Brenda Deutsch, 70, a serial foster mother in Missouri, was sentenced to seven years in prison for child endangerment, because, among other things, she traded her teenage foster daughter for a monkey.
Nonetheless this creature—Deutch, not the monkey—avoided prison time, or even zoo time. Judge Thomas Frawley condemned her in open court as reprehensible and apologized to her alleged victims for a foster care system that had failed them, but he suspended execution of the sentence and placed her on three years of probation. Hey, after all, she was good to the monkey! The judge also revoked Deutsch’s foster care license and criticized the state of Missouri for allowing her to keep it.
Deutsch was arrested in April after authorities investigated allegations that she sent the girl she was fostering, now 17, to Texas to stay in a home that Deutsch admitted in court she knew nothing about. After Deutsch sought permission to take the girl to visit “a friend” in Texas, an anonymous caller alerted the Missouri Department of Social Services Children’s Division that Deutsch was allegedly physically and mentally abusing a child. Investigators later learned that the girl had been allegedly traded for “an exotic animal,” aka. the monkey, and was now living in Texas with the “friend.” She was also apparently living in squalor, because her new home was packed with animals. The teenager told investigators that Foster Mom had told her trading partner that she could keep the girl, but that Deutsch “will be keeping the check.” And the monkey, of course.
I don’t understand why Deutch isn’t receiving the same kind of passionate support Lindsay Clancy is. Heck, all Deutch did was trade a child for a monkey; she didn’t kill her. And everyone knows that teenagers are much more annoying than toddlers and babies.
It also seems pretty clear that Deutch is at least as nuts as Clancy is, just in different ways. (Note that I resisted saying that she was “bananas”…) So where’s the compassion? Where are the demonstrators in pink? How many mothers haven’t had moments when they would have happily traded their unruly, hateful teen for a monkey, a Hershey Bar or a 1958 Gino Cimoli baseball card? I see no signs reading “Listen to Mothers…Who want to Trade Their Teens for Monkeys!” This is a double standard.
Apparently Deutch has fostered over 200 kids. What a great child welfare system we have!
Ms. Deutsch doesn’t count. She’s old.
I am afraid you hit the nail on the head with this one.
Now, see, that factor didn’t occur to me.
Foster care seems to be mainly for the benefits of the mothers rather than the children. In my state it is almost impossible for children to be adopted out of foster care. That is because mothers (unlike fathers) can never truly have their parental rights terminated. Courts allow mothers to have their parental rights reinstated after termination and the DHS wants to keep the kids ‘available’ just in case the mother gets her rights back. I know of a case where the mother’s rights were terminated after her continual arrests for drug dealing and prostitution sent her to prison. The father was dead. The infant went to foster care. At 5, the mom got out, got her parental rights reinstated and got her son back. Six months later, she was arrested for child neglect and drug dealing, lost her parental rights, and back to prison. At 11 same thing. At 15 same thing. The kid was warehoused just for the off chance that mom might get her life together sometime in the next 17 years.
The foster care system doesn’t pay much and doesn’t start paying until 6 months or so after you start caring for a foster child. They have a ‘policy’ against back reimbursements, so tough. They insist that your first loyalty is to keeping the child ready to be reunited with the mother. With such a foster care system, these are the foster parents you get.
I met someone whose parents were foster parents. They fostered 5-7 kids at a time, keeping them in squalor. They used their own biological children to take care of the foster kids and spent most of their time at casinos or out using drugs. When their oldest child graduated from high school, she took her younger sibling with her so they could escape the foster care nightmare.
It also seems pretty clear that Deutch is at least as bananas as Clancy is, just in different ways. (Note that I she is white as am I, so it’s ok to use bananas in this instance…)
What’s the significant difference cognitively between someone like Deutch and one of the smart people who manifest TDS? 99% of the time they are acceptable to society.
It’s bad. I only follow my home state, but the DCF is an embarrassment, and no governor in my life time seems have done anything about it. The media only covers incidents as they happen, no systematic investigations, but the sheer number of incidents is frightening.
My state tried to have a comprehensive investigation after several mothers murdered their children. The records showed that after the fathers complained of abuse, DHS only investigated…the fathers.
The problem was that the media went after the investigators and made them ‘evil conservatives’ seeking to demonize “battered women and their dedicated hardworking advocates of the DHS system”. Eventually, the investigators caved under a public backlash.
You don’t hate the media enough.
Would things be better or worse without the current foster care system(s)?