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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb.1, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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The news was front page, the headlines big. They charged China with the "deliberate ... systematic ... murder of orphans." The accuser was Human Rights Watch, an agency based in New York City.
As an adoptive parent who has seen up close how the U.S. foster care system handles abused and neglected kids, I feel my blood boil when I read articles like this. If Human Rights Watch really wants to investigate "unnatural deaths" of orphans and other kids in foster care, let it begin right here.
What's the real story?
Let's start with China. Han Weicheng, the deputy director of Shanghai's Civil Affairs Bureau, acknowledged high death rates in orphanages, though not as high as Human Rights Watch says (1,000 "unnatural deaths" from 1986 to 1992).
The real reasons? Many of the kids in China's orphanages are severely disabled and very ill. They often arrive in poor health. What else? 1989, when the greatest number lost their lives, "was very cold and we had no electricity," explained Han.
This is a tragedy, but it not "deliberate ... systematic murder." The "crime" here is underdevelopment--lack of high-tech health care for the chronically ill, inconsistent electricity and heat.
The criminals? The United States and other capitalist governments that have waged economic and political war on China in order to keep it from developing its economy and building socialism. In truth China, working with practically nothing, can claim major health gains since the 1949 revolution.
Then why the screaming headlines? Washington is trying to get China to change its trade policy. So the big media here lend a hand by bashing China and at the same time taking attention away from what's going on right here.
There's plenty to be shocked and appalled about in the United States.
CUTS KILL
In its May 16, 1995, issue, Family Circle magazine wrote that "2.9 million cases of child abuse and neglect were reported in this country in 1992, an increase of nearly 50 percent since 1985." Nearly 1 million cases of abuse and neglect were substantiated, including 1,261 fatalities and over 100,000 serious injuries, according to Family Circle.
The U.S. population is about one-fifth that of China. So the substantiated child death rate from abuse here is many times what Human Rights Watch alleges about China.
It doesn't stop there.
On Jan. 17 the New York State Investigation Commission released a report entitled "Secrets that Can Kill: Abuse Investigations in New York State." At issue are state laws requiring that child abuse records be destroyed if the abuse is not legally substantiated. This has left kids vulnerable to continued beatings or sexual attacks.
The study concludes, "New York State laws intended to protect children have instead become major obstacles in defending them against neglect, abuse and even death." Yes, even death.
There have been a number of exposes on the foster-care system lately. But in the current political climate, without mass protests these exposes are used to justify even more cuts in services.
The steady and ever-increasing social-service cuts begun in the Reagan years have so gutted the foster-care system that the system itself places kids at grave risk.
How? According to the American Public Welfare Association, the number of foster children in the United States grew from 280,000 in 1986 to 445,000 by June of 1993. That's a 59- percent increase. And the kids are getting younger. In states with the biggest foster-care populations, the number of children aged 3 and under increased 110 percent between 1986 and 1991.
With more and more needing care, and less and less funds provided for this care, kids get caught in the system. They spend more time in foster care, often drifting from placement to placement until they are old enough to be on their own.
One foster-care boy made 23 moves in 16 years, according to the American Public Welfare Association. I know other children who have led similar lives.
Under block grants, and with proposed cuts to these services on city, state, and federal levels, this trend can only accelerate.
Life is hard enough today for young people who have families to help them.
It's a struggle to get a real education in the schools. There are few jobs. College is expensive.
With the job market constantly changing, it's even hard to know what trade or career to study.
What happens to kids who spend their childhoods in foster care, moved from home to home and school to school, with spotty education, no families and few personal attachments?
To see, let's get back to New York. The city of Wall Street. The city of the big bucks.
Pat O'Brien is former head of New York's Downyside Agency, which specializes in the adoption of children 11 years old and up. He paints a grim picture.
According to O'Brien, of the kids who go through the foster-care system without being adopted or reunited with a functioning family, half are dead within 10 years. Half.
More than any other group, these youths are at risk for homelessness, HIV, IV drugs and jail.
There is no excuse for this. It is happening in the United States, where the rich get richer by the week. This is state-sponsored murder of kids. This is where it exists; this is where it is "systematic" and "deliberate."
What's this all about? It's life under capitalism.
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