Adrianna’s Story
Adrianna Cram was born in Oregon, taken into protective custody by the state of Oregon at age 1, and sent to live in Mexico with relatives she’d never met just weeks before her fourth birthday. Adrianna’s journey shows how child welfare agencies in two countries failed a little girl and offers lessons for protecting other children.
Adrianna Romero Cram smiles in a photograph taken in Mexico before she was murdered.
http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2009/03/adriannas_story.html
Oregon girl sent to Mexico falls through the cracks
http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2009/03/adriannas_story_part_one.html
Sunday, March 15, 2009
By Susan Goldsmith and Michelle Cole
The Oregonian
The dark-haired American girl was suffering. The teachers at her preschool in the Mexican village had seen the bruises.
But Adrianna Romero Cram, just 4 years old, a U.S. citizen shipped from Oregon foster care to relatives she’d never met in Mexico, had little to say about what was happening to her.
“Who hit you, Adriannita?” asked teacher Judith Caizero Aguilar. “Who hit you? I won’t tell anybody.”
The little girl had only one answer for her teacher: “I fell.”
But she hadn’t fallen. Adrianna was being abused.
Adrianna’s torment continued for months because governments in two countries failed a little girl they were supposed to protect.
The state of Oregon sent Adrianna to Mexico and had legal responsibility for her well-being. But an investigation by The Oregonian shows that the state’s monitoring of her welfare was limited to occasional phone calls — mostly to her abusers — and unquestioning dependence on welfare workers in Mexico.
Mexican authorities didn’t make adequate checks on Adrianna’s care and blatantly ignored repeated warnings that she was being abused.
Today little has been done on either side of the border to ensure the safety of American children sent from foster care to live with relatives in Mexico.
Nationally, nobody can say exactly how many U.S.-born children have been sent from state foster care to live in other countries. There’s no reliable system to keep track of what happens to these children. What is clear is that the majority go to Mexico.
Adrianna made that journey 10 months before the spring day when her teacher asked the little girl who hit her.
That frightened child was very different from the one who’d arrived in Omealca, a town of 3,600 surrounded by verdant hills and sugar cane fields in the southern Mexico state of Veracruz. The school’s director recalled her as an “adorable, happy child” her first few months.
But by winter, teachers noticed that the bubbly girl who loved wearing hats was quiet, withdrawn and not dressed properly for the cold mornings. She told them she was hungry.
As summer approached, Adrianna’s anguish was in full view: bruises on her legs and back, a chunk of hair pulled from her head, burns on her palms.
The teacher, Caizero Aguilar, tried to comfort the little girl.
“I told her, ‘The angels protect you. In the night, the angels will come and take you on a beautiful trip,’” Caizero Aguilar said, hoping that the girl would feel safe.
“‘Don’t have fear, Adrianna. The angels will protect you.’”
Reporters for The Oregonian have filed records requests and interviewed state officials about the case since August. On Tuesday, as this series was being prepared for publication, Oregon’s Department of Human Services announced a moratorium on sending foster children out of the country. State officials say they want to develop international agreements before more children are sent abroad.
Oregon has sent 13 children to Mexico for adoption since 1999; state officials expect the number to grow. Five children were in the pipeline for Mexico when the moratorium took effect.
For the children who’ve already been sent to Mexico and for those who may follow, it’s important to understand what happened to Adrianna.
Why did she have to turn to angels?
Adrianna was born in the summer of 2000 at Hillsboro’s Tuality Community Hospital to a 17-year-old mother who refused to touch her.
“I believed everything I touched I made garbage,” said Adrianna’s mother, Tausha Cram.
State records repeatedly refer to Cram’s “turbulent” childhood. Turbulent may be too gentle a word.
Born in Washington state, she moved frequently. She was sexually abused as a child and addicted to meth by 13. She dropped out of school and became pregnant with Adrianna when she was 16.
Adrianna’s father, Basilides Romero Marin, was from Mexico and also a teenager. He was violent, records show, and the marriage lasted less than a year.
Just before and just after Adrianna’s first birthday, records show anonymous calls to an Oregon child abuse hot line. The baby wasn’t getting the thyroid medication she needed, callers reported, and her mother was using drugs.
