[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 4, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5710-S5715]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            FOSTER CHILDREN

  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about an American 
tragedy. First, Mr. President, too many children in this country are 
spending the most important formative years in a legal limbo, a legal 
limbo that denies them their chance to be adopted, that denies them 
what all children should have: the chance to be loved and cared for by 
parents.
  Second, we are sending many children in this country back to 
dangerous and abusive homes. We send them back to live with parents who 
are parents in name only, and to homes that are homes in name only. We 
send these children back to the custody of people who have already 
abused and tortured them. We send these children back to be abused, 
beaten, and, many times, killed.
  Mr. President, we are all too familiar with the statistics that 
demonstrate the tragedy that befalls these children. Every day in 
America--every day--three children actually die because of abuse and 
negligent at the hands of their parents or caregivers, over 1,200 
children per year.
  Mr. President, almost half of these children, almost half of them, 
are killed after their tragic circumstances have already come to the 
attention of the local authorities. Tonight, Mr. President, almost 
421,000 children will sleep in foster homes. Over a year's time, 
659,000 will be in a foster home for at least part of the year.
  Shockingly, roughly 43 percent of the children in the foster care 
system at any one time will languish in foster care longer than 2 
years. Mr. President, 10 percent will be in foster care longer than 5 
years.
  Mr. President, the number of these foster children is rising. From 
1986 to 1990, it rose almost 50 percent.
  In summary, Mr. President, too many of our children are not finding 
permanent homes. Too many of them are being hurt, and too many of them 
are dying.
  Mr. President, most Americans have probably heard of the tragedy that 
befell Elisa Izquierdo in New York City. Her mother used crack when she 
was pregnant with Elisa. A month before she was born, her half brother, 
Ruben, and her half sister, Cassie, had been removed from her mother's 
custody and placed into foster care. They had been neglected, 
unsupervised, and unfed for long periods of time. In other words, Mr. 
President, this woman left her children alone and simply did not feed 
them.
  But then, Mr. President, amazingly, the children were sent back to 
the same woman, and then Elisa was born. When Elisa was born, she 
tested positive for crack. She was taken from her mother and 
transferred to her father's custody. Tragically, in 1994, Elisa's 
father died. Elisa was then 5 years old. The director of Elisa's 
preschool warned officials about the mother's history of child abuse 
and drug abuse. Without any further investigation and without ordering 
any further monitoring of Elisa's home situation, a family court judge 
transferred Elisa back to her mother.
  In March 1995, when Elisa was 6 years old, she was admitted to the 
hospital with a shoulder fracture--a shoulder fracture, Mr. President. 
This is a little girl from a household with a history of child abuse, 
and she shows up at the hospital with a shoulder fracture. What did the 
hospital do? The hospital sent her back to her mother.
  Eight months later, in November 1995, she was battered to death by 
that same mother. You see, Elisa's mother was convinced that Elisa was 
possessed by the devil. She wanted to drive out the evil, so she forced 
Elisa to eat her own feces, mopped the floor with her head, and finally 
bashed her head against a concrete wall. On November 2, 1995, Elisa was 
found dead.
  Mr. President, this story then was on the front page of the New York 
Times, and for days after that the story was covered. Millions of 
Americans were, understandably, shocked. But you know, Mr. President, 
what shocked me when I read the story, when I heard about it, was that 
anyone would be shocked at all, because the horrible truth is that 
while this horrible tragedy captured the attention of the country, the 
sad fact is that atrocities such as this are happening against children 
every single day in this country. Children are being reunited with 
brutal abusers. They are abused again and again, and, yes, sometimes 
they are killed.
  Here is another story. A Chicago woman had a lengthy history of 
mental illness. She ate batteries, she ate coat hangers, and she drank 
Drano. She stuck pop cans and light bulbs into herself. Twice she had 
to have surgery to have foreign objects removed from her body. Then 
when she was pregnant, she denied that the baby was hers. While 
pregnant, she set herself on fire. That is her idea of what being a 
parent is all about. On three occasions, her children were taken away 
from her by the department of children and family services, known as 
DCFS.
  One of her children was named Joseph. Joseph's second foster mother--
keep in mind that this was a child that was being pushed back and forth 
between foster homes, back and forth with his mother. Joseph's second 
foster mother reported to the DCFS officials that every time Joseph 
came back from visiting his mother, he had bruises. Yet, in 1993, all 
the children were returned to this mother--one last time.
  A month later, in April 1993, this mother hanged Joseph; she hanged 
her little boy. She hanged her 3-year-old son. Her comment to the 
police was, ``I just killed my child. I hung him.'' She stood him up on 
a chair and said, ``bye.'' He said, ``bye.'' Then he waved. And she 
pushed the chair away. She hanged this little boy.
  Mr. President, what kind of a person does something like that to a 
child? She told a policeman, ``DCFS was'' blankety-blank ``with me.''
  Mr. President, why on Earth would anyone think we should keep trying 
to reunite that family?
  Another example. Last year in Brooklyn, NY, there were allegations 
that baby Cecia Williams and her three older siblings had been 
abandoned by their mother. As a result, they were temporarily removed 
from their mother's custody. It turned out they had not been abandoned 
by the mother. She had actually placed them in the care of an uncle, 
and he had abandoned the children.
  Later, Cecia and the other children were sent back home. Last month, 
after they were sent back home in New York, Cecia Williams died after 
being battered, bruised, and, possibly, sexually abused. Her mother and 
her boyfriend have been charged with the crime.

