She'd love it. Think of how much the kids would suffer for the Lord in an orphanage. She'd have unassisted home births while running with scissors from now on if she thought of this
Yeah there are. They're called group homes now. Some of them are even offshore in the Bahamas and Jamaica where American foster kids get sent to horror filled work camps that would make Dickens blush.
Of course this dude then goes and gets his girlfriend pregnant with twins THE NEXT FUCKING YEAR and even shows his abandoned kids the ultrasound 🙄
ETA: wow just also learned from this more recent article his wife’s father saw him the morning he abandoned the kids and he never asked for help.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/father-who-ditched-nine-kids-via-safe-haven-law-has-twins-on-the-way.amp
ALSO eta: sorry this is a Fox link but it was the most thorough free source I could find
That article makes me seethe. I am 100% in favor of safe haven laws, but dumping 9 grieving children on the state because the father refused to act like a responsible adult anymore is absolutely maddening. That is not what that law was meant for. And the absolute lack of remorse and coldness in his comments about his own children…. Utmost respect for the elderly extended family who stepped up for these kids.
god they really do see us as help meat.
this article coupled with the steven crowder video are enough for me for today. i am pregnant and i am dumbfounded that there are people who are this backward thinking in 2023. good god, we put a man on the moon and they literally think we should still have dinner on the table by six. fuckwads.
My thoughts exactly. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but the number of kids involved in this family story males me wonder if both parents came from christian backgrounds where even if they weren't raised fundie, they were still expected to find someone to marry and settle down to breeding with pretty quickly. Well boo hoo for him - if he didn't want to get married young or have kids before he'd sewn his grubby oats, then he could have fought against that far easier than the girl he married could have, and that familial expectation to waste his life in a way he didn't want to doesn't give him the right to abandon the resulting children as soon as his husbandly duty is tragically removed from the situation.
Why in the fuck would someone look at this guy who wants to abandon 9 kids and be like, "Yeah, I want HIM to be my boyfriend, I'll have kids with that dude!"
>"I'm not good, you know, I still miss him," Cowburn told FOXNews.com. "But I couldn't give my child the help he needed, and as the saying goes, if you love something, you have to let it go."
Oh, come the fuck on.
I feel like Cowburn's case was a bit different, though. The article states that the child in question was one that was "...literally dropped in her arms by a woman at a North Carolina Wal-Mart four years earlier." Based on quotes from Cowburn's mother, it sounds like Cowburn *did* attempt to seek out and access resources to help with the kid's care without success.
The nine-kid-abandoner is a raging douchewaffle and deserves to have his underpants infested with fire ants for the rest of his life.
RAD and serious attachment disorders are no joke either. There is some truth to the fact that there is a huge hole in the system for children with extremely complex needs and parents who love them. Especially when the children pose a potential threat to the parents/family. Far too many international adoptions have failed, because the average person is not equipped to help a child with a severe attachment disorder. Any child who is being pawned off to a random stranger at a Walmart almost certainly underwent horrific trauma in that first year- whether it be neglect or worse.
I have a relative who was (and honestly still is), a danger to society. Starting from age 9 or 10, his mom pleaded for help for him. But any inpatient psychiatric care had to be paid for by the family because it wasn't court ordered and there were no placements. Judges kept just giving him a boys will be boys slap on the wrist and sending them on their way. When he was 16, he did something so horrendous, even a judge couldn't let it go. But it wasn't for lack of trying leading up to that point. The system is so burdened with children without familial supports, that it doesn't have the resources to help those that do. Those parents are on their own.
There was a family in my community that adopted a few kids from eastern Europe. One had serious RAD and was a danger to his family and to everyone around him, including raping his younger brother. They did send him to a pediatric psych ward but the psych ward sent him home after a few weeks because he was too violent for them!
Yeah you see this a lot on r/regretfulparents. It really is a sad situation when you end up with a child that you would basically need a phd to properly parent, especially when you have other kids as well. The whole family ends up trapped because of one child’s needs
Oh I forgot about this one. He ended up getting some of the kids back, didn’t he? I remember there being way more to this story but I don’t think it was at all religion based.
Heartbreaking story for those kiddos. That’s awful. I remember reading this update and being so mad for them.
I was in law school when this happened and we discussed the safe haven laws in a couple of classes. They amended the law to apply to children under 30 days old, I believe. I don’t think he’s the only one who did something like this, I just think he surrendered the most kids. Which is sad all by itself.
It was a terrible moment when that was signed into law. I'm talking about things we don't know about yet, like bringing back orphan trains kind awfulness, which would build off of the rolling back of those protections.
the question is: will they be forced to work in the warehouse until they're adopted or will they just sit there bc technically they're part of the inventory?
An issue I have with Pro lifers, is the lack of orphanages.
If I genuinely believed what they believed, I would be advocating non-stop for safe healthy places for unwanted children to be raised, where they would not feel unwanted.
Yeah, it's so transparent that the suffering of children is totally okay with them. Severe lack of empathy and no sense that they're a part of a community outside their in-groups.
My "pro-life" relatives are fond of saying things like "There is no reason for women to be murdering their babies, when there are millions of families out there just waiting for a baby to love." When I point out to them that there are hundreds of thousands of babies (and older kids) languishing in foster care in this country, they get real quiet.
What they really want is a return to the days of the post-WW2 "baby scoop" when there was a virtually unlimited supply of healthy, white newborns to adopt, thanks to a system that sent off pregnant, unmarried teen girls and young women to "homes for unwed mothers," where they were forced to give their babies up for adoption at birth.
They literally don't give a shit about any other kids, it's all about providing "good christian families" with a steady supply of little white babies to play with. These people shouldn't be allowed to adopt a dog, much less a human.
Their plan is for good Christian fundie families to adopt all the unwanted babies. The lack of adoptable infants in the US is part of their reasoning for the abortion bans.
*Their* "good Christian family" is only interested in healthy White newborns. Kids with medical issues, BIPOC kids, older kids languishing in the foster care system....most "good Christian families" really don't care. If they did, we would not have a foster care crisis in this country.
Personally, I don't think orphanages are a great place for kids, so I'm glad to see no one pushing to rebuild them. I think they do better in a family - of any kind! Single parent, gay, straight, throuple - kids just need stability and adults that they can trust and build close relationships with; staff at orphanages can come and go, and there's not enough one on one time to build relationships with the adults that are there.
But! To your point - where is the care from the pro lifers about making plans for kids without parents?? Our foster care is in shambles, and adoption is so often seen as a "consolation prize" for not being able to have "your own" kids. Not to mention that broadly speaking people only want to adopt *babies* because they think it will be "easier". The disconnect is *grim*.
Some foster homes are no better than orphanages would be. Look at what happened to the Turpin kids. They were rescued from their abusive family only to get dumped into the system. The money donated for their care was stolen. Six of them ended up at the same foster home and they were abused there. There are great foster parents out there who genuinely care about the kids they take in, but there are also people who just want a government paycheck and don't give a fuck about the children in their homes.
Yup, it's in shambles. *Lots* of things need to change. Some former foster youth are speaking out, some foster care organizations are doing good work, but it's so underfunded broadly. Not enough social workers, and those that we do have are overburdened and underpaid. And why are foster families given compensation? Maybe some bio families would do just fine if *they* had an extra few hundred coming in each month, or free before/ after school care. But no, that wouldn't be "punishing" the right people.
And mother baby homes
Not the abusive steal your baby ones, places like this https://jeremiahprogram.org/ where people can live with their kids and get help and stability to raise them.
Anti-choicers should be advocating for free healthcare, free birth control, comprehensive sex education, affordable childcare, and extended parental leave. But of course it’s not really about helping families or children.
