Rare adoption ends with mom and kids dead - Florida - MiamiHerald.com

Rare adoption ends with mom and kids dead - Florida - MiamiHerald.com

A mother, stripped of all rights to her oldest child, later was allowed to adopt him. The two and a younger daughter are now dead, raising questions about whether the state should have allowed the adoptions.

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BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER

CMARBIN@MIAMIHERALD.COM

When Jermaine McNeil was 5, the Department of Children & Families decided it best that he be raised by someone other than his mom — a woman with more than a dozen arrests and a string of fleeting relationships.
When Jermaine was 8, DCF did an about-face: Felicia Brown, stripped of her parental rights just three years earlier, was now deemed capable enough to adopt her own son from foster care.
The state sweetened the pot with an adoption subsidy worth hundreds of dollars a month.
The highly unusual adoption — at a time when Brown was known to be involved in a dangerous love triangle — would have tragic consequences.
Jermaine and his younger sister Ju’tyra were discovered dead March 2, stuffed inside luggage floating in a canal along the Delray Beach-Boca Raton border. Their mother was dead, too, though authorities didn’t know it at the time.
A “Jane Doe’’ body from August turned out to be Felicia Brown – identified through the names of her three children tattooed on her body.
Her body had been dumped at a West Palm Beach landfill.
Felicia Brown’s off-again/on-again boyfriend, Clem Beauchamp — two-thirds of the love triangle – has been identified as a suspect in the killings. He’s currently jailed on a weapons offense, but has not been charged with murder.
The case has renewed questions – raised first last month following the beating death of 10-year-old Nubia Barahona — about whether the agency’s fast-tracking of potentially risky adoptions has put children in harm’s way.
Adoptive parents Carmen and Jorge Barahona were approved for adoption despite concerns raised by school officials that Nubia was petrified of Carmen, who, she said, beat her feet with sandals.
“What we seem to have here is somewhat of a rush to judgment where we’re off and running to the races toward adoption – let’s get the other stuff out of the way,’’ children’s advocate David Lawrence Jr., said Monday on a panel studying Nubia’s death for DCF.
“Red flags ought to come up every step of the way instead of ‘we ought to get this adoption done.’ ’’
The Barahonas were both jailed on charges of murder and child abuse after Nubia’s decomposed body was found in a garbage bag in Jorge Barahona’s truck, her twin brother burned by chemicals in the truck’s cab.
DCF, which declined to release records on the Delray Beach adoption, had been aware of the violent nature of the three-way relationship involving Brown and Beauchamp. Six months before the adoption was approved, Beauchamp’s former paramour, Michelle Dent, came to the home shared by Beauchamp and Brown and held a knife to Brown’s neck, threatening to kill her if she didn’t “stay out of my business.’’
The incident was reported to the state’s child-abuse hotline, meaning DCF had a record of it.
QUESTIONS
The deaths of the three children in such a short time span raise troubling questions about a program that has been lauded in recent years as singular evidence of Florida’s child welfare turnaround.
In the past decade, the number of Florida children adopted from foster care has more than doubled, from 1,504 in budget year 2000 to 3,368 in 2010. For the 12-month period ending June 30, Florida has so far reported 1,914 adoptions of foster children.
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