Where have I been transported to?
Swat teams pepper spraying college students exercising their right to assemble. Extremists in armed standoffs with police, while other law enforcement officials cover up the murder of unarmed citizens. Purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain turned into wastelands due to resource extraction. Chemical waste killing citizens who are unaware and or misled about water supplies of their area.
Yet none of this bothered me as much as the following story from our great state of Pennsylvania. (Names have been fabricated in the following account). Joe and Mary were newlyweds, and moved to Pennsylvania for a great job opportunity. Having difficulty having children of their own, they look towards adopting a child. After a laborious process, they foster a few children and choose two disadvantaged boys, Peter and Paul.
Peter is around 10, and his biological mother is a drug addict, negligent, system abuser. Paul is his younger brother (7ish) and they have been in and out of foster homes and they both basically have PTSD due to the environment that they have been in for most of their young lives. As Joe and Mary move toward adopting Peter and Paul, they get them involved in sports and other activities. The social workers covering the adoption spend the next six months watching the couple and their potential children for about 20 hours a week, constantly in the young couple’s home. After a week or so, as they are at the children’s track and field practice, one of the social workers breaks down in tears because finally these boys will have a stable environment and opportunities for a normal life.
Peter has trouble adapting to the new environment, still longing for his biological mother’s affection. Paul seems to thrive under the new environment. Peter’s difficulties increase until he becomes violent towards Joe and Mary. The difficulties continue until the adoption is being finalized, at which point the curtain pulls back and the couple learns that Peter has been sexually molesting Paul.
The couple attempts to have the state intervene with Peter and get him help, while still adopting Paul. At this point, the state takes both boys, and sticks them together in another foster home. Peter’s therapist brings up these behaviors in one of his sessions, and Peter replies, “I’ve been doing this since my Mom would just leave the room. You should really put Paul in another home because I won’t stop.” Paul is still living with his brother. Joe and Mary have had their child ripped away from them by the state, forcing him into more years of molestation, all because the couple wasn’t taking both kids off the state’s hands due to Peter’s issues. Really?
This is what we have come to, State mandated molestation. I’m an aspiring fantasy author who writes about murder, torture, and demons taking over the world and its inhabitants. Never before have I come across something that put me into a fetal position crying about the lack of humanity. I wish I could hug Paul, but will he ever be able to feel the love in that embrace? Will it just be fear of contact with other humans that he feels? Where did we lose sight of another’s humanity, and stop realizing that by raising everyone up we necessarily improve our own lot in life? Someone please wake me up, because I tire of this nightmare…
