In Maine “child welfare” it’s more like 1001 clowns – and there’s nothing funny about them

Tragic life imitating comic art illustrates why Maine – and every other state – needs a “balance of harms” law.

 Art … 

The movie has a happier ending. A case it echoes does not.

My earliest introduction to how child protective services works came all the way back in 1965 – at the movies. It was the film version of Herb Gardber’s play, A Thousand Clowns.  Wikipedia sums up the plot this way – including the ending, so there are MAJOR SPOILERS IN THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS: 

Unemployed television writer Murray Burns (Jason Robards) lives in a cluttered New York City studio apartment with his 12-year-old nephew, Nick (Barry Gordon). Murray has been unemployed for five months after quitting his previous job writing jokes for a children's television show called Chuckles the Chipmunk. Nick, the son of Murray's unwed sister, was left with Murray seven years earlier. When Nick writes a school essay on the benefits of unemployment insurance, his school requests that New York State [sic] send social workers to investigate his living conditions. 

In the end, Murray “is forced to conform to society to retain legal custody of his nephew.” By the end Murray is back in a business suit, carrying a briefcase, returning to the job he hated. That’s the price for Nick to be allowed to keep living with him.

 …And life

 A Thousand Clowns is a comedy – and a very good one.  But the real-life version playing out in Maine right now is deadly serious. The story is told in still another excellent story from Josh Keefe of the Maine Monitor.  It’s a long read – and worth every word. 

The real-life Murray is Mica Adler, a woman with a three-year-old son and a dream of living close to nature and off the grid, in a tiny house that some Amish neighbors helped her build. As the story explains: 

Her goal was to build a homestead there, where she could be self-sufficient. She had a well for water and solar panels for electricity, with plans to build a geothermal heating system for warmth. 

But that doesn’t mean she never drove to the supermarket. One day, 15 months ago, in a supermarket parking lot, the boy ran right out toward the path of an oncoming car. He turned around just as Mica was reaching for him, but she wanted to make sure he never did that again.  So she spanked him – on top of his snowsuit and another layer of clothing. 

But the driver of the car into whose path the boy almost ran claimed Mica punched the boy “in the back/butt” – something she said she could see through the side view mirror of her car. 

That was what brought the Maine family police – with their well-known hair trigger – into the family’s life. Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services tears apart families and holds children in foster care at one of the highest rates in the nation. 

And when DHHS caseworkers visited the home it became clear that what really upset them was less the spanking than Mica’s unorthodox lifestyle: minimal modern amenities, not bathing often enough to meet unwritten DHHS standards, often not wearing clothes around the house, and, the only thing in all of this that could be considered harm to the boy: tooth decay; due, Mica says, to a missed appointment because of car trouble. 

But that was enough for DHHS to take the child on the spot and not even ask a judge until afterward. And the parking lot incident led to criminal charges. The boy was moved to four different foster homes – and allegedly abused in one of them.  

At times the allegations bordered on paranoia – on the part of the workers – and may have said more about the mental health of the caseworkers than anyone else’s. From the story: 

At one point early in the case, a police report noted that a DHHS caseworker supervising the visits had concerns about the fact that Adler and her son had often been naked, and that he seemed familiar with anatomical terms for private body parts. (Adler said she taught her child these terms because sexual abuse prevention specialists recommend doing so.) 

The department referred the boy to a forensic interview, which are used to gather information about possible sexual abuse. There are no details about this interview in the DHHS files reviewed by The Monitor, and there were no formal allegations made. (Adler’s lawyer later said that had there been any findings, the department would have introduced them into the case.)[Emphasis added.] 

It took a jury only an hour to find Mica not guilty of the criminal charges.  DHHS ultimately dropped its child abuse case.  Even the “guardian ad litem” named to represent the child’s “best interests” (and who, in this case, happened to be a former Maine Attorney General) wrote in one report: 

“While I might have my own view of Ms. Adler’s lifestyle, she was the only parent to [the boy] for several years, to cut [the boy] off significantly from his mother would not be in his best interest.” 

Yet Mica still doesn’t have her son back. That’s because, after four foster home placements, DHHS placed the child with his father, with whom he had not lived before, and now there are ongoing acrimonious negotiations over custody. 

Balance of harms 

Legislation introduced in Maine would require courts to apply a balance-of-harms test; that is, to weigh the enormous inherent emotional trauma of removal against the harm to the child of remaining in her or his own home. And it would require DHHS to show it did everything it could to mitigate any alleged harm that might occur by keeping the family together (something the director of the agency recently effectively admitted it does not do). 

So let’s balance the harms in this case: 

● If the child remained at home he might suffer further tooth decay (unless, of course, DHHS mitigated that harm by doing something bold and creative like, uh, taking him to a dentist). 

● By removing the child he was subjected to the trauma of separation at an age when he could not possibly understand it. Indeed, he might process it as further punishment for running toward the path of that car.  He was subjected to an astounding number of traumatic interrogations.  (And, though one of the lifestyle concerns was too much nudity in the home, I wonder if total strangers from DHHS stripsearched the boy. Given the nature of the allegation it almost certainly happened at least once.)  Then he was allegedly abused in foster care. 

It doesn’t seem too hard to see where the balance of harms falls here. 

The real-life ending 

Mica’s son goes through far more than Murray’s had to endure in A Thousand Clowns.  Murray’s son was never taken from his uncle, and Murray didn’t have to conform to one “service plan” condition after another, almost none of them related to the actual allegations. 

But Mica and Murray have one thing in common: giving up their dreams. In the end, Mica learns the same lesson as Murray: Conform precisely to middle-class, white-picket-fence child-rearing norms or lose your child. 

As the story explains, Adler now has 

a more traditional living situation. She had moved into a modest ranch house with a roommate, who had just become a grandmother. The house was clean and organized, cavernous in comparison to the tiny home. ...

She explained that she has essentially abandoned her tiny home, and all it represented — at least for now. She has a job tutoring at the Academic Resource Center at Northern Maine Community College. In the fall, she will begin studying electrical construction and maintenance. It’s possible she’ll eventually get a job working on the grid she once tried to escape.

 She is afraid that bringing her son to the small piece of Maine she owns, where she dreamed of raising him, will only invite more trouble.

 “If I don’t bring [my son] there, then it’s just going to be easier to keep them out of my life,” she said. “Out of our lives.”

Oh, and one last question: What wasn’t getting done by caseworkers for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, what child in real danger was missed while so many people there spent some much time tearing apart and keeping apart this mother and child?