Tag: children

‘No one should have to be afraid’

Details of a faked adoption, mother-to-be speaks about how she was duped

By C.S. Hagen
WOODWORTH
 – Autym Burke spent months preparing a nursery for the child she thought she was to adopt.

Living in Oregon, she’d seen pictures and videos of the Native American baby she planned to name “Ruby.” The paperwork seemed to be in order, at first, the caseworker seemed legitimate. After all, Congressman Kevin Cramer, R-ND, included her in a campaign video.

The reported caseworker, Betty Jo Krenz, was included in a 2014-campaign advertisement approved by Cramer. She also spoke at a congressional subcommittee meeting involving Cramer, and bragged about her relationship with the North Dakota congressman and a presidential candidate, Burke said.

“In the beginning she did mention her tie to him [Cramer] several times,” Burke said. “She also said she was a friend of Ben Carson. It was really only in the beginning. I’m sure it was to gain our trust.”

Betty Jo Krenz in Kevin Cramer campaign ad – YouTube

Burke spoke of Carson, the neurosurgeon, and former presidential candidate, currently the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump Administration.

Krenz also said she was a nominee for the 2017 L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth Award, Burke said, for which anyone can be nominated but only 10 finalists are accepted. Spokespeople for the prestigious award affirmed Krenz had been nominated, but was not selected.

“Embarrassing that we fell for this nonsense,” Burke said. “But when I checked out the Congressman Cramer thing, it was legit.”

Cramer was contacted for comment repeatedly by telephone and emails. Cramer’s Communication Director, Adam Jorde, replied saying, “Congressman Cramer is unavailable for your interview request.”

Krenz, approximately 46, was a former caseworker for Spirit Lake Tribal Social Services until she was fired in 2011, and is currently under investigation for fraud and being involved in fake adoption proceedings by the Stutsman County Sheriff’s Department. Krenz has a long criminal record involving forgery and bad checks under her current surname and a former surname, Edland, from 1998 until 2015, according to North Dakota court records.

She appeared in Cramer’s campaign ad entitled “No One Should Have To Be Afraid” in 2014. Three years later, the video had 314 views and 15 subscribers on YouTube.

Approximately 1,500 miles away in South Dakota, “Ruby’s” birth mother, Jodie Blackboy, a registered member of the Spirit Lake Nation, knew nothing about her infant daughter being a candidate for adoption. Her baby’s real name is Julissa, and said in a Facebook post that the scam continued behind her back for eight months.

“I did not know Betty Jo Krenz was using my daughter’s pictures for her own gain,” Blackboy said. She discovered what she called a scam through a Facebook post from Burke.

“My daughter was never up for adoption and I’m not going to jail for drugs,” Blackboy wrote in a public September 23 Facebook post. “I trusted this woman for years, almost let her take my child, thank God I didn’t, I would have never got her back, and only to find out she was in it for my child.”

The same day she posted a picture of Krenz and titled it: “Human child trafficker alert.”

Another Facebook conversation written by Amber Jo, who claimed to be Krenz’s daughter, said her mother is “as corrupt as the person who fired her, and as far as I’m concerned, she should not be around children herself. I know her well, I’m her own blood, and this lady has no right to be around those children.”

The alleged long con
A family friend who wishes to remain anonymous introduced Krenz to Burke in February this year.

“First contact with her was over the phone,” Burke said. “Before this ordeal was complete, we had communicated by phone, text, Messenger, and she even came to my home in Oregon to conduct what we now know to be a fake home study to make sure we were qualified to adopt this little baby girl. She inspected our home and spent a great deal of time with us over the course of a week.”

Screenshot of conversation pertaining to the baby Autym Burke was to adopt with Betty Jo Krenz assistance – Facebook post

Even though Krenz came with a high personal recommendation, Burke did her due diligence, she said. Krenz seemed well connected, and said she loved the Native American people. Her apparent relationship with Cramer played a “huge role” in believing Krenz was credible. She was an apparently fierce advocate for women and children and helped find homes for the children of birth mothers who didn’t want to or couldn’t raise their children, Burke said.

“I have to say, there are very few people I have ever liked as much as I did Betty Jo upon first meeting a person,” Burke said. “She was so great.”

Day by day, Burke’s dreams of adopting a baby girl slowly melted away.

