FacePalm Friday
Welcome to this week’s edition of FacePalm Friday.
This is where your hosts will list their top picks for this week’s FacePalm moment—something they learned or read about this week that caused the FacePalm to happen (you know, the expression of embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, shock, disgust or mixed humor as depicted in our Rally FacePalm smiley).
We invite you to add your FacePalm of the week to our comments. Go ahead and add a link, tell a personal story, or share something that triggered the FacePalm on the subject of child welfare or adoption.
Your Host’s Selections:
(1) Worst Savior Ever…By the way, we need some cash 
http://flourishgirlsministry.com/2015/07/22/to-the-girl-who-wants-to-adopt/
They talk about Peru and Guatemala.Of course, they put out the donation request on Facebook…
“Ashleigh and Brett Gurley have just recently answered the call to adopt, and they could not be more thrilled to begin this beautiful journey! They are already so in love with their little one and they know that God has picked out someone so perfect, so precious, for their family. Please join in praying for them as they work to raise a total of $25,000 for the whole process. Adoption is expensive but it is SO worth the expense!!
If you feel led to donate and help them reach this dream, donate ..”
in crisp 
please!
(2)Dr Thomas Jugarthy Hicks 
“A 51-year-old woman who was taken from her parents and sold for less than $1,000 days after she was born has been reunited with her birth mother.
Kriste Hughes had her birth certificate falsified after she was born in MacCaysville, Georgia, and was given to a couple who bought her from Dr Thomas Jugarthy Hicks, a corrupt surgeon who did the same to dozens of others.
Hughes spent decades unaware of where she really came from – and all the while her mother was in the dark as well – Dr Hicks told her that Kriste was stillborn.”
(3)Stroke Survivor Kevin Sorbo Talks At Adoption Fundraiser
http://newsok.com/article/5439816
“Actor Kevin Sorbo, the star of the 1990s TV series “Hercules” and the 2014 film “God’s Not Dead,” will speak at Deaconess Pregnancy and Adoption Services’ annual Angels of Destiny fundraiser set for Aug. 25 at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
Dierdre McCool, the faith-based agency’s executive director, said Sorbo unexpectedly suffered a series of strokes after an undiagnosed aneurysm in his shoulder. He could barely walk and was left partially blind, jeopardizing both his health and his career.
“Our clients can relate to Kevin’s story,”[Really? 
] McCool said. “Just as he had to overcome adversity with his health following his strokes, our clients also have to overcome adversity in a number of ways during their adoption journey.”[Um… 
]
Money raised at the event will be used to fund the many free services Deaconess Pregnancy and Adoption Services provides to adoptive families, birth families and children. ”
This bothers me! As a 
, I would never,ever compare what I went through with some 
of an adoption journey!!!
Rep. Justin Harris getting offered a “Courage Award”, despite his having pulled strings to adopt three sisters against DHS advice and then “rehoming” two of them on the QT when the DHS turned out to be right– to a pedophile.
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2015/08/12/family-council-to-present-courage-award-to-rep-justin-harris-at-ted-cruz-event-today
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/12/1411360/-Arkansas-state-senator-who-rehomed-his-daughters-is-getting-a-courage-award-at-a-Ted-Cruz-event
“…You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means…”
My Facepalms include:
1. Reece’s Rainbow families who adopt 3 unrelated Ukrainian kids and disrupt 2 of them within mere months
2. Mary McBride’s brand new blog about her Ethiopian adopted daughters. So she can carry on as the hypocrite who claimed to care about adoption ethics but adopted from Ethiopia a SECOND time after fraud during her first adoption. She homeschools to keep both girls away from pesky mandated reporters and other parents/kids whose views might differ from hers.
