Homeless, unemployed woman wants son back from foster parents
2006-10-06 A mother who abandoned her son as an infant is now fighting the 5-year-old's adoption by foster parents, a year after authorities discovered the woman who was caring for him was not in fact his mother.
The birth mother was found by police late last year, after Sharon Flake-Jack, 36, admitted she was not the boy's mother and gave the other woman's name to police. After missing two key hearings in Milwaukee County Children's Court regarding the termination of her parental rights, the mother appeared Sept. 21 and said she wanted her son back.
"Your son was sort of just out there," Children's Court Judge Carl Ashley said to the woman at another hearing in the matter held on Monday. "You didn't even know where he was."
The woman told Ashley that she initially had given up on getting her son back and did not show up for court hearings because she was staying in a homeless shelter and did not have a job.
"I was scared," she told Ashley, weeping. "I was told it would be very hard for me to get my son back." She said she now has a home and is able to care for the boy, who will turn six next week. She declined to speak with a reporter.
At the earlier hearing, the boy's biological father appeared via videophone from an Illinois prison where authorities said he is serving time for aggravated vehicle hijacking with a firearm. He is expected to be released in 2008, court records show. He has also refused to voluntarily terminate his parental rights to the boy, who authorities said has never seen his father.
The foster parents who have raised the boy since July 2004 have asked to adopt him, authorities said and court records show. However, before that can be legally finalized, the rights of both biological parents have to be terminated.
When he was an infant, the boy was left in Chicago with friends by his destitute and homeless mother. It is unclear just how and when Flake-Jack took custody of the boy, but at some point she in turn left him to be raised by friends in Milwaukee and visited periodically. In March 2004, the friends reported to child welfare authorities that Flake-Jack had abandoned the child and the boy was placed in foster care.
Child protection authorities moved to terminate Flake-Jack's parental rights. Through genetic testing, they discovered in October 2005 that she was not the boy's mother. The boy has never been reported missing and police began grilling Flake-Jack. She then gave them the biological mother's name and within weeks they were able to locate her and notify her about the court proceedings. The mother gave police the name of the father.
Ashley will rule at a hearing later this month about who will raise the child.
The boy's mother told Ashley she has two other children, lives in East Chicago, Ind., and is unemployed.
On Monday, Virginia Stuller, the mother's attorney, characterized her client as "unsophisticated, indigent and virtually abandoned by support systems," and said she did not appreciate the necessity of attending court hearings regarding the boy.
"This child has been in foster care far too long," Mary Sowinski, an assistant district attorney told the judge. "The state will show that she (his mother) has abandoned this child."
By MARY ZAHN mzahn@journalsentinel.com Posted: Oct. 4, 2006 http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=509904 keywords: keywords:
