“Where Did All the Children Go?” Part 3 – by Charlotte Martin

Something of extraordinary significance happened in 1997 that would change America in ways that no one could have possibly ever imagined. My son, Keith, drowned on 2/21/97, so of course, that changed my life in ways I could never have possibly imagined. I was totally unaware of drastic changes that were happening in America that would eventually affect tens of millions of people.

Ten years would go by before I learned about what else had happened in 1997. For all I know, everyone may have known about it, except me, although I never heard anyone talk about it. Clinton had the federal government to start paying $4,000 for every child that could be taken away from parents and adopted out to foster parents. $6,500 was paid for “special needs” children who could be taken away from parents and adopted out. I read about it in “The Corrupt Business of Child Welfare”. That was back when there was a government agency called The Cabinet for Protection of Children and Families.

Kentucky now has a Child Welfare Oversight Committee that was founded in the last year or two. For several years after my son died, I attended bereaved parent support groups in my hometown and in Evansville. I also attended bereaved parent conferences in Williamsburg, KY where parents came from all across America. We sometimes asked each other if it is perhaps just as painful for parents whose children go missing, or to parents who have their children taken away.

A couple of times, mothers talked about having friends who worked as social workers, and they had asked them if it bothered them to take children away from parents. Their responses were the same – that it did not bother them one bit, and in fact, they loved it because they would rather take 100 children away and be wrong, than to leave one who might be abused or even killed.

Judges said something similar, being that if they must err, they preferred to err on the side of the child. I used to hear Nancy Grace and Jane Velez Mitchell say that if parents had social workers called on them three times, the child should automatically be taken away from parents. Clearly, they did not live in KY or TX. In those states, every time a mother would break up with her boyfriend, the boyfriend or the boy friend’s mother would call social workers to get revenge.

Every time a parent made a neighbor mad, the neighbor called social workers, and then peered through their blinds, laughing their heads off because they had gotten even. I never saw a parent concerned that social workers would come and find that their child was NOT well taken care of. They never grabbed up the child and tried to clean them up. Instead, they went scurrying around at breakneck speed to pick up any clutter or they started mopping the floors. Back then social workers had a reputation for taking children because the house was not taken care of, even though the children were well taken care of.

After my mom died, my son and I moved to the Lake Barkley area. Our neighbors across the street had been foster parents to the Howerton children when they lived in nearby Eddyville. I checked out the book at the library they recommended that I read about the story of the Howerton children, “A Death In White Bear Lake” by Barry Segal.

I learned that in 1964 a meticulous home and ample resources were of utmost importance to social workers. They had convinced unwed mother, Jerri Sherwood that her baby would have a much better chance at having a good life to be raised in such a home. They placed her baby, Dennis in the meticulous home of Lois and Harold Jurgens in a town that had just been called “the best place to live in America”. They had adopted one little boy, but Lois desperately wanted more children.

We ALL had a hard time as we watched George Floyd being tortured to death. Compared to how Lois Jurgens tortured Dennis to death, that would almost certainly have been a blessing for it to end in 8 minutes. Dennis died the day before he would have turned three. There was not a place on him that wasn’t bruised. Among other horrible methods of torture, Lois had poured scalding water on his penis and his penis was almost totally truncated. Lois did not shed a tear as she looked at Dennis lying there in his tiny coffin. The ONLY words she said was “All that training down the toilet”, and she never mentioned him again.

However, Lois STILL desperately wanted more children. Her house was STILL meticulous, and they STILL had ample resources, and that was STILL of great importance to social workers. They placed the Howerton children in the home of Lois and Harold Jurgens in the “best place to live in America”. Another piece to a puzzle had just fallen into my lap when I had no idea that I was trying to put a puzzle together.