Cram denies the accusations, but soon after the third call, state child welfare authorities stepped in and placed Adrianna in foster care.
Caseworkers described 1-year-old Adrianna as an “adorable” toddler. Doctors and social workers chronicled the little girl’s life: At 15 months, Adrianna could say: “hi,” “bye” and “ho ho” for Santa. She enjoyed wearing pretty clothes.
But they also noted concerns: At 17 months, Adrianna’s motor and language skills were those of a younger child. At 2 years, 7 months, Adrianna would have “bad days,” when she was too calm, didn’t play or eat. Other times she wouldn’t tolerate being touched or changed. One doctor observed: “A better plan needs to be in place for her.”
Under federal and state guidelines, children are in state custody for the shortest time possible. The idea is to assure a child a permanent home within 36 months, whether it’s with the parent or someone else, preferably a relative.
Adrianna was in three foster homes that first year. She was moved from one home because a foster parent abused prescription drugs.
Meanwhile, Cram was in and out of drug treatment. Sometimes her supervised visits with Adrianna at the child welfare office were tearful, loving reunions.
Sometimes she didn’t show up.
On Jan. 20, 2004, Cram was serving time in the Washington County jail when she was notified that the court would terminate her parental rights.
Adrianna’s father lived in Washington state. Records show child welfare caseworkers there said he wasn’t fit to parent the girl because he was in the country illegally, had a theft charge and had lied to police regarding his identity. The Oregonian was not able to reach him or confirm his immigration status.
Adrianna was nearly 4 years old and in need of a permanent family. After Oregon officials ruled out Cram’s relatives, Washington County Judge Kirsten Thompson ordered the girl’s father to come up with a list of his relatives who might be willing to adopt her. He suggested his father or a sister in Omealca, Mexico.
Mexican social workers recommended a different sister, Elizabeth Romero Marin. She was 24, married and had two children close to Adrianna’s age. In a two-page home study, Mexican officials reported that Romero Marin and her husband, Hector de Jesus Luna, owned their three-room home, which was clean and had an indoor toilet.
Thompson signed off on a plan allowing James Perillo, Adrianna’s bilingual caseworker, to take the little girl to Mexico for an eventual adoption. Even though Adrianna was going to Mexico, Oregon would remain legally responsible for her until the adoption was final, which can take a year or more.
Oregon had already sent more than a dozen kids to other countries but still had no policy for handling international adoptions. Perillo was on his own.
He said he proceeded the same way he would have had he taken Adrianna to relatives in Minnesota. Adrianna’s pediatrician outlined her medical needs. Doctors in Mexico said they could care for her. Perillo said he called Romero Marin and talked to her about her home and family. “I wanted to hear that they were dedicated.”
Omealca doesn’t show up in most guidebooks to Mexico. It’s three hours inland from the coastal town of Veracruz, where cruise ships dock before they head east to Cancun and Cozumel.
Despite its lush mountain setting, Omealca’s poverty is striking. One-room concrete houses line crooked, dirt streets where dogs roam unattended. Garbage is strewn on the roadsides. Residents say there’s little work outside the sugar cane fields, and most of the men have ditched the town for the United States to find jobs.
Others turn to drug trafficking, evidenced by the federal police who now patrol the town square with assault rifles.
Adrianna arrived in Omealca in the summer of 2004. At first, it looked as if she’d finally found some stability.
She loved playing with her cousins. And she began government-funded preschool in a one-story complex with an outdoor play area a few blocks from her home.
But within months, teachers saw Adrianna come to school without proper clothes for the weather. She was often cold and hungry. School director Albina Cruz Gutierrez spoke with Romero Marin, and the girl’s care improved temporarily.
In December, five months after Adrianna’s arrival, her grandfather, Joel Romero Palacios, went to Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, the Mexican child welfare agency, and told them Adrianna was the victim of family violence.
Information about that report made it back to Oregon authorities via the Mexican Consulate, including an assessment by a welfare agency psychologist that said Adrianna had “defecated in her underwear,” so Romero Marin “bathed her outside with cold water.”
Perillo said he made phone calls to Mexico, talking with the psychologist, the social worker and Romero Marin. His notes do not describe what they talked about even though department guidelines require detailed documentation.
