Eric Ziegler, 38, didn't do a good enough job teaching his son Christopher to wash his hands after going to the bathroom. So the State of Oregon put the boy in foster care.
That's not the only reason the government intervened. But a lengthy story by Samantha Swindler in The Oregonian doesn't shy away from the awful, outrage-inducing truth: The state has taken a couple's children away not because they're abusing or neglecting the kids but because it thinks the parents aren't smart enough to raise them properly.
Ziegler and his partner, Amy Fabbrini, both have below-average IQs—72 and 66, respectively—according to documents provided to The Oregonian. After Christopher was born in 2013, other family members (most significantly, Fabbrini's father, who has a troubled relationship with her) started warning the state's child welfare agency that there were problems.
When the state Department of Human Services began investigating, it found no signs of abuse. But they did find representations of the struggles and frustrations of people with learning disabilities attempting to be parents:
In reports of concerns about the couple's parenting skills, a MountainStar [a nonprofit Oregon group devoted to helping prevent child abuse] worker recalled having to prompt them to have Christopher wash his hands after using the toilet and to apply sunscreen to all of his skin rather than just his face. Fabbrini and Ziegler's attorneys argue these weren't sufficient reasons to keep them from their son.
This year the couple had a second son, Hunter. The state also took custody of him. This time they didn't even wait to see how they'd behave as parents: Fabbrini was still in the hospital when they took the boy.
Oregon's justification for taking Christopher and Hunter away: "limited cognitive abilities that interfere with [their] ability to safely parent the child." In other words, the government declared them too dumb to be parents.
Meanwhile, Swindler's reporting describes Ziegler and Fabbrini's hard work in improving their parenting skills. It quotes other experts who are helping them and who believe the couple is capable of raising children. One volunteer mediator said she told caseworkers that she believed the couple was capable of raising Christopher. Her conclusion conflicted with the position taken by officials, and subsequently, she says, they told her that her services were "no longer needed."
America, sadly, has a lengthy history of using state power to interfere in intellectually disabled people's lives. What happened to this couple isn't as bad as what might have happened to them a century ago, where people with low IQs were often forcibly sterilized. Today Fabbrini and Ziegler's boys are hardly the only children to have been taken by the government because their parents have learning disabilities. Or any disabilities, honestly. According to the National Council of Disabilities, in 35 states it is perfectly legal to use a disability as a reason to terminate an adult's parental rights. The council calculates that between 40 and 80 percent of parents with intellectual disabilities have faced having their children removed. (They don't have more precise numbers because of a lack of research data.)
One expert quoted in The Oregonian noted that IQ doesn't really correlate with parenting problems until it drops below 50. And yet parents are losing custody of their children over fears of what might happen.
Culturally, we're well into an era where governments punish parents based on fears that are completely removed from accurate risk assessments. Reason's Lenore Skenazy regularly documents the brutal, punitive results of this mentality. Parents are abused by the state and their neighbors for the slightest of slip-ups or for misplaced fears of unlikely harms. For those with any sort of disability, intellectual or physical, these slip-ups can also be used to justify breaking their family apart.(How is this legal? How is this permitted. I know some people have more experience with family situations like this but I just can't believe it. What is this world coming too? Drug addled thieves keep their kids and these poor people lose their children.
This is typical of the elitist mindset of governmental workers and the liberal mind.
It beggars belief.)
12 comments:
This story is hard to read. Or, should I say, this story is hard to understand that the state would do such a thing. Fuck those people. Publish their names and pictures so that the citizens can see who not to trust.
How could you not love progressives?!?! They're so wonderful. They know what's best for everyone. They know SO MUCH that it is their right to OWN YOU!!!
Progressives are fascists.
72 and 66 are below average for whites, but not Somalis for example.
There may be a future race problem for the progressives here.
That sound you hear is Der Reichsfuhrer-SS laughing hysterically, somewhere in The Twilight Zone.
Or is that the origin of this story?
Remember this is Oregon. The ultimate progressive state.
To rh's point this only happened because they are white. If they were orcs there would have been full scale riots.
"...other family members (most significantly, Fabbrini's father, who has a troubled relationship with her) started warning the state's child welfare agency that there were problems."
That strikes me as a red flag. Is this part of a custody fight?
My sister introduced me to a family she knew. I have no idea their relationship. She was always attracted to strangeness.
The house was a mess.
I sat at a dining room table with another young man my age playing with preschool toys. (Yesterday I saw a video of a dog stacking the same plastic donuts of primary color of various sizes onto a thick wooden dowel to form a pyramid.) The late teenaged man had that game down. Just like the dog in the video.
There were preschool toys all over the dining room and living room.
His brother was retarded too. And so were two sisters.
Sitting there for forty-five minutes or so I learned the family had five retarded children. And another teenage girl of normal intelligence. Both parents are retarded.
It was a family of retards. Seriously so. The family's decision making sense devolved to the girl, all the family management fell to the girl. All the family's problems fell to the girl.
I think this is how my sister was involved. I don't know. The family had social workers helping them.
By that exposure of simply dreadful family situation I was forced to wonder, how in the hell does the state of Colorado allow these two retards to keep pushing out retarded babies? And low IQ points was the least of their problems. Each family member was loaded with with all kinds of serious health issues. The expense to the state was/is just outrageous. All to protect the human rights of the parents. Every child they produced, except one, was an immense expense in nursing care and financial support, and home planning, and like, an incredibly unchecked burden.
By Colorado standards of that day Oregon standards of today are enlightened. I'm guessing here, Oregon has had it up to their ears in retards. I'm putting it plainly without political correctness.
Your points are all taken. I'm not disputing them. Switch races and a different story emerges. I'm only relating what I saw for myself through my sister's predilection for oddball cases.
Incidentally, she also introduced me to her midget friends. We tore about town recklessly in one of they guy's VW bug, challenging the stoplights dangerously. The exact situation that gets people t-boned. I noticed later that guy driving became an actor. I've seen him a whole bunch of times on t.v. in movies. A chubby little guy who somewhat resembles the comic book store clerk on the Simpsons.
That's my sister for you. She'll introduce you to the oddest people.
No criticism here. Because I do the same thing. Just no so extremely.
A long, long time ago, there was some made-for-TV movie about two mentally slow people who wanted to have a baby but it was against the law or something like that. Rhoda's sister and John-Boy Walton?
Let's find out.
"No Other Love."
Not the law, apparently, but parents' wishes.
I'll award myself three marks out of four.
Chip I hear what you are saying but I have met a few families that are very similar to the one you are talking about. They are very disorganized. But there is no abuse. No crime. Often a lot of love.
This case is just outrageous. These people are not morons. They are just a little slow. How dare the state take away their kids. This case and other cases like Charlie Gard are telling us one thing. We need to do something before the government takes over everything. Every aspect of family life. It has to end.
The only way it will end is at the barrel of a gun.
America is turning into a socialist state. it is becoming an unavoidable fact at this stage. The government is so entrenched in daily life that cases like this will become the norm. If the state begins the process of divesting your interests in civil and constitutional rights and life in the name of public safety, then they end up becoming the nanny or big mother everyone said they were going to become. This is wrong. I do not advocate it, I wish people in government would grow the fuck up and see that these laws are wrong and not follow them and return these children back to their parents instead of looking like they are fallible and therefore weak in the eyes of the citizenry.
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