Tuesday, May 11, 1999

Family joins adoption lawsuit

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Says county wanted black home for boy

BY ANNE MICHAUD
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ken and Ellen Read had a two-year struggle to adopt their foster son. The boy, with his back to the camera, plays with his brother Daniel, 11. (Yoni Pozner photo) | ZOOM |

        A lawsuit over transracial adoptions has prompted a federal investigation of Hamilton County's record on such placements, the county confirmed Monday.

        Also Monday, a Price Hill family came forward to join the lawsuit and tell about their two years of heartache trying to adopt the boy who has lived with them since infancy.

        Kenneth Read said the department favored an African-American family over his in trying to place his foster son, now 3¹/₂, for adoption. “Had there not been another family, I don't think they would have hesitated ... But there was another family, and that family was black and therefore deemed to be a better fit for him.”

        The Reads won the battle to keep their adoptive son, whose name they do not want published, when a court magistrate overturned the decision of the human services department in August.

        Now the couple is joining the legal battle in the hope that similar pain is not inflicted on another family. On Monday, they became co-plaintiffs in a lawsuit that claims the human services department is illegally delaying and denying adoptions because of race.

        The lawsuit was filed on April 19 in U.S. District Court on behalf of the Reads' adoption caseworker. The suit claims the Department of Human Services (DHS) delays and denies transracial adoptions in violation of federal law. Lawyer Scott Greenwood is seeking class-action status, which means the lawsuit could result in new rules for all county adoptions.

        The lawsuit led the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to open an investigation, said Michael Kharfen, a department spokesman.

        The county stands to lose federal funding as a result of the investigation, he said, the second it has faced in less than a decade. (The first occurred after Maurice “Reesie” West, a 2-year-old who was removed in 1989 from a Sharonville home where white parents wanted to adopt him. He was placed with an African-American family in Rochester, N.Y., and eight weeks later, he was beaten to death by one of his new parents.)

        Two laws passed in the mid-1990s make it illegal to use race, culture and heritage as factors in adoptive placements, with rare exceptions.

        But there is no consensus among social workers about how to interpret the law, said Don Thomas, the county's human services director. He spoke publicly about the lawsuit for the first time.

        “All of us are struggling with what the law means,” he said Monday. The laws “are probably well-meant, but they are very short and terse.”

        He said child welfare agen cies around the state are watching what happens here, in the hope of receiving guidance from HHS or the courts in what the law means in day-to-day practice.

        The county did not comment specifically on the Reads' case.

        Statistics suggest a continuing crisis: 56 percent of the 110,000 children awaiting adoption in the United States are African-Americans, who make up only 12 percent of the country's population. From 1995 to 1998, about 14 percent of adoptions through the DHS were transracial, according to information released by the county last month.

        While social workers argue, families are caught in the middle.

        The Reads' adoptive son was placed in their modest Price Hill home in 1996, when he was not quite 5 months old.

        It was the first time the Reads had acted as foster parents. Mr. Read, who teaches music and ministry at Cincinnati Bible College, called the experience a “roller coaster.”

        “You know your job is to give to the child. You want to give your heart all the way, but you have to hold something back because you know you're going to have to say goodbye,” he said.

        Ellen Read, a registered nurse, works in the home and home-schools their four birth children, ages 9-16.

        The Reads' manner is sad, then angry, as they recount the years they struggled to adopt their son: the day they discovered his mother's parental rights would be severed, a form letter from the state telling them that it was illegal to use race in adoptions, visits with the African-American couple who wanted to adopt the boy, searching for the county's policy on the Internet.

        “We really didn't get due process,” Mr. Read said. “We didn't hear what our civil rights were, much less have them carried out.”

        They are trying to introduce their adoptive son to African-American culture. Mrs. Read has joined a more diverse home-school group. They are reading books by African-American adults who grew up with white parents. Mrs. Read and the boy attend an African-American church on Wednesday nights.

        Barbershops are segregated, Mr. Read has discovered, and now he takes the boy to an African-American shop and finds himself in the minority for a change.

        Mrs. Read said that if their adoption worker had not stood up for them, they would not have their son today. They recalled the training they attended to qualify as foster parents and the county's oft-repeated slogan, “Moves hurt kids.”

        “A child doesn't need to be in foster care, he needs to be adopted so these bonds. .. I don't know how to word it,” Mrs. Read said as she folded her arms into her chest.

        Her husband stepped in for her. “It does take a village to raise a child,” he said. “But a village without a family is nothing more than a lot of well-meaning professionals.”

       

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