  Cecia was 9 months old. Cecia is dead today--a victim of blunt blows 
to her torso, and lacerations to her liver and small intestinal area.
  Another example. A young boy in New Jersey named Quintin McKenzie was 
admitted to a Newark hospital after a severe beating, for which his 
father was arrested. Quintin was placed in foster care. But when the 
charges were dropped, he was sent back to that family. In 1988, Quintin 
was 3\1/2\ years old when his mother killed him. She plunged him into 
scalding water because he had soiled his diapers.
  In Franklin County, OH, the local children services agency, in 
another case, was trying to help Kim Chandler deal with her children--
7-year-old Quiana, 4-year-old Quincy, and 1-month-old Erica. In July 
1992, they closed the case on her. On September 24, 1992, all three 
children were shot dead, and Kim Chandler was charged with the crime.
  In Rushville, OH, in March 1989, 4-year-old Christopher Engle died 
when his father dumped scalding water on him.
  Mr. President, we could go on and on and on. Tragically, there is not 
a Member of the Senate who could not cite examples from his or her own 
State of these tragedies. I could multiply example after example of 
households like these--households that look like families but are not, 
Mr. President; people who look like parents, but who are not; people 
who never, never should be allowed to be alone with any child. I do 
intend, in the months ahead, to discuss many of these stories on this 
floor, Mr. President.

  Why are atrocities like this happening? There are many factors 
contributing to this problem. In many cases, the abuse is caused by 
parents who were themselves abused as children. In other cases, the 
parent is deeply disturbed or

[[Page S5711]]

mentally ill. Often, the parent is a teenager, who is emotionally 
unprepared for the responsibility of raising a child.
  All of these factors were present in earlier generations. What is 
different today is that too many of the young parents have no role 
models of good parenting. They did not have good parents themselves, so 
they have no idea how to be parents for their own children.
  Another major problem, Mr. President, is the decline of the extended 
family, the support system that used to do so much to make sure 
children were taken care of. In many cases, it just does not exist 
today.
  Add to all of this the relatively new phenomenon of crack. Since the 
late 1980's, we have seen an explosion of this new form of cocaine that 
is readily available, is cheap, and explosively addictive. Crack is so 
addictive that mothers have sold their children so they can get more of 
it. Someone said, when talking about crack, that crack is the only 
thing that has ever been invented by man that will cause a mother to 
behave not like a mother and abandon all the natural instincts that she 
might have--to leave that child, sell that child, to abuse that child.
  Mr. President, put all these factors together and we have a major 
social problem on our hands. Now, we ask social workers to try to patch 
up the wounded. But the social workers are underpaid and overworked. 
When I was an assistant county prosecutor over 20 years ago, and then 
when I was the county prosecutor in Greene County, OH, I worked closely 
with these dedicated, hard-working social welfare professionals. I have 
great respect and admiration for them. They are literally at the front 
line of our efforts to save children. We expect the impossible from 
them and, frankly, do not give them all the tools and resources they 
need to do their jobs. Often, the only options they have, and the only 
choices they have for these children, are all bad--no good options, no 
good choices.
  Many times, our social welfare agencies are simply overwhelmed. Some 
experts say that the social worker handling children ought to handle no 
more than 15 or 20 cases at a time. But the truth is that we have 
social workers today handling 50, 60, 70 cases. They do not have enough 
time or enough resources to solve the problems these kids have.
  In summary, Mr. President, there are many causes for the tragedies I 
have discussed. Further, there are many things that must change, many 
things that we can do to help these children.
  There are many things we can do, Mr. President, to lessen the time it 
takes for children to be adopted, and to lessen the time these poor 
kids have to spend in the legal limbo of the system. Further, there are 
many things we can do to lessen the odds of tragedies like the cases of 
Elisa Izquierdo and Joseph Wallace.
  Mr. President, I intend to keep working to find solutions to these 
problems, recognizing that their causes are multiple--and that to solve 
them, we must do many things.
  But today, I would like to focus on one of the causes of these 
tragedies, one that most people have not heard about. It is the 
unintended consequence of a small part of a law passed by the U.S. 
Congress.
  In 1980, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare 
Act--known as CWA. The Child Welfare Act has done a great deal of good. 
It increased the resources available to struggling families. It 
increased the supervision of children in the foster care system. And it 
gave financial support to people to encourage them to adopt children 
with special needs.
  But while the law has done a great deal of good, many experts are 
coming to believe that this law has actually had some bad unintended 
consequences.
  Under the CWA, for a State to be eligible for Federal matching funds 
for foster care expenditures, the State must have a plan for the 
provision of child welfare services approved by the Secretary of HHS. 
The State plan must provide:

       . . . that, in each case, reasonable efforts will be made 
     (A) prior to the placement of a child in foster care, to 
     prevent or eliminate the need for removal of the child from 
     his home, and (B) to make it possible for the child to return 
     to his home.

