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 Selection:
Dr. Aronson :
She entitles it, “A Saga Comes to an End: From the Horse’s Mouth on Korean Adoption”
“For the past 19 days, I have been so confused and angry about the one-sided article”Why a Generation of Adoptees Is Returning to South Korea” by Maggie Jones, published in the New York Times magazine section on January 14, 2015. I wrote a 100 word letter to the editor, which was published on February 1, 2015 in the NY Times in which I was able to express an intelligent opinion about one perspective that I thought was missing in the story.” 
Wow a 100 word letter! Well, that should have done it!
Then, tells of Brittany.”They didn’t call me.”This is the title of Brittany’s story and what is funny is that I identify with that title. They didn’t call me either. ” They didn’t CALL Dr.Aronson ! For Shame!
That is the biggest part of the story for me. They just didn’t call an adoptive parent who is speaking for an adoptee against another adoptee!
Any story with which we disagree is now “irresponsible journalism.” I guess responsible journalism tows the party line.
Here’s mine for the week:
Top this.
I am scheduled to travel and need a passport.
I was adopted through the state, and an amended birth certificate was issued more than a year following my birth. In order to confirm U. S. citizenship, the agency issuing passports requires additional proofs, such as a court-certified adoption decree.
The adoption decree I have is from 1969. It is on onion skin and no court seal is apparent. The gentleman at the post office suggested that I’d likely have trouble- there is no case number or visible seal, it’s typed and on onion skin- and to get another decree certified by the court. Easy peasy. Go to the clerk. Pay a fee. Wait ten minutes.
However, the court won’t give me a copy of the decree I hold in my hand, as it is part of a sealed file related to an adoption. The beaurocrat in her cubicle sends me to the state social services adoption department.
The beaurocrat in the adoption department cubicle can’t issue certified court documents and sends me back to beurocrat #1 who cites state law purportedly post 911. Upon reading state code, it pertains to adoptions post 1994 and not to me. None of this matters to said beaurocrat, who has no motivation whatsoever to help me solve a problem their state created. She parrots policy-sealed adoption- as if it is the law, suggesting that I hire an attorney and petition the court to open my file.
*I am holding the original decree in my hand.*
Without the decree, I can’t get a passport.
I am sooo sorry.:( I know several other adoptees that this has happened to. Do you know of any legislations that address this?
I don’t. Do you? I’ve asked my congressman to intervene. I don’t live in the state where my adoption took place.
No, I do not know of any.
Adoptee,
Recently, a homeschooled biokid took to social media to resolve her problems getting legal ID because her fundamentalist-libertarian parents never got a birth certificate for her… which became a problem when she decided to leave the family cult and join the secular world. The site ‘Homeschoolers Anonymous’ calls this “identification abuse”.
https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/when-your-very-identity-is-held-hostage-alecia-pennington-and-identification-abuse/
There are also adoptee groups lobbying for access to their original birth certificate. They might be willing to help you as an sdoptee whose freedom is being significantly impinged by your inability to access your OBC.
http://www.shorelineareanews.com/2014/10/adoption-rights-movement-you-have-your.html
http://www.dailybastardette.com/north-carolina-secrets-and-shame-promote-adoption/
Translation: It’s okay for the media to publish thousands of “happy endings” stories about adoption without bothering to give “balanced coverage” by contacting adoptee, birthmother, or other Adoption Reform advocates for THEIR perspectives, but it’s completely wrong and unethical to cover ANY less-than-blissful adoption perspective without contacting an adoption booster and giving them a chance to do damage control!
And the APs perspective of adoption is the only one that truly counts. *rolls eyes*
I agree 110% that adoption needs to be covered from various perspectives. Positive and negative. I also believe strongly that PAPs should really do their home work and speak with families who have had positive and negative experiences. Not just jump into things with rose colored glasses.
Namely,
Sadly, a lot of Rescue Adopters subscribe to the notion that they should just trust a subjective impression that “God wants us to do this” over rationally weighing their ability to parent special needs or traumatized kids.