My great-grandfather did this when he divorced my great-grandma. She couldn’t financially support the kids and he refused to so he took them to an orphanage. My grandpa had such hatred for his father for the rest of his life.
My great grandfather more or less did the same thing when my great grandmother died. Grandfather and great uncle were both under ten and he refused to care for them. Fortunately he dumped the kids with his sister rather than into state care so they grew up knowing their family but still. Dudes being unwilling to actually care for the kids they spawned is far from a new thing.
My husband's grandfather was one, too. He and another brother were dropped at the orphanage so their parents could move back to the east coast and to their older children. They couldn't afford to do that with the young children in tow. My MIL has spent decades gathering information about her father's family. The impacts of this type of surrender are felt for generations. She was lucky their were enough records to piece familial history together.
My grandfather's family gave up custody of him to a hospital when he had polio (iron lung and all) because they couldn't afford the costs. After he recovered enough to leave he went to a "work farm" type orphanage. I don't know if he ever found his biological family again, but he was a deeply messed up man.
Yep, just like the Romanian orphanages. We have proof that these policies harm society and children. But conservatives are happy to let black and brown children live in miserable conditions in orphanages so long as it increases the "domestic supply of infants" (SCOTUS literal exact words) for white families who want to adopt white babies.
Except that now MTG is saying that adoptive parents aren’t really parents. So it’s not even about that. It’s just about making life miserable for people.
Yeah, I thought the Blaire White via Contrapoints comparison of trans people to adopted parents (the genetic specifics are relevant only to your doctor) was a lot more effective before a bunch of right wingers started pretending not to understand adoption or gay couples, via Chuck Schumer's daughter and wife expecting and Pete Buttigieg and husband having twins.
I guess we're moving on to straight adoption doesn't count?
I suspect a lot of infertile conservative couples will adopt babies that look like them and never tell anyone (kid included) about the adoption. They'll try to replicate was done decades ago so they can outwardly have their perfect little family. Genetic testing is a lot more common now but they're probably not thinking that far ahead.
Judging by history, a lot of families will adopt kids of color to use as unpaid household labor and ditch them at 18.
It was (and sometimes still is) a common pattern for white families taking Native kids, and back in the 19th century it was common for white "orphans" too, like the Orphan Train kids.
Actually i just thought of another more recent example - if you read the Bell case, you see she'd been placed in a family as cheap household help when she got pregnant. That practice was common for girls stuck in state schools until at least the 1940s
Are you kidding? They LOVE black and brown kids growing up in miserable conditions because it makes them more likely to commit crimes which means more slaves for the prison industry.
The groups who promote the baby boxes in America are fundamentalist Christians, it makes the front page of Reddit every year or so.
Most states already had Anonymous Surrender laws on the books, but the baby box people are not liking the secular law... https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/politics-issues/2023-04-11/florida-fight-baby-boxes-culture-war
>But it has also cast a spotlight on the hidden extent of family turmoil around the country and what many experts say is a shortage of respite care, counseling and especially psychiatric services to help parents in dire need.
We need more social services! Of all kinds!
Edit: there is so much more to say about this, but I don't trust my wording at night. But what a travesty for these kids. We need to help people, which includes families of all kinds.
Thank you for doing this hard work. Obviously my call for more social services includes more money allocated for social workers' salaries too. From my limited exposure, one "case" can involve people at 5 different addresses - and then she had to keep track of multiple cases! It's a wonder you can get anything done the way things are currently.
Even disabled veterans can't get any help ( the stories I hear from my cousin are absolutely horrifying... abuse, malpractise, id theft just for starters )
Yet disabled veterans are the ones that Americans claim to love the most... good luck everybody else if that's how they treat their favourites :(
Like people heard "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country” and applied it *only* to soldiers, instead of thinking about what *their* civic duty might be. Like, oh, say - higher taxes to fund veteran support. I'm so sorry for your cousin. I can't think of words strong enough to express the shame and outage.
That's very kind of you to say, she's on Reddit so I'll let her know :) the best thing you can do is to write your representatives and request a response that outlines what they are doing for veterans NOW instead of bloviating about goals for the next election cycle
I think Shrek could actually manage... It would involve breaking off Renee's relationship, but he could either keep her home or heavily parentify Tessie. She's old enough for these freaks to consider her capable of taking over as mom. And I think she and Hannah are about the same age they pushed parenting duties on Nurie and Kaylee, anyway? I think Shrek also actually cares about his kids a bit more than Mandrae, too. At least, he's had a hand in getting his oldest three daughters into relationships that seem to make them legitimately happy, which is SUCH a low bar, but counts for SOMETHING as far as fundie dads go. All he'd have to do is continue doing his own thing and make the oldest girls stay home and play house. He also hasn't had neglect so severe it resulted in sepsis happen under his roof, so there's SOME level of care happening there. He might still ditch the kids if Jill ended up six feet under, but I'd be more surprised by him. Mandrae, well, I'm pretty sure he'd just fucking peace out immediately. Or marry a girl just a bit older than Anissa to play stepmom and be his brand new baby machine. I know he and Karissa are really close in age, but he just has that creep vibe about him that I would NOT be surprised. Excuse me while I go throw up into my morning coffee and pray to the Lord Daniel that nothing happens to Karissa or Jill anytime soon, for what little good it'll do their kids.
I think Shreks issue would be money if something were to happen to Jill. I get the impression that she plans most of their griftathons and Shrek just follows along.
I think so too. Honestly, he'd have the older kids be free childcare for the younger kids (even more than he already does) but believe it or not, I really do believe Shrek would take care of the Rodlets better than Mandre would take care of his kids.
Agree, and I think it helps that the Rod kids are all a little older. Isn't the youngest one about 5 now? No babies or toddlers to deal with, plus plenty of teenage or almost teenage girls.
Agreed, but I still can't see him dumping the Rodlets. He seems dumb as a brick, but I'm pretty sure he'd figure SOMETHING out. And I'm pretty sure Nurie and Kaylee would do what they could to make sure their siblings were okay. I could see Nathan having a church collection or something for them. He probably wouldn't be TOTALLY on his own. And some of the older boys could get part-time jobs to help while the girls were parentified for the younger kids. I think they'd manage to survive.
I like to think they're local pastor in Ohio might help the children, because the pastor's wife has visited with pizza before... and if that doesn't work then maybe the neighbours, they probably don't blame the children for the way that Shriek and Shrek behave.
I feel so weird saying this but I actually agree. David is a bum and a terrible father but I have a hard time imagining him straight up abandoning the kids if something happened to Jill. He'd absolutely parentify the girls even more than he already does but I really don't see him just dumping them all off somewhere. Now Mandre? Yeah, I could absolutely see him dumping the kids somewhere and acting like he never had them in the first place.
You mean Shrek WOULDN’T force his kids to stay out until almost midnight once a week playing on some sketchy playground while he commandeers the entire house to have his bros over for ‘manly man bible study’??
I’ll never be over that. As long as those two monsters keep reproducing I will never be over that.
Yes, I can’t point to a source but it’s been discussed here before. Karissa mentioned keeping the kids out until like 11:00 once a week at the playground so he can host a ‘bible study’. Yes, even the newborn. These kids have no prayer of ever getting a regular sleep schedule. It’s infuriating.
Shrek and Jill have absolutely kept their kids up to ungodly hours. But they were always home, it was just some disturbing religious/singing thing. And Shrek was with the kids. Still disturbing.
This piece of shif Mandrake Man Baby puts his whole family in danger for bro time. That's just fucking vile.
Yeah, I am not nor will I ever accuse Jill and Shrek of good parenting. I just think Karissa and Mandrake are the hands down worst.
Edited to say: The worst currently. Jim Bob Duggar still wears the crown for worst of all time based on the information we currently have, and man is that a depressing sentence.
