The stupidity of the bureaucracy aside, and acknowledging that we're only hearing about this because the girls were British and also that its limited to their viewpoint (wow, talk about disclaimers ), what the fuck is going on with that orphanage?

If someone was describing the situation there to me without mentioning that it was an orphanage, I'd assume that it was a harsh youth reeducation facility for juvenile offenders, ie. a prison - strip-searches, monitored showers, standard issue uniforms/clothing (especially when the girls had perfectly serviceable clothing of their own for a non-extended stay) - it simply would not be possible for it to register any other way. In, fact, I bet that locally, if it came to light that such procedures were being used at even a juvenile detention facility it would cause a shitstorm, or at the very least a debate about the proprietress of using such harsh measures when the goal should be reeducation. For implementing such procedures at an orphanage the people responsible would, and have, get fired at the very least and possibly go to prison. I'm pretty sure that its similar in the rest of Europe (feel free to contradict me people).

So the question is; how the fuck can the US (specifically the US government, or whatever local government is in charge) justify that sort of orphanage, which by definition means housing of (law-wise) innocent kids? And why isn't there a huge shitstorm going on about those practices with people that let the system fall apart at the very least feeling the heat of the public? Why do we have to wait for some British girls to have the unfortune to fall into that hellhole before there is any mention of such unjustifiably harsh conditions? Even more importantly, now that the light has been shone on the situation, why aren't there follow up articles pressuring the government to do something about the situation?

...

Now that I was looking up the news on Google news to confirm that there truly isn't a shitstorm brewing in the US (there is one in the UK apparently), I stumbled upon a picture of the girls in question:

Those are the girls that you shouldn't ask anything? The ones that can't be trusted to remain at their mother's bedside for a day or two or in the hotel? Those are the girls that should be treated the same as toddlers by the social services and the same as youth felons by the orphanage? WTF? America really is a nanny state, just not in the way Americans seem to understand the term.

The simple question "Where do you live ?" should have led to a search for a passport or a call at the UK embassy to verify the information.

This is what's always bothered me about everyone on this board talking about how we need to emulate European things like socialized healthcare. Nobody seems to realize that when the United States implements government programmes, it always does so in the worst possible way.

In the United States, socialized healthcare would not resemble that in Canada, Australia, or Britain. It would resemble that of the Soviet Union in the 1980s with distilled water replacing drugs to meet production quotas. Our government is simply structurally incapable of implementing a social programme effectively--and it's almost certainly due to the constitutionally entrenched "Spoils System" which prevents the establishment of a civil service.

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The strange thing is, the only reason I even saw this was being it was a part of a 'And in lighter news this week' on teletext. It was just considered to be a rather bizarre thing to happen, alongside a drunk unicyclist in Yorkshire.

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Because, for the most part, no one gives a fuck about kids that aren't their own.


Because, believe it or not, most Americans do not view these places as a problem. The view abused and neglected kids not as victims to be helped but future threats that need to be controlled.


Yes. With rare exception, US laws do not distinguish between toddlers and teenagers. Aside from being allowed to drive at 16 (with more and more restrictions every year) you go from no rights when you're 17 years 364 days old to being a legal adult at 18 years of age.

Again - something like 80-90% of the US population will never own a passport in their entire lives. A lot of foreign nationals in the US don't have a passport. While in Europe everyone has a passport in the US the vast majority don't, it's a pain in the ass to get one, and it will not occur to your average American to ask for one.

Although a passport is legal ID in this country and, most remarkably, I happen to own one, it wasn't that long ago when I presented it as proof as identity and citizenship when applying for a job and the girl behind the desk rejected it and asked for other ID because she had no clue what a US passport looked like and felt she was more capable of spotting a bogus driver's license than a bogus passport. Do you understand that even though a passport is a Federal government issued ID that a lot of people in the US will NOT accept one because they don't know what they fucking look like! Regardless of what the law says (and under the law a passport is supposed to be the gold standard of ID) the de facto proof of identity in the US is a driver's license - which of course neither of those two girls possessed.