“There were a few things throughout the whole process that caused a slight amount of doubt here and there,” Burke said. “However, she told me many times that I have lived under a rock my whole life and just don’t get how the system works. She is very convincing. It wasn’t until the very last week of August that I knew she was lying to us, and that this baby, who we had named Ruby, was never coming home to us. It was a heartbreaking process getting to the end of this and uncovering her lies one by one. Very, very painful.”

The most poignant proof Burke had about what she calls a con was the lack of proof.

Weeks of delays were followed by excuses. Judges had full court schedules. Paperwork needed signing.

“Something in my heart was telling me that she was lying,” Burke said.

Burke, who has no natural children, and her husband, who has two boys, began demanding proof of the documentation they were promised. They wanted to stop relying on Krenz’s word.

“When she couldn’t produce the proof over the course of the last 48 hours of this ordeal, we knew it was all lies,” Burke said. “And then I confronted her with her lies and she didn’t even deny them.”

Krenz is still under investigation, and has not been arrested at this time. Repeated attempts to contact Krenz have not been successful.

Screenshot of conversation between Betty Jo Krenz, sometimes known as Jo Betty, and Autym Burke on August 26, 2017 – Facebook post

“I can’t explain how painful this realization was for us,” Burke said. “Of course I know now that this sweet little baby was never meant to be ours, but it was still a heartbreaking blow to our family.  I know my husband and I never held her, but she truly was in our hearts.”

The Burke family didn’t seek out a Native American child to start with, she said.

“Our hearts were open to any child from anywhere,” Burke said. “However, when this came into our lives without us seeking it out, it felt very meant-to-be at that time.”

Knowing little about Native American adoption issues, they accepted an explanation that their baby-to-be was not eligible for enrollment in an indigenous tribe. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 gave a strong voice to tribal governments concerning child custody hearings involving Native American children, by giving tribes jurisdiction on a reservation.

An indigenous child is considered a ward of the tribe. The act was enacted due to the excessive removal of indigenous children – approximately 35 percent – from traditional homes into non-Indigenous and religious groups.

Krenz has numerous GoFundMe accounts, including one that is now now closed, which raised $16,544. Another account Krenz is credited with being involved with is called a math camp for Lakota children and raised $4,470. Krenz was also involved with the Kind Hearted Woman Dream Shelter, in Jamestown, with Robin’s House, a shelter for women and children, and with a blog called Restless Spirit Blog, last updated in 2015. On a September 2016 YouTube channel, Krenz discusses a $2,000 micro grant she planned to use to help women for Damsel In Defense, an empowering women organization.

Three years ago, Krenz issued a public statement on Disqus.

“Well, I am proud to say I am a birth mother of a baby girl I chose to place up for adoption 22 years ago, and I can assure you I received nothing and paid my own medical expenses,” Krenz wrote. Punctuation and grammar have been altered for editing purposes.

“Adoption fees go to the place that does the legal work involved in name changing and other court work involved. Legitimate adoptions thru agencies such as The Village do not pay the birth mother a penny. I know nothing about surrogate mothers, but I have seen children sold on a reservation and it’s nothing that I care to see legalized in this state.”

“We are very sad at the heartache this had caused for Jodie Blackboy as well,” Autym Burke said. “I never would have reached out to her if not just to try to protect her and Julissa from Betty Jo. Honestly, putting this behind us would be the best way to begin healing, but we felt she needed to know. We felt she too was lied to. And as sad as this loss is, we truly are so glad that it ended where it did and did not go further, and that Jodie and Julissa are together and doing so well.

“We will stand by them as long as it takes to shine the light bright enough on this issue to make sure no one else is victimized by Betty Jo Krenz. And maybe more people will come forward if they hear our story.”

“On the Backs of Our Children”

Children’s Care in North Dakota Cut for Oil Interests

By C.S. Hagen 

FARGO, ND – Oil, not the state’s children or the elderly, is North Dakota’s primary concern, according to North Dakota legislature and mental health advocates.

Anger against recent budget cuts, despite fierce resistance during the state’s 15th special session of the legislature in August, prompted The Consensus Council, Inc. to arrange a meeting with therapy workers, advocates, mental health professionals, state politicians, and parents. They’re preparing to fight, once again, sweeping budget cuts passed by North Dakota’s legislature, which have taken millions of dollars in government support from the state’s most vulnerable.

