Yep, because unstable, unsuitable people NEVER get through the adoption process, do they Angie....
Adopted boy had face pushed into hot food: Single mother subjected child to years of cruelty | Mail Online
Adopted boy had face pushed into hot food: Single mother subjected child to years of cruelty
By
Steve Doughty
Last updated at 6:55 AM on 02nd April 2009
The mother subjected her adopted son to four years of violent abuse in a bid to control his behaviour (posed by model)
A single woman who was chosen to adopt a boy subjected him to four years of beatings and abuse.
She spat at him, locked him in a laundry cupboard for hours without food or water, and once pushed his face into a plate of hot spaghetti.
The adoption was one of the first by a single mother after social workers and adoption agencies began looking for single parents and gay couples to adopt, in some cases in preference to married couples.
The 43-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had never lived in a long-term relationship or been married when social workers decided she was suitable to adopt.
Yesterday she was given a conditional discharge after admitting child cruelty. An MP questioned why social workers failed to act after the woman herself reported that she was in difficulties.
The boy - whose age during his time as an adopted child was given only as under 12 - came from a troubled background, Exeter Crown Court heard.
Within a short period after he went to live with the woman, she began to use violence to try to control his behaviour.
Incidents included smacking him in the face and digging fingernails into his chin, kicking him while he lay on the floor, lying on top of him, and grabbing his arms.
On one occasion she pushed his face into a plate of hot spaghetti as a punishment.
By 2005 she had admitted to social workers that she had washed the boy's face 'roughly'.
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During therapy sessions, the boy spoke of physical abuse and said that he did not want to go home.
However, the abuse continued until last year when a social worker noticed pinch marks on his arms. The boy has since been found a new home and the woman has been told she cannot adopt again.
The judge, Recorder Mark Evans QC, told her: 'When things were difficult you reported it to the adoption agency and after one incident social services and the police became involved.
'Clearly the signs were there but they weren't picked up. You sought help. That wasn't forthcoming and you didn't have the resources to cope.'
Dan Norris, a former child protection officer who is now Labour MP for Wansdyke, said: 'If there was a plea for help it should not have been ignored. But being a single parent is not an excuse for being a bad parent.'
In the late 1990s, social workers began to choose single parents as adoptive mothers on the grounds that children who had been born to single parents are better brought up in one-parent homes.
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