Perillo never talked to Adrianna’s teachers, saying he assumed they would report any problems to the Mexican social workers.
He had to trust his counterparts in Mexico who told him Adrianna was all right, Perillo said. “What could I do? I had no choice.”
Still, Perillo admitted that he wasn’t getting the regular written updates on Adrianna that he’d requested. After the December report, he received no other written report until April. His monitoring largely meant monthly phone calls to Romero Marin.
Perillo also occasionally spoke with Adrianna.
On May 16, 2005, he wrote in the case file: “I talked to Adriana (sic) who seems fine. I told her I was going to Mexico next week. Adriana (sic) asked me if I was going to visit her. I told her I was going to another place in Mexico. She said, ‘OK.’”
It would be the last contact he’d have with the girl.
Mexican welfare workers’ spotty communiques about Adrianna’s new life in Mexico made no mention of what Adrianna’s family members, teachers and even some neighbors knew: The 4-year-old American girl was being beaten regularly.
By May, the principal and several teachers at Adrianna’s school began a desperate effort to get the Mexican child welfare agency to pay attention. They took daily pictures of Adrianna’s bruises and wounds and went to the agency’s offices pleading for help.
None of the teachers’ information was ever conveyed to Oregon officials, who still had responsibility for Adrianna.
On May 19, Albina Cruz Gutierrez, the school’s principal, wrote a letter to the head of the welfare office in Omealca asking for urgent help because Adrianna was showing up at school with bruises on her face, hands, legs and back.
Officials responded with a letter that said a social worker visited the school May 23, assessed all the children and found them to be in “perfect health.” Adrianna, the letter noted, was absent from preschool that day.
Cruz Gutierrez then went to the local office and urged them to investigate. “They said, ‘Don’t worry,’” she recalled. “‘We’ll investigate.’”
But no investigation began.
Frustrated, the principal dispatched two teachers to Xalapa, the state’s capital, to see whether child welfare officials there might help.
“We told them that, if they didn’t do their jobs, we were going to the prosecutors and going to press charges,” Cruz Gutierrez said.
The principal also sent two teachers to Adrianna’s home to check on her after she’d missed several days of school. The teachers did not see her, so Cruz Gutierrez went to speak with Romero Marin.
“She told me Adrianna didn’t behave,” the principal recalled. “I told her I didn’t want her to hurt Adrianna and she should treat her like her other children.”
Adrianna returned to school. But each day, teachers say, they found new cuts, bruises and burns, which they fastidiously documented in photos and written reports.
On June 6, the school’s records show Adrianna came to preschool with a large bruise on her face, near her mouth. She told teachers she’d bitten her lip.
Two days later, Cruz Gutierrez and teachers checked Adrianna again and found a new bruise on her stomach. Adrianna said it was a mosquito bite.
Music teacher Jazmin Juarez Benitez spent much of her time off looking for help for Adrianna.
After fruitless visits to the child welfare offices around the state, she went to a Mexican human rights group, where she was told she needed to go through child welfare authorities. Frustrated, and convinced that the little girl was in danger, Juarez Benitez also went to the state attorney general’s office in Cordoba, a bustling city a half-hour’s drive from Omealca.
Prosecutors told her to gather all the evidence of abuse and get Adrianna’s birth certificate and other paperwork in order.
When she reported back to Cruz Gutierrez, the principal called the preschool staff together to discuss how to proceed.
“I wanted to see if we had enough evidence,” she recalled. “We did not have enough. We were gathering it.”
Some of the teachers discussed kidnapping Adrianna for her own safety. Some were fearful.
“Omealca is known as a very violent and aggressive place,” Juarez Benitez said. They were supposed to work through the welfare agency, but the officials charged with caring for the child repeatedly ignored their pleas.
Juarez Benitez said she was tormented.
“I felt Adrianna needed help urgently,” she said in a phone interview a few weeks ago. “I felt very handcuffed.”
On June 10, a Friday, teacher Caizero Aguilar questioned Adrianna about her abuse. She got no answers.
Frustrated by the apathy of welfare officials and the child’s obvious pain, the teacher reached for her faith. The angels, she promised Adrianna, would protect her.
