Reactive Attachment Disorder and a Broken System: Our Son Never Stood a Chance
We always feared our adopted son would end up in jail, so after he turned 18, I started searching the recent arrest pages and inmate lookups. That’s how I thought I’d find out. But instead, my husband’s boss emailed us the police announcement, complete with terrifying mugshot, smug smile on his face. That mugshot and list of his crime spree made news across our state’s social media, newspapers and radio stations.
The Arrest That Confirmed Our Fears
Our son, whom we’ll call Jimmy, had stolen a van in one town, driven it to another town, then started blowing through stop signs and traffic signals. A cop tried to pull him over, but he sped off, leading to a multi-car police chase through icy roads at 1 a.m.. He eventually spun out, hitting three parked cars, then fled on foot. After a 20-minute foot chase, the police pulled out their guns and ordered him to the ground. Jimmy was charged with motor vehicle theft, reckless driving, fleeing/eluding, duty to stop after a crash, failure to obey traffic control signals and having an obstructed license plate. In the van, the police found window punches, gloves and bobby pins for picking locks. The release listed him as a transient, as he’d been kicked out of his roommate situation a few days prior.
Misconceptions About the Story
I couldn’t help but pour through the comments of the social media posts, all of which were off base.
“Trying to find a place to stay warm: three hots and a cot,” one commenter wrote. Nope. His sister and cousin advised him to go to the local nonprofit for housing assistance after he’d burned all his other bridges, quit job after job, and blew through all the money he’d stolen. But Jimmy didn’t want to wait in the line, so he chose a crime spree instead.
“Who’s raising these kids?” another wrote. “I bet his parents are so proud of him,” one person said; another replied, “I’m voting considering he’s a transient at 19, his parents probably don’t care about him ….” True of his birth parents maybe, but some of his parents certainly cared.
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While Jimmy’s birth family holds the greatest blame in how his life turned out, a close second is “the child welfare system.” In my personal experience, plus interviewing dozens of other adoptive families, the system often functions more like a fly-by-night sales scam than anything to do with children’s welfare.
(Note: There are many great and dedicated social workers, but most are very overburdened. In addition, they have too little training or understanding in how reactive attachment disorder/developmental trauma can play out in an adoptive family. They also have little control over how the system responds to families after adoption.)
System Failures That Perpetuate Reactive Attachment Disorder
The system didn’t just fail Jimmy once — it failed him at every critical point in his life. At each stage, intervention was either absent, inadequate or outright negligent. These failures stacked up, one after another, until the inevitable outcome we feared became reality.
Here’s where the system broke down:
Failure 1: No Early Intervention
The system failed our son before he even left the hospital as a newborn. You see, his birth mother, who we’ll call Lucy, had already been on the sex offender list for years. She’d already been arrested and had her first child removed for severe physical abuse. According to the court report, the child suffered from a fractured left radius, fractured left tibia, multiple bilateral retinal hemorrhaging (both eyes), vitreous hemorrhaging (both eyes) and trauma to the liver caused by abdominal trauma at the hands of her mother.
The birth father had a multi-page rap sheet, mostly for drug trafficking. Lucy used drugs, alcohol and cigarettes throughout her pregnancy. Yet our son, whom we’ll call Jimmy, was sent home with them with no early intervention services, no supervision.
Early parenting interventions — such as education, visits and coaching — have been found to improve early childhood development outcomes and are more cost effective than later interventions.
Fast forward 2.5 years, and the police burst into their home on a drug raid. Although still in diapers, little Jimmy already knew how to roll a perfect joint by this time. All over the house, the police found unsecured drugs — methamphetamines, crack cocaine, marijuana, scales, baggies, pay-and-owe slips and cash. Little Jimmy was running around acting “visibly high” they noted in their police report. Sure enough, a urine test revealed meth, cocaine and marijuana in his system.
Failure 2: Placement in Another Abusive Home
Jimmy’s older half-sister had been placed with Lucy’s sister Linda, so Linda also adopted Jimmy. Linda moved the children from California to Nevada. Jimmy received no psychological or psychiatric services.
Lucy and Linda’s family was a multi-generational dysfunctional, abusive family, as Lucy later told me directly. Lucy and Linda had been raped by their father throughout their childhood. Linda, though not a drug addict, was a sadistic abuser. The kids had broom handles with their names on them for beatings. Their meals were timed. If the timed, forced eating caused vomiting, they had to eat the vomit. If they disobeyed, in addition to the beatings, there were drownings or other means of torture like brushing teeth with hot sauce.
When Jimmy was 7, his older sister was beaten with a crowbar. When Linda went to the grocery store, the sister ran to neighbors for help and was hospitalized for her injuries. The children were removed. Linda immediately signed over her rights but was not charged with anything.
Failure 3: Ignored in Foster Care
After his removal from Linda’s home, Jimmy was placed in Nevada foster care for 2.5 years. During that time, his history was overlooked entirely. Social workers never contacted California to obtain his records, leaving his traumatic early experiences buried and unaddressed. In addition, he never received a psychological evaluation and his deep-seated struggles went unnoticed. Though he briefly saw a therapist, his foster mother deemed it unnecessary — and was allowed to stop his treatment altogether.
Jimmy was failing elementary school, and school testing showed he would qualify for an IEP and additional school services, but the department of family services and the foster parents never pursued it.
Even though Linda had already signed over parental rights, Jimmy wasn’t listed for adoption for over two years, until he was 9.5 years old. During those years, he languished.
