Child Goes Missing For Ten Years, And His Adoptive Parents Didn’t Think To Report It?
Monday, January 12, 2009Posted in: Fucktards R Us, Fucktards United
(CNN) — Authorities in Kansas are looking for a boy who disappeared about a decade ago, but was not reported missing until a few weeks ago.
“We don’t know what happened to Adam Herrman past ’99, when he was last seen,” Butler County Sheriff Craig Murphy said at a news conference in El Dorado.
“Is he alive, is he dead? That one I can’t answer because we don’t know,” he added.
Adam was 11 or 12 when he was last seen, Murphy said. At the time, he was living in a mobile home park in Towanda, a small town in southern Kansas, with his adoptive parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman. The couple did not report him missing, Murphy said.
A few weeks ago, a person notified Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Children’s Unit of a “concern” regarding Adam, Murphy said.
The agency did not immediately return CNN’s phone call seeking additional information.
Wichita attorney Warner Eisenbise, who is representing Adam’s adoptive parents, said the couple “really rue the fact that they didn’t” report the boy missing.
“They feel very guilty” about not doing that, he said in a telephone interview. The couple told him the boy had run away frequently, he said, and they believed him to be either with his biological parents or homeless.
Although the Herrmans did not report him missing, “they were very worried about him,” he said.
Authorities have searched the Pine Ridge Mobile Home Park, where the family had lived, and discovered an “answer” to one of their questions, Murphy said, without explaining.
“We did find one of the answers we were looking for, but I am holding that one very tightly,” he said.
Eisenbise said authorities also executed a search warrant on December 15 at the Herrmans’ home in Derby, a town just outside of Wichita. They took the couple’s computer, he said.
Murphy said the couple is cooperating and had not been charged with anything.
Citing a relative, the Wichita Eagle reported the Herrmans had taken Adam into foster care and later adopted him.
Michelle Ponce of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, which oversees adoption and foster care, said she could not release any details regard Adam’s case, and could confirm only that he had been in foster care at some point, but was no longer in foster care in 1999.
His adoptive parents felt guilty? Guilty? Erm, they fucking didn’t, or if they had, they’d have reported him missing to begin with.
The authorities gave this boy to a couple who didn’t have the sense to know that if a child goes missing, you need to report it? Nobody checked on him in all that time to see how he was doing?
I’ll say it again, What. The. Fuck?
So, either these people were two of the most stupidest people who have ever walked the earth, or they did something to that little boy.
I know which option I’m going with.
Thanks to Ann Bruce for the heads up.
Shiloh Walker
January 12
12:07 pm
Dear God.
Fae Sutherland
January 12
12:14 pm
Jesus. It’s just like the Caylee Anthony story. Except instead of being found out after a month of no sign of the kid, they got away with it for ten years.
People are so good about reminding me why I like my cats more than most humans. >:(
vanessa jaye
January 12
1:17 pm
I’m with you. WTF?
They ‘really rue’ not reporting him missing my ass. I’m gobsmacked and truly sickened by their disregard. That poor kid.
theo
January 12
1:24 pm
Good Lord!!!
I’m with you, Karen. The only reason to not report him missing is because they did something to him.
Another system child falls through the cracks and pays the ultimate price.
AnneD
January 12
2:04 pm
How horribly bizarre!
People just need to learn they will get caught eventually.
Lolita Lopez
January 12
2:57 pm
That is just so effing sad. What the hell is wrong with these people?
Tuscan Capo
January 12
3:16 pm
According to this article, one of the biological sons says his mother abused Adam and that she and her husband continued to receive adoption subsidy payments after his disappearance:
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=6588020&page=1
Jen
January 12
5:09 pm
Yeah, but good thing a loving gay couple couldn’t adopt him, ’cause he’d be so much worse off.
/snark
Poor kid. I hope they find his remains and give him a decent burial.
AztecLady
January 12
6:03 pm
My first thought was, WTF.
My second thought was, WThollyF.
My third thought echoes Jen’s.
I can’t even decide who to be most angry with–the adoptive parents who, quite likely did something to this poor child? the authorities who washed their hands off him the moment he was adopted? the neighbors, extended family, teachers, what have you, who should have wondered at his disappearance?
Poor lost child.
Emma Petersen
January 12
6:04 pm
😐 Seriously? Your 11 year old child has been missing for 10 years and you “rue” the fact you decided not to do a fucking thing about? How much do you want the bet they will find that boy buried somewhere on these people’s property? Seriously CPS, can we be a little more selective when allowing people to adopt? Even if these people didn’t murder that poor boy, they killed him with their indifference. Who let’s an 11 year old child run away and *shrug if off* that he might be homeless or worse, with the parent(s) he had been taken from in the first place? Seriously.
