This is a horrible horrible account of a family living in squalor. The baby died at some point in the night. Obviously the parents are at fault. How much blame do you lay at child services?
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/article188429509.html
"…The stench of decay, sewage, rotting food, dirty diapers, cigarettes, stale beer and sour milk hit Schellhardt and his fellow officers. One cop staggered, then vomited.
Schellhardt stared at steps leading to the living room area of the split-level home. They were covered with animal feces and trash stuck on top of a kind of orange ooze. He didn’t want to go in. He didn’t want to move.
But he knew the baby’s father was somewhere inside. He didn’t know how Matthew died. And there were the other kids…"
Oh no no no. My house is dirty. That house is poisonous.
I agree that foster care is often a terrible place for children- but when this is the alternative, I think foster care should be a chance worth taking.
I feel so bad for all the kids. I found it very touching how the oldest girls were trying to carve out a space of their own and doing the younger kids laundry at the grandmother’s house.
The comment by the DCFS director is infuriating. A dirty home? This home was horrific and toxic and no one should have been living there, let alone 9 children! This whole story makes me very angry. The fact that this couple had child after child and subjected them to this kind of life? Just awful. When I think of the couples who are unable to conceive and have children and then I see a story like this, ugh, it makes my blood boil.
Yep, I agree with @BunsenBurner I also have more sympathy with the DCFS director than some of you seem to have.
It’s really hard when there are a lot of kids because often the kids really are bonded to one another and it’s incredibly rare for that many kids to be accepted by one foster family. Splitting them up can really, really emotionally scar a child. Yes, you are removing them from a filthy home. Yes, you are taking them away from parents who neglected them. You are ALSO taking them away from some or all of their siblings and doing that may hurt them a lot.
In this case, it appears that none of the children were beaten. There’s no indication of sexual abuse. For fairly strong stretches of time, the family–especially the wife–seemed to “get it together.”
So, yes, at the end of the story, it’s easy to say the kids should have been removed earlier. But at each step along the way…I suspect it wasn’t that clear.
The kids were very tight knit but I have also seen secret keeping as a family glue.
The filth was awful but the kids were exposed to this as well: “In his frustration, police say Tim got drunk and hit his wife. He punched holes in the walls…”
The kids in the family were split into two groups but they were with family members. None of them were placed with strangers. “…The kids now live with Amy’s sister and her mother. They live across the street from each other, within a block of their old home. They still go to the same schools, play on the same streets…But Presson noted in one of the interviews, the kids seemed relieved, now able to bathe and do their homework and go to the bathroom with the door shut…”
Foster care is tough on kids. My husband’s aunts and uncles were in the system after their mother died, the dad was in prison, and my father in law was fighting in the Korean War. They talk about how hard it was. They had no alternative. These kids had family members ready to step up.
I get the impression this is a sparsely populated area-? After all, it’s 26 miles to where he was booked. I doubt there are many potential foster parents lined up.
So, the question is, why weren’t they placed with the relatives sooner? (Which is generally the first preference, if suitable.) Rather than the DCFS director seeming to state he’s anti about moving kids, at all. "You shouldn’t take a child out of home just because it’s dirty.” This wasn’t just dirty.
Foster care isn’t all bad stories, btw. There are problem adults and many good ones.
I suspect that it would have been difficult to place the kids with relatives while the dad was still living across the street. It sounds as if he was very controlling and probably nearby relatives were frightened of him. As soon as DCFS left, my guess is that he would have made all of the kids come back home. It is more feasible now that he is in jail.
DCFS closed the case. They left things unexamined, though there was evidence that conditions were getting worse. They spent years telling the parents to clean the house and listening to promises that it would be done. We know better than that. I have much empathy for their working conditions, high case loads and few options for remedies. The list of who failed these children is very long; poignant is the way some stepped up to help.
The likelihood that children are otherwise “well tended” in a home that is completely destroyed and not habitable is very small. Abused and neglected children are often told by their parents what to say to social services to avoid continued intervention or removal from the home. Fear is cultivated and kids are loyal, with no frame of reference for functional parenting. They also have connections to their parents, who they often feel responsible for from a very young age, and their siblings, enhanced by messaging that it us against the world. Complex, unacceptable and heart breaking, with a lifetime of consequences. We have a long way to go to address the needs of children whose parents are severely compromised.
The father had an explosive temper. The kids were living in feces. The baby died.
No sorry. I have a lot of sympathy for social workers and whatnot and as I said up-thread, foster care isn’t always the best solution. But it likely would have been a better solution than this.
These kids are going to be screwed up for a long time. They endured mental, and I’d take a wild guess and say physical abuse too. Remember, a lot of people are fiercely loyal to their abusers. That’s how they survive.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that it would have been a better solution than leaving children in this horrific mess. I’m surprised that some of you think otherwise. Feces, rats, roaches, filth. No one is better off in that type of situation than either with relatives or in foster care. We hear about the awful stories of foster care but most foster parents provide a good home to the kids they take in.
@alwaysamom I’m not saying that the children should have been left in the home. I’m only saying that I am not as ready to condemn DCFS for failing to remove the children earlier–especially when dad had not been convicted of anything. Would I have made the same decision? I don’t know. I’d like to think I would have made a different one…but I’m not going to assume that it was as open and shut a case as it is in hindsight.
The holes in the drywall of the house are evidence of domestic violence. It’s interesting he had a huge new flat screen and a Wii U. He could have turned in that massive pile of aluminum beer cans for some cash. I’m amazed the DCFS wouldn’t gently suggest birth control for this family. I guess they were baby hoarders as well. Kittens and puppies living in these conditions would be removed in my state. I thought the house was a run down 60’s split level. Reading the article Habitat built the house for the family. They were to pay $250/month for it. They never made one payment. I’m not clear why the parents are not charged with homicide. The baby was in a car seat. Someone must have physically smothered him. I’m amazed the father was arrested in 2014 and it took three years to go to trial for a DUI/accident. Something is broken in Illinois.
Alcoholic controlling dad. Depressed and repressed mom. Hoarder house. DOCUMENTED FOR YEARS.
Too many children, too many (house pooping) animals, too much (beer can prominent) trash.
I DO find DCFS culpable. Yes, the foster care program is broken, but there seemed to be extended family support here that could have been given the option to take in the children before the baby’s death.
I finally was able to read the entire article. Oh what a truly sad, sad story how a mental illness (the article mentions several expert opinions) can destroy what could have been a happy family.