  In other words, Mr. President, no matter what the particular 
circumstances of a household may be--the State must make reasonable 
efforts to keep it together, and to put it back together if it falls 
apart.
  What constitutes ``reasonable efforts''? Here is where maybe we have 
part of the problem.
  This has not been defined by Congress. Nor has it been defined by 
HHS.
  This failure to define what constitutes ``reasonable efforts'' has 
had a very important--and very damaging--practical result. There is 
strong evidence to suggest that in the absence of a definition, 
reasonable efforts have become--in some cases--extraordinary efforts. 
Efforts to keep families together at all costs.
  Mr. President, much of the national attention on the case of Elisa 
Izquierdo has focused on the many ways the social welfare agencies 
dropped the ball. It has been said that there were numerous points in 
the story when some agency could have and should have intervened to 
remove Elisa and her siblings from her mother's custody.
  I am not going to revisit that ground. Rather, my point is a broader 
one: Should our Federal law really push the envelope, so that 
extraordinary efforts are made to keep that family together--efforts 
that any of us in this Chamber or anyone listening would not consider 
reasonable?

  Throughout human history, the family has been recognized as the 
bedrock of civilization. The family is where values are transmitted. It 
is where children learn behavior--develop their character--and form 
their personality.
  Over the last couple of years, a remarkable convergence has occurred 
in American social thought. Liberals and conservatives are now in near-
total agreement on the need to strengthen the family as an institution. 
Without stronger families, it will be impossible to avoid a social 
explosion in which troubled children turn into dysfunctional adults on 
a massive scale.
  But what we are confronting in the terrible stories I have just 
recounted are not families. They are households that look like 
families--but are not.
  If you look inside one of these households, you see some children. 
And you see some people who--superficially, at least--resemble parents. 
But this is not what you and I and most Americans mean when we talk 
about families.
  In this type of family when we have heard the horror stories, the 
children are beaten and abused and neglected. Mr. President, what do 
we, as a society, do about these households--these households that are 
not families?
  By 1980, the child welfare system in this country had come under some 
pretty strong criticism. That is why we have the bill. After many 
hearings, Congress concluded that abused and neglected children too 
often were unnecessarily removed from their parents--and very 
significantly that insufficient resources were devoted to the 
commendable task of preserving and reuniting families--and that 
children not able to return to their parents often drifted in foster 
care without ever finding a permanent home.
  That is how the CWA came to be enacted. The phenomenon known as 
foster care drift--children who get lost in a child welfare system that 
cannot or will not find them a permanent home--simply had to be faced 
and reversed.
  Let me interject at this point, Mr. President, that I had substantial 
experience on this issue before the passage of the CWA legislation in 
1980. As long ago as 1973, I was serving as an assistant county 
prosecutor in Greene County, OH, and one of my duties was to represent 
the Greene County Children Services in cases where children were going 
to be removed from their parents' custody.
  I saw first hand that too many of these cases dragged on forever. The 
children end up getting trapped in temporary foster care placements, 
which often entail multiple moves from foster home to foster home to 
foster home, for years and years and years.
  Congress enacted the CWA to try to solve this very real problem. 
There were good reasons for the CWA, and the CWA has done a lot of 
good. There are some families that need a little help if they are going 
to stay together, and it is right for us to help them. Not only is it 
right--it is also clearly in the best interests of the child to reunite 
families when we can.

[[Page S5712]]

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 5 additional minutes, and 
I apologize to my colleague.
  Mr. EXON. Reserving the right to object, I would like to see what the 
parliamentary procedure is and ask the Chair to make a ruling. I have 
15 minutes that was assigned to me under the original schedule, and 
also Senator Leahy. The time is about up. I would not object to the 
request from the Senator so he can finish his remarks so long as the 
same procedure would be afforded to this Senator after he has finished 
his presentation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is their objection to the Senator's request?
  Hearing none, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DeWINE. I thank my colleague. Again I apologize for taking his 
time and the Senate's time. But I would like to complete. It should not 
take any more than just a few more moments.
  We should not be in the position of taking children away just because 
the parents are too poor--or just because there is a problem in the 
family. If the problem can be fixed, we must try to keep the family 
together for the children's benefit. It is just that at some point, 
when it comes to cases of child abuse and child neglect, we have to 
step in and say: ``Enough is enough. The child comes first.''
  And that is where we are now, in a lot of cases. Fifteen years after 
the passage of the CWA, I think we need to revisit this issue, and see 
how the system is working in practice.
  I believe we need to reemphasize what all of us agree on--the fact 
that the child ought to come first. We have to make the best interests 
of the child our top national priority.
  In many of the cases we have looked at, it looks like the CWA has 
been not been correctly interpreted. At least that is the way it 
appears. Try to imagine what the authors of the CWA--the people who 
stood on this Senate floor and the House floor in 1979 and 1980--what 
would they have said if they had been asked: ``Should Joseph Wallace be 
sent back to his mother? Should this little Joseph, this little boy, be 
sent back?''