On Monday, Adrianna didn’t show up for preschool. Hector de Jesus Luna, Romero Marin’s husband, told the principal, Cruz Gutierrez, that the girl was sick and he was taking her to the doctor.
Two hours later, the principal called the doctor to check on Adrianna.
The little American girl was dead.
SIDE BARS
Teacher: What happened to your hands and your ear? Adrianna: Elizabeth Romero Marin, Adrianna’s aunt, “put my hands on the stovetop and had to put toothpaste on it.” She pulled my ear because she said “you dirtied your house dress” and “I had to bleed you for that.” Teacher: What about your head? Adrianna: “I climbed on top of the hammock and had to hit my head.” Teacher asks about eating at home.
Adrianna: “I like to eat tortilla.”
Romero Marin “says eat good and with your mouth closed because if your (uncle) sees you he will see how you eat like a little pig.”
“She says that I don’t have to eat, but I wanted to eat, but she says you will eat, but you will not throw up.”
June 2:
Romero Marin approached a teacher and commented that she feels tense and pressured, feeling a distancing from Adrianna, noticing that it is becoming very difficult even to comb her hair because of the lack of affection she feels. She said her daughter noticed it and asked why she didn’t like Adrianna anymore. She also mentioned that she stopped sending Adrianna to the psychologist.
June 6:
Adrianna showed up with a big bruise on her mouth, specifically on the corner of her mouth and inside, too. When asked, she said she “bit her lip.”
June 8:
Today Adrianna was checked more thoroughly, and new bruises and scrapes were discovered (more recent than the ones we already knew about). On her stomach on her right side, there’s a bruise. She says that “it just appeared.” When asked how, she answered, “just because” and “the mosquitoes bit me.”
She also has a couple of scrapes on her chest that seem deep. When asked what happened, she says that she cut herself with a knife when Romero Marin stepped out for a minute. Later, she volunteers, “the mosquitoes bit me and (Romero Marin) had to punish me.” I asked, because the mosquitoes bit you, she punished you? She said, “yes.”
I also asked her about eating breakfast before school and she answered, “Yesterday she didn’t feed me.” I asked her, how about today? “No, today neither.”
June 9:
Today I checked her out again and there’s the same scars from the day before, but today she says Romero Marin “hit me with her shoe.” I asked her what part of the shoe and she said “the heel.” She also said Romero Marin hits her with her belt, with her hand, with a flip-flop and with a yellow belt. She says Hector de Jesus Luna, her uncle, hits her with a dirty undershirt.
When asked about a bruise on her right cheek, Adrianna says Romero Marin hit her for accepting the soup that a neighbor lady offered her.
Boy at center of 2007 adoption dispute thrives
Gabriel Brandt, the little boy at the center of a 2007 adoption dispute that captured international attention, is now learning to count to 10 and living a quieter life near the Oregon coast.
Child welfare officials set off an emotional tug of war when they decided to send the toddler, a U.S. citizen, to Mexico to be raised by his grandmother.
Angela and Steve Brandt of Toledo, who had been Gabriel’s foster parents since he was 4 months old, were devastated by the decision and worried about the boy’s safety. They sued to keep him.
The Brandts prevailed, but not before drawing Gov. Ted Kulongoski, then-U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith and others into debate over sending children from Oregon foster care to other countries to be adopted by relatives.
Two state adoption panels recommended sending Gabriel to live with his paternal grandmother, Cecilia Martinez, in San Jose Miahuatlan, a small farming community outside Mexico City.
Mediated talks between the Brandts and Martinez led to an agreement that allowed the Brandts to adopt Gabriel but ensures contact with family in Mexico.
Last May, the Brandts took Gabriel to Mexico. Angela Brandt said Gabriel’s grandmother and family were gracious hosts but that conditions of the home and village were “so much worse” than she expected.
The families talk occasionally by phone, but there are no plans for another visit to Mexico, Angela Brandt said. “We’re not wealthy.”
Born Gabriel Allred, but now named Gabriel Justice Brandt, the boy enjoys singing the “ABC song” and is quite possibly “the most finicky eater on the planet,” his mother says.