I agree absolutely the proper and intelligent thing to do would have been to ask the girls for whatever identification they had - in this case passports - and then call the UK embassy. BUT - living in the US I know not to expect that to happen. The social services system is NOT set up to deal with foreign children. It's a one-size-fits all approach.

Broom, the sad thing is that the "righteous anger" and questioning in my last post was mostly rhetorical - I pretty much expected the exact response you gave me. I know the US bashing in threads like this can wear a little thin (not to mention that I'm a bit of a hypocrite bashing the US social services system with examples from the one of my country while being aware that that system has different major flaws of its own, yet that nobody will call me on it because of Croatia's utter irrelevance on the international stage), but the US really is perplexing some times. It most certainly is the richest country on Earth and yet huge parts of its populace lives in conditions that are worse then second tier (or second world, to go back to pre-'90 terminology) countries like my own.

While I understand that a passport is a foreign concept to US citizens (;-)), I was more astonished that there seems to have been no attempt for any identification or notification of any next-of-kin - that should have been the top priority for the social service after taking custody. I'd not expect children to phone home to tell grandma what's going on after being removed from their mother's hospital bed. Nobody knew how long the mother should have stayed in the hospital, the whole family would have just disappeared for those days.

Also, we don't know what happened after the questionaire and shower - maybe they changed gears when the answers indicated the children were not taken away from a drug overdose victim. The glass-walled dormitory could have been the only available.

I didn't take so much as "US bashing" as a lack of comprehension of what things are actually like in this country. Hospitals are meat grinders, even the good ones. This woman ended up at county/charity - no doubt because, no matter what sort of "traveler's insurance" she has, under the US system she is seen as having no health insurance whatsoever. Foreign nationals pay cash here.


Yes, I know. I've lived here all my life and I still don't understand this place!


Yes, this is true, but perhaps not well known. The US has always had a great disparity of wealth between the richest and poorest. Even during the most prosperous years - post WWII, basically - we had lots of people living in shithole 3rd world conditions that would probably shock tribal Africans. It's the dark side of the land of opportunity - if you don't win big you can wind up very miserable indeed, and since the mythology is that anyone can get ahead with hard work, then if you don't get ahead it must be your own damn fault.

Frankly, throughout the run-up toward my visit last year to the USA all kinds of officials engrossed me with horror stories about bureaucratic screw-ups involving foreign nationals and how I should basically have the phone number of the Dutch consulate tatooed into my living skin "just in case", so I had a faint idea of the state of things... But to be perfectly honest I still can't quite wrap my head around it.

Admittedly it's not like people don't occasionally get caught between the cogs of the bureaucratic machine over here, but this level of messing-up, and being told it's endemic... Well, it's just hard to conceive of having to apply standards usually reserved for Soviet Russia or, oh I don't know, some Central African shithole run solely on bribes, to the United States of America.

You'd expect something a bit more enlightened, I guess.

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I suspect a healthy part of the bureaucratic bullshit is the result of years of "compassionate conservatives" playing "starve the beast" by cutting funding and imposing restrictions on social services until virtually nothing is left and the good people are gone.

MOST people who visit the US don't have this level of problem but, yes, it's a real possibility.

Suppose an American citizen had no relatives or friends he could call, and had to be admitted to hospital, thus leaving a couple of children at home. Would the same thing happen?

Also, I have to ask if she tried to make any arrangements for the kids. Pneumonia is a debilitating condition but it is not one that leaves you comatose and unable to communicate.

Very probably yes. I doubt the children would always go to such a nightmarish orphanage, but if next-of-kin could not be contacted they would go 'into the system'.


I don't know what arrangements she could have made, especially if the social workers were fired up to 'save' the children and the doctors were keeping the woman from getting out of bed.