  I cannot believe that anyone would say he should have been sent back. 
And I cannot believe that it was the authors' intent that it would take 
place. I cannot believe that they would say, ``In that case, and in 
every case, the child must be reunited with the adult at all costs.''
  No, I don't think so.
  Reasonable people agree, Mr. President, on one point: Nothing--
nothing--should take precedence over the best interests of the child. 
It is common sense. And I think we need to make sure the CWA is 
interpreted consistently--and correctly--to reflect that common sense.
  It is my hope that an important new book will spark the national 
debate that America need to have on this issue. The book is called 
``The Book of David: How Preserving Families Can Cost Children's 
Lives,'' by Richard J. Gelles.
  Dr. Gelles is the director of the Family Violence Research Program at 
the University of Rhode Island. For years, Dr. Gelles thought children 
should be permanently removed from their homes only as a last resort, 
even if it meant that the children may spend years moving back and 
forth between birth homes and foster homes. He now says--and I quote:

       It is a fiction to believe one can balance preservation and 
     safety without tilting in favor of parents and placing 
     children at risk.

  He believes that the system is weighted too far toward giving the 
mother and father chance after chance after chance to put their life in 
order--putting the adults first, rather than putting the children 
first.
  Even some social-work professionals will tell you how true this is. 
Krista Grevious, a Kentucky social worker with 21 years of experience, 
says:

       I think it's probably one of the most dangerous things we 
     have ever done for children.

  Patrick Murphy is the court-appointed lawyer for abused children in 
Cook County, Il. He says:

       Increasingly, people in this business do not look at things 
     from the point of view of the child. But the child is the 
     defenseless party here. We've forgotten that.

  In 1993, Murphy published an article in the New York Times that put 
the problem in historical context. I quote from his article:

       The family preservation system is a continuation of sloppy 
     thinking of the 1960's and 1970's that holds, as an 
     unquestionable truth, that society should never blame a 
     victim. Of course, the children are not considered the 
     victims here. Rather the abusive parents are considered 
     victims of poverty and addiction. This attitude is not only 
     patronizing, it endangers children.

  Marcia Robinson Lowry, head of the Children's Rights Project at the 
American Civil Liberties Union, sums it up. She says:

       We've oversold the fact that all families can be saved. All 
     families can't be saved.

  Mr. President, let me make this absolutely clear. I think there is 
nothing wrong with giving parents another chance. But we have to make 
sure the child comes first. Is that child going to get a second chance 
at growing up? A second chance to be 4 years old--the age when a 
personality is already fundamentally shaped?
  Jann Heffner, the director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for 
Adoption, has a useful way of looking at this problem--the concept of 
``kid days.'' When you are 3 years old, 1 month of experience does a 
lot to the formation of your personality. It is not a month that can be 
taken for granted, or treated as routine.

  One helpful way of looking at it is this: If you are 50 years old, 1 
year is 2 percent of your life. If you are 3 years old, 1 year is one-
third of your life.
  There is some important psychological activity going on with these 
children. And every day--every hour--really counts. Lynne Gallagher, 
director of the Arizona Governor's Office for Children, says:

       It's as though these people think we can put the kids in 
     the deep freeze for awhile * * * and then pull them out when 
     the parents are ready to parent.

  We all know how crucial those formative years can be.
  Let me return to the work of Dr. Gelles. He says:

       It is time to face up to the fact that some parents are not 
     capable of being parents, cannot be changed, and should not 
     continue to be allowed to care for children.

  He advocates changes in Federal laws to protect children. He also 
thinks that child-protection officials should move to terminate 
parental rights sooner, thus freeing children for adoption.
  I think the time is ripe for these changes. In New York City, Mayor 
Giuliani has pledged to shift the city's priorities away from family 
preservation--and toward protecting children from harm.
  But we need to examine how much of the problem we face is a 
consequence of Federal law--the lack of precision of the CWA 
legislation back in 1980. And this is truly a national problem that 
needs a national response. According to the National Committee to 
Prevent Child Abuse, child abuse fatalities have increased by 40 
percent between 1985 and 1995.
  I think there is something the U.S. Congress should do about that. I 
think we should make it absolutely clear that the best interests of the 
child are the primary concern of social policy.
  We need to examine, Mr. President, whether in fact the 1980 Child 
Welfare Act has been misinterpreted--and whether we need to clarify it 
so there can be no misunderstanding of Congress' intent. While family 
reunification is a laudable goal, and should usually be attempted, the 
best interests of the child should always come first. This, Mr. 
President, was the intention of the drafters of the 1980 law. Congress 
should reaffirm this--by making whatever clarification is necessary in 
the law.