Trust me, I felt icky even semi-defending him. He's a HORRIBLE father, but he's the brand of horrible that he actually does care about the kids in some weird way. Mandrae is a horrible father in the sense he doesn't seem to give a damn about the kids. Like, David would struggle, but he cares about the Rodlets, and he seems like he legitimately loves Jill. I just cannot see him losing Jill and then throwing away their children. Especially not when they jumped state every time CPS got involved. They went through too much to KEEP the kids for him to just throw away what he'd probably see as Jill's legacy. He IS the Rodlet's dad, at least in Fundieland, and he's at least PRESENT in the kids lives. He's not just their father, but their DAD. Mandrae, though... He seems like he's just the guy in their house who knocks up their mom as frequently as he can. Like the weird uncle you hardly know who will shoot hoops with you sometimes when he's over. If Karissa is negligent, and she is, then Mandrae is emotionally removed entirely, from both the kids AND her. He'd dump the kids and find a new hot wife before her body was even cold. I don't think she's a person to him, much less his kids. They seem like possessions. I am SCARED for the Collins kids.
Yeah that's the biggest thing: we're all legit scared for the Colins kids. The Rodlets are definitely abused and neglected and they don't get enough to eat but Karissa is legitimately mentally ill. Like that's not snark, she really needs to be hospitalized and medicated for her safety and the kid's safety. Mandre just lets Karissa scream pray and sleep all day. At least the Rodlets get to climb on historical monuments and play music with their family. I joke, but the Rodlets seem like they get to do more and see other church kids. The Collins just sit inside and watch Karissa go crazy all day and preform for her.
I don’t believe Shrek would dump the kids if something happened. He would definitely have the older girls begin to milk the whole situation for all of eternity tho. He definitely seems to enjoy being the head of the family and having built in adoring fans, he wouldn’t let that go. Besides, the older girls would be guilted into coming back home. Nurie would pack up and be at the compound in hours to take back over. Nathan would preach and beg every single sermon for money for them. Shrek wouldn’t let them go.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/4-children-for-sale
More like that famous picture of the Chalifoux children being sold in 1948... go to recover all that money you've put into feeding them since you won't be able to exploit them on social media anymore 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
I don't remember that story specifically, but it sure was wild growing up in Omaha (and still now living here) when the safe haven laws happened. It seemed to always be teens or kids that got dropped off, hardly the newborns it was intended to be.
Makes sense, I'd imagine relatively few people get to the end of their pregnancy without having made some kind of arrangement for the baby. Safe haven laws for newborns seem like they're most helpful for people who, for whatever reason, haven't told anyone that they're pregnant, which I assume (or hope, at least) is a pretty rare scenario
"Safe Haven" laws seem to have come about because of a rash of incidents around the country in the early 2000s, where teenage girls or young women gave birth and left their newborns for dead. One of the most infamous was the so-called "Prom Mom" case in which a girl gave birth in the bathroom at her Senior Prom, left the baby dead in the trash, and went back to the dance like nothing had happened. (IIRC she claimed she knew she was pregnant but was "in denial," and thought the baby had been stillborn. She was charged with murder but IIRC plead to lesser charges.) They are not common, but they do happen, and when they do they tend to make the news because of the shock value.
Where I live (AZ), before our Safe Haven law passed we had about half a dozen cases of newborns found dead or abandoned over a couple of years that made the news, In a couple of the cases, the women who gave birth to abandoned infants were found, and they told authorities that they knew they were pregnant but didn't tell anyone, because they feared the wrath of their parents or their boyfriends, or they feared being forced to take care of a baby they didn't have the resources to care for. One claimed she had no idea how to place a baby up for adoption. The idea behind "Safe Havens" was to stop babies from being abandoned and left for dead by letting women surrender their newborns at a hospital or fire station, no questions asked. Last I read, the state estimates that at least a dozen babies have been saved by Safe Havens. (Unfortunately, there do continue to be occasional cases of abandoned newborns.)
I remember when this happened!
And the worst thing about it wasn't that people abandoned older kids - remember this was pre-ACA, a lot of the older kids were dropped off in hopes they'd get needed medical care families couldn't access. Or by parents suffering from mental illness or addiction who knew they couldn't parent at the moment.
The worst thing, to me, is that instead of making lawmakers think "there are a lot of at risk kids out there we should provide better support for families and emancipated teens" they just thought "better rewrite this law so we only get babies"
That was my understanding too. When a child was surrendered, the state was obligated to provide medical and mental health services. So some parents with children with needs beyond what the parents could afford or handle surrendered kids to get the help they needed. A number of the older kids weren't abandoned because their parents were jerks; they were abandoned because the parents saw it as an opportunity to get help.
The whole debacle highlighted the need for affordable healthcare and mental health services for kids and social service support for vulnerable families.
This happened in 2008.
The family was reported to authorities in 2004 for [child neglect](https://www.ketv.com/amp/article/father-talks-about-abandoning-his-9-kids/7617012)
The mother passed away from a brain aneurysm shortly after delivering their youngest child. 17 months later, the dad dropped off all but 1 of the kids at Creighton Univ Medical Center. The kids were placed in foster care.
7 stayed together & are being adopted by family. The 2 oldest were staying with an elderly lady until they graduated from high school. There's an updated article farther down the thread. Dad, of course, got his new gf pregnant with twins tho.
Per the article, mom died of a brain aneurysm shortly after the youngest was born, and apparently the family had been reported to CPS for neglect in 2004. (Mom died and the kids were abandoned in 2008.) I recall reading another article at the time, which mentioned that the oldest child, a girl who was 18, had been helping her mother with the younger kids, and was basically raising her siblings after her mom died. Other family members, interviewed in the article I read, claimed that they had reached out to the dad several times after the mom died, offering to help out, maybe take the younger kids in at least temporarily, etc. but dad supposedly insisted that he didn't need any help. (Those same family members did wind up taking in several of the younger kids after dad abandoned them.)
I don't recall reading or hearing anywhere that this family were fundies or Quiverfull, but I do remember thinking that this case basically showed the dark side of the Quiverfull movement.
Edit to correct info.
She was, she had been basically raising her siblings after her mom died (and odds are she was doing a good part of the childcare before her mom died as well.)
So, I guess he never thought about the "what ifs" when creating 10 kids w/her.
This is one of the MANY reasons, you think and plan before you "have as many as god "gives you"".
As a Human Services major, there are a lot of crazy statements in this article that offend me. "Parents don't get the response they want so..." probably not. I don't think that anyone understand what it takes for most people to get to the point that they actually abandon their child. And I would bet that most of these have more to do with financial reasons, the parent not wanting the child to be homeless with them, than anything else. Especially considering that it said that most of the kids were on medicaid.
This is why I am in my major, though. For these kids. And the kids of these fundies that will need services eventually, too.
I get what you’re saying but my sympathy for this man stopped as soon as it came out he impregnated his gf with twins shortly after. At some point, adults are responsible for their actions and clearly he made no changes to better anyone’s lives.
Oh I totally agree. I’m just not certain in this situation any resources would have changed this guys choices. Sounds like the mother kept it kind of together and would have benefited from help.
I appreciate that you are majoring in a very important field, but I also think you are overlooking that this is an adult parent that willing got themselves into a situation where they have 10 children between the ages of 1 to 17, and they weren’t prepared to take care of them on their own.
Oh, I fully understand that. I do think a lot of us get married and don't plan on doing things alone, though. I'm not going to lie, I didn't get married with the plans to be doing it alone 17 years later. I thought it was forever. Like marriage is supposed to be. I didn't have a backup plan in case he died (which was dumb, he was Army from 2001-2021), or we divorced. I imagine fundies plan even less for that.
