Underground network
moves children from home to home
By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
January 18, 2006
TRENTON, Tenn. At the end of a long tree-lined driveway, amid
18 acres that include a greenhouse and gazebo, sits a
historic plantation home where, a state indictment says,
children were beaten and forced to sleep in a totally enclosed
baby crib.
Tennessee is
charging the owners, Debra and Tom Schmitz, with abusing some of
their 18 children, most of them disabled. The state says Debra
Schmitz threw a knife at one child, held two children underwater for
punishment and forced five to dig holes in the ground that would be
their graves.
The couple, whose
trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 30, are also charged with child
trafficking for moving a girl to Arizona without permission from
state child-welfare officials.
The Schmitzes
strongly deny the charges, which stemmed from complaints by the
children and nurses who worked in their house. "The children were
our entire life. They were our everything," Debra Schmitz says.
What they don't
deny, and what the trial may help spotlight, is their role in a
largely unknown aspect of the nation's beleaguered child-welfare
system: an underground network of families that takes in children
others do not want. Some families do so legally, and eventually
adopt the children, but others may violate child-welfare laws by
failing to notify authorities, according to interviews by USA TODAY
with families, officials and child-welfare experts. (Related
story:
No state fully compliant with welfare)
"There are homes
all across the United States that transfer kids from one place to
another. No one's keeping tabs on this. ... These kids just come and
go," says Sheriff Joe Shepard of Gibson County in rural northwest
Tennessee, where the Schmitzes live.
"Dump and run
it happens all the time," says Ronald Federici, a neuropsychologist
in Alexandria, Va., and author of Help for the Hopeless Children
who has adopted seven children. He says one adoptive family
abandoned a child in his office. He says there are hundreds of
e-mail chat rooms in which people who adopted children are trying to
find new homes for them outside the public system.
"They don't want
to sell the kids. They just want to get rid of them," he says,
explaining the children may have health problems the adoptive
parents never expected. "It's not the merchandise they bought." He
says many of these parents are looking for the cheapest and fastest
placement.
Yet, many couples
who take in large numbers of children "are incredibly
well-motivated," says Kent Markus, director of the National Center
for Adoption Law & Policy. He says many view caring for
special-needs kids as a "calling."
Some of these
families know each other because they practice so-called attachment
therapy (AT), a controversial regimen of discipline. Adherents such
as the Schmitzes say attachment therapy helps kids develop bonds
with their new parents, but one critic describes the techniques as
"fairly brutal." If one family has trouble with a child, it sends
him to another home practicing this therapy.
Debra Schmitz
says 80% to 90% of her Internet network revolved around attachment
therapy. Other self-described practitioners include Michael and
Sharen Gravelle, an Ohio couple who, a judge ruled in a custody
hearing last month, had abused their 11 adoptive kids by making some
of them sleep in cagelike bunk beds.
The Gravelles
face a hearing today that could determine custody of the kids, now
in foster care. (Related story:
Enclosed beds cause controversy)
"A lot of people
do it (take in children) for the money," says Federici, referring to
government subsidies that can exceed $1,100 monthly for a child with
disabilities. "Others collect kids."
Yet many of the
families in this private network say they don't do it for the money
but to save the children, especially those with special needs, from
bouncing around the public system. "These kids will rot in the
foster-care system," says Charlene Stockton, a Tennessee adoptive
mom of 17 children, several of whom have Down syndrome, congestive
heart failure and dementia. She adopted a girl from Vietnam via
"someone who knew someone who knew someone."
The Schmitz
network
State officials
say the Schmitzes lacked legal custody of at least seven of the 18
kids in their care, who ranged in age from 1 to 17, says Didi
Christie, an attorney with the Tennessee Department of Children
Services. "They were operating under the radar. No one would know
what was happening" to these kids, says Christie, adding that some
of them were home-schooled. A Tennessee law requires all parents or
guardians to notify authorities if they place children with a
non-relative for more than 30 days.
A biological
daughter, Melanie Schmitz, recalls the family piling into a motor
home to pick up a child at a truck stop in Illinois about five years
ago, one year before they moved from Wisconsin to Tennessee. "It was
kind of a secretive thing," Melanie, now 21, told The Jackson
(Tenn.) Sun, a Gannett paper that has tracked the case.
Debra Schmitz
denies she picked up a child at a truck stop. She says Melanie, from
whom she's estranged, was an "angry teenager" who wanted to run away
from home. Her attorney, Barney Witherington, says the Schmitzes
notified state authorities when they took each child and retained an
attorney to adopt each one.
The children,
removed from the Schmitzes' home in June 2004, are now in foster
care. District Attorney Garry Brown says some may testify against
the Schmitzes, who were accused of child abuse in 2000 when they
lived in Wisconsin. An extensive investigation followed, but no
charges were filed then.
Also testifying
will be Brenda Filkel and Sherry Dvorak, licensed practical nurses
who worked at the Schmitz home, Dvorak says. In an affidavit
attached to a search warrant, they say Debra Schmitz was often drunk
"by suppertime." They also say they saw six children ranging in
age from 8 to 14 being thrown into "the cage" by older kids at the
Schmitzes' instructions and that, as punishment, kids were deprived
of leg braces, eyeglasses and a walker.
Filkel says she
saw "records of swapped, traded and interchanged children" in the
Schmitz home and that Debra Schmitz told her she could get a child
through a website within three weeks without having to go through
the Department of Children Services. Filkel and Dvorak took in some
of the children after they were removed from the Schmitzes' home.
Children may
testify
Five of the
children will be subpoenaed to testify for the defense, says Tom
Schmitz's attorney, Frank Deslauriers. He says he'll also seek
testimony from the two nurses and neuropsychologist Federici, who
says he was initially hired by the prosecution to examine the kids.