  To the extent that the 1980 law has been imprecise, ambiguous, and 
unclear, or just misinterpreted, it has contributed to the syndrome in 
which children move from child abuse to foster home to child abuse. It 
is time for us to break this cycle--to help children escape their 
abusers and find a permanent home before they have suffered absolutely 
irreparable physical and emotional damage.
  If we make explicit our commitment to putting the best interests of 
the child first, in almost all cases that will mean family 
reunification. The best interests of the child are almost always served 
by reuniting and preserving families. But in the cases where family 
reunification is not in the best interest of the child, in those cases 
we must protect the child. Federal law must be clearly on the side of 
the child.
  I intend to introduce--in the near future--legislation that will 
clarify once

[[Page S5713]]

and for all the intent of Congress on this issue. Congress should stand 
with the highest values of the American people. And the mind and heart 
of America are crystal clear on this issue: The children come first.
  When they do not, we, as a society, as Americans, have every right to 
become outraged, to get mad--and demand change.
  I simply conclude by saying we need to look at the best interests of 
the child. We need to reexamine this law. We need to look at how it is 
actually working.
  I understand that this may be an uphill battle, that there is a 
reluctance to revisit this. But I think we should revisit it. I think 
we should look at it, keeping in mind only one thing, what really is in 
the best interests of children.
  I ask unanimous consent that four articles on this subject be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the Baltimore Sun, Dec. 4, 1995]

                              Tiny Coffins

                            (By Mona Charen)

       Washington.--The death of 6-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, 
     allegedly at the hands of her mother, has touched New York as 
     few such cases do. Her funeral was attended by the city's 
     mayor, the state's lieutenant governor and hundreds of 
     mourners who didn't even know her.
       It mystifies me that some cases of child abuse receive 
     extravagant attention and evoke the tears and guilty 
     questions they ought to arouse. Thousands of others are 
     ignored, their funerals sparsely attended, their files 
     closed, and we never ask how this is possible in a country 
     that calls itself civilized. According to Richard Gelles of 
     the University of Rhode Island, between 1,200 and 1,400 
     children are killed by their parents or caretakers every year 
     in America. At least half are known to social-service 
     agencies before they die.
       Elisa Izquierdo had been tormented for a very long time. 
     When she died from a severe beating, her body bore old scars 
     of scores of other injuries. Neighbors recalled hearing her 
     scream in pain and beg her mother not to hurt her. Her 
     cousin, who had sued for custody, revealed that the mother 
     had, among other tortures, forced the child to eat her own 
     feces.
       The number of New Yorkers who knew of Elisa's suffering but 
     did nothing is astounding. She was being seen regularly by 
     social-service workers at her kindergarten. She was known to 
     the city's Child Welfare Administration and to a private 
     agency that intervenes in troubled families.
       Social service agencies nationwide complain that they are 
     impossibly overburdened. ``There are people who have 40 
     cases,'' complained a caseworker to the New York Times. 
     ``They don't have time to go back and make second visits.'' 
     Budget cuts have made it even harder to do their jobs.
       Who else can intervene?
       Though I am generally opposed to bureaucracy, preventing 
     child abuse is an exception. Who else but the government can 
     intervene to protect these children? The number of children 
     in foster care is increasing dramatically, from 434,000 in 
     1982 to more than 600,000 today. According to the American 
     Public Welfare Association, 70 percent of those kids enter 
     the system because of abuse, neglect or ``parental 
     conditions'' including drug abuse. In the District of 
     Columbia, social workers don't have enough cars or fax 
     machines to keep abreast of their caseloads. If child 
     protective agencies need more money, they should have it.
       But the heart of the problem is not money; it is 
     philosophy. Most social-service agencies pursue the goal of 
     ``family preservation.'' Federal money is tied to state 
     efforts to keep biological families together. Children, once 
     removed from abusive homes, are returned again and again. 
     Social workers see their jobs as the provision of 
     ``services'' to parents who abuse their children. In one case 
     the parents of 10 children were hurting some of them. The 
     Child Welfare Administration assigned them a full-time 
     housekeeper, lamenting only that budget cuts forced them to 
     withdraw her after a year or so.
       Unless social-service agencies nationwide can stiffen their 
     spines, stop thinking of the abusing parents as the victims 
     and focus on terminating parental rights in cases of abuse 
     and neglect, this plague of tiny coffins will continue. There 
     are thousands of would-be adoptive couples ready to provide 
     loving homes for kids who have been abused. Yet the system 
     frustrates them at every turn.
                                                                    ____


                [From the Tampa Tribune, Apr. 21, 1996]

                    Take Children Out of Harm's Way

                             (By Joan Beck)

