Murder charges for fundie parents

[Nurse Jenna]

I live in King county and remember telling my husband when the story first broke that I would bet dollars to doughnuts that adoptive family was hard core fundie. That poor little girl. Fuking, evil Pearls

[Mompom]

I was disgusted by this entire story. I was slightly encouraged that at least one homeschool, adoptive family blew the whistle (I did read that correctly in the report, right?) and had CPS out there looking things over. I'm not quite sure WHY CPS wouldn't have removed them at that point. I mean the report from the friend was chilling. What encouraged me was that their entire community was not like them, they were the oddities. However, I'm thinking the knitting group should have stepped up with a report to CPS too, since the mom was very open with some of the trouble she was having. Carrie had lost weight and was under considerable stress (being evil will do that to you, I think). I think it's yet another case of someone who is on the fringe, but still "managing" who thinks they can go out and do something good when really, they have enough troubles on their own. Sad. I cried when I realized what the last few months of her life were like. And Christmas and her birthday? No words.

[Mompom]

From page 16 of the affidavit:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/66907264/Probable-Cause

"Since the children have been in State's care, they have all gained weight and appear to be happy. Foster parents report that they have never seen such sheltered children with no information or experience outside their home life. One of the children was amazed at such tall buildings in a nearby large city. Other children were unsure if watching TV would be appropriate and many of them questioned whether this would be acceptable to their parents."

I read this too, how freaking weird can people be? How could you not even take your children to a neighboring city once in their entire lives?

[Mompom]

I think it's very true that this story line has repeated itself, with the worst possible outcome other than both children being murdered. The story of Lovelie and Justus really pierced my heart several months ago (sorry if that sounds fundie, but I actually mean it) and I thought it about it a lot for many weeks, as I'm many FJers did. This one is even worse. These horrific outcomes are completely senseless and could have been prevented at many junctures along the way.

I realize many people in the USA hate the government and they don't want any regulation over anyting to do with raising children. But I believe that these adoption agencies should be very regulated for the safety of these children, particularly in adoptions of older children and international children, and that adoptive parents of these children should have to be willing to be open about their childrearing in order to participate.

I don't know exactly how some of these agencies come into business, but it sort of seems like these private, religious-based agencies just kind of pop up and name themselves something religious-y like "Little Lambs of God" or some such crud and then they're off and running and there is no oversight either from within the private agency or the public entities that protect children. Did these agencies do home studies on Emma and her asshole husband, or on the Williams? Did they talk privately to their existing children and ask meaningful questions about how the home is run and how the interaction plays out between the parents and the children? Do they ask if the parents believe that corporal punishment is an appropriate way to discipline a child? What other methods of punishment would they use? And is the family amenable to follow-up (accountability), to include private interviews with the adopted children on an ongoing basis?

Why not require a psychological evaluation on these parents? Hell, I had to pass a psychological exam to get a damn position within my state government, not to mention a polygraph. Why should the bar be lower to adopt a child? God only knows the constellation of psychiatric problems that may have been discovered in both of these couples if an evaluation had been done on the parents by a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Answers to these questions would provide information - and red flags - so that agencies can make better decisions. It seems like it's more about money than it is about finding "good homes" for hard-to-place children. As it stands now, the private religious-based system is like a candy store to these "child collectors".

A lot of people would find much of this too intrusive, not just fundies, and to a small extent I get that. But if a family has nothing to hide, what's the problem? There has always been a sense that to adopt a child, you must be worthy of that privilege in a variety of ways. Health of the parents, finances, family dynamics, and a host of things are considered in an above-board adoption (or at least should be). As a society, we need to acknowledge that the adoption of older children and international children brings with it many more stressors than the domestic adoption of a newborn. While I believe there should be oversight in all adoptions, I think there needs, in particular, for oversight to be ongoing in these adoptions that statistically have many more problems.

I'm rambling, I know. . . I just can't get this off my mind, partly because of the horror of it, and the intense feelings of sadness for this little girl, but partly because as a society, we should be able to do better. We should accept nothing less than doing better and people that were involved in this from beginning to end should be called to account.

I totally agree on the psych eval part! For our homestudy for adoption they did a "light" psych eval. I think they could have gone way deeper though. I think you should have to say that you will never spank an adoptive child in the same way that you can't spank a foster child (at least in my state you can't spank a foster child). You should have to take numerous parenting classes. And you should be required to meet with a support group facilitated by a mental health professional familiar with international adoption/attachment issues. I would welcome all of those interventions as an adoptive parent.

[oscar]

bakersdozen.typepad.com/a_bakerss_dozen_daily_lif/2011/10/the-not-quite-top-blogger.html

Evidently, Renee at Bakers Dozen was acquainted with this woman, and is now concerned that this case will reflect poorly on large families who choose to adopt and homeschool.