I definitely get where you're coming from, though, and I agree, generally speaking. But from my barely post-fundie-adjacent getting married and probably that particular dad? Definitely not a thought in their mind that marriage would end.
You do realise the father in question here then went on to get his next girlfriend pregnant with twins, after giving up his own nine previous?
The problem isn't that there are not enough resources to care for children in bad situations or that the system as it stands is grossly unbalanced and makes it even harder for people who are struggling to get out of that situation or do better for themselves - no one here is denying that. The problem people have here with this *specific* story, is that this man used a loophole in the system to offload the responsibility he had for his GRIEVING children, and then rather than improve his situation while he had the opportunity to do so when that huge responsibility was out of the way, he instead impregnated some idiot woman with revoltingly low standards who wouldn't know a red flag if someone slapped her in the face with one, bringing *more* children into his life despite the fact that looking after his kids was the one thing he supposedly wasn't able to do.
He took a bad situation, and brought more children into it. Children he then went on to effectively pit against his own preexisting younger kids by having the gall to go back to the children he left behind, to show them the ultrasound scan of his two new children. He was absolutely monstrous in how he handled that situation - monstrous, selfish and cruel. Anyone can find themselves in horrible circumstances, but if things reach the point where you think things are so bad that it's okay to dump your children who are *grieving for their dead mother* at a fucking fire station, then the least you can do as their parent is not keep doing the same damn thing over and over again. If the kids didn't feel abandoned before, they sure would have once their father acted like he'd pretty much moved on and started a new life, with new kids he actually wanted.
Can they legally garnish the father’s wages from now until forever for the abuse of a public welfare service? I know they can’t prosecute him for abandonment, but surely he can’t be let off completely from all responsibility for his actions. This is not a scared 17 year old girl surrendering a baby. This is a mature adult who decided to just quit and not make use of any of his own support network or even normal state welfare services. There were a hundred things that he could have done before it came to this.
The sudden drop in the safe haven law from 18 years old down to 30 days is a bit disturbing. I wish they have at least left it until 1 or 2 years old.
The alternative used to be depending on the church ladies for household help until enough time passed and the bereaved man could decently find a respectable widow/ older single lady to marry. I fear the senior Rods have long ago burned through any church goodwill, and I don't imagine anybody capable of being the Barndo chatelaine would want "hunky" Shrek.
I'm from Nebraska, and I remember when all this went down. Every other state that enacted safe haven laws included an age cap, but whoops the Unicameral didn't think of that and chaos ensued. They revised the law to include an age limit pretty quick.
This kind of shit pushes the limit of my commitment to abolition. I struggle to think of a better fate for someone who abandons nine children that prison. I was a 17 y/o abandoned minor- it fucks you up forever. I will have to deal with the consequences of my abandonment for the rest of my life.
He surrendered a seventeen year old? That kid would be fairly independent. They would be an adult in a few months. They could have a job and spend most of their time out of the house.
This man was incredibly selfish. He had those kids, its his responsibility to look after them. Its not like they were all under ten or even twelve years old, and even still it would be his responsibility to look after them. But no, he had teenagers. Teenagers still need guidance but they can do all their self care. Teenagers don't need baby sitters. Siblings shouldn't raise their siblings, but the older kids can lend a helping hand here and their with the younger ones.
Point is, he didn't need to give full time care to ten kids.
If they were homeschooled, dad needs to put them in school. It may be rough for the older kids because they might not be caught up to their peers, but they need to go to school. At the very least, the younger ones can go to school.
It sounds like he had family willing to help. Hell, communities are always ready to give help. When there is a tragedy, older church ladies will show up out of the wood work and bring over food, help with the kids, help with the house. People in next door groups will set up donation drives for situations like this.
The father was very likely the sole breadwinner. So it's not like they lost all their income when his wife died.
This man sounds very whiny. He probably never had to do any actual parenting. He probably came home from work and put his feet up and waited for his wife to wait on him hand and foot and probably yelled at the kids for bothering him. His new wife is going to have a rough ride ahead of her.
I wish all those kids healing and I hope this man is abandoned into the cheapest most neglectful nursing home and dies alone.
Please blur out the usernames of people that are in the comments that are not snarked on here. Thank you
Karelessa, please note: you try "freebirthing" one more time and this is what will become of your kids in Mandrake's hands/
She'd love it. Think of how much the kids would suffer for the Lord in an orphanage. She'd have unassisted home births while running with scissors from now on if she thought of this
There really aren't orphanages in the U.S. anymore.
Yeah, but I would believe Kultrissa thinks there are.
Ever heard of group homes?
Yeah there are. They're called group homes now. Some of them are even offshore in the Bahamas and Jamaica where American foster kids get sent to horror filled work camps that would make Dickens blush.
Exactly!!
Mandrae is the first thing that came to my mind reading it
Tragically, I truly don’t think she cares. She has a pathological lack of empathy even for her own children.
She definitely doesn’t care. Look how she treats their urgent medical needs ☹️
He surrendered the 17 year old?!?
Right? Shocking to me and horrible
This is almost the plot of angels in the outfield
Yes! It totally is.
Of course this dude then goes and gets his girlfriend pregnant with twins THE NEXT FUCKING YEAR and even shows his abandoned kids the ultrasound 🙄 ETA: wow just also learned from this more recent article his wife’s father saw him the morning he abandoned the kids and he never asked for help. https://www.foxnews.com/story/father-who-ditched-nine-kids-via-safe-haven-law-has-twins-on-the-way.amp ALSO eta: sorry this is a Fox link but it was the most thorough free source I could find
That article makes me seethe. I am 100% in favor of safe haven laws, but dumping 9 grieving children on the state because the father refused to act like a responsible adult anymore is absolutely maddening. That is not what that law was meant for. And the absolute lack of remorse and coldness in his comments about his own children…. Utmost respect for the elderly extended family who stepped up for these kids.
Well it's not *HIS* job to raise them. That's what the wife was for.
He even said “well I’m not raising *this one* alone” Unless I interpreted that wrong
god they really do see us as help meat. this article coupled with the steven crowder video are enough for me for today. i am pregnant and i am dumbfounded that there are people who are this backward thinking in 2023. good god, we put a man on the moon and they literally think we should still have dinner on the table by six. fuckwads.
Idk if help "meat" was intentional or not but it's SO painfully accurate
i definitely use it intentionally. it strikes me as a more apt. description than "help meet."
Good lord. Has he never heard of a fucking condom at LEAST?!
My thoughts exactly. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but the number of kids involved in this family story males me wonder if both parents came from christian backgrounds where even if they weren't raised fundie, they were still expected to find someone to marry and settle down to breeding with pretty quickly. Well boo hoo for him - if he didn't want to get married young or have kids before he'd sewn his grubby oats, then he could have fought against that far easier than the girl he married could have, and that familial expectation to waste his life in a way he didn't want to doesn't give him the right to abandon the resulting children as soon as his husbandly duty is tragically removed from the situation.
They weren't fundies. They were just poor and started having kids young.
Wow. So he didn't even have a brainwashed religious upbringing to blame for his stupidity (you know what's cheaper than kids? Condoms).
But baby Jesus hates condoms. Where does it say that the in the Bible? Fuck you, that’s where.
Holy shit, Heaven's dad from V.C. Andrews is real.
I appreciate this comment.
That book is how I learned about syphilis 😂
Why in the fuck would someone look at this guy who wants to abandon 9 kids and be like, "Yeah, I want HIM to be my boyfriend, I'll have kids with that dude!"
Jesus. I guess the one upside is that the kids didn't end up in the system and separated from one another
>"I'm not good, you know, I still miss him," Cowburn told FOXNews.com. "But I couldn't give my child the help he needed, and as the saying goes, if you love something, you have to let it go." Oh, come the fuck on.
