I had one of those Jon Stewart moments last week – one of those moments when someone says something that is either so outlandish or so obvious or simply such a contradiction of everything else that person says or does that it demands a quick, strong response.
Example: Martha Coakley is asked if she is being too passive in her U.S. Senate campaign.
Coakley: "As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?"
Stewart: "Let me see if I can field that one for you: YES!!!"
My Jon Stewart moment occurred as I read an example of the kind of journalism that should remind us of why we still need newspapers: A searing account in the Philadelphia Daily News of how that city's Department of Human Services destroyed a family in almost every possible way. A key issue was the abuse the children suffered in foster care.
But it wasn't the DHS comments that really got to me – I'm used to the kind of b.s. one gets from child welfare agencies. No, the problem came when the reporter turned for expertise to Marcia Lowry, who runs the group that so arrogantly calls itself "Children's Rights" (CR). And the problem isn't that what she said is wrong – the problem is that what she said is right.
Here's what she said:
"I've been doing this work for a long time and represented thousands and thousands of foster children, both in class-action lawsuits and individually, and I have almost never seen a child, boy or girl, who has been in foster care for any length of time who has not been sexually abused in some way, whether it is child-on-child or not."
Marcia's "sample" of foster children is not random. But her comment is remarkably similar to one made by a former foster child on the PBS series Frontline:
I know that there are good foster families out there, o.k.? But I also know that every foster kid that I have ever talked to, including myself, have been abused in foster homes. And I'm talking physically, emotionally and sexually.
And since several studies indicate that there is abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes (often not including cases of foster children abusing each other) and many foster children go through at least three foster homes, it makes perfect sense that Marcia would see exactly what she says she sees.
So what's the problem?
●CR is the group whose Michigan settlement could have led to a mass expulsion of children from the homes of their grandparents and other relatives into foster care with strangers – had CR and the state not been pressured by NCCPR and others to back off.
●CR is the group that has so far failed to go back into court to challenge Michigan's cuts in safe, proven programs to keep families together. Cuts that have been made to fund rate increases for residential treatment centers and a foster care worker hiring binge.
●CR is the group that is fighting a law in Tennessee that would ever so slightly balance the terrible incentives to take children from their homes.
● CR is the group that negotiated an agreement with the Wisconsin child welfare agency to hire a top consultant to study the terrible problems in the Milwaukee County system – but with instructions to the consultant to ignore Milwaukee's high rate of child removal.
●CR is the group whose settlements all over the country typically include almost nothing to encourage reunification of families and even less to discourage the wrongful removal of children in the first place.
So look again at what Marcia told the Philadelphia Daily News:
"I've been doing this work for a long time and represented thousands and thousands of foster children, both in class-action lawsuits and individually, and I have almost never seen a child, boy or girl, who has been in foster care for any length of time who has not been sexually abused in some way, whether it is child-on-child or not."
When Marcia Lowry says something like that about foster care, one obvious question leaps to mind: THEN – WHY – DO – YOU – KEEP – PUSHING – POLICIES – TO – PUT – MORE – CHILDREN – IN – IT?
