Child abuse and neglect and inadequate parenting have always existed in some measure and always will. Though a benevolent society may desire to eradicate such problems, the sad reality is that it can only hope to achieve their diminution. And to do even that, of necessity, requires an aggressive, sweeping, and flexible approach to these societal ills, one that gives ample consideration to the root causes and does not settle for the cheaper (and cheapening) convenience of symptom management. Such an approach is not what I have seen in my many years of service as a clinical social worker nor what I see when I survey the broader national landscape. The various systems that have been established to provide oversight and care—e.g., state child protective services, psychiatric providers, federal agencies—remain either ill-equipped or ill-attuned to effectively take on the task at hand. Thus, largely unabated, the suffering and maltreatment of children persist. And we all pay the price.

In today’s Washington Post, Brigid Schulte writes at some length of one case that exemplifies the many ways in which the system at large fails children and families. It is a cautionary tale that is well-worth reading and taking to heart:

Va. Parents Trying to Unadopt Troubled Boy

A talkative 9-year-old boy came to Helen Briggs on Valentine’s Day 2000. She was a foster mother with years of tough love and scores of troubled kids behind her. But she grew to love this boy. Within the year, she’d talked her husband into adopting him.

Now, six years later, Briggs and her husband, James, a maintenance worker for the city of Alexandria, are taking the highly unusual step of trying to unadopt him.

In 2003, when the boy was 12, he sexually molested a 6-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl still in diapers. She said it was only then, as she waited outside the courtroom for his sexual battery hearing and caseworkers handed her his psychological profile, that she found out just how damaged the boy had been when he came into her life.

The Washington Post generally does not name the subjects of juvenile court cases.

Briggs said she did not know he had lived in five foster homes since he was 16 months old. Nor that his alcohol- and drug-addicted biological parents had physically abused him, injuring his brain stem and impairing his ability to gauge the passage of time.

He’d been hospitalized seven times in psychiatric institutions and diagnosed as possibly psychotically bipolar. He’d thrown knives, kicked in walls, pulled out all his hair and threatened to kill himself. He’d heard voices telling him to do bad things. His confidential case file shows he most likely was sexually abused.

“I did not know any of that,” Briggs said, though Virginia policy states that caseworkers should provide “full, factual information” about a child to adoptive parents. “They just told me he was hyperactive.”

She said the state’s failure to fully disclose the boy’s background is tantamount to fraud.

State child welfare officials could not comment on the case because of confidentiality restrictions. But some caseworkers do not believe Briggs, records show. They think she wants to get out of paying child support.

Still, a Fairfax County court has granted Briggs’s petition to relinquish custody. The boy, who has lived in institutions since his conviction, is now officially back in foster care. He asked to be put on suicide watch, records show, when the judge’s decision came down.

Briggs hired an attorney to terminate her parental rights. But in Virginia, a child older than 14 must give consent. The boy, now nearing 16, wants Briggs to be his mother forever, according to the voluminous confidential case file and e-mail and phone records Briggs subpoenaed for her lawsuit and provided to The Post.

Briggs sought to file a “wrongful adoption” lawsuit. But under Virginia law, she needed to file within two years of discovering the boy’s history. Instead, she wavered.

First, she wanted him home after he had completed his sex offender treatment. But then psychologists deemed him a “sexual predator.” That meant Briggs could no longer be a foster parent, which she considers her job. Nor could she allow her three grandchildren in her house. Nor could she keep a little girl she had cared for since the day she was born.

She had to choose.

“You don’t want to throw somebody away,” she said. “But sometimes you have to.”

Her choice has left her with none of the rights and many of the responsibilities of a parent. Caseworkers forbid her from contacting the child because he becomes so violent and angry when she does. Yet state law requires that she pay $427 a month in child support and cover court costs when he appears before judges who now decide what’s best for him.

With no legal recourse, she is asking politicians to help her find a way out.

“At first blush, you think, ‘What, you’re trying to give up your kid? You’re a jerk,’ ” said Virginia Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax). “Then you find this lady has received awards for all the foster work she’s done. And that she never would have adopted the boy and put other children in danger if she had had the information that was withheld from her.”

The technical term for what Briggs is trying to do is “dissolve” the adoption, as if all the bonds of love and hurt could simply vanish into thin air. [full text]