He lives with four older brothers and two dogs. He adores “Teaspoon,” a puppy the family got last Christmas, and “Bonnie,” a golden retriever who “tolerates him rolling around with her,” Angela Brandt said. “He told me he wants ’1, 2, 3, 4, 5 dogs!’”
- Michelle Cole
PART 2 OF ADRIANNA’S STORY
http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2009/03/adriannas_story_part_two.html
Monday, March 16, 2009
By Susan Goldsmith and Michelle Cole
Years after her daughter's murder at the hands of paternal family in Mexico, Tausha Cram still grieves over her loss and lives with regrets she says she will carry forever. She keeps Adrianna's ashes in a box in her bedroom and talks regularly to her two younger children about their sister who is now gone. Photo by Faith Cathcart/The Oregonian
The Oregonian
None of the teachers at Adrianna Romero Cram’s small Mexican preschool will ever forget June 13, 2005.
That hot, sticky morning, Adrianna’s uncle stopped by to let teachers know his niece was sick and he was taking her to the doctor. Two hours later, Principal Albina Cruz Gutierrez phoned the physician to see how the little American girl was doing.
The secretary at the doctor’s office told her Adrianna was dead.
Cruz Gutierrez didn’t need to hear the official cause. She knew Adrianna, the 4-year-old from Oregon, had been murdered by abuse.
When she died, the beautiful hazel-eyed girl was legally in the protective custody of the Oregon Department of Human Services, which had sent her to Mexico.
The agency did little to monitor Adrianna’s well-being after sending her to live with relatives she’d never met. A state caseworker made occasional calls to Mexico, while welfare authorities there ignored repeated warnings about Adrianna’s abuse and wrote positive reports about her life.
Four and a half years after Adrianna’s murder, child welfare workers in Oregon still talk of how devastated they are by her death and how important it is to make sure no other Oregon child suffers a similar tragedy when sent to another country.
Yet the state’s investigation and response following Adrianna’s death stopped at the border. With no more monitoring than Adrianna had, the state has sent eight more children from foster care to live with relatives in Mexico.
A U.S. citizen, Adrianna was taken from her mother because of neglect and placed in Oregon state foster care when she was 1 year old. An Oregon court ordered her sent to Omealca, a village in the southern Mexico state of Veracuz, in the summer of 2004, just weeks before her fourth birthday. Once there, she was abused by the aunt and uncle the state of Oregon had selected as her new parents.
Teachers at Adrianna’s preschool saw her bruises, cuts and burns and spent weeks badgering Mexican welfare officials to help her.
At the preschool that June morning, the principal and Jazmin Juarez Benitez, a music teacher who hunted for help for Adrianna for weeks, somberly gathered photos they’d taken of Adrianna’s injuries and notes about her treatment and walked to the state prosecutor’s office just a few doors down.
The women told prosecutors they were certain Adrianna died of abuse, handed over their evidence and gave sworn statements.
“I left that office so sad and frustrated, and with the heaviest of hearts,” the principal, Cruz Gutierrez, said.
Adrianna’s body was a tableau of torture. The coroner found “multiple contusions and hematomas in various degrees of maturity throughout her whole body.” Her small body also revealed “signs of forced violence and defensive fighting.”
Officially, the cause of death was “a deep contusion of the abdomen along with a brain hemorrhage” from injuries sustained two or three days earlier.
Weeks later, Adrianna’s aunt and uncle, Elizabeth Romero Marin and Hector de Jesus Luna, were arrested and charged with aggravated murder. Both were convicted.
Adrianna’s aunt received a 45-year sentence. Her uncle got only two years for the same crime. A judge decided the case in secret.
“I don’t even know what happened,” said prosecutor Roberto Sandoval Uribe. Both were equally responsible for Adrianna’s murder, he said. “They had both abused and tortured her for months.”
In the days after Adrianna died, records show a flurry of e-mails and meetings at the Oregon Department of Human Services. Caseworkers were shocked and heartsick. There was also much bureaucratic scrambling.
“Everybody and their mother and their lawyer showed up,” said Jerry Buzzard, then the state’s child welfare manager in Hillsboro. There was a debate, Buzzard remembers, about whether Adrianna’s biological mother, Tausha Cram, should be told of her death. Legally, the lawyers pointed out, she had no rights as a parent as she’d lost them because of neglect.
