By Cindi Andrews
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Anthony Read, 8, plays in the family room of his Price Hill home under the watchful eye of his dad, Ken Read. (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

Years of civil rights violations by Hamilton County's adoption agency - violations that kept white families from adopting black children - are revealed in unprecedented detail in a new report by the federal Office for Civil Rights.

In the report, obtained by the Enquirer, the county's human services department is criticized for delaying and derailing transracial adoptions by scrutinizing the racial makeup of prospective parents' neighborhoods and making them write special plans for maintaining a child's cultural identity, among other practices. The state's human services agency also is condemned for not policing the county department.

"The longer kids are in the system, the much more likely it is that they won't be adopted," said Scott Greenwood, a lawyer who represented several families and a caseworker in a related lawsuit against Hamilton County. "This practice had the effect of putting these kids in a holding pattern."

The report covers 11 years before the 2002 settlement of his clients' lawsuit, which prompted national debate on whether children are better off being raised by parents of the same race. The county ended the suit by agreeing to follow the law and cooperate with a court-appointed monitor, but the Office for Civil Rights continued investigating past violations.

Counting the days

From 1995 to 2000, investigators found, black families wanting to adopt black children waited an average of 89.8 days. White parents wanting to adopt black babies waited an average of 201.5 days.

At the same time, white children under 2 years old waited an average of 145 days from the time they came into Hamilton County's custody until adoption. But African-American children under 2 waited 53 percent longer - an average of 223 days.

"These ... discriminatory policies and practices had serious, direct and adverse consequences for the children and families involved," the report says.

The state also comes in for a thrashing.

Ohio had adoption placement policies that violated federal law and it failed to adequately supervise counties, according to the report. The state human services department had just one person responsible for monitoring all 88 counties' adoption agencies and 253 private adoption agencies, and in five years never conducted a compliance review in any large metropolitan county.

The county and state could face a fine of up to $15 million, but officials say they hope it will be much less since they have changed their ways.

"We hired 10 additional staff (in 2000) and all were sent out immediately into the field," said Barbara Riley, head of Ohio's Office for Children and Families. "We have been very much on top of it."

At the county level, Suzanne Burke took over the human services agency - now called Job and Family Services - in 2002, and an assistant director who supported race-based placements left.

County policies have been rewritten and a lot of training added, Burke said, to ensure that children are placed with the parents best able to love and care for them - regardless of race.

In addition to the court-appointed monitor, Burke has her own full-time staff person monitoring compliance with adoption laws.

"Frankly, I don't see how a financial penalty would do anything at this point but take services away from children," she said.

A new attitude?

Ken and Ellen Read, a white Price Hill couple, say they have seen a marked change at the agency since they first tried to adopt their African-American foster child in 1997.

The family was required to write a cultural-identity plan and encouraged to change churches to one that was more integrated, according to the report by the Office for Civil Rights - violations of federal law because the agency didn't make the same demands in same-race adoptions. Even after the Reads complied, the county's selection committee recommended putting the boy with a black woman.

The Reads only got to keep him after Juvenile Court ruled the 2-year-old shouldn't be taken from the only family he had known since he was 4 months old.

Now the Reads, who were part of Greenwood's lawsuit, find themselves again trying to adopt a child from Hamilton County - this time an 11-month-old boy of mixed ethnicity who has lived with them since birth.

"None of the issues that came up last time have been an issue this time," said Ken Read, a music professor at Cincinnati Bible College. "I have to say they've really not asked (about race)."

Greenwood, however, is not convinced race-based placements have been rooted out.

Hamilton County claimed to have changed once before, he said, after 2-year-old Maurice "Reecie" West was beaten to death by one of his adoptive parents in 1989. He'd been sent to a black family in Rochester, N.Y., despite his white foster parents' desire to adopt him.

The county and state have 30 days from the Oct. 20 report to submit plans to fix the problems or risk losing federal money. State and county officials said they'll explain the changes they've made.

Reporter Robert Anglen contributed. E-mail candrews@enquirer.com or ranglen@enquirer.com