The Day I Confronted My Troll

The following excerpts come from an article that appeared on the UK's The Guardian.  It is a story about someone who dropped off Twitter because he began to receive threatening messages online.

Eventually, it escalated to in-person harassment.

I received a parcel at my home address. Nothing unusual there – I get lots of post. I ripped it open and there was a Tupperware lunchbox inside full of ashes. There was a note included, saying, "Say hello to your relatives from Auschwitz". I was physically sick.

I was petrified. They had my address. I reported it to the authorities and hoped for the best.

Two days later I opened my front door and there was a bunch of dead flowers with my wife's old Twitter username on it. Then that night I received a DM. "You'll get home some day & ur bitches throat will be cut & ur son will be gone."

The author ultimately managed to track down his troll. He turned out to be his friend's 17-year old son.

I put my hand on his shoulder and asked him: "Why?"

The Troll sat there for a moment and said "I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry. It was like a game thing."

A game thing.

So, that's what it was...

Read the article.  It's pretty disturbing.

Online Comment Sections ARE a Joke

This morning, I found the following article on CNN:

Have online comment sections become 'a joke'?

In the early days of the Internet, there was hope that the unprecedented tool for global communication would lead to thoughtful sharing and discussion on its most popular sites.

A decade and a half later, the very idea is laughable, says Gawker Media founder Nick Denton.

I can't argue with Denton's position one bit.  Over the years that I've blogged, I've been on the receiving end of many nasty remarks.  Here's a quote from the above-mentioned article, that I found especially interesting:

[Denton] said that commenting on his own sites (which he's seen make reporters cry) has gotten so bad that he doesn't engage.

"I don't like going into the comments. ... For every two comments that are interesting -- even if they're critical, you want to engage with them -- there will be eight that are off-topic or just toxic," he said.

Toxic.  Yeah, I'll buy that. I've gotten plenty of toxic comments over the years.

Here are a few quotes from anonymous comments that I've opted not to publish:

• I truly believe Danielle had a lot of potential, but you are the worst thing that has happened to her.
• You are SUCH a liar!
• You are a negative, horrible person. You know it. Deny it all you want, but you know, deep down, that it is true.
• You make me sick.
• I hope you do get charged. No one deserves it more.

When I first started blogging, I kept my comments wide open.  Anyone could comment, and they would be published immediately.  It wasn't too long after I started that I began to get comment spam, so I enabled a captcha, which made it a little harder for blatant garbage to end up on my blog.  Eventually, I picked up my first troll, and then another, so I opted to enable comment moderation.  I've switched back and forth between allowing and disallowing anonymous comments, but I haven't entirely decided which I prefer.  Allowing anonymous remarks seems to invite more people to comment in general, but it does tend to increase the number that are purely insulting.

I've also had comments (which I haven't posted) from people complaining of my excessive "censorship" of the remarks I allow to appear on my blog.  Sorry to those of you griping, but I'm not going to allow my blog to be your public space to bash me.

In case anyone has forgotten, not all blogs or online communities are intended to be an area for public discourse and debate.  In my case, my blog isn't an open invitation for people to call me names or criticize my decisions.  I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but if they are disrespectful or insulting, I likely won't publish their comments.

When it comes to my blog, it isn't a democracy.  It's a benign dictatorship.  Like it, or lump it.  If you are rude, disrespectful, insulting, harassing, or threatening, I'm not going to publish your remarks. In fact, I might not even read them.  Lots of anonymous comments I briefly skim and don't even bother to read in their entirety.

So if my blog isn't really open to public debate and discourse, then why am I blogging?

I am blogging for one reason and one reason only: I'm telling my family's story as a cautionary tale to others. 

Adoption professionals would like people to believe that every adoption ends with a "happily ever after."  They often don't tell families of the real truths involved.  Often, caseworkers have very sick children on their caseloads, and it is in the state's best interest to get those children into adoptive homes as quickly as possible.  Even if these kids go out with adoption assistance packages attached to them, the cost to the state is still far less than it would be if a child stayed in foster care.

