Ah, The Mythology Takes Another Hit

We have a page on our MSN group, Anti-Adoption Truth (link is at the right) which has a list of these stories as long as your arm. The thread is on the "Docs. & Articles" page and is titled "Adopter Abuse in the News." I suggest that everyone who thinks that natural parents are fated to abuse (one commenter said "millions of children," an overstatement of momentous proportions), need to see that it happens in adoption situation as well and, proportionately, perhaps more often.

I am so sick of the idea people have that an unmarried, young woman is predisposed to abusing her child. There are skewed studies to this effect that were commissioned by the proponents of adoption and the industry, mainly the NCFA and the EBDIA. Now, who would have more to gain by an unbalanced "study" that only tells a small part of the story? I know too many single, young moms who are paragons of motherhood and would never think of harming their child. It is unfair and unreasonable. What if we judged all adopters by this woman in this article?

The poor kids in this article went from the frying pan into the fire. This woman is a nut job who has no business raising puppies (another puppy-mill adopter), much less children who have already been through a rough time. Who the heck does these "home studies, anyway?" Don't older, special needs kids have the same right to a safe home as healthy, cute infants and toddlers?Hmmmmmm??

The fact is that those who adopt are no better than those of us blessed with our own children, and there are, at least, as many abusers, divorces, alcoholics and drug abusers, neglecters and toxic caregivers in adoptive situations, proportionately, as there are in natural families. One study shows that an adult with no genetic ties to a child in their care is more likely to abuse. To be honest, this study centered on step-fathers and boyfriends, but I think it extends. Non-genetic connection is non-genetic connection.

I cannot believe that the jury is having trouble with this one. It just goes to show that the myth of the "saintly, better-than-thou, entitled" adopter is still alive and kicking and those who believe it really need a reality check. The defense attorney should be jailed along with this horrible woman.




http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/paddock/story/1103991.html

The News & ObserverPublished: Jun 11, 2008 09:59 AMModified: Jun 11, 2008

SMITHFIELD - A Johnston County jury deliberated about an hour and half today without reaching a verdict in the trial of Lynn Paddock, accused of killing her 4-year-old son, Sean.The jury is scheduled to resume deliberations Thursday.

In a final argument earlier today, a prosecutor today flashed a picture of the child's dead, shrunken body on a courtroom screen and told jurors of the terror the boy must have felt in the final minutes of his life."A picture is worth a thousand words," said Paul Jackson, an assistant district attorney. "The pleas for help that went unanswered. It's like he gave up. The world with Lynn Paddock held nothing for him but pain and terror and misery, and it cost him his life."Jackson asked jurors to convict Paddock of first-degree murder on grounds that the child was tortured.

He also asked them to consider convicting her under the theory of felony murder, meaning that the child's death resulted from the felony of child abuse.If the jury finds Paddock guilty as charged, she would spend the rest of her life in prison. Jurors may consider the lesser charges of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

Jackson reminded jurors of the unorthodox discipline Paddock unleashed on her adopted children, including striking them with a plastic plumbing supply line.He swung a piece of the line for jurors; it whistled as it sliced through the air of the silent courtroom.Jackson argued that abuse turned the children into virtual robots."These were not children who were just polite," Jackson said. "These were children who were like robots. They were afraid to do or say anything. That's soul murder. That's taking the child out of a child."

Paddock testified Monday that she didn't mean to kill Sean, who suffocated when he was wrapped tightly in blankets in February 2006.But another assistant district attorney, Kelly Sandling, pointed out that she had admitted binding him in blankets for five nights during the week he died."You don't do something for five nights in a row and call it an accident," said Sandling.

Paddock's attorney Jack O'Hale argued that Paddock had no reason to think Sean would die from the wrapping.He said Paddock and her then-husband, Johnny, welcomed trouble into their lives when they adopted foster children already exposed to tremendous abuse. The couple adopted six children; Sean was the youngest."They took in kids no one else wanted," O'Hale said.O'Hale said that Paddock learned to parent from her mother, who has been described as a tyrant who severely abused Paddock and her step-siblings.

And he attacked the prosecution's star witness, Dr. Sharon Cooper, a forensic pediatrician who said Paddock tortured her children."She was brought to you to sell something," O'Hale said. "Her product was her agenda: abuse and torture."

He suggested that the children who testified had exaggerated the level of abuse inflicted by Paddock. He said Johnny Paddock would not have tolerated such severe abuse."You think [Johnny] was permitting this to go on," O'Hale said. "It wasn't what the state portrayed it to be. It wasn't the torture, the conduct you've heard described in this case."

Jackson, however, denied that the children had overstated the abuse."What in the world would anyone have to gain?" Jackson asked jurors. "You know what [the children] had to gain. They had to come into this courtroom, with strangers, with the scariest person they've ever known in their life and talk to you about the worst aspects of their lives."

mandy.locke@newsobserver.com, or (919) 829-8927
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