Let me start closer to home. In Crystal Lake, an outer-ring\nChicago suburb, a five-year-old boy, \u201cAJ\u201d Freund, was found in a shallow grave\nin an isolated site near his home. Police found him during an investigation\ntriggered by the boy\u2019s father, who called 911 to report that he was missing.\nPolice dogs tracing his scent at home found no evidence that he had walked out\nthe door. Interrogation of the father, a 60-year-old attorney engaged to a\nformer client in a divorce case, the boy\u2019s 36-year-old mother, caused the police\nto become suspicious of the couple themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It turned out that the Illinois Department of Children and\nFamily Services (DCFS) had been involved with the family since the boy was born\nwith opiates in his system, clearly indicating a drug problem for the mother.\nOne police report a few months ago indicated that the home was filthy with pet\nfeces and utilities were shut off, but DCFS apparently found concerns about\nneglect \u201cunfounded.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, how did AJ wind up in his shallow grave? According to\nthe police, the couple kept him in a cold shower before beating him, resulting\nin his death from head trauma. Needless to say, the couple are now in jail,\nfacing murder charges, and are separately secluded from the rest of the McHenry\nCounty jail population for their own safety. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t wish here to focus on the court case. Judge, jury,\nand prosecutors will make their own determinations as the case proceeds, and\nlike anyone else, the parents are entitled to a defense. What concerns me is\nwhat needs to happen at DCFS to prevent many more children from being similarly\nharmed. This is an agency with serious problems that must be solved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past four years, we had a governor with a serious\nempathy deficit, who preferred to engineer a stalemate with the Democratic\nlegislature over the state budget while bills went unpaid and progress at\nagencies like DCFS sputtered, and numerous nonprofit social service providers\nwent unpaid for months on end. But Republican Bruce Rauner<\/a> did not\ninitiate the crisis at DCFS, which is a product of neglect and malfeasance by\nseveral prior administrations, not to mention the frequent unwillingness of the\nlegislature to prioritize funding for social services. But funding is not the only\nissue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How bad has it been? According\nto today\u2019s Chicago Tribune<\/em><\/a>, \u201cDCFS\nhas churned through 14 previous leaders since 2003 and has seen its budget and\nstaffing dwindle.\u201d This turnover implicates two previous Democratic\nadministrations as well as that of Rauner, who had his own revolving door for\nDCFS executives in the last four years. No one can establish stability and\nquality of services in such an environment. We can only hope that Gov. J.B.\nPritzker<\/a>, who took office three months ago, can make this a priority and\nturn the situation around. He has brought in Marc\nSmith<\/a>, previously the head of a suburban social service organization, and\nmore importantly, has requested a $75 million increase in funding for the\nagency. He is taking heat for proposing to amend Illinois\u2019s constitution to\nallow a progressive income tax in order to gain new revenue from high-income\nresidents, but the money must come from somewhere and the state needs to\nbalance its wobbly budget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But let me get more personal here. And I do take this\npersonally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My wife and I have been foster parents since 1991. Two\ndaughters we adopted are now grown, and there are grandchildren. We also have\nguardianship for one grandson at the moment, so we have a long history of\ninteraction with DCFS. Like many other foster and adoptive parents in Illinois,\nwe have long had reason to question the managerial culture of the agency, which\nhas tended to emphasize restoring or maintaining the custody of natural parents\nwhenever possible. I understand that generally, but not when there is obvious\nabuse or neglect and caseworkers either fail to take notice or fail to act to\nprotect the children. As headlines have often suggested, that happens more than\nwe may want to know. AJ has become the\nlatest case in point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Long ago, two children from a large family reached out to\nconnect with us, and we often let them visit and share their story. We relayed\nsome concerns to DCFS. As a teacher, my wife fell into the category of mandated\nreporters under state law. Doctors, school officials, and others who may\nsuspect or witness abuse or neglect are legally obligated to report it to the\nDCFS hotline. In this case, nothing happened until one child died of starvation.\nThen the remaining children were placed in foster care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On another unrelated occasion, I became concerned about belt\nmarks on a three-year-old child. I called the hotline, where an imperious\nresponder told me that \u201cunder Illinois law, parents are allowed to use corporal\npunishment to discipline their children.\u201d Appalled by her disinterest, I raised\nmy voice: \u201cWe are talking about belt marks on a three-year-old!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMr. Schwab<\/em>,\u201d she\nresponded sternly, \u201cit is not illegal for parents to use corporal punishment.\u201d\nStunned by this indifference, I faced the same dilemma I am sure has confronted\nothers in the same position: Where do we go from here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such responses, to be sure, are not always the case. They\nsimply happen too often. Sometimes, an overburdened caseworker takes shortcuts\nor fails to investigate. The point is that something must change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some Illinois legislators\u2014from both parties\u2014were seeking answers\nfrom DCFS officials at a hearing in Springfield yesterday. I hope they are all,\nfinally, serious as hell about fostering positive change and not just grabbing\nheadlines in a dramatic case. Too many children\u2019s lives and welfare are at\nstake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sri Lanka<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n By now, I don\u2019t imagine there is a need to rehash the\ndetails of recent\nbombings in Sri Lanka<\/a>. It would have been hard to escape the news: suicide\nbombings by apparent Muslim extremists in three hotels in Colombo as well as\nseveral Christian churches