Please Read This TWICE
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. – Frederick Douglas
Please read this not once but twice. Read once and feel the shock of it and then read it again and imagine you are that mother.
A friend of mine, an Easter House mother in reunion, recently shared something I have never heard before. Perhaps it has happened others. Perhaps you have heard of it. Perhaps it happened to you. I just never heard of it before and it shocks and disgusts me.
What is it?
Well, friend informed me that after surrendering her child in open court (per the state regulations for the state she lived in) with agency caseworker standing at her side, the judge sentenced her to complete community service.
Read that? Community Service. Like a criminal. Which act was criminal I wonder? Sex outside of marriage? Giving up her child? Hmm? What warranted community service?
Community service.
After a baby brokering agency (unknown to her at the time) helps her to give her child a “better” life, the judge in the case requires her to complete COMMUNITY SERVICE.
I am gonna say it again.
Community service.
WTF?
Isn’t giving up your child that mythical “better life” enough community service? How about the fact that you are making some infertile families dream come true so they can pretend your child was “as if born” to them? That seems to a valuable community service many agencies believe mothers provide, being a breeder for someone else. Isn’t that a enough service?
Really? Community service?
Where does the insanity stop?
Sentencing surrendering mothers to community service?
I am sickened. Truly disgusted.
I thought I had seen it all. Thought I had heard every horror story imaginable but apparently not.
Now please, read this a second time and this time pretend you are that mother, a few days post partum, aching for your child, having to stand up in court with baby brokering agency rep beside you and then to your surprise, being ordered to complete community service.
Or maybe you would like to pretend you are the adoptive parents of that child. How would you like to know that in order for you to get your dream child the mother was ordered to complete community service as a condition of her release back into the world sans her child?
This sounds to me like enacting additional, unwarranted punishment for the mother–just in case having her child taken from her didn’t give her enough of a clue that she, in their minds, did wrong. Like those mothers who were denied pain medication during labor because “she deserved it”. One of my problems with adoption is the fact that it often comes down to the personal bias of people in power, like this judge who sounds like he/she arbitrarily decided to hand down punishment to someone who’s been punished enough.
I agree Triona and I have other similar examples.
One mother I lived with in the home had an episiotomy sewn up wrongly/badly and the doctor told her afterwords it was her punishment for having sex with a man outside of marriage. Another was given such poor medical care she was never able to conceive again. And all of us in the home were treated by the clinic doctors/doctors in training. Yet surprisingly (or not) in the cases like mine where babies were being adopted through Easter House, the prospective adopters were being charged HUGE fees to cover mothers medical care. Huh? Huge fees for substandard medical care?
It’s inexcusable. And I can’t imagine the hate that must live inside of someone to want to and be able to hand down sentences like that. Community services, botched episiotomies, refusal of pain medication – I will never understand the people that feel it’s their place to punish these women.
How on earth did the judge get away with that?! Surely she needed to be charged with some kind of crime for that to happen, or did they just come up with some kind of trumped up charge? I’m so angry right now…
Karlinda –
In the state this happened (I am not noting that out of privacy) there are things called Blue Laws. It is quite possible that she had indeed violated some puritan value. I have no idea (but I intend to find out). She told me she got to pick from a selection of community service options. ?@#$@##$\ – and she did complete her duty.
It is also possible the judge (as noted above by Triona) was drunk on his own power. How would a 19 yo girl with no legal representation know any better? Her only support was from the agency that stood to profit from the placement of her child.
Suz, totally appalling and disgusting!!!
Absolute power corrupts absolutely as they say, grrrr!!!
UFR!!!
that sounds totally insane and ludicrous! I honestly cant think of how or why that order was made. Family court has become more powerful than criminal court. at least in criminal court your presumed innocent.
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This makes me so sick that I can’t even type…
Did she do the service or tell them to stick it? What was required? Is she willing to name the Judge and social worker in this case?
Truly sickening.
Wow..yikes. That just doesn’t make any sense at all…! My first mom hid her pregnancy (me) for nine months from my grandparents and didn’t tell them until her water broke. After she left the hospital, not knowing what else to do with a post partum 17 year old, grounded her for two weeks. And I thought THAT was harsh???
WTF.
WTF?!
Uhhh…ok, again, wtf?!
It would be kick @ss if this woman was willing to step up and out and throw this out to the public.
Wowzers.
Laurel – I wish she would. This mom is very private about the stuff. I need to respect that. I felt bad even posting this here but I dont believe I have revealed much about her. And I was so angry, so shocked, I had to vent and share yet another judgement cast down on a mother for giving her child that so called better life.