“Those of us who were social workers were talking about our ethical responsibility,” he said.
Buzzard decided to tell Cram himself.
Cram, originally from Washington state, was abused herself as a child. She gave birth to Adrianna when she was 17, had been addicted to drugs and was still trying to pull her life together.
Cram asked to bring Adrianna’s body home. The agency declined.
The little girl was buried in an Omealca cemetery surrounded by sugar cane fields. The tin plaque on her grave misspelled her name.
James Perillo, Adrianna’s Oregon caseworker, insists he saw no red flags that would have prompted him to bring Adrianna back from Mexico before she died. Yet she taught him a painful lesson.
“What I do differently now is that I’m demanding things differently,” he said. “And I’m pushing the consulate to help me by making sure I’m getting things and reports. Because, in a heartbeat, if things don’t go right, I’m going to go and get a kid.”
Others in the agency dealt with Adrianna’s death less personally.
State officials consulted with the Mexican Consulate about what to say if reporters called. One note suggested wording for a news release: “It was a tragedy nobody anticipated.”
When a child in the state’s protective custody dies, a team reviews how the case was handled to see what lessons can be learned. The team investigated the state’s own files and questioned how Adrianna’s uncle and aunt in Mexico were selected in the first place.
But the state’s investigation of Adrianna’s abuse and death stopped at the Oregon border.
No one from Oregon talked to Adrianna’s grandfather, who told the Mexican welfare agency that the girl was being abused six months before her death.
No one from Oregon talked to Adrianna’s teachers, who documented her abuse and pleaded with Mexican officials for help.
And no one from Oregon talked to the prosecutor in Mexico, who investigated Adrianna’s murder.
Without that information, the changes the state team recommended did little to ensure that other Oregon children sent to Mexico would have more vigilant monitoring. Instead, the team’s report conceded, on out-of-country placements “mistakes and missteps are possible.”
Even so, Erinn Kelley-Siel, named head of Oregon’s child welfare division last year, said Adrianna’s death “left a legacy” throughout the organization.
“Because of what she experienced — which I wish she never had to experience — because of it, kids are safer,” she said.
Because of Adrianna, the state now pursues a much more thorough investigation of all adopting families, even if they are relatives, Kelley-Siel said. New caseworkers receive training on a new policy guiding international placements.
But when children are sent to other countries, the state still depends on welfare workers beyond U.S. borders to see the children and respond to any problems. In the case of Mexico, Oregon is depending on the same Mexican welfare agency that ignored repeated reports of Adrianna’s abuse.
In an interview Feb. 27, Kelley-Siel said she saw no reason to stop sending Oregon foster children out of the country. “Just because someone lives in another state or another country,” she said, “I can’t say I’m not going to place a child there just on that basis.”
Yet in another interview 10 days later, Kelley-Siel announced a moratorium on sending Oregon foster children to other countries while the state works with the U.S. State Department on a plan to guarantee better protection for the children. The decision means five Oregon foster children scheduled to go to Mexico won’t be going — at least for now.
At Adrianna’s preschool in Omealca, teachers honor her each November by hanging up her picture for the Day of the Dead celebration.
One teacher, Judith Caizero Aguilar, thought about naming her third child after the little American girl. But she decided it would be a mistake, she said, because “there was only one Adrianna.”
Although the teachers try to keep Adrianna’s memory alive, social workers at the Mexican welfare agency have tried to forget.
Last year, caseworkers at the Omealca branch of the agency feared Adrianna was haunting the office, so the agency director brought in a priest to exorcise Adrianna’s spirit. Since then, workers have not heard her cries for help, said the director, Irene Barrientos de Sierra.
The agency’s records of the 4-year-old American girl’s case also disappeared, she said; previous administrators took them when they left two years ago.
In an interview with The Oregonian, Enrique Romero Cuevas, the consul of Mexico in Portland, expressed regret about Adrianna’s death and pointed out that children in the United States die in foster care as well. He produced numerous news accounts of those cases.
“Systems fail even here,” he said.