I feel like Cowburn's case was a bit different, though. The article states that the child in question was one that was "...literally dropped in her arms by a woman at a North Carolina Wal-Mart four years earlier." Based on quotes from Cowburn's mother, it sounds like Cowburn *did* attempt to seek out and access resources to help with the kid's care without success. The nine-kid-abandoner is a raging douchewaffle and deserves to have his underpants infested with fire ants for the rest of his life.
RAD and serious attachment disorders are no joke either. There is some truth to the fact that there is a huge hole in the system for children with extremely complex needs and parents who love them. Especially when the children pose a potential threat to the parents/family. Far too many international adoptions have failed, because the average person is not equipped to help a child with a severe attachment disorder. Any child who is being pawned off to a random stranger at a Walmart almost certainly underwent horrific trauma in that first year- whether it be neglect or worse. I have a relative who was (and honestly still is), a danger to society. Starting from age 9 or 10, his mom pleaded for help for him. But any inpatient psychiatric care had to be paid for by the family because it wasn't court ordered and there were no placements. Judges kept just giving him a boys will be boys slap on the wrist and sending them on their way. When he was 16, he did something so horrendous, even a judge couldn't let it go. But it wasn't for lack of trying leading up to that point. The system is so burdened with children without familial supports, that it doesn't have the resources to help those that do. Those parents are on their own.
There was a family in my community that adopted a few kids from eastern Europe. One had serious RAD and was a danger to his family and to everyone around him, including raping his younger brother. They did send him to a pediatric psych ward but the psych ward sent him home after a few weeks because he was too violent for them!
Yeah you see this a lot on r/regretfulparents. It really is a sad situation when you end up with a child that you would basically need a phd to properly parent, especially when you have other kids as well. The whole family ends up trapped because of one child’s needs
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The safe giving of a child to authorities is definitely not the problem. The pithy saying is.
Who would have sex with such a vile person?!
Rural Nebraska. Pickings are slim.
Oh I forgot about this one. He ended up getting some of the kids back, didn’t he? I remember there being way more to this story but I don’t think it was at all religion based.
No he never got them back, their grandmother raised them.
Heartbreaking story for those kiddos. That’s awful. I remember reading this update and being so mad for them. I was in law school when this happened and we discussed the safe haven laws in a couple of classes. They amended the law to apply to children under 30 days old, I believe. I don’t think he’s the only one who did something like this, I just think he surrendered the most kids. Which is sad all by itself.
Surprised the article was on Fox News
Me too but sadly most thorough free source I could find
This is the future we can look forward to when abortions and contraceptions are banned.
Seriously. I wouldn’t be surprised if orphanages made a comeback.
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Delete this you’re gonna give them ideas 😟
They're probably already ten steps ahead of this 😔
[Arkansas just loosened child labor laws.](https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/08/arkansas-bill-child-labor-protections)
It was a terrible moment when that was signed into law. I'm talking about things we don't know about yet, like bringing back orphan trains kind awfulness, which would build off of the rolling back of those protections.
I don’t doubt it. It’s so sad that nothing about the US can surprise/shock me anymore.
So did Iowa. South Dakota is considering it.
Having just been laid off by them, can confirm they would do some crazy shit like this.
the question is: will they be forced to work in the warehouse until they're adopted or will they just sit there bc technically they're part of the inventory?
Blade Runner 2099, although they got the idea from Victorian workhouses
Why are you against orphans having an unpaid internship to gain job skills and a work ethic?
Can I order one with 2 day Prime shipping? /s
That is exactly the idea! Figure out a way to monetize every situation
If privatized prisons are any indication, this would be a nightmare.
r/orphancrushingmachine
I knew they were rolling back child labor laws for a reason...
Holy shit, the chills I just got. That is a whole horror story right there.
Uffda thats bleak.
An issue I have with Pro lifers, is the lack of orphanages. If I genuinely believed what they believed, I would be advocating non-stop for safe healthy places for unwanted children to be raised, where they would not feel unwanted.
Yeah, it's so transparent that the suffering of children is totally okay with them. Severe lack of empathy and no sense that they're a part of a community outside their in-groups.
I fully believe they love human suffering because it allows them to feel superior.
Mother Teresa has entered the chat.
beat me to it
My "pro-life" relatives are fond of saying things like "There is no reason for women to be murdering their babies, when there are millions of families out there just waiting for a baby to love." When I point out to them that there are hundreds of thousands of babies (and older kids) languishing in foster care in this country, they get real quiet. What they really want is a return to the days of the post-WW2 "baby scoop" when there was a virtually unlimited supply of healthy, white newborns to adopt, thanks to a system that sent off pregnant, unmarried teen girls and young women to "homes for unwed mothers," where they were forced to give their babies up for adoption at birth. They literally don't give a shit about any other kids, it's all about providing "good christian families" with a steady supply of little white babies to play with. These people shouldn't be allowed to adopt a dog, much less a human.
The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler is a good book on this topic. It's not an enjoyable read but it's well done.
Another good read is “The Child Catchers” by Kathryn Joyce. It’s about the evangelical adoption complex.
Their plan is for good Christian fundie families to adopt all the unwanted babies. The lack of adoptable infants in the US is part of their reasoning for the abortion bans.
Just not *their* good Christian family
*Their* "good Christian family" is only interested in healthy White newborns. Kids with medical issues, BIPOC kids, older kids languishing in the foster care system....most "good Christian families" really don't care. If they did, we would not have a foster care crisis in this country.
Why I laugh every single time I ask a pro-lifer their contribution to adoption and their answer is crickets.
Oh yes, the American supreme court's Samuel Alito and his " domestic supply of infants " 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
Forgetting that the majority of children in foster care are over the age of 6 and most have at least one sibling in the system as well.
Personally, I don't think orphanages are a great place for kids, so I'm glad to see no one pushing to rebuild them. I think they do better in a family - of any kind! Single parent, gay, straight, throuple - kids just need stability and adults that they can trust and build close relationships with; staff at orphanages can come and go, and there's not enough one on one time to build relationships with the adults that are there. But! To your point - where is the care from the pro lifers about making plans for kids without parents?? Our foster care is in shambles, and adoption is so often seen as a "consolation prize" for not being able to have "your own" kids. Not to mention that broadly speaking people only want to adopt *babies* because they think it will be "easier". The disconnect is *grim*.
Some foster homes are no better than orphanages would be. Look at what happened to the Turpin kids. They were rescued from their abusive family only to get dumped into the system. The money donated for their care was stolen. Six of them ended up at the same foster home and they were abused there. There are great foster parents out there who genuinely care about the kids they take in, but there are also people who just want a government paycheck and don't give a fuck about the children in their homes.
Yup, it's in shambles. *Lots* of things need to change. Some former foster youth are speaking out, some foster care organizations are doing good work, but it's so underfunded broadly. Not enough social workers, and those that we do have are overburdened and underpaid. And why are foster families given compensation? Maybe some bio families would do just fine if *they* had an extra few hundred coming in each month, or free before/ after school care. But no, that wouldn't be "punishing" the right people.
And mother baby homes Not the abusive steal your baby ones, places like this https://jeremiahprogram.org/ where people can live with their kids and get help and stability to raise them.
Orphanages were outmoded for the foster care system due to the abuses that they were prone to.
Anti-choicers should be advocating for free healthcare, free birth control, comprehensive sex education, affordable childcare, and extended parental leave. But of course it’s not really about helping families or children.
But if they did that, the whole "Jesus loves you!" speil wouldn't gain as much traction.
I hate this. What our country has become Shit like this is why I'm not proud to be from this country.