(You may recall Mary’s impassioned explanation for why the older girl, Z, who was adopted at age 3 to an English-only family and was then almost 7 who didn’t yet know her letters — “she’s only been speaking English for 3+ years!”):
http://www.alittlebitunusual.com
3. Staci of Scoopingitupblog.blogspot.com (her blog’s private but she’s still active on Facebook), also amom to Ethiopian kids (fraud during 1st adoption, yet went back for 2 more kids)… who moans about the racial microaggressions / discrimination her brown kids face… how it breaks her heart… and she intentionally moved her family to a lily-white, rural area where her kids are the only kids of color at any given activity!
Staci’s aware how hard the lack of diversity is on her kids, claims to love/respect/want the best/etc for her kids but is 100% unwilling to move someplace diverse. She LEFT a diverse area AFTER adopting! Barf!
Honestly, Mary McBride doesn’t strike me as one of the bad ones. Her second adopted daughter had medical special needs and was apparently legitimately available for adoption. She hasn’t gone on to adopt a slew of kids from different countries at breakneck pace.
Her motive for homeschooling doesn’t seem to be to keep her from mandated reporters or exposure to “secularism” but to meet her oldest daughter’s individual learning needs. She lets both girls participate in out-of-home organized activities in which any signs of abuse could be noted.
Homeschooling, writ large, gives me the heebie-jeebies and the fact that the older girl has never been to a “regular” school means she doesn’t know what she’s missing. Which is the point of homeschooling, after all!
Mary ran into falsified paperwork adopting Zinashi from Ethiopia in 2009 or 2010 — 1-2 years after “Flyaway Children” and about a million exposes on the awful corruption and fraud in pretty much all Ethiopian adoptions.
Despite that + first-hand fraud, Mary went back for a second kid, little Elvie.
Mary, like Staci/Scoopy, actively campaigns against adoptions from Ethiopia because of all that nasty corruption… That she didn’t give a damn about until she had acquired all the Ethiopian kids she wanted.
Neither kid has any idea of the activities available (elvie’s too little, to be fair) but with Zinashi its deliberate. And wrong. Because if the activity isn’t some thing that Z has seen or May mentions, it may as well not exist. And, what, 2 hours a week of dance class makes up for the fact that S spends all day, every day in the company of nobody but her mom and sisterZ no friends. No play dates.
According to the blog, they go on a lot of daytrips by rail, so it’s not like the girls are cloistered away from society.
I’m not sure about the no play dates– I don’t recall the blog posts I’ve read mentioning any, but McBride does state that their neighborhood is ethnically diverse, and chatting with the neighbors. You may question some of her parenting decisions, but compared to Denise Davis et al, she seems to be pretty good.
Compared to Denise Davis, Charlie Sheen’s ex Brooke Mueller isn’t such a bad parent!
She looks great compared to the Josses. (See below.)
Yet another Reece’s rainbow kid is dead — Chinese Brooke Joss, adopted a mere 9 mos ago by Don + Amy Joss is dead.
Of pneumonia. A pointless 100% preventable death. Brooke’s only special need was Down syndrome!
http://redemptionwhispers.blogspot.ca/2015/09/with-deepest-grief.html?m=1
I checked the blog– they didn’t adopt Brooke nine months ago; they SAW HER PICTURE NINE MONTHS AGO! She arrived in the U.S. September 24, 2015, and died September 29th– a mere five days after joining her “forever family”.
It doesn’t sound like the parents did anything wrong from the blog account. They already had an appointment set up with their pediatrician on 10/08/15, before she fell ill. Sadly, that was too late.
But this is another two-at-once adoption– and they started proceedings for the adoption of a previously-wanted child “Lucy” before they even had Brooke and Jillian “home”. Counting Jillian, they now have fifteen kids, many with Special Needs. The mother had a stroke while pregnant in 2013.
All of this probably explains why their former agency refused to allow them to adopt Lucy and another boy back in the summer of 2014, when the Josses had fourteen kids, including a baby boy born just that May.
http://redemptionwhispers.blogspot.ca/p/about-us.html
http://redemptionwhispers.blogspot.ca/2015/09/deep-breathhere-we-go-again.html
I have a hard time blaming the family on this one. There were no severe warning signs, and they had planned to take her in if she took a turn for the worse before their doctor’s appointment.