Seneca
January 12
6:43 pm
If you are thinking that the adoptive ‘parents’ did something to him, then I agree with you.
I want to know what the hell is wrong with the friends and family?! I have a 10 year old and if he just disappeared one day you can bet the people in my life would notice.
It’ll be interesting to see where this case goes. There must be something they can be charged with.
Anon76
January 12
7:40 pm
And to me, the absolute worst part…
They’d had this child since he was two. Nine years of abuse before he dissappeared and was not reported missing and then they kept on receiving checks and lying to adult family members.
Fry ’em
Las
January 12
7:43 pm
What really gets to me is the fact that the school never reported anything. How the hell does that happen?
CJ England
January 12
8:27 pm
If they took money after he was gone, that’s fraud,isn’t it?
I don’t know if these people are just the most uncaring, selfish people on the planet or flat out murderers, but why didn’t someone else notice this child missing. Like others who posted here, that scares me most.
I homeschooled my kids so we didn’t have that daily school contact, but you can bet your sweet patootie that had one of them disappeared, a plethora of people would have asked why!
Anne Brighton
January 12
9:07 pm
They fraudently continued to collect adoption subsidy payments ($700 / month) until the boy was 18. Don’t you think that’s a darn good reason not to have reported him…especially if you did something to the poor child?
My question is where the hell were the adoption authorities? Where were the truant officers? Where were the neighbors? Didn’t ANYONE notice this boy was simply not there anymore? How can such a thing happen in this day and age? It boggles the mind. We can track somebody’s expensive Lexus when it gets swiped but we can’t keep track of a defenseless little boy?
West
January 12
9:10 pm
CJ- yes, it’s fraud. And it’s also my bet as to why they didn’t report him missing. Same income, less output. That is, of course, assuming they didn’t have anything to do with his disappearance to begin with.
“Really Rue” my ass. They do not feel guilty about not reporting him. It was deliberate.
If they had something to do with it- they’re bastards. If they didn’t have anything to do with it- they’re still bastards.
Bailey
January 12
11:26 pm
That poor baby! No excuse for this. Even if turns out he wasn’t physically or emotionally abused while with the adoptive parents, not reporting his absence was an abuse in itself!
Felicia
January 13
12:53 am
As a foster care/adoption social worker, all I can do is shake my head and say WTholyF. And thank all the powers that be that 99% of adoptive families aren’t total fuck nuts like this family.
Kids in foster care drew the genetic short straw the first time around, when it came to parents. They deserved better then and they sure as hell deserve better the second time around. I have no words to describe how I feel about the perfect storm of failure that let this poor boy down. This goes above and beyond being let down by the system. I can’t think of a punishment harsh enough for everyone who failed this child.
Lorraine
January 13
12:54 am
Someone did know what happened…their adult son. Why didn’t he say anything to the authorities when he became an adult? I get that it’s hard for kids to rat out their parents when they’re a minor living at home, but once you move out, there’s no excuse for keeping silent.
Hopefully Adam Herrman did run away to his family of origin and it’s all a big misunderstanding. Of course his family probably sucked for him to have been taken away from them in the first place. Ugh, that means his whole fucking life was filled with pain and disappointment. How awful.
Amy
January 13
3:25 am
About the comment on the biological son, we shouldn’t be surprised if the source that tipped off the police wasn’t him. He’s barely an adult now himself; it may have been that only recently did he find the chance to get away himself and report what he knows. I don’t even want to imagine what that home life was like. He may have had to seek counseling to figure what is up from down before he even understood the reality of Adam’s missing.
Emmy
January 13
9:19 am
They sound almost as fun as the guy who sold his 14-year-old daughter for some beer and meat.
For reals tho, wtf?
Debbie
June 17
2:28 pm
Obviously, he could not have been legally adopted if they were still receiving money every month. I know from experience that once a child is legally adopted, all outside subsidies stop. Maybe that was the problem. They adopted him, stopped getting money and regretted the adoption. An 11 year old child that keeps running away is either looking for his biological family, or is being abused. If it is the first, the biological parents may not have reported it so the authorities would not take him away again, if it was the second then he is most likely dead.
Johnny
March 15
6:21 am
Sad story.
To the author of it; ‘most stupidest’? That makes you look like a moron insulting morons. Please use proper grammar.