Barbara Hollingsworth: Still tearing families apart in Arlington
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Examiner Columnist
October 13, 2009
What a farce. Arlington County recently received $187,600 in state tobacco settlement money to fund its "Strengthening Families Program." How much of it will be used to identify at-risk families so that Arlington judges and social workers can tear them apart?
Think that's too harsh? Talk to Nancy Hey or Benita Washington, whose parental rights were both terminated on unsubstantiated grounds of medical neglect by Arlington Juvenile Court Judge Esther Wiggins Lyles and Circuit Judge James Almand.
Hey's daughter, Sabrina -- snatched by Arlington social workers when she was just 3 weeks old -- was later adopted by her politically connected foster parents. Washington's 8-year-old son, Moses, also lingered in foster care for three years.
Federal law requires social service agencies to document reasonable efforts to place foster children with next of kin. Adoption is supposed to be a last resort. When I asked Kurt Larrick of Arlington's Child Protective Services why family members had not been given a chance to adopt Moses, now 11, he refused to discuss the case except to say: "We have done everything by the book."
Not quite. Synthia Johnson, a licensed social worker and Washington's cousin, told The Examiner that she called Arlington CPS several times to request an adoption application after Moses was featured on WRC-TV's "Wednesday's Child" for the second time this year. But nobody called her back, even though Moses and his mother had been living with her before his removal.
Johnson, who has testified in court as an expert witness in many child protection cases, blasted Arlington CPS' treatment of her cousin: It's "uncalled for and defies any rationale. ... I have worked with mothers who were truly guilty of neglect and abuse, and they were able to have supervised visits with their children and the children were eventually returned home.
"Benita was denied supervised visits, and neither the court nor social service seemed to have a plan to help her and return her son to her. It makes one wonder if there is profit in terminating parental rights and placing children for adoption who are loved and wanted by their natural parents."
Two weeks ago, Johnson called to tell me she had finally heard from Arlington CPS. Moses, the agency told her, was in the process of being adopted by another family.
Her mother, Gloria Johnson -- who testified in court that her niece Benita was a good mother -- says the Washington family still cannot understand why they were cut off from all contact with Moses.
"Honey, they should give that child back to her," she told me. "Benita has a very nice apartment and a good job. She is capable of taking care of that boy, and he needs her. The only time we saw Moses was on TV, where they were trying to find a home for him. It's so disgusting."
Another aunt who lives in Philadelphia confirmed that CPS never contacted Moses' close relatives. And far from being neglectful or abusive, she described her niece as "overprotective" -- an observation made by other relatives, friends and co-workers. "She lived at the hospital day and night [when Moses was admitted with a severe asthma attack]," Christine Washington said. "We were concerned she was going to lose her job."
Instead, she lost her son. Three years later, she's still fighting to get him back.
A 158-page report released by the American Bar Association's Child Welfare Services Division found that even good parents who find themselves in a financial bind or housing crisis, as Washington did, are vulnerable to losing their children to overzealous or incompetent social workers, whose "professional" recommendations are then rubber-stamped by corrupt and/or lazy judges.
Arlington CPS gets federal money for each adoption, but the lifelong damage these so-called "public servants" do by separating parents from their children is incalculable.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner's local opinion editor. She can be reached by e-mail at bhollingsworth@washingtonexaminer.com.
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