I don’t blame them for medical neglect– I’m stating that they’re making high-risk and unwise adoption decisions. The people I’m “blaming” are those who are enabling them; i.e. employees at USCIS and their home study agency who see nothing wrong with approving a family with fourteen children– including many with special needs and at least one medically fragile child– to adopt two more special needs kids out of birth order.
Oh, and the Chinese official who allowed them to waive the six month waiting period so they could start right in on adopting child number 17, even as they were picking up their 15th and 16th children. Though it remains to be seen if that waiver will remain in force after poor Brooke’s death.
I’m not saying the Josses are bad parents; I’m saying they’re human beings who can’t possibly fulfill the responsibilities they’re being allowed to take on. I’m willing to accept Brooke’s death as a tragic fluke, but their high-risk adoptions are putting their children in danger of harm. If they can’t stop themselves, someone needs to stand up to them and say “No”.
death by flu for an otherwise healthy kid with DS is pretty rare – and pretty fishy to me. But within the realm of the possible, I guess.
I’m still horrified at both USCIS and the Chinese officials who approved the Joss’ to adopt two more SN kids they clearly couldn’t afford.
Amy fundraised the adoption AND the funeral.
According to their blogspot, they paid $24,000 of the $44,000 adoption themselves. They also paid for the funeral, but the GoFundMe contributions will allow them to have “extras” like flowers.
I can’t begrudge grieving parents flowers at their child’s funeral.
Still… according to their blogspot they aren’t putting away anything in savings, but are spending everything above living expenses on adoptions.
http://redemptionwhispers.blogspot.ca/2015/10/another-daya-thousand-more-tears.html
How do they plan to provide for themselves in their old age, plus their growing number of lifetime-dependent children? What if the husband suffers an injury which leaves him temporarily– or permanently– unable to keep up their home business? Or if the wife suffers another stroke, leaving her unable to care for the kids (and perhaps in need of caregiving herself?)
*sigh* Why do I bother asking? They’re “trusting God” to make up for the shortfalls of their own improvidence– which in practice means either the fickle generosity of the crowdfunding donor base, or the government safety net (which Tea Party politicians are currently trying to eliminate).
I agree with Terrie. As concerning as some of the Joss’s adoption choices are, there doesn’t appear to be any relationship between those, and what just happened to poor Brooke. She presented as having the flu, not pneumonia, they treated her as such, and planned a sensible course of action for a child with flu. Nobody knows at this stage why it presented that way.
I wonder if maybe she contracted a respiratory virus such as SARS or Avian flu whilst in China or on the journey home – they often are mistaken for a cold or influenza but can be fatal.
Tl;dr: it doesn’t look like Brooke’s passing could have been predicted or avoided. The family must be feeling dreadful right about now.
And I never said otherwise– just that their adoption practices are cause for legitimate concern in their own right.
Now that they’ve experienced a child death, they shouldn’t be allowed to adopt again for at least a year, to give themselves time to fully process their grief before bringing a new child into the family.
I’d definitely agree that they should be forced to wait before pursuing their next adoption. It was absurd in the first place that they effectively started pursuing their next adoption before Brooke and Jillian were even home.
Two new adoptions and a sudden bereavement in the space of a week would devastate any family, so they should be prevented from bringing another child who will inevitably have her own baggage into the family unit, until all the current members have had ample time to grieve and ultimately stabilise.
Call me a cynic, but I think there’s a good chance that no such thing will happen, though.
They should NEVER EVER have been approved in the first place. How they are raising all these children is no different than the kids being in an orphanage. SHAME forever on the greedy pig Chinese officials who allowed this travesty to happen. And the stupid idiot SW. And the incompetent idiot agency. They are all responsible.