The adoption of older kids is simply a cost-saving measure for the state.  They save money because they don't have to pay out so much for child's care, and they get delicious incentive dollars from the Federal government for making sure all these poor, homeless kids go to great families.

Oh, and let's not forget that the Feds also send money to the state for the kids who are in foster care, as well.

So there's a lot of money involved in the system.  There's money that provides incentives to take kids away from families, and there's more money that provides incentives for social services to give those removed kids to new families.  In order to keep this massive child-moving machine in business, there has to be both a supply of so-called "needy" children, and a ready supply of helping families willing to take them.

Social workers aren't necessarily going to be honest.  They might lie about the kids they place in your care, they might lie about their histories, their families, or even the financial, emotional, medical and dental help you will receive.  Sure, there are some honest people out there, but there are enough incentives (try "get these kids placed if you want to keep your job") in the system that make it difficult for honest, motivated and hard-working people to stay that way.

So why do I manage to get so much criticism?  Because I've probably been far too honest about how damaging and frustrating this experience has been for all of us.  As a result, I've given people plenty of reasons to hate me:

• Adult adoptees and former foster kids hate me because I am critical of my child's behavior
• Adoption professionals and social workers hate me because I am critical of their lies and a dysfunctional system that needlessly injures everyone that comes in contact with it
• Do-gooders who believe that my story couldn't possibly be true, or that every child's ugly, out-of-control, or mentally-ill behavior can be fixed by the right family, parenting techniques, therapy or magic intervention
• People with rose-colored glasses who believe that unconditional love conquers all.

I don't believe, for one second, that I'm the only foster/adoptive parent out here in the blogosphere who has received ugly comments from trolls.  I also don't believe that I'm the only blogger who has been harassed by stalkers from the Internet.  I do think I am one of the few who has continued to tell my story, despite criticism, name-calling and real-world harassment, because I believe the story is important.

People need to know what they could be in for if they decide to become foster or adoptive parents.  There are too many training classes and too many social workers who are willing to obfuscate the real truth.  I know even the scariest of our training classes was a complete soft-sell of what might happen.  We were never taught how to deal with a kid who routinely raged to the point where we needed to call police, nor we were we told that if we had to call the cops, that they would respond with indifference.

The truth about the foster care system needs to be out there.  People need to understand that kids are unnecessarily being removed from their families and shuffled around through a system that damages them further.  Yes, there are some children who really need to be in the system for their own protection, but I think that number is far smaller than the number of kids who actually end up in care.  People need to understand that the kids who are in care now are far sicker than they were even 20 years ago. 

So it doesn't matter if you, my dear reader, think I'm the devil incarnate, a saint, or somewhere in-between.  It doesn't matter if you think I'm the best or the worst parent in the world.  What matters is that the myth that adoption always equals "happily ever after" is finally busted.

Our family isn't the only post-adoptive family who is suffering. There our countless families, across this great nation of ours, who are suffering the indignities brought on by a combination of sick kids, and a lack of post-adoption support.  Most of these families suffer in silence, while a few end up on the national news because a disturbed child murdered someone, or a distraught and desperate couple ended up relinquishing their kid in a horrible and dramatic way.

Families adopt children because they want to do the right thing.  Sometimes, they find out too late that the adoption wasn't the right thing to do, but the system gives them no option, short of abandoning their child and facing charges, to undo those mistakes.  Well-meaning families who end up in over their heads shouldn't be judged as bad people, as they are now by the system.  They deserve support, respite and help.

Instead, they get only criticism and blame until their child does something really terrible, and everyone cries, "why didn't someone do something?"

I'd argue, in almost every single case that hits the national news, that someone did try to do something.  The problem is that the something done wasn't enough to get a very sick and dangerous child hospitalized before he could do something terrible.