“In the last week what the majority party shoved through circumventing the normal processes was a 23 percent oil extraction tax cut, 80 percent of which goes out of state to businesses who are not connected to North Dakota in any way other than a profit way,” Representative Mary Schneider, D-N.D., said.

“It’s millions and millions of dollars that we gave away that we could have been using to help our own people,” Schneider said. As of August, North Dakota has lost USD 13 million per month and an additional USD 51 million in federal matching monies because of the oil extraction tax cut, which could have been directed toward health issues, Schneider said. The oil extraction tax incentive is in addition to the 4.05 percent budget cut allotment passed in February 2016, after projected general fund revenues fell USD 1.074 billion short of forecasts, affecting children and nursing homes across the state.

“And oil companies were not even pushing for this.”

North Dakota Department of Human Services’ budget, the state’s largest agency, had its budget reduced by USD 54 million in general funds, and a matching USD 61 million in federal funds, Executive Director Maggie Anderson said.

“No autism services have been affected through the second round of budget cuts,” Jeff Zent, the communications director and policy advisor at the State of North Dakota Governor’s Office, said. “And I believe that we’re getting a million dollars a month more now because of these legislature changes. They’re paying more today than before.”

The oil extraction tax break was part of a plan under House Bill 1476 to find savings for the state. “They aren’t reductions to existing services, they are eliminations to appropriated expansions,” Zent said. “The governor has always considered this as short term adjustments meant to get us through the current budget cycle. During the next legislative session and two-year budget, there are going to be challenges, no doubt about it.”

In what Schneider described as a “sneak attack,” Governor Jack Dalrymple, R-N.D., and the dominating Republican Party circumvented the normal processes and balanced the oil-company tax incentives “on the backs of our children,” without changing “one word or one comma with the bill they walked into the session with,” Schneider said.

North Dakota’s children – the autistic, the mentally ill, and the mentally challenged – their parents, their doctors, and therapists, are being hit – hard – by budget cuts and the tax-cut incentive, Executive Director of Mental Health American and the North Dakota Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health Carlotta McCleary said.

“We were in a crises and now it is worse than a crime,” McCleary said. “Typical situation is that for those with chronic illnesses are now not going to hospitals but to jails, in handcuffs.”

A woman in northwestern North Dakota committed suicide because she could no longer pay the fees to help her troubled child. Teenagers with mental health issues are being dragged to jail in handcuffs instead of being treated properly at hospitals. Hospitals are refusing to take troubled children. Insurance companies, as North Dakota is one of five states in the nation that doesn’t require insurance companies to cover those with special needs, are refusing coverage. Waiting lines for mental assistance have grown longer, making acceptance nearly impossible. Skilled therapists are living paycheck to paycheck, therapist Stephen Olson for Pediatric Therapy Partners said, and some are beginning to look for work elsewhere.

The North Dakota Department of Human Services was excluded from the second round of allotments assigned during August’s special session of the legislature, Anderson said. Although the original 4.05 percent budget cut is in place, an additional 2.5 percent cut was not enforced, she said.

The North Dakota Department of Human Services is funded primarily through the federal government, and although their budget shrank, no one will be losing their jobs, Anderson said.

“We’re listening to what people are saying, but funding and appropriation decisions are with the legislature and what they’re able to do,” Anderson said.

Automatic oil triggers, set by law for decades, would have further reduced funding to human services and other state agencies if Dalrymple had not called the special session, Ryan Rauschenberger, the state tax commissioner said. According to law, when oil prices drop below USD 55 a barrel, the oil extraction tax would have dropped to one percent.

“Had the law not passed we would have collected USD 300 million less,” Rauschenberger said. “Only for the last 12 years did we have the top rate. What we saw is that the triggers were going to come on again, and we said we got to do something.”

Most oil extraction taxes are dedicated solely to constitutional funds, such as the general funds for human services, for school, for legacy funds, which are voted in by the people of North Dakota, Rauschenberger said. State legislature meets again in January, and will be reviewing – once again – the impacts of recent budget cuts.

Mental health services in North Dakota were not perfect before, but with one in five families in North Dakota who have children with special needs – enough to fill the Fargodome – the situation is now dire, Director of Family Voices of North Dakota Donene Feist said.

“There’s nobody this will not affect,” Feist said.

“The long term impact on our state will be tremendous,” Tricia Page, a parent said. Her oldest son has autism, and she isn’t sure how her family will continue. “This will affect families and eventually the taxpayers.” Children in need of special services have the capability to learn to read, to speak, and to practice social behavior, basic functions of life taken for granted by most, and these services, difficult to obtain before budget cuts, now border the impossible.