Romero Cuevas said the consulate has never received documents about Adrianna’s case because the Mexican judiciary refuses to turn them over. “The file is restricted,” he said, “and we have asked the judiciary for at least a summary of the case, and we have not received an answer yet.”
He learned during the interview that Adrianna’s teachers and principal repeatedly begged child welfare officials for help before her murder.
“That would establish clear responsibility,” he said, “and should be investigated, and if need be, prosecuted.”
In July, three years after her daughter’s murder, Cram went to Omealca.
“I wanted to ask her forgiveness,” she said.
But Cram also was propelled by a need for answers about what happened to Adrianna. And she wanted to bring her daughter’s body home.
Cram went to the Mexican court and bought a copy of the case file on Adrianna’s murder. The file tells the story of Adrianna’s abuse during her year in Mexico. These are documents the Mexican Consulate says it has been unable to get, and Oregon state officials have not seen.
Cram also got permission to dig up her daughter’s body and bring it home. She scoured the cemetery, looking for Adrianna’s grave, wandering among the dozens of graves adorned with plastic flowers, balloons and statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She found it, in the middle of the graveyard, marked with a tin plaque. With a sledgehammer, she broke open the concrete tomb.
Adrianna was cremated in Mexico in July. Tausha Cram brought her ashes back to Oregon in a stone urn. On the front of the urn is a silver angel.
SIDE BAR
Since Adrianna’s death In the four years since Adrianna Romero Cram was murdered, the Oregon Department of Human Services has added a more extensive home study of adopting relatives, training for new workers, and designated experts in out-of-country placements at its Salem headquarters. But there’s still more to do.
Here’s what hasn’t changed:
Caseworkers do not visit children awaiting adoption in other countries, even though they remain in state custody.
There are no safety contracts between Oregon and Mexico to require regular visits and reports for specific children, even though Oregon has agreements with other countries.
Nationally, there’s no reliable tracking of the number of U.S. children sent by states to be adopted in Mexico or other countries.
A new international agreement provides a framework for protecting children sent outside their home countries. But most states, including Oregon, have not set up systems to comply with the agreement. Last week, Oregon temporarily stopped sending foster children out of the country while it talks with the U.S. State Department about what the state needs to do.
Out-of-U.S. adoption-monitoring agreements still works in progress
Oregon isn’t alone in its struggle to manage a growing number of out-of-country adoptions of children from foster care.
“It’s hard to manage these cases because the best type of oversight is when there’s someone on the ground,” says Judge Patricia Macias, president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court and an El Paso, Texas, family court judge.
El Paso has a social worker in Juarez, Mexico, to work with that country’s child welfare authorities and to monitor the kids.
A few states have forged agreements with Mexico to define who will watch over children.
In San Diego County, officials sent 39 children to Mexico last year. The county has an agreement with the Mexican Consulate that spells out how the children will be monitored.
“We do have a great working relationship with Mexico given our proximity,” said Margo Fudge, assistant to the director of San Diego County’s child welfare agency. She conceded the arrangement has pitfalls, but declined to give specifics.
“Whenever you’re at the mercy of another agency,” she said, “tragedies happen.”
Shortly after 4-year-old Adrianna Romero Cram was murdered in 2005, Oregon child welfare officials and authorities from the Mexican Consulate in Portland began drafting a legal agreement spelling out the responsibilities of each side to monitor kids in foster care who are to be adopted by relatives in Mexico.
That agreement was never completed, though Oregon has sent eight more children to Mexico for adoption since Adrianna’s death.
Oregon officials have agreements with some other countries.
In 2007, the department signed a 39-page document with the children’s aid agency in Mississauga, Ontario, detailing how an adoptive placement there would be handled.
Last week, Oregon officials said they hope to have the U.S. State Department’s help with international placements.
Oregon has placed a temporary stop to out-of-country adoptions while officials learn what the state must do to comply with The Hague agreement, an international treaty intended to provide extra safeguards for children outside their home countries.
CPS cannot even manage to protect children in their own counties, how the hell can they be trusted to protect children under their care in other countries??? They have children that live 5 minutes from their office that they will not even take the time to check on, do you really believe they will take the time to check on children thousands of miles away. Hell they can’t even finish the contract in this case!