This is what happened with Justin and Marsha Harris. DHS tried repeatedly to dissuade them from adopting the girls, believing they couldn’t parent them effectively, but the Harrises pooh-poohed all the incoming reality. They believed that they could do it “with God’s help”– and when God’s help proved to be lacking, slipped the two younger girls out the back door and into a sexual predator’s hands.
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2015/03/07/foster-family-disputes-key-staments-from-justin-harris
Hopefully, the publicity about this story will lead to PAPs thinking more carefully before they take on problematic adoptions. Unfortunately, I’m afraid it’ll cause more would-be Rescue Adopters to turn to the Wild West of international adoption over America’s waiting children.
Update on Rep. Justin Harris and Marsha Harris case:
They kept the older girl in the kind of lockdown you’d expect of a maximum security prison, and they had both girls– get this– EXORCISED FOR DEMONIC POSSESSION!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/11/1370092/-State-Senator-Justin-Harris-and-Wife-Believed-Adopted-Daughters-Possessed-by-Demons-Had-an-Exorcism
Rally, I think these two really deserve their own independent page.
I have the how could you right here, but I need to update it and i will add their names to it too: https://reformtalk.net/2015/03/05/how-could-you-hall-of-shame-eric-cameron-francis/
I still think it’s apparent that the Harris case is complicated enough on its own to justify its own ‘How Could You?’ page. Stuff is still coming out about Rep Harris’s parenting of the girls when they were in his “care”– including the fact that he pulled strings to get approved to adopt the girls over the advice of the entire child welfare team. And the Eric Cameron Francis page is way long already. Just sayin’.
Couldn’t you link the two pages, if only by including URLs at the top with a note explaining the connection?
In Adeye Salem’s latest blog post, she publishes the pictures, personal information, and HIV status (!) of prostituted women in Uganda in order to raise money for a new ministry. If this is legal — and I’m pretty sure that publishing someone’s HIV status right above their photograph without their knowledge or consent isn’t even remotely legal — then it’s both disgustingly unethical and heinously exploitative. The ministry claims to want to provide opportunities for women to leave prostitution — so how does plastering their faces on the internet with the word “PROSTITUTE” help advance that goal, exactly?!
http://www.nogreaterjoymom.com/2015/03/broken-dreams-and-glass-houses/
My comment (which I’m sure she won’t publish):
“Were these young women informed that their photographs were going to be published on the internet to illustrate a blog post that shares intimate, specific, and incriminating details about their personal lives? Did they sign any sort of documentation indicating their understanding and consent? As I’m sure you’re aware, individuals who are HIV+ experience horrendous stigma. Did the woman with the red hair — who is clearly identifiable in the last picture — know that you were going to be making her medical history public? Is doing so even legal? And if it IS legal, is it ethical? Have you considered the fact that, should these women leave sex work, their faces, histories, and HIV status can now be found on the internet in a blog post about prostitution? Do you think that will help them in any way? And how do you draw a line between pimps using the bodies of prostituted women to make money and a “ministry” using the bodies of prostituted women to raise money? I respect your project, but publishing these photographs along with such specific information (“One was just 17 years old…She left her home in Western Uganda to come to Kampala for work”; “Another woman, her hair dyed a beautiful deep red…tells me she is HIV positive and has…three children”) is exploitative, unethical, and has the potential to put every single one of these women in real danger. If you care about their wellbeing, you’ll take these pictures down.”
She didn’t publish your comment– but the ‘Wanted’ poster style photos are gone. There are still photos, but they’re group photos in which it’s not clear who’s a victim of sex trafficking and who’s a volunteer/missionary.
Good! I wish all people would a) think about who may be affected by photos they post on public blogs and b) act appropriately and remove said photos when the problem is brought to their attention. Even if she doesn’t acknowledge her mistake I’m glad she did something about it.