was obviously an impossible goal. But professional hubris led many to believe that psycho-analytic theory could provide the correct answer to child placement. Many poor children were removed from imperfect but not abusive parents and institutionalized. In response to this undesirable practice, theory changed, and it is now established policy to keep families together no matter how undesirable the family situation is.

A new profession arose to implement this goal, namely, family therapists. Some family therapists are licensed psychiatrists and psychologists. Many are not. Some are former school teachers and social workers who call themselves family therapists. Others are individuals with no format training and little experience who set themselves up in business as family therapists. On the whole, it is a profitable occupation. Schools, courts, and hospitals refer troubled families to such persons for treatment. I have had many cases involving physical abuse, incest, and other crimes against children in which the conventional wisdom dictates: "Keep the family together. Order therapy."

In one case, the family had been "in treatment" with a family therapist for more than a year after the father had been convicted (before another judge) of having sex with his 12-year-old daughter. The father then was before me in criminal court charged with statutory rape of his ten-year-old daughter. These two unhappy little girls were failing in school. The prosecutor, the court psychiatrist, and, of course, defense counsel all urged probation with family therapy for the father. With the consent of the parties, I met with the family therapist who had been treating them. He told me that the mother refused to have sex with her husband but that the therapist was getting her to change her attitude. He urged me not to incarcerate the man.

"It's my duty to protect the girls," I told him.

"But I am keeping the family together," he indignantly replied.

In my opinion, this was not a family that should be kept together. If the man had molested a girl who was not his daughter, no one would have objected to a prison sentence.

Foster failures

Of course there is a middle ground between institutions and families: foster homes. But it's a solution that's never proven adequate. Although extensive and expensive public relations programs to recruit foster families have been in effect for several years, they have not produced enough foster families to meet the need. Few sensible persons will agree to take care of a strange child 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for pay of less than $5,000 with no vacation or sick leave and no fringe benefits. In 1987, the American Public Welfare Association reported that 33 states paid only between $200 and $300 a month per child for basic foster care. With the exception of a small number of saintly souls, foster parents are like all other people who work for a living. They want good pay, reasonable hours, and good working conditions. The pay for foster parents is attractive only to those who have no other options.

Whether foster placement is or is not preferable to institutions, it must be recognized that there are simply not enough foster parents to care for all the infants and children who need homes. In New York City the demand for foster care placements jumped 29 percent from 1985 to 1986, according to the Children's Defense Fund. In Illinois, there was a 32 percent increase in the number of children entering care from 1986 to 1987. But the number of licensed foster homes in Illinois dropped from 3,597 in June 1984 to 2,790 three years later.

Some 1,000 children from newborn to two years old in New York City are in hospitals as "boarder babies." Many have been abandoned. Others have drug-addicted mothers. It is unlikely that any of these children will be adopted. They will be shifted from hospital to hospital, wherever a bed is available. Often the diagnosis of a child will change to meet the admission requirements of the institutions, not the needs of the child. I have seen many children who have been diagnosed at different times as retarded, emotionally disturbed, and "predelinquent" in order to find a bed somewhere for a homeless youngster.

After the public outcry about the death of little Matthew Eli Creekmore, who was kicked to death by his father in Seattle despite repeated intervention by state workers, more than 5,000 children were removed from abusive homes in the state of Washington. But authorities could find foster homes for only 3,800.

And there is no assurance that foster placement will provide even a modicum of care, security, or permanence for the child. Public institutions are answerable to the public. They can be inspected regularly by public officials. Committees of private citizens can act as overseers and keep a careful eye on the operations of such orphanages. It is difficult and expensive for social workers to inspect at frequent intervals all foster homes.

An audit of the New York State Division of Youth by the state comptroller disclosed that children have been placed with foster parents who were emotionally unstable, suicidal, violent, and financially unable to provide the youths with a clean place to live and necessities such as drinking water. In 1987, Judge Daniel D. Leddy of New York Family Court told The New York Times, "It's gotten to the point where we're sending kids home to bad circumstances because foster care is such a terrible alternative."

Two-year-old Joseph Huot died of brain injuries in January, two months after being placed in the foster care of a convicted rapist. Philadelphia police have arrested the foster parents and charged them with murder. Huot was placed in the couple's care (his parents separated and his grandfather could no longer care for him) despite the fact that the foster father, 26-year-old Walter Hairston, had pleaded guilty seven years earlier to rape, aggravated assault, and burglary. Police said Hairston falsified his application with Catholic Social Services, deleting his criminal record. The Hairstons received $18.55 a day to care for Huot, who doctors said died of "shaken baby syndrome," which occurs when the brain strikes against the skull. Though Huot family members began reporting their suspicions of child abuse in November--after spotting bruises on the child's back--doctors said they did not suspect abuse, and state social workers ruled the family's claim unfounded.