on Easter Sunday, killing well\nover 250 people<\/a>. The body count has varied, in part because it is difficult\nto count bodies that have been so badly burned and blown apart. Exactly who\nplanned what is not entirely clear yet, although authorities have blamed a\nhomegrown Muslim militant organization, National Towheed\nJamaat<\/a>. Whether there are ties to Islamic State is a subject of\ninvestigation. The precise motive is something that remains unclear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This comes just a month after the attack by an Australian\nwhite supremacist on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, which I discussed\nlast month<\/a>. I noted that I had spent time in New Zealand in 2008 as a\nVisiting Fellow for a research center in Christchurch. Thus, I found it\ndisturbing in part because of a personal connection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens that I spent 10 days in Sri Lanka in 2005 as\npart of an eight-member interdisciplinary team of Americans invited by the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects<\/a> to assess damage\nfrom the Indian\nOcean tsunami<\/a> and recommend options for rebuilding. In the weeks before the\ntrip, I made a brief, stumbling attempt to acquire some familiarity with the\ndominant national language, Sinhala, but found it daunting. But I find such\nefforts allow me to breathe in a little more of the ethos of the nation I am\nvisiting. And from further reading and from talking to our hosts, I learned\nsome very interesting facts about Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The civil war that once raged is now over, but that was not\nthe case then. We traveled from the capital, Colombo<\/a>, on the western coast\nof this island, along the coast to Batticaloa<\/a>, halfway up the\neastern coast, before we were forced to turn west through the Central\nHighlands of Kandy<\/a> back to Colombo. The Northeast and the Jaffna Peninsula<\/a> were\nunder the control of the rebel Tamil\nTigers<\/a>. Along the way back, we encountered some military checkpoints.\nCaught in the middle of this long-running tragedy were the people of many rural\nvillages and smaller cities. As one architect on our team from New Mexico, who\nwas a Vietnam veteran, commented, \u201cThe rural people are the ones who always\ntake it in the shorts.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n But this struggle had little to do with Muslims or\nChristians, except coincidentally. They were largely bystanders. The battle was\nbetween the Sinhalese\nmajority<\/a> and the Tamil\nminority<\/a>, which wanted rights to sustain its own Tamil language<\/a>\nand culture in a multicultural nation. That sounds fair enough, but the Tamil\nTigers became an incredibly vicious movement that had few compunctions about\nsending suicide bombers to blow up public buses. They demanded a Tamil homeland\nin the regions they controlled. Thousands of Sri Lankans died during decades of\narmed insurgency. Finally, the rebellion was suppressed by the government about\nten years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When we arrived, a cease-fire negotiated by Norwegian\ndiplomats was in effect, but 35,000 Sri Lankans had died as a result of the\ntsunami\u2014drowned in a wall of water, washed out to sea, crushed beneath\nshattered buildings. The southern and eastern coasts were devastated. A nation\nthat had suffered so much needless death suffered even more at the hands of the\nforces of nature, reinforced by a noticeable lack of preparation for such an\nevent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even before I left for Sri Lanka, I experienced a personal connection to it all. The Rev. Eardley Mendis<\/a>, a Sri Lankan-American pastor, had worked as the custodian for Augustana Lutheran Church<\/a>, of which my wife and I are members, while studying at the nearby Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago<\/a>. By 2005, he was the pastor of a local Lutheran church largely supported by Asian Americans. But his wife and daughter had returned to visit family in Sri Lanka over Christmas in 2004. When the tsunami struck on December 26, they were aboard the coastal passenger train that was destroyed<\/a> by the second major tsunami wave, largely due to lack of warning of the impending danger. Eardley\u2019s daughter survived; his wife did not. I interviewed him over lunch before I left Chicago. Later, during the trip, a villager in Peraliya took me to see the demolished train, stored on a side track as a memorial. For me, it was one of the most emotionally powerful moments of the entire tour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This man then showed all of us what was left of his home by the sea, including his makeshift oven, where he cooked meals that he sold to travelers along the road. That was his now fragile livelihood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sri Lanka has had a measure of peace for most of this decade\nsince the end of the Tamil Tigers insurrection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A note on Sri Lankan demographics is in order at this point.\nAbout two-thirds of the nation is Buddhist, mostly of Sinhalese ethnicity.\nAbout 15 percent are Tamil and largely Hindu. The remainder of the nation mostly\nconsists of two religious minorities, half Muslim and half Christian. The\nMuslims are mostly descended from traders who occupied the coastal cities since\nmedieval times, with Sri Lanka about midway between the predominantly Muslim\nArabian peninsula and predominantly Muslim Indonesia. While a very small number\nof Christians are descended from European colonial settlers of centuries past,\nmost are converts of native Sri Lankan ancestry. The churches, both Catholic\nand Protestant, are part of the fabric of modern Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And so it may seem curious that one minority might attack\nanother, but it is far more important to know that the vast majority of Sri\nLankans of all faiths have had more than enough of war and bombings and\nsectarian violence. The perpetrators of the Easter bombings appear to include some\nchildren of a wealthy spice dealer in Colombo. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe<\/a>\napparently has expressed doubt that the father knew what the children were up\nto, but the police rightly seem determined to find out. Muslims, like other\npeople across the planet, sometimes experience the pain of children who choose\nan evil path. The Bible is replete with such stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/staging\/1734\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/36939_05.jpg\")
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