Federici says
seven kids say nothing bad happened at the Schmitzes' and they want
to return. He says the others talked about being spanked and about
Debra Schmitz's drinking.
Federici, who has
reviewed the Schmitzes' financial records, says the couple
eventually received subsidies for each child, taking in $8,000 to
$9,000 monthly. The monthly subsidies ranged from $364 to $817 for
nine of the children, Christie says. She says one adoptive family
helped pay for an addition to the Schmitzes' home after they took in
a child and another paid child support.
Karen Sue Tolin,
an adoptive mom in Michigan, says she didn't pay the Schmitzes for
taking her daughter Erin but only provided supplies for incontinence
as well as other materials. "This is not a money thing," Tolin says.
"They had resources we didn't," she says, including mental health
care that Erin, who has fetal alcohol syndrome, needed.
Debra Schmitz, a
stay-at-home mom, says she didn't receive a penny for the last seven
kids she took and spent everything on the children. "I wore rags,
but my kids always looked wonderful," she says. Tom Schmitz works
for a firm that rents and sells portable bathrooms.
No data exist on
how many children are moved from family to family outside the public
child-welfare system. Yet the Schmitzes, who took in children from
at least seven states, are not the only people in this private
network:
In 2000, Denise
Thomas of Littleton, Colo., was put on probation for a year after
attempting to sell her daughter, adopted from Russia, on the
Internet. She has said she was simply trying to recoup some of her
adoption costs.
In February
2004, Diana Groves of Bloomington, Ind., a single woman who had
taken in 13 children, was charged with child abuse, in part for
duct-taping some of the kids to a wall and hitting them with a
tennis racket. Brad Swain, a detective in the Monroe County
Sheriff's department, says Groves acquired the kids by "loose
word-of-mouth" and received financial support from private
individuals. Groves, who has three separate, unrelated felony
convictions, has pleaded innocent and is free on bond while awaiting
trial.
In December
2004, Frances Ellen Matthews of Kenton, Tenn., was found guilty of a
child-abuse charge. She says she took in children through private
arrangements. She was caring for 16 children, many with severe
disabilities, at the time of her arrest. Ten have been returned to
her home.
Disrupted
adoptions
Like many large
adoptive families, the Schmitzes took in children adopted abroad by
other people. Parents who no longer want an adopted child may seek a
word-of-mouth placement because they may not get placement help from
adoption agencies or they may want to avoid paying child support,
which may be necessary if a child enters the foster-care system.
"Most agencies in
the U.S. won't take a child from overseas, so families are stuck on
their own," says Susan Meyer, a Florida adoptive mom of 28 children
and founder of the Foundation for Large Families. She says states,
burdened with U.S.-born children, also don't want to take these
children into the public foster-care system.
Meyer adopted an
autistic girl from the Ukraine, whom she found "through friends"
after the child had moved from family to family following a
disrupted adoption.
Similarly,
Madeline Lynch, an adoptive mother in Auburn, Mich., has taken in
four girls from Russia, the fourth of whom she heard about "through
a friend of a friend." She took the girl more than a year ago and
plans to adopt her.
Deslauriers, Tom
Schmitz's attorney, says his client took in two Chinese children
unwanted by the adoptive father an attorney who said they were
not smart enough. The Schmitzes had four other foreign-born children
two from Russia, one from Vietnam and one from Mexico, state
officials say.
Therapy is
debated
The Schmitzes
also took in kids from families sharing their interest in attachment
therapy, which may include extensive chores, strict discipline and
holding kids while looking into their eyes and feeding them
chocolate and other treats.
The Schmitzes
advertised themselves online as AT experts, says Christie, a state
attorney.
"There was a
support group," Debra Schmitz says. "It was not anything untoward or
illegal. We just all talked." She says parents asked: "Can you take
my child for a week? Pretty soon, they can't handle them at all, and
the kids stay."
Many of the
websites she used disappeared after her arrest in June 2004, says
Shepard, the sheriff.
Debra Schmitz
says many of her kids had reactive attachment disorder, an inability
to trust, empathize or bond. Federici says only two or three do. He
says most suffer from severe brain damage or psychiatric disorders
that make them inappropriate court witnesses.
Federici says
Schmitz's "overzealous discipline" was not formal AT, but he argues
most of the criminal charges against the couple are false. "It was a
zoo there, but the state of Tennessee allowed it," says Federici,
citing the numerous home studies state officials had done.
Twice, for short
periods, the Schmitzes took in Marianna, an adopted girl from
Matthews, who also espoused AT. Matthews also took care of at least
one Schmitz child. "We help each other out," Matthews says. "I've
had quite a few people say: 'If you don't take this child, I'm going
to kill her. You're my last resort.' "
Theresa Showell
of Phoenix, who's studying to become an attachment therapist, took
in a girl, Bethany, from the Schmitzes because they had trouble
dealing with her. She plans to adopt Bethany. She's also taken in
four children from Russia and a fifth child who initially came for a
two-week stay. She believes AT's cuddling and intensive structure
help her children.
Critics say some
AT techniques amount to child abuse. "It's fairly brutal. It's like
turning a home into a boot camp," says Larry Sarner, legislative
director of the non-profit Advocates for Children in Therapy. His
group says some families "swap" children in part to keep them
"off-balance."
"Attachment
therapy is a young and diverse field," says a new report by a task
force of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children,
a non-profit group based in Charleston, S.C. "The benefits and risks
of many treatments remain scientifically undetermined."
Markus says
children with severe behavior problems may cause some families to
cross the line of acceptable parenting. "I've heard lots and lots of
cases where parents have to take extraordinary steps just to
(physically) protect them selves," Markus says.
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