One would hope that this case will reflect poorly on people with inappropriate motivations and inadequate preparation who seek to adopt or homeschool, regardless of their family size.

[apple1]

bakersdozen.typepad.com/a_bakerss_dozen_daily_lif/2011/10/the-not-quite-top-blogger.html

Evidently, Renee at Bakers Dozen was acquainted with this woman, and is now concerned that this case will reflect poorly on large families who choose to adopt and homeschool.

One would hope that this case will reflect poorly on people with inappropriate motivations and inadequate preparation who seek to adopt or homeschool, regardless of their family size.

@ the Bakers dozen blogger:

No, they were NOT charged with homicide by neglect, as you state in your blog. They were charged with homicide by abuse, and with first degree child assault. Don't try to make this sound less awful than it is.

[Buzzard]

I wonder if they were members of heritage defense... and if so, why they arent defending them!

[Vex]

Thank you for your kind words, Austin.

I was telling some friends about this case, and the one thing that all of them said was 'why haven't the Pearls been charged as accessories?'. From a legal perspective, I understand it. America is a Christian country that takes freedom of speech very seriously, and obviously the Pearls have a solid defense - they clearly state in their book that you have to issue their punishments with moderation and love, which did not happen in the case of poor Hana.

It's very frustrating. I think that had this happened here in Australia, the Pearls would be charged.

It's probably hypocritical of me to condemn the book. I don't believe that violent video games make kids act out (rather, I believe that it's a case of kids who are inclinded to act out are drawn to violent video games), and if someone played Manhunt II and then went out and suffocated a man with a plastic bag because you do it in the game, I would blame the person and not the game.

Then again, Manhunt is banned in Australia in the first place...

[Linnea]

Ugh, I kind of wish I hadn't read the affadavit.

What struck me was their interviews with the biokids. They all seemed to be reading from the same script, talking about how Hana was "rebellious" and how on the night she died she was "pretending" she couldn't walk.

And yeah, the report says that taking off your clothes is a symptom of advanced hypothermia, and that she was subject to hypothermia at 40 degrees because it was wet and because she'd lost about 25% of her body weight.

The other thing was that apparently she hadn't had any kind of medical attention for almost two years when she died. There's a record of her height and weight every month or two for the first year or so after her adoption, and then nothing.

THIS is why we need the Eeebil Government to interfere in the lives of homeschoolers. Because if she'd been in school, she would have at least gotten weighed and measured once a year, and someone would have reported her weight loss, even in the absence of other signs of abuse.

[Love]

42F is much closer to freezing than it is to even a low room temperature. And if you're wet, even room temp. can be chilly. The excuses some of the apologists made about "Well, it was May, it wasn't that cold" make me sick.

If you've never lived through a NW Fall / Winter / Spring rain season its hard to understand just how the cold gets into your bones up here. The rain is heavy and the cold really penetrates into the body. Not to mention the air just feels wet. Sedro Wooley is very close to the Canadian border, settled between the bays off of the Pacific Ocean and the mountains.

brrrrrr!

[BravaAmica]

If you've never lived through a NW Fall / Winter / Spring rain season its hard to understand just how the cold gets into your bones up here. The rain is heavy and the cold really penetrates into the body. Not to mention the air just feels wet. Sedro Wooley is very close to the Canadian border, settled between the bays off of the Pacific Ocean and the mountains.

brrrrrr!

This. It's super damp, which makes even a moderate 42F degree day feel even colder. And if it's been chilly and damp for months (like it was last May, we'd had one of the wettest springs on record) the ambient temperature would feel even colder.

[starfish]

Still waiting to see pictures of the happy, homicidal, control-freak couple.......

Along with all the other indignities and abuse, it bothered me how Carrie Williams cut off all Hanna's hair because she was mad at her. The biokids said how sad that made Hanna, because she loved to braid her hair. That poor child.

[Austin]

@ the Bakers dozen blogger:

No, they were NOT charged with homicide by neglect, as you state in your blog. They were charged with homicide by abuse, and with first degree child assault. Don't try to make this sound less awful than it is.

I posted the following on that blog:

They have not been charged by homicide with neglect. Re-read the documents. They have been charged with homicide by child abuse and first degree child assault.

I don't have objections to big families or homeschooling. I do object to these isolated family compounds where people seem to do whatever they want with no accountability whatsoever except from people who think just like they do and feel that many of the measures that these "parents" took were just fine, except they just took it "a little too far". I do object to no effective post-adoption follow-up. I do object to beating, starving, and freezing a child to death. Call me crazy.

It's in moderation, and I'm not familiar enough with the blogger to know if she'll post it or not.

