Although
the idea of going "back to the orphanage" gained a great deal of
attention when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich brought it up, the notion has
quietly been pushed by child savers for a long time.
Gingrich,
at least, was honest about his agenda: He wanted to take children away from
their parents just because they are poor. The child savers claim no such
intent, but their proposals amount to the same thing.
Supporters
of orphanages base their arguments on three false premises:
First,
they say, we must have more orphanages because there are not enough foster
parents for all the children who need them.
But as we have shown in previous issue papers, we do not have too few
foster parents, we have too many children needlessly taken from their own
homes.
Thousands
of children who could be safely in their own homes now languish in foster
care. Get these children out of the
system and there will be plenty of room in foster homes for the children who
really do need substitute care and
there will be no need to build any more orphanages.
Second,
orphanage backers claim that institutionalizing children gives them
"stability." But orphanage
staff often work in shifts, and even in places that employ so-called
"house parents," they typically quit every year or two. For a child, that makes living in an orphanage
every bit as unstable as a succession of foster homes.[1]
The
third false premise is the Boys Town myth. Child savers say today's orphanages
will be better than yesterday's and we should no longer precede the word
"orphanage" with the word Dickensian. This myth has been fed by media
that flocked to what they thought were the nation's few well-run institutions
(some of which turned out not to be models after all). Of course there are
model orphanages. There also are model jails. But they are called models
precisely because they are unusual.
To
find out what is in store for most children if we go back to the orphanage, we
need go back no further than 1987. That was the year New York City set up 17
mini-orphanages for infants and toddlers. The city called them "congregate
care facilities" but they soon acquired another name: baby warehouses. In
the two years between the time they were set up and the time the state ordered
them closed:
· Two children died of
infectious diarrhea because of unsanitary diapering practices. A third child
died because -- like 91 percent of the children -- he was not properly
immunized. There may have been more deaths, but the record keeping was as
shoddy as the sanitation.
· Inspectors found that
"all but five of the shelters have had consistent problems with roaches,
flies, mice, or rats. Food practices are often unsafe."
· Disease was not the only
hazard. Inspectors also found "unshielded wall outlets, broken cribs,
playpens, and highchairs, play areas with broken glass, toxic chemicals leaking
from containers within easy reach of toddlers."
· Children were cared for in
eight-hour shifts by untrained workers who often did not even know their names.
At one of the baby warehouses, the children were spoken to only when they did
something wrong [2].
Sixteen
years later, a new study of group homes and institutions in New York, this time
for teenagers, found similar hideous conditions. According to The New York Times, “the report paints a
daily life full of barbarisms…[emphasis added].
“Teenagers recount being raped, having their rooms set on fire, being pressed to join gangs and routinely having their few nice possessions stolen. Insiders and outsiders … agree that staff members not only fail to protect children but also engage in violence and intimidation themselves.” [3]
These institutions are not aberrations. An Indiana study found that
children in "group homes" are 10 times more likely to be physically
abused and 28 times more likely to be sexually abused than children in their
own homes [4].
There
have been other tales of terror from America's modern orphanages. Among them:
· SOS Children's Village in
Florida repeatedly has been cited by orphanage proponents as proof that
orphanages can work. But between 1999 and 2001 33 reports were filed with
Florida's child abuse hotline alleging abuse of children at the 50-bed
facility; 21 were "substantiated" or "indicated." During
the same time period 13 "house parents" and 14 "parent
assistants" quit or were fired. (So much for orphanages providing
"stability.") [5]
· Another facility touted as a
national model, Maryville, near Chicago, has been revealed as a place of terror
for many of the children confined there, according to documents obtained by the
Chicago Sun-Times. The newspaper reports that "the place is often up for
grabs, with staff struggling to handle suicide attempts, sex abuse, drug use,
fights and vandalism [6]
In
2001, police were called to Maryville 909 times.[7]
After a 15-year-old left her Maryville "cottage", was gang raped by
other Maryville residents and escaped from her attackers, she says the kindly
staff at her "cottage" wouldn't let her in until they had filled out
a report about her "running away." [8]
In 2004, Illinois pulled all 270 state wards out of
Maryville [9] – something it could do because it had done such a good job of
reducing needless foster care. As a
result, in Illinois, substitute care is no longer a “sellers market.”
There are many other examples:
· A 1997 Los Angeles County
Grand Jury report which found, according to the Los Angeles Times, that
"Many of the nearly 5,000 foster children housed in Los Angeles
County group homes are physically abused and drugged excessively while being
forced to live without proper food, clothing, education, and counseling." [10] [Emphasis added]
A year later, the Times found that "children under state protection in
California group and foster homes are being drugged with potent, dangerous
psychiatric medications, at times just to keep them obedient and docile for
overburdened caretakers…Under the influence of such drugs, children have
suffered from drug-induced psychoses, hallucinations, abnormal heart activity,
uncontrollable tremors, liver problems, and loss of bowel control..."
