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)Uganda Adoption-Adoptive Parents meet the biological parents?
See http://www.ellsworthamerican.com/featured/brooklin-family-adopts-twin-sisters-from-uganda
“Through an interpreter, the Tarrs learned that some village members were wary of their reasons for wanting to adopt the girls, Joyce said. But Ruth and Margaret’s biological parents seemed “very excited to think that these kids were going to have a home.””
Wow! They are really orphaned,huh?
(2)Susan Silverman and her Ethiopia Adoption Book, “Casting Lots: Creating a Family in a Beautiful, Broken World,”
See http://www.timesofisrael.com/funny-you-dont-look-jewish-the-story-of-transracial-adoption/ and http://justadopt.net/
“The idea was to write about adoption from the perspective of the global orphan crisis instead of from the perspective of parents who can’t biologically conceive”
“In getting her organization off the ground, Silverman has worked with Both Ends Burning,
an organization devoted to prioritizing adoption over institutionalization, that has helped her establish relationships with welfare ministries in African, Asian, Latin American and East European countries.” 
“While Silverman is fully aware of the importance of the issues on which Guberman and Sartori are focused, she believes that matters of cultural heritage must come second to saving the millions of children around the world in need of loving homes.”
(3) Burmans blocked from adopting 14th or 18th? child
Aw…Poor babies.
See http://www.fox4news.com/news/112746827-story.
“All of the adopted kids have special needs. Shelly’s biological son and daughter pitch in to help along with several paid caretakers.”
“The Burman’s said a foster child they were hoping to make their 14th adopted child 17-year-old Donovan. The teen was with them for 7 months before being removed from their care after a CPS investigation.”
“Shelly, a former special education teacher, and Brian, a Tarrant County Sheriff deputy, hope they will find an attorney they can afford to help appeal the CPS decision.”
You can see some of their story here: http://www.carringtonscourage.blogspot.com/. At least their other blog is password protected: atorchforteagan.blogspot.com. You can google their names. There are plenty of stories about them.
How we have missed the FP Friday! Thank you for the latest installment in infamy.
What I’d like to know is “Where’d the funds for the ‘several paid caretakers’ come from?” This is NOT a minor expense, and the Burmans don’t appear to be made of money based on their past legal battles over Reese’s Rainbow grants.
My impression from reading the blog in the past is that the Burmans aren’t paying these aides salaries– the taxpayers are. Shelley Burman complained a lot about a “former employee” who filed a “false report” against them with CPS. To me. that sounds like a state-provided caregiver who’s a mandated reporter.
However, I could be wrong. A lot of Rescue Adopters feel no shame about begging for funds even when they have the means to pay their own way.
The other thing is that the Burmans sound more like a small group home than a family– a publicly-funded small group home. The same level of care could be provided in their native countries, by people who speak their birth languages.
This confirms something I’ve long suspected– illegal photos are a big marketing tool for crowdfunding.
http://covenantbuilders.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-faceless-ones.html
I just found this story through the ‘No Longer Quivering’ site:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/04/21/my-wife-and-i-are-white-evangelicals-heres-why-we-chose-to-give-birth-to-black-triplets/
Forget the race issue for a moment, and realize that this family is going to have FIVE kids under four years old, three of them preemies at risk for a plethora of developmental and medical complications. What kind of home study approves such a placement? Well, other than the kind who doesn’t care a flip about the well-being of the kids as long as the PAPs check clears, of course.
Well it’s probably Nightlight Christian Adoptions for Embryo adoptions.
Excited that you brought Facepalm Fridays back!
I nominate adopter Lindsay Crapo (who is also a professional “therapeutic parenting expert” who gets paid to give parenting advice), whose failure to properly supervise her kids resulted in ANOTHER sibling-on-sibling sexual assault:
http://homeasoftplacetofall.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-friday-we-had-to-call-child.html
This was not the first time! It’s happened before! Horrible!
(Yes, she called CPS herself and gets credit for not sweeping it under the rug… butIT IS NOT THE FIRST TIME THIS HAPPENED!!).
According to her entry, the therapists working with the kids told them that it was okay to take down the alarms and let up on the monitoring. Therefore, I can’t fault them for that.
It’s just that they wouldn’t BE in this situation if they hadn’t fallen for the Rescue Adoption hysteria which led them to adopt five older kids at once.