Nicole Watkins, a mother of a child with mental health issues, broke down in tears during the September 28 meeting while describing how her son took a golf club to her house, and how hospital personnel actively tried to push her to press charges and send her son to jail, instead of being admitted.

“There was nowhere for him,” Watkins said. “And that can’t happen, not in our state.”

The lack of services for children with special needs will one day increase the risk for long term hospitalization and assumedly without insurance, jail times for soon-to-be unavoidable crimes. Lack of funds now will force skilled therapists and doctors to leave the state, all of which will burden the taxpayer in the long term, McCleary said. In Minot, a hospital lost its permission for a 10-bed increase. Mobile Crisis lost USD 250,000 in support, recovery centers are losing slots for patients, and some are contemplating closing down.

Senator Tim Mathern, D-N.D., and Schneider attended the meeting sponsored by the North Dakota Autism Spectrum Disorders Advocacy Coalition and held at St. Genevieve’s in Fargo. The Consensus Council, Inc., a non-profit, private disagreement facilitator, organized the meeting. As an advocate herself, Executive Director Rose Stoller said funding could come from any number of the state’s 200 special interest accounts – or perhaps even funds from the governor’s new USD 5 million mansion – to help ease with the situation.

“They really need to choose wisely,” Stoller said. “There should be more work done in earnest to meet these very basic needs. People in North Dakota really care about these issues.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure that everyone has the best interests in mind for protecting vulnerable citizens,” Schnieder said. “We had a lot of resources, and we still do have resources, rather than cutting child care, behavioral health autism, and other people projects. The reason we’re not doing it is because of an imbalance of power and the wrong values controlling the government of this state.”

Commodity prices are lower than previous years, oil prices also are lower, but Schnieder believes the move to be an intentional shrinking of government agenda.

“It makes me sad, and it makes me angry,” Schneider said.

A Tianjin Haunting

Grave behind Purple Bamboo Grove Church outside of the old English Concession. Watchmen of the church say it belongs to a young boy, anonymous.

Photos by C.S. Hagen  –  Grave behind Purple Bamboo Grove Church outside of the old English Concession. Watchmen of the church say it belongs to a young boy, anonymous.

By C.S. Hagen

TIANJIN, CHINA (PRC) – Behind the crippled Purple Bamboo Grove Church rests a poorly made grave.  Tiered red brick forms a horseshoe shape, yawning in the middle to reveal blackness beneath.  Ground surrounding the grave is moist and springy, a perfect breeding ground for the poison ivy that surrounds the site in warmer months like so many sentient soldiers.

Three carefully placed ceramic toys adorn the grave’s left side.  The most undamaged toy is of a Christmas tree with four smiling Santas holding hands.

“It is the grave of a child,” the night watchman said.  Fearing to lose his metal rice

The ceramic toy Santa at the grave

The ceramic toy Santa at the grave

bowl of a job, he preferred to keep his name private.  “An elderly foreign lady once visited this spot.”

The watchman didn’t know who placed the ceramic toys on top of the grave, but admitted the old church was haunted.  The boy’s grave was not the only body buried in the back of the Purple Bamboo Grove Church, but no other headstone or marker remain.  In June 2012 a man quit working as a second watchman because he believed the ruined church became alive with the dead at night.

The night watchman who remained knew of the atrocities that were once committed at the church’s front doors and agreed that if any place in Tianjin (formerly spelled Tientsin), should be haunted, the old church stood high on the list.

Cement mixing buckets, bricks, pipes and tarps lay forgotten at the entrance.  Trees are warped and mostly leafless in mid August.  The old Red Cross sign that once advertised the Sisters of Charity Orphanage in the midst of Purple Bamboo Grove, the heart of the red light district and a stone’s throw from the old English Concession, has been chiseled away.  Remnants of communist propaganda painted in revolutionary red still remain.

‘Mao Zedong Thought,’ the slogan says.

Entryway to the Sisters of Charity Orphanage, the Cultural Revolution slogan is painted on left side pillars

Entryway to the Sisters of Charity Orphanage, the Cultural Revolution slogan is painted on left side pillars

Ironically the entrance’s doors remain, but the archway is blackened by fire, reminiscent of the brutal atrocities committed in 1870.

