Patrick T. Murphy, Cook County public guardian. The Chicago Tribune. April 11, 2000
CHICAGO -- As I walk through the halls of Chicago's Juvenile Court, I fail to understand all the fuss about Elian Gonzalez. My office represents about 28,000 abused and neglected children, yet I do not see a single protester nor the mayor throwing down the gauntlet to the federal government or
even to the state's child welfare system, nor a presidential candidate flip-flopping to ingratiate himself with the voters on behalf of these children.
True, Elian lost his mother as she tried to make a better life for him. But is this personal tragedy worth weeks of front-page articles and endless stories on national news, not to mention thousands of words spilled in guest editorials and talk shows?
No matter what happens, Elian will probably land on his feet, either with kind and caring relatives or more probably with a decent and loving father, even if he does live in a dirt poor country run by a crackpot dictator.
I've never been to Cuba, but as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s, I lived in a third world country, Somalia. Nothing I saw there approached the poverty and violence of the homes from which most of my child clients are taken. Whatever Cuba is like for children cannot match the depression and
despondency we see in places like Cabrini-Green, the Robert Taylor Homes and similar housing projects all over this country.
Instead of Elian's smiling face and flashing dark eyes, I wish the reporters would find and the viewers could see the vacant eyes of four foster children under the age of 3 whom we now represent. Soon after they were taken from their mother, a Department of Children and Family Services social
worker wrote the following description of the foster home where they were placed: " . . . inhumane conditions. It smelled terrible throughout the entire house. The apartment was filthy . . . beds had no sheets or blankets . . . roaches present throughout . . . the kitchen wall had so many
roaches you would have thought they were forming some kind of wall picture . . . there was no food, no refrigerator . . . the children were filthy . . . dirty pampers thrown all over the porch."
Could Elian's Cuba be worse than what the child-welfare system provided these children taken from their mother?
And of course the crowds, politicians and pundits have not championed the case of 2 1/2-year-old Coreese G., who was taken from his neglectful, drugged-up parents for his protection. Over the next three months, Coreese's foster mother tried to toilet train him, using lighted cigarettes and a
belt. By the time paramedics rushed him to the hospital, and then drove him to the morgue, Coreese had more than 200 belt marks and cigarette burns forming a grisly mosaic on his body. Coreese's death prompted a few local articles, but unlike Elian's case, there were no extensive debates nor guest
editorials nor commentaries about his short life.
Children abused by their parents and neglected by the state are gritty and depressing subjects. Even more unpalatable for a flush society is the distressing news that deep poverty, which too often breeds abuse and neglect and crime, is alive and well in unwelcome pockets around the country. It's
like some large rock from under which thousands of slimy things crawl. We'd rather just put it back down. |