Topeka, KS–
And it seems the adoptive parents neglected to mention the fact to authorities or indeed to anyone. Hey, a child goes missing for ten years; it’s the type of thing anyone could overlook, right? But check this out:
The boy’s biological father, Irvin Groeninger II, also expressed regret. The Indiana trucker was divorced when authorities took Adam and his siblings from their mother’s home after alleged abuse. He says he was cleared of any wrongdoing and tried to get custody of his children, but child welfare officials terminated his parental rights.
“Basically, I have lost him twice,” Groeninger said.
So it’s another case of the state’s dogged determination to separate children from their fathers. The parents got divorced and she got the kids. She abused the children badly enough that Adam was taken from her by the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services. That agency then did what similar ones so often do – ignore the fact that there’s a father who claims to be qualified to care for his son. They do that in order to place the boy in an adoptive home.
Now, set aside for a moment the fact that the department may have earned money for the state by placing Adam for adoption instead of handing him over to his father.
What also happened here is that, by forcing adoption on a child who didn’t need it, the department denied adoptive parents to some child who did. Every single day in this country, there are far more children who need to be adopted than there are qualified adoptive parents (only about 50,000 “stranger” adoptions occur in this country each year).
So the current emphasis on adoption at any cost is worse than you think. It deprives fathers of their children, sure, but it also deprives needy children of adoptive parents.
In this case it looks worse still. When a child has been missing for ten years, what do you think happened?
Thanks to “Tex” for the heads-up.