“The sisters were stripped naked, and, one after the other, in full sight of the remainder, their bodies were ripped open, their eyes gouged out and their breasts cut off.  As each one was mutilated the body was hoisted on long spears and thrown into the burning chapel.”  O.D. Rasmussen wrote in his book Tientsin: An Illustrated Outline History (Tientsin Press, 1925).

Missionary reports dating back to 1871 report nine nuns from the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage were burned beyond recognition.

“…And of these most have been mere unrecognizable fragments; how as a fit accompaniment to the rest, thirty or forty of the children of the hospital were smothered in the vaults where they had taken refuge,” reported Charles William Wason in the Shanghai Evening Courier in September 1870.

Inside the Purple Bamboo Grove Church

Inside the Purple Bamboo Grove Church

The original church was destroyed, but was rebuilt.  Pillars the sisters were tortured upon are not the same ones dating back to the Tientsin Massacre in 1870.  The ground, however, hallowed or desecrated, is the same.  The sisters bodies were buried across the street from the Astor Hotel outside the British Consulate, Gordon Hall, demolished in 1984 after the Tangshan Earthquake.  A memorial was erected over their charred remains.

Purple Bamboo Grove altar

Purple Bamboo Grove altar

Events that led Tientsin’s populace to bloody deeds in 1870 and again in 1900 are not without merit, if one was to look through the eyes of the locals at that time.  In a world spiraling toward locomotives, electricity and division of labor, the average Chinese person in 1870 was still mired in superstition and ancient tradition.  Rumors began to spread in Tientsin of the paper man, a demon who rose from the Hai River, (then called the Peiho), to kidnap, injure and kill the natives.

The paper man, of course, had pale skin, colored hair and green eyes.

“…He transforms himself, by the aid of some mysterious power, into paper.  At times, it is asserted, he will appear as a scrap of plain paper; at other times he comes in the guise of an old newspaper.  A favorite dodge with him is to get himself made into a kite.  He thereby accomplishes his object of getting into people’s houses with greater facility…” wrote George Thin in his book The Tientsin Massacre, published in 1870.

According to George Thin the most common remedy was for families to sprinkle bathing water on every scrap of paper in the house, which would “certainly give the paper man his quietus.”

The paper man also took the form of women, and in Tientsin more specifically the Sisters of Charity, who in their black robes and horned white hats struck horror into the local populace.  Such an image to the Chinese sparked fear, for white is the color of death, and rumors the sisters were kidnapping children to make powerful magic spells and medicines quickly became panic.

In truth, the Sisters of Charity provided shelter, food and medicines for orphans, but due to Christian doctrines and the symbolization of communion the populace believed the nuns, as well as all Christian congregations, were cannibals, and were secretly slaying the city’s children to make Eye and Heart Bewitching Philtres.

Citywide panic turned to rage when graves were exhumed behind the Wanghai Lou, or Victory Mary Church.  Inside the graves were bodies of children, who according to missionary journals of the time died from plague.  Rage then became a riot when yamen officials caught three Chinese men who confessed they sold ten children to the Sisters of Mercy.  The rumors raged like a conflagration to every Tientsin district, coming to a head on June 21, 1870.  Missionaries were boiling babies to sell to opium merchants, the people cried.  Pettifoggers, or yamen clerks, ran through the streets and rain dancers with green wreaths, swinging peach wood swords, stirred the local populace to rise up against the foreigners.

Before the sun set more than twenty-two politicians, priests, nuns and merchants were killed.

Daoists believe each person has three spirits: the hun, or cloud spirit, which exits the body on death, the p’o, or the white spirit, which stays behind, and then a third part that enters a spirit tablet and demands reverence from surviving family.  Another essential part of the Daoist beliefs demand that a body must return home in order for its souls to be at rest.

If any credence is given to such beliefs, then surely, the Purple Bamboo Grove Church must be one of the world’s most haunted sites.  A trip within the decrepit structure is harrowing.  The original altar still sits where the church’s last sermon was given.  An unreadable bronze plaque in the wall commemorates the deaths of unknown members.  Stray sections of stained glass in back room windows defy the stench and decay and a humid breeze, sifting through the buildings cracks, whines as loud as screams.

Partially stained glass window

Partially stained glass window

 

Back room behind pulpit inside the Purple Bamboo Grove Church

Back room behind pulpit inside the Purple Bamboo Grove Church

 

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