Last night I was reading a story in the Cincinnati Enquirer that is absolutely abhorrent! I just couldn't resist reacting to it! See the story below:
CINCINNATI ENQUIRER - At age 31, Mary Mitchell has seven lovely children and is pregnant with her eighth.
She’s also a crack addict on her way to prison for violating her probation, leading a judge Tuesday to hold her up as the prime argument for the resurrection of institutions for abused or neglected children.
“Mary, you’re the poster child for people who talk about bringing back orphanages to protect children,” Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Norbert Nadel said Tuesday. “(Your) children might be safer in an orphanage.”
Mitchell was convicted of robbery after she went through the pockets of a man who’d been attacked in Price Hill by Mitchell and her two male partners.
Nadel put her on three years probation in February 2006. She violated that probation by testing positive twice for cocaine last month.
Nadel was aghast as social workers, probation officers and Mitchell’s attorney laid out her story.
Mitchell has seven children, but two of them are in permanent custody of relatives.
Her youngest was born addicted to crack cocaine.
She’s pregnant again.
“Aren’t you concerned about having more kids that will be crack-addicted?” Nadel asked without getting a response.
The fathers of the children are either in prison or can’t be found.
“My heavens,” Nadel said.
He was particularly upset when he was told the Hamilton County Department of Job & Family Services sought to give five of Mitchell’s children back to her before her latest arrest.
“What a horrible, horrible situation,” Nadel said.
All of the children now are in foster care and Mitchell lost her $760 per month in food stamps and $660 per month in cash from the government.
Mitchell’s attorney, Norm Aubin, told the judge that Mitchell’s drug addiction and poor choices of men are to blame.
Aubin said when she gives birth, the eighth child also will be placed in foster care.
That didn’t appease the judge.
“These poor children, they’re born with three strikes against them,” Nadel said. “She appears to me to be an unfit mother, a horribly unfit mother.”
Nadel revoked Mitchell’s probation and sent her to prison for five years on the original robbery charge.
She left the court in tears.
CINCINNATI ENQUIRER - At age 31, Mary Mitchell has seven lovely children and is pregnant with her eighth.
She’s also a crack addict on her way to prison for violating her probation, leading a judge Tuesday to hold her up as the prime argument for the resurrection of institutions for abused or neglected children.
“Mary, you’re the poster child for people who talk about bringing back orphanages to protect children,” Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Norbert Nadel said Tuesday. “(Your) children might be safer in an orphanage.”
Mitchell was convicted of robbery after she went through the pockets of a man who’d been attacked in Price Hill by Mitchell and her two male partners.
Nadel put her on three years probation in February 2006. She violated that probation by testing positive twice for cocaine last month.
Nadel was aghast as social workers, probation officers and Mitchell’s attorney laid out her story.
Mitchell has seven children, but two of them are in permanent custody of relatives.
Her youngest was born addicted to crack cocaine.
She’s pregnant again.
“Aren’t you concerned about having more kids that will be crack-addicted?” Nadel asked without getting a response.
The fathers of the children are either in prison or can’t be found.
“My heavens,” Nadel said.
He was particularly upset when he was told the Hamilton County Department of Job & Family Services sought to give five of Mitchell’s children back to her before her latest arrest.
“What a horrible, horrible situation,” Nadel said.
All of the children now are in foster care and Mitchell lost her $760 per month in food stamps and $660 per month in cash from the government.
Mitchell’s attorney, Norm Aubin, told the judge that Mitchell’s drug addiction and poor choices of men are to blame.
Aubin said when she gives birth, the eighth child also will be placed in foster care.
That didn’t appease the judge.
“These poor children, they’re born with three strikes against them,” Nadel said. “She appears to me to be an unfit mother, a horribly unfit mother.”
Nadel revoked Mitchell’s probation and sent her to prison for five years on the original robbery charge.
She left the court in tears.
It is stories like these that make me a HUGE proponent of the rebirth of orphanages. Having a family member who is a prosecutor, I have certainly heard so many stories about innocent children raised by incompetent parents, who have zero chance in life! They get shuffled from parent to parent, to aunt to uncle, to grandma, to foster care and then all over again! If this country would just realize that not everyone can be REHABILITATED and it is in the best interest of many children to sever ties from their families!
This day in age, we are so concerned with being politically correct and not offending anyone, that we look past what is best for a child and only think what is going to be the least confrontational. So...we give these kids, who are products of addicts, back to their addicted parents and think that is what is best for them. Or, we shuffle them through the most awful foster care system, while their unlawful parents are trying to be "rehabilitated" or are incarcerated, in hopes that they will have some form of normalcy. And I know, before some of you reading this jump all over me, that there are many good foster care families, but there are also so many that are not! Many people abuse the system and become foster parents for the little bit of money that they will make, instead of for the purpose of loving and caring for a child! And many of these children will never have a chance and end up being replicas of their upbringing!
If we brought back orphanages, where these children would have discipline, which is foreign to so many of them, just think of the amount of potential they would have! There would be rules, school, healthy food and a healthy, stable atmosphere. They wouldn't be shipped all over the place trying to find someone who wants them... They would have hope and structure! Why not eradicate the foster care system and replace it with orphanages?
**Please note: I am a HUGE proponent of adoption and only wish it were easier for loving families to adopt these children from such traumatic living conditions.**
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