Going back to my original theme for today's post, which is that online comment sections are a joke, the truth is that the Internet emboldens people to say really horrible, critical things that they would never dare say to your face.  It's easy to make an uncaring, ugly, or insulting remark, because it's unlikely you'll face any social consequences for doing so.  If you tell a friend, a neighbor, or a co-worker something hateful, something will happen.  If you leave a nasty remark on someone's blog, you might walk away hoping you hurt someone's feelings, but even if you do, it's not like they can strike back at you.  You are just a random person coming from a random IP address out there in the universe.  Not many people are going to spend the time and effort to trace your IP and contact your hosting provider to complain about your behavior.

So yes, Mr. Denton is right.  Most online comment sections ARE a joke.  I keep mine open because I still get a few comments that are supportive, interesting and sometimes thought-provoking.  It's those remarks I treasure.

All the rest, I just push into my spam folder.

Internet Stalkers and Child Welfare Investigations

Long time readers will remember that I shut my first blog down twice.  I made it private while we were involved in the year-long battle to keep Danielle, and I shut it down for good the summer before last, because Internet stalkers banded together and made a false child welfare report against my wife and me.

And now, I read about a similar thing happening to someone else.

For quite some time, I've been following Michael Schofield over at Jani's Journey.  On his blog, he writes about his daughter Jani, who suffers from severe mental illness.

I was absolutely floored when I read his post from yesterday where he wrote the following:

Since our story became public over two years ago, DCFS has received two claims about us…. from people who have never met any of us. There only knowledge of us comes from what they have seen on TV and/or what they have read on my blog.

Nonetheless, DCFS is obligated under law to investigate any claim, regardless of whether the claimant actually has met the family or children.

In this case, as soon as we heard the claim, we knew exactly who it was. We know because the language of the claim came directly from a conversation with one of our regular critics on Facebook, a woman by the name of Jen B (I will refrain from using her full name because then I would be no better than her). Jen B is the same person who uses the handle “WarriorMom” on the Amazon discussion page about my book, who has posted somewhere in the vicinity of 400 posts accusing me of abusing Jani, doing everything from taking my blog posts out of context to outright lies.

He went on to say more:

DCFS is concerned because Jen WarriorMom is not your average critic. She is a full on internet stalker. She invaded my private Facebook page under a false identity (causing me to shut it down). But what really scares the shit out me is this woman is hell bent on destroying my family. That’s not hyperbole. She wants Jani and Bodhi removed from our care and placed in foster care. She even has a website set up to this effect, arranging a network to “follow” Jani and Bodhi once they are removed from our care (apparently forgetting that privacy laws would prevent her from doing so). This woman is so convinced that I am evil that she wants my kids taken away from me.

This woman hates me more than my ex-girlfriends.

I am...shocked.

What Michael describes in his post is eerily similar to what happened to us during the summer of 2010.  We learned that a private online community had been created for the express purpose of discussing us, our family, and any details people could scrape off the Internet about us.  The group elected a single representative to make contact with our local child welfare authorities for the express purpose of making a report.

Interestingly enough, not a single person from that community had ever met us.  They decided, based on what I'd written in my blog, that we were emotionally, physically and sexually abusing our child.

The solution to the problem suggested by our social worker is the same as what has been suggested to Michael Schofield.  We were told to stop writing about our family and our child on the Internet.  Of course the abuse allegations were ruled to be unfounded, as we weren't abusing our kid, but the whole experience was pretty scary.  I went on hiatus for several months, and came back with this blog, though I share a lot less than what I did on my original.

Now I should probably point out that I don't personally know Michael Schofield.  I have never met the man, nor do I have any kind of online relationship with him.  I just find it rather creepy that someone I don't know has had nearly the same experience that we did.

It disgusts me to realize that there are people out there in the world who think it is their job to make false reports to DCFS against people they don't even know.

What a sick, sick world we live in.