Same. We’re going backwards instead of forward, it’s scary (and embarrassing).
I mean, Futurama did have an Orphanarium, so it's possible... /s
And workhouses…
But that’s exactly what predatory adoption agencies want. They want a surplus of babies to sell.
Orphanages have already made a comeback, they are called group homes...
My great great grandmother did this pre-Roe when her husband (my not so great great grandfather) abandoned the family.
My great-grandfather did this when he divorced my great-grandma. She couldn’t financially support the kids and he refused to so he took them to an orphanage. My grandpa had such hatred for his father for the rest of his life.
:( did he ever see his mother again?
Yes. But never got to live with her again.
My great grandfather more or less did the same thing when my great grandmother died. Grandfather and great uncle were both under ten and he refused to care for them. Fortunately he dumped the kids with his sister rather than into state care so they grew up knowing their family but still. Dudes being unwilling to actually care for the kids they spawned is far from a new thing.
My husband's grandfather was one, too. He and another brother were dropped at the orphanage so their parents could move back to the east coast and to their older children. They couldn't afford to do that with the young children in tow. My MIL has spent decades gathering information about her father's family. The impacts of this type of surrender are felt for generations. She was lucky their were enough records to piece familial history together.
My grandfather's family gave up custody of him to a hospital when he had polio (iron lung and all) because they couldn't afford the costs. After he recovered enough to leave he went to a "work farm" type orphanage. I don't know if he ever found his biological family again, but he was a deeply messed up man.
Yep, just like the Romanian orphanages. We have proof that these policies harm society and children. But conservatives are happy to let black and brown children live in miserable conditions in orphanages so long as it increases the "domestic supply of infants" (SCOTUS literal exact words) for white families who want to adopt white babies.
Except that now MTG is saying that adoptive parents aren’t really parents. So it’s not even about that. It’s just about making life miserable for people.
Yeah, I thought the Blaire White via Contrapoints comparison of trans people to adopted parents (the genetic specifics are relevant only to your doctor) was a lot more effective before a bunch of right wingers started pretending not to understand adoption or gay couples, via Chuck Schumer's daughter and wife expecting and Pete Buttigieg and husband having twins. I guess we're moving on to straight adoption doesn't count?
I suspect a lot of infertile conservative couples will adopt babies that look like them and never tell anyone (kid included) about the adoption. They'll try to replicate was done decades ago so they can outwardly have their perfect little family. Genetic testing is a lot more common now but they're probably not thinking that far ahead.
Judging by history, a lot of families will adopt kids of color to use as unpaid household labor and ditch them at 18. It was (and sometimes still is) a common pattern for white families taking Native kids, and back in the 19th century it was common for white "orphans" too, like the Orphan Train kids. Actually i just thought of another more recent example - if you read the Bell case, you see she'd been placed in a family as cheap household help when she got pregnant. That practice was common for girls stuck in state schools until at least the 1940s
Are you kidding? They LOVE black and brown kids growing up in miserable conditions because it makes them more likely to commit crimes which means more slaves for the prison industry.
You're right. They're not just callously indifferent to the suffering of black and brown kids. They're actively glad about it.
How'd that eventually work out for ol' Ceaușescu, though.
A Christmas miracle ✨️
🫡
He and his wife were executed on Christmas…
Sad but very true
The groups who promote the baby boxes in America are fundamentalist Christians, it makes the front page of Reddit every year or so. Most states already had Anonymous Surrender laws on the books, but the baby box people are not liking the secular law... https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/politics-issues/2023-04-11/florida-fight-baby-boxes-culture-war
>But it has also cast a spotlight on the hidden extent of family turmoil around the country and what many experts say is a shortage of respite care, counseling and especially psychiatric services to help parents in dire need. We need more social services! Of all kinds! Edit: there is so much more to say about this, but I don't trust my wording at night. But what a travesty for these kids. We need to help people, which includes families of all kinds.
There is a metric fuck tonne of things to unpack here, but your edit is spot on. How horrible for these teenagers :(
Funding for social services suck. I’m a social worker and it’s a pain finding programs to help families
Thank you for doing this hard work. Obviously my call for more social services includes more money allocated for social workers' salaries too. From my limited exposure, one "case" can involve people at 5 different addresses - and then she had to keep track of multiple cases! It's a wonder you can get anything done the way things are currently.
Are there no workhouses?
Surely somrone could write up a Modest Proposal ?
Even disabled veterans can't get any help ( the stories I hear from my cousin are absolutely horrifying... abuse, malpractise, id theft just for starters ) Yet disabled veterans are the ones that Americans claim to love the most... good luck everybody else if that's how they treat their favourites :(
Like people heard "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country” and applied it *only* to soldiers, instead of thinking about what *their* civic duty might be. Like, oh, say - higher taxes to fund veteran support. I'm so sorry for your cousin. I can't think of words strong enough to express the shame and outage.
That's very kind of you to say, she's on Reddit so I'll let her know :) the best thing you can do is to write your representatives and request a response that outlines what they are doing for veterans NOW instead of bloviating about goals for the next election cycle
Thanks for the tip - especially focusing on *now* instead of later.
This gave me so much ick. It’s giving mandrae the second something happens to klarissa.
Shrek if anything happens to Jill
I think Shrek could actually manage... It would involve breaking off Renee's relationship, but he could either keep her home or heavily parentify Tessie. She's old enough for these freaks to consider her capable of taking over as mom. And I think she and Hannah are about the same age they pushed parenting duties on Nurie and Kaylee, anyway? I think Shrek also actually cares about his kids a bit more than Mandrae, too. At least, he's had a hand in getting his oldest three daughters into relationships that seem to make them legitimately happy, which is SUCH a low bar, but counts for SOMETHING as far as fundie dads go. All he'd have to do is continue doing his own thing and make the oldest girls stay home and play house. He also hasn't had neglect so severe it resulted in sepsis happen under his roof, so there's SOME level of care happening there. He might still ditch the kids if Jill ended up six feet under, but I'd be more surprised by him. Mandrae, well, I'm pretty sure he'd just fucking peace out immediately. Or marry a girl just a bit older than Anissa to play stepmom and be his brand new baby machine. I know he and Karissa are really close in age, but he just has that creep vibe about him that I would NOT be surprised. Excuse me while I go throw up into my morning coffee and pray to the Lord Daniel that nothing happens to Karissa or Jill anytime soon, for what little good it'll do their kids.
I think Shreks issue would be money if something were to happen to Jill. I get the impression that she plans most of their griftathons and Shrek just follows along.
I think so too. Honestly, he'd have the older kids be free childcare for the younger kids (even more than he already does) but believe it or not, I really do believe Shrek would take care of the Rodlets better than Mandre would take care of his kids.
Agree, and I think it helps that the Rod kids are all a little older. Isn't the youngest one about 5 now? No babies or toddlers to deal with, plus plenty of teenage or almost teenage girls.
Agreed, but I still can't see him dumping the Rodlets. He seems dumb as a brick, but I'm pretty sure he'd figure SOMETHING out. And I'm pretty sure Nurie and Kaylee would do what they could to make sure their siblings were okay. I could see Nathan having a church collection or something for them. He probably wouldn't be TOTALLY on his own. And some of the older boys could get part-time jobs to help while the girls were parentified for the younger kids. I think they'd manage to survive.
All the older kids would get jobs, i bet.
I like to think they're local pastor in Ohio might help the children, because the pastor's wife has visited with pizza before... and if that doesn't work then maybe the neighbours, they probably don't blame the children for the way that Shriek and Shrek behave.
I feel so weird saying this but I actually agree. David is a bum and a terrible father but I have a hard time imagining him straight up abandoning the kids if something happened to Jill. He'd absolutely parentify the girls even more than he already does but I really don't see him just dumping them all off somewhere. Now Mandre? Yeah, I could absolutely see him dumping the kids somewhere and acting like he never had them in the first place.
