June 16, 2008
Child's Brutal Death Spurs More Talk of Reform
After a 3-year-old boy died, battered and sexually abused by his caretakers, fingers have pointed at his abusers, his parents, his neighbors and the Administration of Children's Services. Now lawmakers hope to new law can stop similar tragedies.
Kyle Smith had been in the care of his godmother Nymeem Cheatham and her boyfriend Lemar Martin when his mother needed help, as she battled her drug addiction. Though a court found Cheatham to be an able custodian, it turned out her four biological children had been taken away from her in Texas, leading an ACS spokesperson to say, "There is no national child-welfare database. We can only run records through the New York state child database."
City Councilman Bill deBlasio said, "We have all failed here. The system of protecting our children is broken across the board." He wants a bill that will allow child welfare workers access to state criminal records and eventually a national criminal database. Cheatham and Martin were indicted on manslaughter charges last week.
And Kyle's parents, Elliott Smith and Eugenia Holmes, have been arguing over funeral arrangements. Smith, who has claimed he tried to seek custody of his son but was overwhelmed when he went to court without a lawyer (Smith still cares for their 6-year-old son; Holmes now lives in South Carolina), and Holmes have finally decided to hold a wake today and tomorrow and the Upper East Side.
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Get prepared for the politically correctoids to flail away at the comments.
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It's hard to believe that there are still anti-abortion activists.
(Get ready for all of the bigots to flail away at the comments.)
Clearly, not everyone who is capable of having children SHOULD have children.
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talk talk talk talk. that's all they ever do is "talk about reform".
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I am generally against federalizing things and doing anything "for the children." In lieu of licensing parenthood,--e.g. fascist states--however, one can acknowledge 'the system' is broken. The U.S. has a mobile population. One can pull up stakes and move to another state in a day. There is no reason to allow that freedom to accommodate child abusers.
I don't know about national databases, but the easier cross-referencing of state databases and criminal background checks seems like a good idea. Kyle Smith's fate was practically written on a billboard, but that billboard was facing a brick wall in an alley that no one ever walked down.
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I agree not every should have kids. But the funny thing is there are so many people here in the states that want to adopt but the red tape that is supposed to protect the kids does not. So couples end up going to China to adopt while American kids end up on foster care suffering.
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#5
Foster care isn't the same as adoption. You can care for a baby until he/she is an adult and never let a chance to adopt. There are too many cases of children in loving foster homes who could not get adopted by the very willing because the rights of the scumbag biological parent have to be taken into account.
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I'm still wondering how the mother could have turned over her child to a woman who lost all her children in Texas because she abused them. How could she not know about that, yet select her as the godmother?
I'm also wondering how the father could just go to court to get his kid without a lawyer? There are some services for people in his situation.
There is a lot more to this story, but I'll have to wait years until the civil cases explains things a little better.