The Times found that it happens to children as young as 3 "and even a
22-month- old knew the word 'meds.'" [11]
· The JDM Residential Treatment
Center near St. Louis, where, according to a former director, "there were days
when there wasn't any food. The whole thing was just a way to make money off
the state."[12]
·
Mooseheart, near Chicago, where, over five years, four
"houseparents" were convicted of molesting the children in their
care. In the most recent case, a houseparent was convicted of molesting six
pre-teen boys in less than a year. [13]
· Mission of the Immaculate
Virgin on Staten Island, which became so well known for brutality that youths
would run away and sleep on the subway rather than spend even one night there.
According to New York Newsday, "Adolescents returning from
temporary placements ... described a pattern of incidents in which longer-term
residents raped, robbed, or assaulted newcomers while night-shift staff slept
on the job." [14]
· Linden Hill and Hawthorne
Cedar Knolls, two institutions in Westchester County, New York which were,
according to New York Newsday, "plagued by violence, unchecked sex,
and poor supervision. ... " Said one counselor: "They have lost sight
that the program is no longer safe to kids. It's outrageous." [15]
A
study of teenagers who had been through a representative cross-section of
orphanages reported that the teenagers found institutions to be a significantly
worse option than their own families, care by relatives, adoption, or even
foster care.[16] The North American Council
on Adoptable Children aptly summed up the study findings: "The teens felt
"less loved, less looked after, less trusted, less wanted Teens described
a powerful code of behavior dictated by institutional peer-group subculture,
encompassing drugs, sex, and intimidation."[17]
And that study is
typical. A comprehensive review of the scientific literature on orphanages
reveals that even the model facilities do serious emotional harm to children.[18] When it comes to orphanages, we’re not talking about rotten
apples. We’re talking about rotten
barrels.
To know which is more likely to emerge from
the "back to the orphanage" movement -- luxury orphan resorts or baby
warehouses --we need only look at how America has handled the mass
institutionalization of other populations who are feared and despised.
The
"back-to-the-orphanage" movement is based on the premise that the
same governments and private agencies that have given us the prison system and
the juvenile justice system, and have dotted the landscape with hideous
warehouses for the mentally ill and the mentally retarded, somehow will come up
with loving, humane institutions for children who are disproportionately black
and overwhelmingly poor. But orphanages are institutions for the poor, and
institutions for the poor are almost always poor institutions.
Updated January 1, 2008
1. North American Council on Adoptable Children, There
is a Better Way: Family-Based Alternatives to Institutional Care (St. Paul,
Minn: 1995) pp. 5-9.
2.
All information about the "baby warehouses" is from Karen Benker and
James Rempel, "Inexcusable Harm: The Effect of institutionalization on
Young Foster Children in New York City," City Health Report (New
York: Public Interest Health Consortium for New York City), May, 1989. Back to Text.
3.
Leslie Kaufman, “Survey Backs Reputation of Danger in Group Homes,” The New
York Times, November 6, 2003.
4. J. William Spencer and Dean D. Knudsen, "Out of
Home Maltreatment: An Analysis of Risk in Various Settings for Children," Children
and Youth Services Review Vol. 14, pp. 485-492. Back to
Text.
5. Megan O'Matz, "Model children's home falls short
of expectations," South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 21, 2002, p.A1.
Back to Text.
6. Tim Novak and Chris Fusco, "Reports find
Maryville's environment 'dangerous'" Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 6,
2002. Back to Text.
7. Ofelia Casillas and David Heinzmann, "A troubled
Maryville attempts to heal self," Chicago Tribune, Sept. 7, 2002. Back to Text.
8. David Heinzmann and Ofelia Casillas, "Maryville
feeling stress of its kids," Chicago Tribune, Sept. 8, 2002. Back to Text.
9.
Ofelia Casillas, “Maryville opens doors again,” Chicago Tribune,
June 28, 2007. In 2007, 25 state wards
were transferred to the campus from another Maryville program.
10. James Rainey, "Grand Jury Cites Abuses in Group
Foster Homes," Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1997, p.A1. Back to Text.
11.Tracy Weber, "Caretakers Routinely Drug Foster
Children"(p.A1) and "Prescription for Tragedy" (p.A31) Los
Angeles Times, May 17, 1998. Back to Text.
12. Martha Shirk, "As Troubles Come to Light, Home
Surrenders License," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 3, 1993, p.1. Back to Text.
13."Ex-Mooseheart Staffer Guilty of Molesting
Boys," Chicago Tribune, Nov. 5, 1993, Sec. 2, p. 7; Linda Young,
"Mooseheart Aches After Sex Abuses," Chicago Tribune, Feb. 8,
1994, p.1., Alicia Fabbre, “Mooseheart worker
pleads guilty to abuse,” Arlington Heights, Illinois, Daily Herald
February 07, 2003 Back to Text.
14. Nina Bernstein, "Probe of Foster Care
Nightmares," New York Newsday, May 2, 1990, 16. Back
to Text.
15. Michael Powell, "Violence Rife at Two Homes for
Troubled Teens," New York Newsday, Nov. 14, 1990, p.6. Back to Text.
16. M. Bush, "Institutions for Dependent and
Neglected Children: Therapeutic option of choice or last resort? American
Journal of Orthopsychiatry (50)(2), 239-255.Back to Text.
17. North American Council on Adoptable Children, Note
1, supra. Back to Text.
18. The summary, with full citations, is available on
request from NCCPR. Back to Text.