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Experts worry the high-profile Gebauer case will dissuade people from taking in the 4,000 Pennsylvania children looking for homes

Sunday, March 10, 2002

By Joe Smydo, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Karen Jorgenson's voice quavered as she recounted being betrayed by a boy she not only welcomed into her home, but made her son.

She adopted him when he was 8, after he had been in and out of six foster homes. By 14, he had become verbally abusive and stolen from her. He was put out of the house after Jorgenson learned he repeatedly raped her mentally retarded biological daughter and molested neighborhood girls.

"And he said he would be back to get us," recalled Jorgenson, administrator of the National Foster Parent Association in Gig Harbor, Wash., who, about five years ago, severed contact with the boy who is now a college student.

Although violence rarely rises to the level of murder, as police said it did Feb. 13 in the death of Fallowfield farmer Alison Gebauer, researchers and child welfare experts said foster and adoptive children struggling with feelings of anger and grief sometimes push, slap, kick and bite family members.

Statistics are lacking -- violence by foster and adoptive children toward family members is "badly under-researched," said Jeffrey J. Haugaard, associate professor in the Cornell University Department of Human Development. Some experts were skittish about discussing the issue, fearful the publicity will scare away prospective parents for the large number of teen-agers languishing on adoption waiting lists.

However, the risk of violence is serious enough for some child welfare agencies to address the issue in training programs for foster and adoptive parents. And violent acts have been committed often enough for psychologists to have developed -- and defense lawyers to have used -- diagnoses such as "adopted child syndrome" to help explain the crimes.

John Frank Gebauer, 15, was charged with fatally shooting his adoptive mother and sexually abusing her corpse at the family farm while his adoptive father, Ed, was out of town. The boy had some of the characteristics associated with the syndrome -- a history of lying, defiance and running away that he acknowledged in an essay he wrote in October 2000.

The syndrome was introduced in the 1984 trial of a teen-ager charged with setting fire to his adoptive parents' home and murdering them. That case, "started a pattern of attributing murderous impulses to other adopted young people, perhaps the most well known being David Berkowitz, or 'The Son of Sam,'" the New York serial killer, according to an article last year in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services.

The author, Jerome Smith, retired associate professor at Indiana University School of Social Work, is among those who say the theory is invalid because it focuses on the issue of adoption, rather than underlying problems such as mental illness.

Chief public defender Glenn Alterio arranged for a mental-health evaluation of Gebauer, one of the first steps in determining what type of defense to mount. With a defense such as adopted child syndrome, Alterio probably would have to convince a judge the disease is recognized by the medical community and worthy of being introduced at trial, said John Rago, associate dean and assistant professor at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh.

In a children's book, author Betsy Cromer Byars uses the word "pinballs" to describe children who have been bounced around the foster-care system. In some cases, children move from family to family, school to school, neighborhood to neighborhood, even from one state to another.

Child welfare agencies said they give foster and adoptive parents as much information as possible about the children they're letting into their homes. But with children moving around so much, it's often difficult to maintain a complete record, said Cindy Freidmutter, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York.

Like Jorgenson's son, Gebauer had a traumatic childhood -- his biological mother died when he was 7 -- and he had been in numerous foster homes before being adopted about three years ago. Because he found a family, Gebauer was one of the lucky ones.

Often abused and neglected by their biological families, foster and adoptive children struggle with feelings of anger, loss and grief that compound the ordinary problems of adolescence, said Sandy Gallagher, director of the Statewide Adoption Network.The love of adoptive parents, experts said, doesn't cure all of a child's problems.

Infants are the most popular candidates for adoption. The older they are, and the more time they spend in foster care, the less likely foster children are to find adoptive parents and to flourish in families willing to give them a permanent home, some studies show.

A 1997 federal law requires child welfare workers to try to find permanent placements for children who have been in foster homes for 15 months in a 22-month period. Child Law Practice, a journal of the American Bar Association, in 1999 published an article outlining the disadvantages of growing up in foster care and encouraging judges and lawyers to work for adolescent adoptions.

Despite the push, researchers and child welfare agencies didn't know of any studies directly addressing violence by foster and adoptive children toward family members. The state Department of Public Welfare said it doesn't track such behavior because the federal government doesn't require the data. Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency had no figures, either.

However, some insights may be gleaned from studies focusing on other aspects of foster care and adoption.

In one study, Illinois State University researchers Susan Smith and Jeanne Howard found children adopted after stints in foster care were more likely than other groups of children to behave at a level associated with the need for mental health counseling.

Twenty-six percent of the former foster children had broken objects purposely while 36 percent had bullied or been cruel to others. Overall, these children showed more behavior problems than the comparative groups of children who had been raised by their biological parents and children who were adopted in infancy, said Smith, professor of social work and co-director of the university's Center for Adoption Studies.

In a second study involving families that sought special services for troubled adopted children, researchers found that 56 percent of the children were physically aggressive while 7 percent -- a "small subgroup," Smith said -- had homicidal tendencies. She emphasized the findings do not reflect behavior trends among the overall population of adopted children.

While Jorgenson said violence occurs infrequently, she told the story of a friend who worked for the Child Welfare League of America and was beaten by her 19-year-old adopted son. Jorgenson also addresses the risk of violence in foster parent training and cites her experience as, "the worst of the worst."

Parental Stress Center in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood also addresses the issue in training sessions and suggests foster families promote a peaceful atmosphere by banning the viewing of violent television shows, said Kathy Moore, program director.

Moore said it's "not unusual" for preschool or elementary-school children to bite or slap foster parents. She said such behavior is less common in older children, who know they risk being removed from the home.

Maria Gaso, a foster parent for two years, has a different perception.

Gaso has welcomed 12 children into her Bentleyville home, only one a teen-ager, for whom Washington County Children and Youth Services had to find a bed quickly. While she had no problem with that child, Gaso said she's heard "horror stories" about teen-agers destroying property and prefers helping younger kids such as the 4-year-old foster child she and her husband, Joseph, plan to adopt.

Publicity about the Gebauer case troubles child welfare agencies with more children to place than families willing to accept them. Besides finding foster and adoptive families on their own, some government agencies pay private organizations to do additional recruiting.

Gallagher of the Statewide Adoption Network said the 4,000 Pennsylvania children looking for new homes -- nearly 2,200 of them older than 9 -- shouldn't have to wait a moment longer "because of one incident or a few incidents" involving high-profile violence.

Jorgenson said there's a "strong possibility" inappropriate placements will occur because of the federal mandate to find permanent homes for children languishing in foster care.

Children just aren't dropped in adoptive homes; Gallagher said the adoption is finalized only after a trial period monitored by child welfare officials. And, as in the Gasos' case, children often are adopted by their foster parents.

However, Richard P. Barth, professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work, said a federal government pushing adoption could provide more assistance to adoptive families. He said temporary institutional placement, available for children in foster homes, isn't available in many states after children have been adopted.

Smith, the Illinois State University researcher, said the "overwhelming majority" of parents she's met are pleased with their adopted children. But Timothy P. Snyder, executive director of Parental Stress Center, said families do take risks when they take in children knocked around by life.

'The cumulative effect of that can be overwhelming," Snyder said.