       Every day at least three children in America die--killed by 
     their parents or caretakers. Often they are also the victims 
     of efforts by child protection agencies to keep families 
     together, whatever the risks.
       Such a child was David Edwards, dead at the age of 15 
     months, whose mother, Darlene, 23, called 911 one morning to 
     say her son wasn't breathing. Paramedics arrived quickly and 
     immediately began CPR, inserting a breathing tube into his 
     throat and rhythmically compressing his chest in hopes of 
     keeping blood flowing to his brain.
       Continuing CPR, the paramedics rushed David to a Rhode 
     Island hospital, where further efforts at resuscitation were 
     futile. An autopsy showed signs of repeated child abuse and 
     suffocation. Investigators found that after David's father, 
     Donald, had left for work, Darlene, who had been working as a 
     prostitute out of their apartment, had entertained a 
     ``trick.'' To keep David quiet, she forcibly held him down 
     and suffocated him.
       What's chilling is that David was known to be at deadly 
     risk. His parents had earlier lost custody of David's older 
     sister, Marie, because of severe abuse. The state child 
     protective agency had been called twice about David. His 
     father had raged at the caseworker when she tried to check on 
     the child. But the casework plan had been to keep the family 
     together.
       Questioned after David's funeral, attended only by his 
     grandparents and a state investigator, Darlene was charged 
     with murder. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was 
     sentenced to four years in prison, followed by a long 
     probation.
       There's nothing new about David's story. Similar tragedies 
     are old stuff in big-city newspapers and on TV stations. Only 
     the names of the children are different.
       But David shouldn't have died, insists Richard J. Gelles, 
     director of the family violence research program at the 
     University of Rhode Island. Contributing to David's death, he 
     says, are the laws, casework philosophy and public sentiments 
     that keep emphasizing the rights of biological parents and 
     the goal of family preservation.
       Like David, more than half of the annual toll of 1,200 
     children killed by parents or caretakers were already known 
     by state or local child protection agencies to be in danger. 
     Their deaths are heartbreaking evidence that current policies 
     and services are failing and must be changed.
       But the answers don't come easy. The problems are 
     overwhelming the system and getting worse, as dysfunctional 
     families and single-parent homes increase, drug abuse grows 
     and state agencies are dangerously pinched for resources. In 
     his new book, ``The Book of David'' (subtitled ``How 
     Preserving Families Can Cost children's Lives''), Gelles 
     points out the worrisome realities. State and local child 
     protection agencies get almost 3 million reports of abuse and 
     neglect every year; about 38 percent are substantiated. Many 
     charges are dismissed--in part because some child abuse and 
     neglect can be difficult to detect.
       The caseworkers who must make the life-and-death decisions 
     about which children are actually in danger and how to help 
     them, Gelles says, are typically in their 20s--liberal-arts 
     majors with about 20 hours of training. Part of that training 
     is how to fill out paperwork, and some of it emphasizes 
     keeping families together.
       But family preservation, however appealing its philosophy 
     and goals, has been dangerously oversold as an answer to 
     child abuse and neglect, Gelles insists--and as cost savings 
     for taxpayers.
       He urges that the rights of abusing parents be terminated 
     much faster--after no more than a year, for example, for 
     those with drug or alcohol problems who are not making good 
     progress in rehabilitation. He would also end parental rights 
     quickly in cases like David's in which abusing parents have 
     already lost custody of another youngster.
       Gelles concedes that the foster-care system is overwhelmed 
     with the needs of all the children who should be placed out 
     of their homes for their own safety. But his other solutions 
     only nibble away at the problem.
       Making endangered children available for adoption at the 
     youngest ages possible gives them the best shot they can have 
     at a safe and benign childhood, Gelles points out. Adoptive 
     parents are easiest to find for babies and toddlers, before a 
     youngster has been permanently damaged emotionally or 
     physically by abuse.
       Even David's sister was eventually adopted, although she 
     was permanently disabled by her parents' abuse. New parents 
     could easily have been found for David had the rights of his 
     biological parents been terminated, Gelles points out.
       Gelles also recommends setting up more small residential 
     group homes. He says this setting gives a child the chance to 
     make the long-term attachment to a caring adult that is 
     psychologically essential, although he does not recommend 
     such homes for youngsters under age 3.
       Most important, every kind of help for abused children must 
     put their safety first, Gelles insists, even at the expense 
     of the rights of biological parents or the benign-sounding 
     goals of family preservation.
       Better solutions to problems of poverty, unemployment, 
     dangerous neighborhoods, drugs, teen pregnancy, crime and 
     poor schools would also help, Gelles agrees, in hopes of 
     reducing abuse and neglect. Better welfare policies could 
     help families ``where the overriding problems are those of 
     poverty rather than inflicted injury or sexual abuse.''
       Gelles knows there is no single answer to problems of child 
     abuse. He acknowledges that family preservation efforts do 
     help in some instances, that foster care sometimes fails, 
     that money and public patience run out. But he has done a 
     public service with his insistence that we make the well-
     being of children the center of our welfare and protection 
     policies--in ways that we don't now.
                                                                    ____


[[Page S5714]]

                [From the Washington Post, May 12, 1996]

                        Adopt a Sense of Outrage

                           (By Mary McGrory)

