Kid-Dumper AR Rep Justin Harris So SO Sorry … That DHS Screwed Him And His Family (Video)
(warning: only read this if you have a truly strong stomach)
Kid-Dumper AR Rep Justin Harris So SO Sorry … That DHS Screwed Him And His Family (Video)
After the older of his two adopted daughters — at the mature age of six — was raped by the man to whom he had “rehomed” her, Arkansas state Rep. Justin Harris (R – “God’s Kingdom”) gave a press conference today to attempt to justify it. (He did not attempt to justify the rape, by family friend Eric Francis, to whom he had turned over his two adopted daughters in late 2013; he merely attempted to justify the rest of it.) Harris started by “clarifying” that “the victims here are the children,” since the country and the Internet did not take well to his sad claim yesterday that it was he and his wife who had “suffered a severe injustice.” While the girls were “the real victims,” he back-pedaled, he and his wife had been “failed” by the Department of Human Services, which is really to blame.
In this afternoon’s press conference (see video above), he began by thanking the reporters in attendance for their “support,” which was probably not their intention in attending. His voice soon breaking, he claimed that he and his wife, Marsha, had rehomed the 6- and 3-year-old — and more on the number of daughters in his custody in a moment — to Eric and Stacey Francis only after an unbroken streak of terror by the girls, who had been abused in their birth family, and for whom no kind of therapy, he said, was working. He claimed that he attempted to talk to DHS — the agency that had arranged and confirmed the Harrises’ adoption of the girls — about returning the girls “multiple times” but was met with “nothing with hostility.” If he attempted to return the girls, Harris says an unnamed worker at DHS told him, he would be charged with child abandonment, and his three birth sons could be taken away as well.
A statement to Wonkette from DHS’s communications director, Amy Webb, regarding Harris’s charge of threats by DHS to his family should he attempt to return the girls said, “I am prohibited by law from discussing specific cases, including that allegation. Here’s all I can say … We understand that in rare cases, a successful adoption is impossible to achieve. In those situations, there is always an option.”
Asked by reporters present who the unnamed DHS worker was, Harris declined to say. He was not as reticent in detailing the girls’ mental health issues, though — and said that DHS had not informed his family they were getting girls who were disturbed by the trauma of their upbringing in their birth family.
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Read more at http://wonkette.com/578793/kid-dumper-ar-rep-justin-harris-so-sorry-that-dhs-screwed-him-and-his-family-video#oJQ3vB3UjHGOYWx4.99
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Did you read the Reuters series on private rehoming? I wish they'd looked at the religious angle. Disruption and RAD diagnoses are very faddish among fundie circles, as are the accusation that the disrupted kids were perverts and dangers to the family's bio children. I know the Campbell family (who publish a QF/ patriarchal magazine for women, "Above Rubies"
have had the same exact scenario play out, as have a lot of others who debatably aren't public figures so I won't name them.
The only unusual thing about the AR case is that it's a domestic adoption.