I saw a different example of the failings of the foster care system when Edward came before my court. Though he was only 16, Family Court decided he was incorrigible and he was transferred to be tried as an adult. Edward's juvenile court file consisted of two thick volumes. His problems had first landed him in court when he was seven, when his father was murdered and his mother, a drug addict, disappeared. The court psychiatrist's report stated: "Edward grieves for his father. He misses his mother. He needs a warm, supportive home and intensive counseling." Edward remained in juvenile detention for more than six months while efforts were made to find him a foster home.

Mrs. S., his first foster mother, had two children of her own. In addition to Edward she had three other foster children. It was a noisy, impersonal household. Mr. and Mrs. S. did not abuse Edward. They fed him and gave him a bed in a room with two other boys who complained that Edward cried at night. The school teacher reported that Edward did not pay attention in class. Mrs. S. told the social worker that a neighbor had accused Edward of stealing her pocketbook. Delinquency charges were filed against Edward and he was back in the detention center. When the theft charges came up for trial the neighbor did not appear. The court entered an order: "determined," a concept peculiar to some juvenile courts. The child cannot be found guilty because there is no evidence. But in order to give the child the benefit of juvenile court supervision, the court does not dismiss the charges. With this record, it was even more difficult to find a foster home for Edward. Who wants to take in a thief even if he is only ten years old?

The second foster mother also made a living out of this occupation. She increased her meager profits by scrimping on the food and clothing she provided for the children and pocketing some of the allotment, a not uncommon practice. When Edward complained, she beat him. He ran away, earning a second delinquency charge. On the street he ate from garbage cans and stole. He was caught and placed in the detention center again. Two more charges: runaway and theft. He ran away from the center and was caught while attempting to steal a candy bar. Two more charges of delinquency. The Family Court then sought a "secure facility," that is, a jail, for Edward. Finally it was decided that Edward was beyond the rehabilitative powers of the juvenile court system and that he should be treated as an adult offender.

For nine years Edward had been under the control and supervision of the juvenile court and the welfare system. The only schooling he had was a few months while he lived with the first foster family and an occasional hour or two in the detention center. Somehow Edward did learn to read. Although he was examined and evaluated three times by court psychiatrists who all recommended therapy, he never received any. So far as I could see Edward had not failed the juvenile court system; it had failed him.

The orphanage option

There is an alternative to this deplorable situation: group homes for abused and abandoned children--orphanages. In 1964, Dr. Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist, established the first Village for homeless children. The impetus came from a judge. As Dr. Menninger explains, a judge asked him, "Dr. Karl, what the devil can I do with this boy? Where can I put him? He has done no crime, he has no disease, but he doesn't have dependable parents and he is on my hands. These foster placements keep jailing and ditching the children so often."

There are now 16 Villages in Kansas and Indiana. The children who live there have been neglected, abused, or abandoned. No child needs to leave the Village until he or she has reached adulthood. When I visited one of the Villages in Topeka, they were having a wedding. A young man who had spent his adolescence in the Village came back to his "home" to be married.

Compare this experience with the life of Bill, who has been in foster care in New York City for five years and has had to move ten times. Bill told a reporter for The New York Times, "I've had so many social workers I can't remember them. They say, `All right, we're gonna help you.' But then they go against you. They're always on your back. It's like Rambo against the Vietcong."

Most communities do not have a children's Village. Some cities have a few group homes, but not nearly enough to meet the need. And few are more than temporary shelters. Judges who see abused, neglected, and abandoned children often have no option but a temporary detention center in which delinquents are also housed.

When I was running a law office for indigent children funded by the Office for Economic Opportunity in the 1960s, we encountered this situation daily. Once when a judge was about to commit a child to juvenile jail even though the youngster had not committed a crime, I protested.

He replied, "The parents won't keep him. There is no place that will take him. Will you take him to your home?"

All institutions are not bad; all families are not good. Neither are all foster parents good or bad. There is really no way of knowing. Caring foster parents rarely make the headlines; those who kill and abuse do.

When Elizabeth Steinberg of New York City was beaten to death by her adoptive father, or Matthew Eli Creekmore died in Seattle despite repeated intervention by state workers, these deaths were headline news. Such cases tear the hearts of Americans. "How can such things happen in a civilized country?" people ask.

We can do better. Bring back the orphanage.