From everything that’s come to light so far, state Representative Justin Harris and his wife aren’t really accused of anything but trying to do right by a couple of girls who needed a family.
It all began when the third-term state rep from West Fork and Mrs. Harris tried to adopt the girls several years back but, well, no good deed goes unpunished. Or in this sad case, when the adoption didn’t work out, gets used for cynical political purposes.
It’s a sad thing to happen to a family, and, oh, yes, to the kids involved. Some of us have known folks who have had adoptions go bad. The family reaches out to help, the child reaches for that help, and . . . things just don’t work. Sometimes the kids can’t cope with such a big change in their lives. And adoptions don’t fail after one bad night in a strange bed, either. These families may work for months, even years, trying to make things better. But things only get worse, and finally intolerable. And everybody loses out. Yes, sad. But this case turned out to be more than sad; it had a terrible twist.
The Harrises eventually gave the girls to another family—friends of the Harrises they knew well. It’s called re-homing. Which a lot of folks in Arkansas never heard of before last week, and we’re starting to think nobody should ever hear of again. It sounds like a dubious policy: letting one family adopt a kid, then hand the youngster off to another one. In this case, a man in the kids’ new family was convicted of raping one of the girls—and is now serving 40 years in prison. Which makes this sad story worse than sad, but terrible.
Justin Harris and his wife, and their attorney, held a press conference last week to give the public even more details. Forgive us if we won’t go into most of them here. Too painful.
But at that press conference, Mr. Harris made a serious allegation against those running the Department of Human Services, a department he’s had trouble with in the past as the operator of a preschool. According to the story in Saturday’s paper, Mr. Harris said he couldn’t have given the girls back to the state because a former employee of DHS, as well as a current one, “indicated that if he tried to return the two girls, he and his wife would face child-abandonment accusations, which could even result in [their] losing custody of their biological children.”
Wait a minute. Didn’t some reports last week acknowledge that failed adoptions do happen, and when they do, DHS takes the children back? Has there ever been a case in which DHS has filed an abandonment lawsuit in the case of a failed adoption? At the press conference, Justin Harris declined to name those who he said had threatened to do just that. Earlier in the week, he’d mentioned the head of the Children and Family Services Division, but now the lawmaker seems inclined to be less specific. Unfortunately. He needs to name names, and not just to document his own defense. But to prevent some other family from falling into the same predicament.
For its part, the DHS says it’s not its policy to threaten parents with child abandonment suits. But if this threat was actually made, if there’s anybody at DHS who would act like this, the public needs to know. For its part, DHS says these cases come with so many protections for the privacy of all concerned that it can’t even dispute inaccurate information about them. That’s a pity, but Justin Harris needs to name names—if he can. So the state can investigate further. But if he can’t, he owes the folks at DHS an apology.
Of course you knew that somebody would try to make partisan hay out of all this. That’s politics, that’s Arkansas, and that’s the head of the state’s Democratic Party, one Vince Insalaco. A partisan first and last, he’s already called for . . . not a full and impartial investigation, not a calm review of all the relevant facts, but, you guessed it—Representative Harris’ immediate resignation.
On what grounds? For trying to help two little girls in need of a family? For trying to make the world a better place? As are most all people who decide to become adoptive parents.
Better if Mr. Insalaco goes back to his cave to issue partisan press releases about politics. What he’s been saying this week can’t be helpful—not to the state, not to public discourse, not to his party, and certainly not to the kids involved in this case.