[apple1]

I posted the following on that blog:

It's in moderation, and I'm not familiar enough with the blogger to know if she'll post it or not.

Thank you, Austin. I am not sure whether the average reader would have even noticed, and "neglect" is bad enough, but I really took that word choice to have significance.

[margiebargie]

I read the blog entry at bakersdozen and it pissed me off. She's more worried about how this might reflect on large, homeschooling families than what happened to that little girl. She's more concerned about what the critics might say about her or people like her. Not a word about how this might have been prevented. What an asshole. Maybe this is what happens when you isolate yourself from society. You stop giving a shit about people.

Oh then she went on to some other miscellaneous crap, like some blog she thinks is hilarious. The post is titled "The Not Quite Top Blogger". It's not even dedicated to the serious topic of a murdered child. It's blended in with a bunch of fluff. She can write whatever she wants, I just happen to think this makes her seem like a crappy person.

[apple1]

I read the blog entry at bakersdozen and it pissed me off. She's more worried about how this might reflect on large, homeschooling families than what happened to that little girl. She's more concerned about what the critics might say about her or people like her. Not a word about how this might have been prevented. What an asshole. Maybe this is what happens when you isolate yourself from society. You stop giving a shit about people.

Oh then she went on to some other miscellaneous crap, like some blog she thinks is hilarious. The post is titled "The Not Quite Top Blogger". It's not even dedicated to the serious topic of a murdered child. It's blended in with a bunch of fluff. She can write whatever she wants, I just happen to think this makes her seem like a crappy person.

Agree.

[Guest Anonymous]

Agree.

She doesn't SEEM like a crappy person, she IS a crappy person.

[Austin]

Thank you, Austin. I am not sure whether the average reader would have even noticed, and "neglect" is bad enough, but I really took that word choice to have significance.

She did post my comment and responded herself.

Austin, thank you for the correction. I was reading that document late at night and was naturally disturbed by it. And yes, it is hard to imagine that nobody suspected anything was amiss. And let me say, there is virtually no post-adoption support for international adoption... And that is a problem as well.

At least she admitted her mistake.

[apple1]

At least she admitted her mistake.

Good. A step in the right direction.

[starfish]

I have attempted to cut and paste a link to video footage of the story.

http://www.kirotv.com/news/29409477/detail.html

If you watch the video, you can see Carrie and Larry's ugly mugs.

Carrie appears to be smirking. An 18-year old son was in the courtroom, looking extremely fundy. If he beat that child, I think he should be charged also.

The judge reduced their bail to $150,000. I hope he took their passports away.

Larry's a Boeing engineer.

[Austin]

I have attempted to cut and paste a link to video footage of the story.

http://www.kirotv.com/news/29409477/detail.html

If you watch the video, you can see Carrie and Larry's ugly mugs.

Carrie appears to be smirking. An 18-year old son was in the courtroom, looking extremely fundy. If he beat that child, I think he should be charged also.

The judge reduced their bail to $150,000. I hope he took their passports away.

Larry's a Boeing engineer.

Wow. Thank you for posting that. Carrie's father seems to be a real piece of work, too.

So, to get out of prison, they'd have to come up with $30K in cash and $270K in collateral. . . is that right? Isn't that how it normally works? I'd love for them to have to stay in prison, but I'm betting between family & friends, they'll probably be able to come up with that much.

How are they not a danger to others? They would certainly be able to emotionally abuse their childen just by influencing them and guilting them into "not telling", if they contact them. They may be prohibited from doing so, but since some of the kids are with family members, how likely is it that they won't find a way? Especially these types of people, who are control freaks and who like nothing more than to flip the government off.

[Linnea]

I fervently hope that all the children get taken away from them permanently. Even if the biokids weren't as seriously abused as the adopted ones, they've been taught that it's acceptable to treat someone the way Hana was treated, and in my book, that is Bad Parenting.

Does anyone know what usually happens in cases like this?

[Austin]

I fervently hope that all the children get taken away from them permanently. Even if the biokids weren't as seriously abused as the adopted ones, they've been taught that it's acceptable to treat someone the way Hana was treated, and in my book, that is Bad Parenting.

Does anyone know what usually happens in cases like this?

I think it was more than teaching them that it was acceptable, because according to the arrest affidavit, they had the older children beating on the younger ones, including Hana and her brother. I'm sure the children who participated in the abuse were taught that this was God's will or some such evilness.

[BravaAmica]

I really hope Larry gets fired from Boeing. I really really do.

[Linnea]

I really hope Larry gets fired from Boeing. I really really do.

I think he deserves all kinds of bad things to happen to him, but can your employer fire you for something you do in your own home, on your own time? The only reason I could see this leading to him being fired is if he gets sent to jail for a good long time and therefore can't show up at work.