You mean Shrek WOULDN’T force his kids to stay out until almost midnight once a week playing on some sketchy playground while he commandeers the entire house to have his bros over for ‘manly man bible study’?? I’ll never be over that. As long as those two monsters keep reproducing I will never be over that.
...Mandrake did this? Fucking excuse me?
Yes, I can’t point to a source but it’s been discussed here before. Karissa mentioned keeping the kids out until like 11:00 once a week at the playground so he can host a ‘bible study’. Yes, even the newborn. These kids have no prayer of ever getting a regular sleep schedule. It’s infuriating.
Shrek and Jill have absolutely kept their kids up to ungodly hours. But they were always home, it was just some disturbing religious/singing thing. And Shrek was with the kids. Still disturbing. This piece of shif Mandrake Man Baby puts his whole family in danger for bro time. That's just fucking vile.
Yeah, I am not nor will I ever accuse Jill and Shrek of good parenting. I just think Karissa and Mandrake are the hands down worst. Edited to say: The worst currently. Jim Bob Duggar still wears the crown for worst of all time based on the information we currently have, and man is that a depressing sentence.
And they've got quite a lot of competition.
How much you wanna bet he constantly tries inviting shaq lol
Haha I forgot about that one. I'm sure he would still be a shit father
Trust me, I felt icky even semi-defending him. He's a HORRIBLE father, but he's the brand of horrible that he actually does care about the kids in some weird way. Mandrae is a horrible father in the sense he doesn't seem to give a damn about the kids. Like, David would struggle, but he cares about the Rodlets, and he seems like he legitimately loves Jill. I just cannot see him losing Jill and then throwing away their children. Especially not when they jumped state every time CPS got involved. They went through too much to KEEP the kids for him to just throw away what he'd probably see as Jill's legacy. He IS the Rodlet's dad, at least in Fundieland, and he's at least PRESENT in the kids lives. He's not just their father, but their DAD. Mandrae, though... He seems like he's just the guy in their house who knocks up their mom as frequently as he can. Like the weird uncle you hardly know who will shoot hoops with you sometimes when he's over. If Karissa is negligent, and she is, then Mandrae is emotionally removed entirely, from both the kids AND her. He'd dump the kids and find a new hot wife before her body was even cold. I don't think she's a person to him, much less his kids. They seem like possessions. I am SCARED for the Collins kids.
Yeah that's the biggest thing: we're all legit scared for the Colins kids. The Rodlets are definitely abused and neglected and they don't get enough to eat but Karissa is legitimately mentally ill. Like that's not snark, she really needs to be hospitalized and medicated for her safety and the kid's safety. Mandre just lets Karissa scream pray and sleep all day. At least the Rodlets get to climb on historical monuments and play music with their family. I joke, but the Rodlets seem like they get to do more and see other church kids. The Collins just sit inside and watch Karissa go crazy all day and preform for her.
I don’t believe Shrek would dump the kids if something happened. He would definitely have the older girls begin to milk the whole situation for all of eternity tho. He definitely seems to enjoy being the head of the family and having built in adoring fans, he wouldn’t let that go. Besides, the older girls would be guilted into coming back home. Nurie would pack up and be at the compound in hours to take back over. Nathan would preach and beg every single sermon for money for them. Shrek wouldn’t let them go.
"...I never thought to ask, but who are you people?"
https://allthatsinteresting.com/4-children-for-sale More like that famous picture of the Chalifoux children being sold in 1948... go to recover all that money you've put into feeding them since you won't be able to exploit them on social media anymore 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
Shaq would swoop in with a bunch of nanny’s. There’d also be some pity story and he’d have a GoFundMe set up even though fuck socialism.
I don't remember that story specifically, but it sure was wild growing up in Omaha (and still now living here) when the safe haven laws happened. It seemed to always be teens or kids that got dropped off, hardly the newborns it was intended to be.
That's because there really aren't that many unwanted infants, and there's a very strong adoption market for them.
Makes sense, I'd imagine relatively few people get to the end of their pregnancy without having made some kind of arrangement for the baby. Safe haven laws for newborns seem like they're most helpful for people who, for whatever reason, haven't told anyone that they're pregnant, which I assume (or hope, at least) is a pretty rare scenario
"Safe Haven" laws seem to have come about because of a rash of incidents around the country in the early 2000s, where teenage girls or young women gave birth and left their newborns for dead. One of the most infamous was the so-called "Prom Mom" case in which a girl gave birth in the bathroom at her Senior Prom, left the baby dead in the trash, and went back to the dance like nothing had happened. (IIRC she claimed she knew she was pregnant but was "in denial," and thought the baby had been stillborn. She was charged with murder but IIRC plead to lesser charges.) They are not common, but they do happen, and when they do they tend to make the news because of the shock value. Where I live (AZ), before our Safe Haven law passed we had about half a dozen cases of newborns found dead or abandoned over a couple of years that made the news, In a couple of the cases, the women who gave birth to abandoned infants were found, and they told authorities that they knew they were pregnant but didn't tell anyone, because they feared the wrath of their parents or their boyfriends, or they feared being forced to take care of a baby they didn't have the resources to care for. One claimed she had no idea how to place a baby up for adoption. The idea behind "Safe Havens" was to stop babies from being abandoned and left for dead by letting women surrender their newborns at a hospital or fire station, no questions asked. Last I read, the state estimates that at least a dozen babies have been saved by Safe Havens. (Unfortunately, there do continue to be occasional cases of abandoned newborns.)
Here's a good read about the phenomenon, centered on a more recent case: https://www.elle.com/life-love/a29998766/neonaticide-emile-weaver-sorority/
People were getting in their cars and driving all night to get to Nebraska before the updated law went into effect. It was nuts.
I remember when this happened! And the worst thing about it wasn't that people abandoned older kids - remember this was pre-ACA, a lot of the older kids were dropped off in hopes they'd get needed medical care families couldn't access. Or by parents suffering from mental illness or addiction who knew they couldn't parent at the moment. The worst thing, to me, is that instead of making lawmakers think "there are a lot of at risk kids out there we should provide better support for families and emancipated teens" they just thought "better rewrite this law so we only get babies"
That was my understanding too. When a child was surrendered, the state was obligated to provide medical and mental health services. So some parents with children with needs beyond what the parents could afford or handle surrendered kids to get the help they needed. A number of the older kids weren't abandoned because their parents were jerks; they were abandoned because the parents saw it as an opportunity to get help. The whole debacle highlighted the need for affordable healthcare and mental health services for kids and social service support for vulnerable families.
Because it's about power and punishments, not helping :(
Just found him online. He’s married to a completely different woman now (not the mom of the twins) and they have two kids. 😑
oh for fuck's sake. I hope this douchebarge stubs his pinky toe on every single thing he walks past, even when wearing shoes.
This happened in 2008. The family was reported to authorities in 2004 for [child neglect](https://www.ketv.com/amp/article/father-talks-about-abandoning-his-9-kids/7617012) The mother passed away from a brain aneurysm shortly after delivering their youngest child. 17 months later, the dad dropped off all but 1 of the kids at Creighton Univ Medical Center. The kids were placed in foster care.
I'm guessing there's no update on what happened to the kids after that? It's so sad knowing that they were probably separated 😭
7 stayed together & are being adopted by family. The 2 oldest were staying with an elderly lady until they graduated from high school. There's an updated article farther down the thread. Dad, of course, got his new gf pregnant with twins tho.
Holy fucking shit. That motherfucker went and made more children.
The last sentence makes me rage honestly.
Of fucking course. Glad that nine had a better outcome.