Failure 4: Deceptive Adoption Practices
Jimmy was eventually listed for adoption online. When we inquired about him, they said we couldn’t see his background paperwork until we committed to the match and came out to meet him. We expected to see a large folder of information, but what they handed us was only a few pages thick.
His foster parents were honest with us, saying he wouldn’t do anything they told him. However, we naively believed what the system told us, that with stability, permanence and some basic therapy, he’d start to heal.
We’d gone through foster care training. We’d sought out additional training. I’d read every book I could find. While we thought our online pilot certificate had prepared us to fly, we were for all intents and purposes flying blind.
Failure 5: Lack of Support for Reactive Attachment Disorder
Unbeknownst to us, our family was doomed before it even became official. We were handed a child with severe issues, but no one disclosed those issues to us. Without knowing what we were facing or the best approaches to meet his needs and help him heal, we were doomed to fail, exacerbate his issues, and rip our family apart in the process. The system wasn’t just going to fail Jimmy again this time: It also failed us.
The social workers said he would need “therapy,” but no one told us what kind. I found a local therapist who listed trauma and adoption among her specialties, but we had to bribe him to go, and he only used those one-on-one sessions to triangulate.
At home, he argued incessantly and had hours-long tantrums if asked to do anything. He lied, stole and ran away. At school, his teachers were faced with the same issues, in addition to Jimmy disrupting class, picking fights and refusing to do his schoolwork.
We tried various parenting strategies and threw all the resources we could find at the problems: an IEP, tutoring, psychiatry, essential oils, supplements, diet, meditation, wraparound, respite, special summer camps and extracurriculars. But things only got worse. Jimmy became more rebellious and hostile. We didn’t know what we were dealing with or how to treat it.
As the years went by, and our mental and physical health suffered under the stress, Jimmy racked up a long list of diagnoses. But it wasn’t until he was 14 that his psychiatric nurse practitioner mentioned reactive attachment disorder. I started reading all the blogs on RAD Advocates. This was the first diagnosis that actually made sense. While certain families found select treatments helpful, we lived in a small town. Specialized services weren’t available there. We were also limited financially to what his insurance could cover.
At our wits end, we reached out to the social workers in Nevada, but they couldn’t help. We reached out to our local department of family services, but they couldn’t help. Our family was in crisis. We’d been sold a lie and left high and dry.
Failure 6: Criminalizing Desperate Parents in Need of Help
By the time Jimmy was 15.5, he was adamant he no longer wanted to live with us or listen to anything we said. One weekend after a blow up, we took him to the local youth crisis center, as we had many times before. Usually, a few days there would at least make him want to come back home. But this time was different. This time he’d made up his mind once and for all that he was done with us. He wanted to be emancipated but didn’t qualify for that.
By then, we had nothing left to give. We were exhausted and saw no path forward. If he was adamant that he no longer would live with us, what were we to do? He was the same weight as my husband by now, and his increasing anger scared us.
We hired a lawyer and decided not to pick him up from the crisis center. Refusing to pick up is often seen as the last resort for adoptive parents in our situation. Our lawyer met with the department of family services (DFS). We wanted to force their hand, hoping they would step in and help pay for a specialized residential or in-patient treatment program — our last hope.
Our lawyer said we’d be charged civilly for child neglect/abandonment for not picking him up. But instead, police officers showed up at our house, arrested us and paraded us down the street handcuffed. They then drove us to jail and booked us, slapping us with a criminal charge that carried up to five years in jail.
We were upstanding professionals within our community. We owned our home. We had a clean record. Our son have even told DFS we never harmed him. The criminal lawyer we hired next said we never should have been handcuffed and made to do a perp walk. With no fear of us fleeing, our lawyer should have been allowed to bring us to the jail for processing. They were trying to make an example of us.
Our lawyers went back and forth with the prosecutor. Eventually, the state agreed to lower our charge to a misdemeanor and take Jimmy into care.
My husband told the judge: “This child will end up in jail if he doesn’t get help.”
Failure 7: Placing Wrongful Blame Rather Than Effective Intervention
But the system didn’t get Jimmy help. Instead, they said we were the problem. Even though we knew Jimmy had been cussing out the crisis center staff and his teachers, refusing to go to school or work, in court they acted like he was a model child, a “typical” teen. They placed him with a 20-something couple who had just become licensed to foster. They had two young children of their own with a special needs child on the way. In their care, Jimmy started skipping classes, got in more trouble and started experimenting with drugs. After a year with them, he went to a National Guard bootcamp, then tried mechanics training. But he dropped out of that, too, and wouldn’t hold down a job. He began running away again, and they had to give up their guardianship.
The System Must Do Better for Kids and Families
A few months before his car chase arrest, Jimmy stole $10,000 from his former foster grandparents. Then his mugshot was plastered across the internet, and people started weighing in on whose fault it is.
Of course, Jimmy holds part of the blame now. He’s an adult. But his birth family still gets top billing. A close second is “the system.”
The system should have intervened from the beginning. The system shouldn’t have placed him with a second abuser. The system should have prosecuted the abusers. The system should have given him a detailed psychological evaluation so that he could receive appropriate treatment the moment he entered care. The system should have informed us of his past and the type of parenting and care he would need. The system should have helped us when we asked for help, rather than say, “Once you’ve signed the dotted line, he’s your problem.” The system should not have criminalized us when our only crime was wanting to help.
When we work together to advocate against a broken system, we take steps toward healthier children, families and communities. RAD Advocates is here to equip and support caregivers in this fight. But anyone can do their part. Change starts with awareness and action — no matter your role in society, get involved today.
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