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Well, I hate to say it because it will make me sound like one of these "Family Values" assholes, but this case is a good example of where a two-parent family is a lot better off than a single-parent family. If one of the two parents gets seriously ill, the remaining healthy parent can soldier on and keep things from going to hell. That happened with me when Rebecca got sick. But if you only have one parent and that parent becomes seriously ill, the family disintegrates. The children have to be sent off to live with someone else in the best case scenario, or with the state in the worst case scenario.

Consti-what? That's a bit harsh Marina. The Constitution gives the President the power to appoint people to various positions, and it is only natural that the chief executive should have such power. That does not mean the President can just clear out the entire government and refill it with his cronies any time he enters office. We can blame Jackson for that one, though in all fairness to the man, the cultural make-up of the country would have made it come along eventually. Though the spoils system would really not be an issue if not for people fundamentally opposed to any sort of socialism gaining enough power to take advantage of it. Were they a fringe minority, it wouldn't be an issue in that regard.

Yes. The details would vary from place to place, but essentially the children would wind up in state custody until the parent was able to reclaim them.


It can leave you in that state if you keep pushing yourself while ill and refuse to go to the doctor.

Let's look at this tidbit:

OK, this dingbat, after spending a couple days in the hospital, STILL on antibiotics and apparently other medications, wanted to go gallivanting in sub-zero conditions in Sweden for a week! I suspect she may be the sort who insists "I never get sick" while hacking and coughing and being a walking petri dish and not having the sense to slow down. WTF? She needs to be told going out in the winter cold for a week while still seriously ill is a bad idea? She's a flake.

Even more so, it's an argument for an extended family. If parents can't be located (say both parents are in a car accident) then social services will seek out grandparents, aunts/uncles, and even adult siblings. There IS a mandate to find relatives but they have to be accessible. If it will take a few days for the relative(s) to arrive then the children will remain in state custody until such time. In cases of, say, same sex partners it is possible to write up a legal document so that the legal parent explicitly states "If I am incapacitated this designated person will become the legal guardian." Usually it's honored, even if challenged, provided the legalities are completed ahead of time.

If, hypothetically, the girls' father (or other relative) had been contacted and he left for New York immediately the girls would STILL remain in state custody until he arrived to claim them.

True; everyone needs an extended family. But you don't normally take an extended family with you on vacation.

Nevertheless, as you point out in your previous post, it looks like this woman is an idiot. It's entirely possible that she was so self-centred that she didn't even think about what happened to her kids until she was discharged.

This is sort of a nitpick, but Britain is doing just that, in the guise of state funding for homeopathy.

Every time the topic of socialized health care comes up, Americans point out that Canadian-style health care would never work in the US, because apparently, everyone in your society and government is a bigger asshole than their counterparts here, and their assholish nature would cause the whole idea to collapse. Are you guys serious?

Apparently yes.

Also, you did notice that the thing the woman was wanting to go on to do was to raise money for charity right?

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And yet, if a foreigner were to say that Americans are assholes, the Yanks would get all pissed off at him. Apparently, only Americans are allowed to say that Americans are assholes. Such assholes, apparently, that any socialized health care system would crumble against the immovable wall of their assholishness.

I've known plenty of people who volunteered for church charities at the expense of their kids, and while I don't know much about this one, it doesn't necessarily mean the person isn't self-centred. Ultimately, they tend to do it because it's simply what they want to do, and their direct responsibilities don't bother them. But if nothing else, the person is definitely stupid; one does not immediately go from pneumonia to dancing in the snow.

So what?

As a single parent she has a responsibility to take care of herself FIRST for the benefit of her children BEFORE she takes a major risk, even if it is for charitable purposes.

The articles that tell her side of the story imply at least that she discharged herself early against medical advice to track down her kids. Is it possible she initially let the social workers take care of it under the assumption that it wouldn't have come to this?

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Which leads me back to my previousl post, if Iread the article right, 30 isn't enough time for a plodding bureaucracy to do such a thing. It's entirely possibe that after three or four, perhaps a working week, that they would have.