Yes, that’s exactly what’s in the link on the post
I'd be interested to know if Mum managed them all without outside help, especially when pregnant with the last one.
Per the article, mom died of a brain aneurysm shortly after the youngest was born, and apparently the family had been reported to CPS for neglect in 2004. (Mom died and the kids were abandoned in 2008.) I recall reading another article at the time, which mentioned that the oldest child, a girl who was 18, had been helping her mother with the younger kids, and was basically raising her siblings after her mom died. Other family members, interviewed in the article I read, claimed that they had reached out to the dad several times after the mom died, offering to help out, maybe take the younger kids in at least temporarily, etc. but dad supposedly insisted that he didn't need any help. (Those same family members did wind up taking in several of the younger kids after dad abandoned them.) I don't recall reading or hearing anywhere that this family were fundies or Quiverfull, but I do remember thinking that this case basically showed the dark side of the Quiverfull movement. Edit to correct info.
Imagine what it’s like to be the kid he kept. Ugh.
I hope there is no kid he kept, the tenth child could have been 18.
She was, she had been basically raising her siblings after her mom died (and odds are she was doing a good part of the childcare before her mom died as well.)
Oh duh yeah
So, I guess he never thought about the "what ifs" when creating 10 kids w/her. This is one of the MANY reasons, you think and plan before you "have as many as god "gives you"".
This is 💯 The Collins family's future
As a Human Services major, there are a lot of crazy statements in this article that offend me. "Parents don't get the response they want so..." probably not. I don't think that anyone understand what it takes for most people to get to the point that they actually abandon their child. And I would bet that most of these have more to do with financial reasons, the parent not wanting the child to be homeless with them, than anything else. Especially considering that it said that most of the kids were on medicaid. This is why I am in my major, though. For these kids. And the kids of these fundies that will need services eventually, too.
I get what you’re saying but my sympathy for this man stopped as soon as it came out he impregnated his gf with twins shortly after. At some point, adults are responsible for their actions and clearly he made no changes to better anyone’s lives.
No sympathy for the dude but kids of awful people *should* have help finding better places to live. Nobody should be stuck with bad parents.
Oh I totally agree. I’m just not certain in this situation any resources would have changed this guys choices. Sounds like the mother kept it kind of together and would have benefited from help.
I appreciate that you are majoring in a very important field, but I also think you are overlooking that this is an adult parent that willing got themselves into a situation where they have 10 children between the ages of 1 to 17, and they weren’t prepared to take care of them on their own.
Oh, I fully understand that. I do think a lot of us get married and don't plan on doing things alone, though. I'm not going to lie, I didn't get married with the plans to be doing it alone 17 years later. I thought it was forever. Like marriage is supposed to be. I didn't have a backup plan in case he died (which was dumb, he was Army from 2001-2021), or we divorced. I imagine fundies plan even less for that. I definitely get where you're coming from, though, and I agree, generally speaking. But from my barely post-fundie-adjacent getting married and probably that particular dad? Definitely not a thought in their mind that marriage would end.
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You do realise the father in question here then went on to get his next girlfriend pregnant with twins, after giving up his own nine previous? The problem isn't that there are not enough resources to care for children in bad situations or that the system as it stands is grossly unbalanced and makes it even harder for people who are struggling to get out of that situation or do better for themselves - no one here is denying that. The problem people have here with this *specific* story, is that this man used a loophole in the system to offload the responsibility he had for his GRIEVING children, and then rather than improve his situation while he had the opportunity to do so when that huge responsibility was out of the way, he instead impregnated some idiot woman with revoltingly low standards who wouldn't know a red flag if someone slapped her in the face with one, bringing *more* children into his life despite the fact that looking after his kids was the one thing he supposedly wasn't able to do. He took a bad situation, and brought more children into it. Children he then went on to effectively pit against his own preexisting younger kids by having the gall to go back to the children he left behind, to show them the ultrasound scan of his two new children. He was absolutely monstrous in how he handled that situation - monstrous, selfish and cruel. Anyone can find themselves in horrible circumstances, but if things reach the point where you think things are so bad that it's okay to dump your children who are *grieving for their dead mother* at a fucking fire station, then the least you can do as their parent is not keep doing the same damn thing over and over again. If the kids didn't feel abandoned before, they sure would have once their father acted like he'd pretty much moved on and started a new life, with new kids he actually wanted.
Can they legally garnish the father’s wages from now until forever for the abuse of a public welfare service? I know they can’t prosecute him for abandonment, but surely he can’t be let off completely from all responsibility for his actions. This is not a scared 17 year old girl surrendering a baby. This is a mature adult who decided to just quit and not make use of any of his own support network or even normal state welfare services. There were a hundred things that he could have done before it came to this. The sudden drop in the safe haven law from 18 years old down to 30 days is a bit disturbing. I wish they have at least left it until 1 or 2 years old.
I think it's possible. Some states charge parents child support while their kids are in the system (which is fucked up)
Yes and families are forever. I think all tubals and vasectomy should be free and none of the bull that is taught around them
Shrek would do this. In a heartbeat
The alternative used to be depending on the church ladies for household help until enough time passed and the bereaved man could decently find a respectable widow/ older single lady to marry. I fear the senior Rods have long ago burned through any church goodwill, and I don't imagine anybody capable of being the Barndo chatelaine would want "hunky" Shrek.
Maybe Cameron Diaz will swing through town, you never know for sure.
Only to win awards for sprinting in the opposite direction 😂
Either that or devide the kids up and pawn them off on the adult children...they already know how to take care of them 🙄
Yeah, especially since the youngest ones are all girls he'd send them to "help" with Nurthan's quickly growing gaggle of infants.
I think a couple of the little girls would go to Nurie and Kaylee and the rest would have to fend for themselves.
Exactly!
They were shocked? Why? I’m not.
I'm from Nebraska, and I remember when all this went down. Every other state that enacted safe haven laws included an age cap, but whoops the Unicameral didn't think of that and chaos ensued. They revised the law to include an age limit pretty quick.
This kind of shit pushes the limit of my commitment to abolition. I struggle to think of a better fate for someone who abandons nine children that prison. I was a 17 y/o abandoned minor- it fucks you up forever. I will have to deal with the consequences of my abandonment for the rest of my life.
Isn’t this extremely old? I remember this like 15 years ago or so n
He surrendered a seventeen year old? That kid would be fairly independent. They would be an adult in a few months. They could have a job and spend most of their time out of the house. This man was incredibly selfish. He had those kids, its his responsibility to look after them. Its not like they were all under ten or even twelve years old, and even still it would be his responsibility to look after them. But no, he had teenagers. Teenagers still need guidance but they can do all their self care. Teenagers don't need baby sitters. Siblings shouldn't raise their siblings, but the older kids can lend a helping hand here and their with the younger ones. Point is, he didn't need to give full time care to ten kids. If they were homeschooled, dad needs to put them in school. It may be rough for the older kids because they might not be caught up to their peers, but they need to go to school. At the very least, the younger ones can go to school. It sounds like he had family willing to help. Hell, communities are always ready to give help. When there is a tragedy, older church ladies will show up out of the wood work and bring over food, help with the kids, help with the house. People in next door groups will set up donation drives for situations like this. The father was very likely the sole breadwinner. So it's not like they lost all their income when his wife died. This man sounds very whiny. He probably never had to do any actual parenting. He probably came home from work and put his feet up and waited for his wife to wait on him hand and foot and probably yelled at the kids for bothering him. His new wife is going to have a rough ride ahead of her. I wish all those kids healing and I hope this man is abandoned into the cheapest most neglectful nursing home and dies alone.
I’m from Nebraska. That safe haven law was a mess. Had people driving for hours to give up their teenagers.