       After Sister Josephine finished her wrathful remarks about 
     abused children at the spring adoption seminar in a 
     Washington law office, the chairman, former Pennsylvania 
     governor Robert P. Casey, spoke in praise of outrage.
       ``If you don't have a sense of outrage as a politician, you 
     are not worth a damn. If you have lost it, get out of 
     politics.''
       He is quite right. Sister Josephine Murphy of the Daughters 
     of Charity told of the grossly abused babies who pass through 
     her hands at St. Ann's Infant and Maternity Home in 
     Hyattsville, where she is the administrator. I add, in the 
     interests of full disclosure, that I am a friend and fan of 
     hers and awestruck at her competence. I believe she could run 
     the Defense Department. I am familiar with her views on what 
     she regards as the uneven contest between women and 
     children--she notes with asperity the hullabaloo over rape in 
     contrast to the relatively mild sentences for infanticide.
       She described graphically the sufferings of the abused, 
     abandoned and neglected; infants who have been burned at an 
     open fire; children raped and assaulted--and sent back to 
     their abusive homes by judges who don't care to know what is 
     happening. She told of a 7-year-old boy who reproached her 
     for sending him home. He warned her that when he grew up he 
     was going to ``go out and kill my mother's boyfriend.'' She 
     had a warning too. ``The money we don't spend protecting 
     children we will have to spend on jails.''
       The Family Reunification and Preservation Act is the cause 
     of these grotesque practices. The body count of children 
     abused to death in 1995 was 1,271, according to the National 
     Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. Yet in the much-praised 
     adoption reform bills being pushed through Congress in time 
     for Mother's Day, no mention is made of this.
       The law's folly--requiring social workers to make 
     ``reasonable efforts'' to send a child back to abusive 
     parents--was remarked upon at the seminar by William Pierce, 
     president of the National Council for Adoption. Imagine, he 
     said, if a wife-batterer were brought into court and the 
     judge ordered the wife to return to him while he tried to 
     straighten out.
       The pendulum has begun to swing the other way, Casey says. 
     Some states have passed laws requiring delinquent parents to 
     improve within a year--or forego their parental rights.
       Why don't politicians seize on this deadly danger to 
     children? Well, it could be dangerous to them. Douglas 
     Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, a leading 
     authority on child welfare, points out the political 
     trickiness of revising the statute. ``Don't forget,'' he 
     says, ``that six years ago David Dinkins ran for mayor of New 
     York against [Ed] Koch on a charge that he was taking too 
     many black kids away from their families.''
       Maybe that is why today's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, one of the 
     most astute politicians in the country, is avoiding the issue 
     in the most notorious (and still reverberating) child-abuse 
     horror: the murder of 6-year old Elisa Izquierdo by her 
     mother. Giuliani has created a new child welfare agency and a 
     review panel that issued a voluminous report and suspended 
     two employees involved in the case. But he never came to 
     grips with the crime in the courtroom.
       Elisa had been in the care of her adoring father. When he 
     died, his sister, Elisa's aunt, applied for custody. But 
     under the Family Reunification Act, the judge gave Elisa into 
     the care of her mad mother. Given that the numerous social 
     workers involved should have been more watchful and more 
     demanding, the mayor should have realized that the tragedy 
     began with the custody award.
       Beshasrov, who served on the mayor's commission, says the 
     terrible irony is that the judge who made the decision had 
     had Elisa's mother before her when the first custody choice 
     was made. She apparently forgot all about it--and had no 
     lawyer or clerk to remind her, thereby sentencing Elisa to 
     beatings and tortures and eventual death.
       Too bad Giuliani didn't read ``The Book of David,'' also a 
     true-life tale, by Richard Gelles of the Family Violence 
     Research Program of the University of Rhode Island. Gelles, 
     author of 20 books about child welfare, is currently in 
     Washington, working for Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn) on 
     adoption laws. David, 15 months old, died at the hands of his 
     mother, a part-time prostitute. It was avoidable. His mother 
     had also abused David's older sister, almost to death. Gelles 
     shows the tension in social workers who must work under 
     warring mandates: investigating abusive parents while drawing 
     up plans to reunite them with their endangered children.
       The policy, Gelles says, comes of ``a persistent 
     unwillingness to put children first.'' It is also the 
     unwillingness of public men to break shibboleths. We as a 
     nation, profess to believe that all mothers are like 
     Whistler's and that a ``family'' can consist of one female, a 
     drug addict and a ``home,'' a drug den. As Casey says, 
     outrage is needed.
                                                                    ____


                [From the Weekly Standard, May 27, 1996]

                          Two Words That Kill

                         (By Richard J. Gelles)

