Disturbing story on the news this morning. A woman in New York, attending a birthday party, recognized (somehow) one of the little girls there as her own daughter, who had been kidnapped 6 years earlier. DNA tests confirmed this, and the "mother" of the girl -- now revealed as her kidnapper -- has been arrested. The courts are trying to decide how to handle this, how to carefully "reintroduce" the girl to her real mother, since, of course, as far as she's known for her whole life the woman who kidnapped her was her real mother.
Listening to this story on the radio I was immediately reminded of the case from a decade or more ago, in which it was discovered 2 little girls had been switched at birth due to a hospital error. This was discovered when one of the girls died, due to an inherited disorder, and when the other girl was tracked down thru hospital records the courts immediately ordered her "returned" to her birth mother. The couple who had been functioning as her parents, the only parents she knew, fought this in the courts, but eventually we were subjected to the screaming, crying, clearly traumatized girl being literally torn from the only home she had ever known and dropped into a family of strangers. (As I recall, the birth mother may even have fought visitation rights for the other couple.)
The great philosophical question this raises is "Huh???" In the case where the girl was kidnapped, the courts order the restoration of the actual mother to be handled "carefully" so as not to "traumatize" the child -- but in the case of the hospital mix-up the little girl is basically treated as property, and afforded all the care and consideration one might grant a toaster.
The kidnapped girl was a baby when abducted, and now is about 6 years old.
The other was around 4, if I recall correctly. Possibly younger. I seem to remember thinking there would be no way anyone could explain to her what was happening in any sort of terms she would comprehend.
(Confession -- in the older case I was very much aware of my personal prejudices kicking into high gear. The couple who had raised the girl thinking she was their own were upscale yuppie types who would have been right at home on my block. The family to whom the girl was being "returned" could politely be called blue collar -- unpolitely, trailer trash. I did not see that the girl's future was being given a whole lot of consideration. Treated as property, as I said.)
Its in Philadelphia, not New York, the girl was taken when she was 10 days old and she's 6 years old now. the kidnapper has prior convictions for arson and theft and apparently set fire to the house where the little girl was taken from to cover-up the kidnapping, making it appear she had died in the fire.
Having been through numerous court battles with my ex, and hearing other sad stories constantly, I can tell you that the court system RARELY puts the kid first. Most often, the judge has an agenda. In Florida at least, there are so many judges who are ignorant of Family Law to begin with.
I had one judge tell me that he could care less that my ex's new husband took a swing at me twice, once IN FRONT OF MY CHILD, because that is to be expected from warring spouses!
When I was about 19 years old I was going thru some old family papers and found my parent's marriage license, which they thought they had lost when we'd come over from England and one of the trunks had gone missing en route. I was shocked to see my mother named as "the divorced wife of. . . ". Before then I had not known my father was her second husband.
The first thing that flashed into my mind, of course, was "Do I have any brothers or sisters I don't know about??"
Then I remembered that under British law (at least at the time) the mother got custody of the children no matter what . If she was a drug-using kitten torturer, she automatically got the kids. So no sibs for me!
(When I asked for details about this prior marriage I learned it was a classic war-bride situation. My mother, young and away from home for the first time -- she had joined the RAF -- fell in love with a dashing young flyer and married him on impulse. The union was annulled after a short period during which time the "couple" were barely even together -- as you can infer from the fact that it was annulled!)
I'm pretty sure that there was a TV movie or miniseries telling this story a few years back.
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If not this, certainly another. There have been many such "switched at birth" stories over the years.
(The old "Dick van Dyke Show" did an episode in which Rob manages to convince himself, via a series of coincidences, that Richie is not actual his and Laura's kid. For those who have not seen the show and who someday might I will not reveal the punchline, but it was very funny.)
I don't see how this demonstrates that "society" is fucked up, or what constructive purpose is served by blaming this on "society." The case law's pretty old that establishes parents' "fundamental right" to raise their children, a right that can only be legally disturbed in narrow cases. I tend to think that treating parental rights as "fundamental," and thus subject to strict scrutiny under the U.S. Constitution, to be unfounded in the Constitution and too great a bar to interventions in cases of bad parenting, as well as a vestige of the notion that children are their parents' property.
All that said, different jurisdictions -- was the earlier case in New York? -- and differnt judges will reach different conclusions and handle matters differently. The end result they face, however, would remain the same, given Supreme Court case law that's at least 80 years old, and common law of parent-child relations that goes back quite a bit farther.
I don't see how this demonstrates that "society" is fucked up. . .
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A society that allows one child to be traumatized by being torn from the only family she has ever known due to a clerical error, while another child must be "carefully" reintroduced to her birth mother after having been kidnapped --- that is a fucked up society. That a different set of rules that could allow this to happen even exists makes for a fucked up society. That parents are seen as having "fundamental" (essentailly property) rights to their children indicates a fucked up society.
The story of the young girl who was switched at birth has not ended, and as you can see by the below, the story just gets worse. I remember the bizarre twist when she ran from her dad into the arms of the birth parents after all the court cases died down. This is from a few years ago:
Are you suggesting bright-line rules to govern the reintroduction of children to their parents? What would those rules be? What if those rules don't work in a given situation?
Do you oppose the presumption in favor of natural parents?
I certainly agree that the earlier case you cite seems to have been handled badly, but that could be the result of a bad judge, an individual, not "society." I wonder how that removal was addressed in court, i.e., how did "society," through law handle it? Do we know that the child remained with the trailer trash?
For the record, I tend to think that all children of trailer trash and yuppies alike should be removed from their parents' custody. It's for the children.
Thank you very much for your enlightened use of the term "birth mother" in your post above -- a lot of people would have simply used the term "real mother," which is quite a misnomer. As the parent of two adopted children now, I can say without a doubt that my wife and I are the "real" parents of our two daughters. This isn't just touchy-feely "politically correct" terminolgy here -- biological parents of adopted children are birth parents, but as most adopted people will tell you, the people who loved, nourished, and raised them are their real parents.
So, thanks for your sensitivity -- or enlightenment -- in this. Quite refreshing!
In a related aside, both of our daughters were adopted internationally (from Guatemala and Ecuador), and they both became available for adoption through relinquishment, not abandonment. In both cases, DNA testing was done to confirm that the relinquishment was lawful, that the person relinquishing the child was indeed the birth parent, and that the relinquishment was not the result of any illicit baby selling or kidnapping schemes (which, unfortunatley, is not uncommon in foreign countries).
-- JCB (Proud Pa Kent understudy . . . or is that Fred Danvers?)
Apparently the natural mother was always suspicious that her daughter was not dead, but that she had been kidnapped. Apparently the little girl looks very much like she did as a child, and she managed to get a few hairs to test the little girl's DNA.