       What if, by changing two words in a federal law, you could 
     prevent the deaths of hundreds of children each year and also 
     prevent tens or even hundreds of thousands of abused children 
     from being victimized again and again?
       For 16 years, child welfare policies have been guided by 
     two words: ``reasonable efforts.'' One of the cornerstones of 
     the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (PL 96-
     272) was the mandate that states make ``reasonable efforts'' 
     to keep or reunite abused and neglected children with their 
     biological parents. This provision was designed to reduce the 
     number of maltreated children placed in foster care. Although 
     reducing the cost of out-of-home placement was certainly a 
     factor behind the reasonable-efforts provision, the major 
     rationale for these two words was the deep-seated belief that 
     children do best when raised by their biological parents and 
     that parents will stop maltreating their children if they are 
     provided with sufficient personal, social and economic 
     resources.
       There was bipartisan support for the doctrine of reasonable 
     efforts. Conservatives supported it because it was consistent 
     with a family-values approach to social policy. Liberals 
     supported it because it was in the best tradition of the 
     safety net for children and families in need. Child advocates 
     enthusiastically embraced ``reasonable efforts'' because they 
     saw taking children from abusive parents as even more harmful 
     than the abuse, because they felt there was subtle racism in 
     the child welfare system that made minority children more 
     likely to be placed in foster care, and because ``reasonable 
     efforts'' created a new funding stream for a social service 
     system whose funding, in the 1980s, was being restricted or 
     cut.
       Soon after the adoption of the doctrine of reasonable 
     efforts, family-preservation programs were developed. These 
     provide intensive services, such as parent education, help 
     with housekeeping, and assistance dealing with the 
     bureaucracy, to families deemed at risk of having their 
     children removed. Financially supported and marketed by 
     private foundations such as the Edna McConnell Clark 
     Foundation, embraced by the Children's Defense Fund and the 
     Child Welfare League of America, and ultimately the recipient 
     of $1 billion of federal support, intensive family-
     preservation programs are touted as able to both preserve 
     families and protect children.
       But reasonable efforts and intensive family preservation 
     have been a false promise. Child-welfare-agency directors and 
     workers believe that family preservation and child safety can 
     be balanced. Because they believe family-preservation 
     programs are effective, child welfare agencies and workers 
     often make every possible effort to preserve families, even 
     when what they are preserving could hardly be called a family 
     and even when there is no evidence that the parents can or 
     will change their abusive behavior. There have been nearly a 
     dozen scientifically reputable evaluations of intensive 
     family-preservation programs and not one has found that such 
     programs reduce costs, reduce out-of-home placements, or 
     improve child safety. Similarly, research finds that children 
     need a stable, giving caretaker, not necessary a biological 
     caretaker.
       It is a fiction to believe one can balance preservation and 
     safety without tilting in favor of parents and placing 
     children at risk. More than 1,200 children are killed by 
     their parents or caretakers such year, and nearly half of 
     these children are killed after they or their parents have 
     come to the attention of child welfare agencies. Tens of 
     thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of children are re-
     abused each year after they or their parents have been 
     identified by child welfare agencies.
       It is time to replace the words ``reasonable efforts'' with 
     two others: ``child safety.'' It is time to fact up to the 
     fact that some parents are not capable of being parents, 
     cannot be changed, and should not continue to be allowed to 
     care for children. Of course, the change will be a bit 
     difficult than merely substituting two words. There will be 
     howls of protest from advocates who will claim that 
     abolishing ``reasonable efforts'' means that more children 
     will be placed in foster care, thus straining already over-
     taxed state child welfare budgets. Claims that children are 
     abused or harmed by foster care will also be trotted out, 
     typically without actual research to support such claims. 
     Indeed, some children are harmed in foster care, but research 
     does show that abused children placed out of the home do 
     better in the short and long runs than children left with 
     abusive and neglectful parents. Advocates will also argue 
     that child welfare policy should not be based on child 
     fatalities, because such fatalities are rare. Well, child 
     fatalities are not rare enough. Elisa Izquierdo in New York 
     City, Joseph Wallace in Chicago, and hundreds of other less 
     publicized child fatalities were the direct results of 
     unreasonable efforts to keep children with their abusive 
     biological caretakers. A change in two words will force child 
     welfare agencies to take steps to enhance and speed up 
     adoptions and to consider the use of congregate care 
     facilities (or what some have called ``orphanages'') for some 
     children who have no other safe permanent home.
       The 1995 report on child fatalities by the U.S. Advisory 
     Board on Child Abuse and Neglect was dedicated to children 
     killed by parents or caretakers and concluded with a 
     recommendation that all child and family programs make child 
     safety a ``major priority.'' Changing two words in welfare 
     reform legislation now before Congress would go a long way 
     toward achieving that goal.


[[Page S5715]]


  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that whatever time 
beyond the hour of 10:30 is taken in morning business be added on to 
the period of time for debate so that, on the Missile Defense Act, 
there is still a total of 2 hours equally divided between the two 
sides.
  Mr. EXON. May I ask a question? Will the Senator yield for a 
question?
  Mr. KYL. Certainly.
  Mr. EXON. Would the Senator also add on 3 minutes for the Senator 
from Massachusetts?
  Mr. KYL. Certainly. I will add that to the unanimous-consent request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the unanimous consent, the Senator from 
Nebraska has 15 minutes, the Senator from Massachusetts has 3 minutes, 
which will be added on to make 2 hours for missile defense.
  The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, if I have the floor, I yield 3 minutes to 
the Senator from Massachusetts at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

                          ____________________