It’s getting to be a habit. Two more Angels in Adoption winners have fallen to earth with a big thud and are currently sitting in a well-deserved slammer.
Fox29 in Kansas City reports that Topeka City Councilman Jonathan Robert Schumm, 34, and his wife Allison Nicole Schumm, 32, were arrested last Thursday (Thanksgiving) and charged child abuse and aggravated battery.
The couple has four bio chidlren and another ten adopted (between 2006-2013) and were fostering two more.The Schumms are accused of “torturing and severely beating a 12-year old. Schumm reportedly choked his son and threatened to “kill him” the next time. The choking followed a beating in which Schumm allegedly struck his son with a belt that lacerated his eye and hand, the court record said.
The children have been removed from the home and are currently in fostercare.
Jonathan Schumm, according to Topeka Capitol-Journal, has been charged with one count each of aggravated battery and, as an alternative, abuse of a child (torture or cruelly beating a child younger than 18), which is alleged to have occurred between Oct. 7 and Oct. 11, and four counts of endangering a child, which is alleged to have occurred Oct. 31. Allison Schrumm has been charged with the same counts and also with aiding or assisting her husband in the aggravated battery charge,case, defined as knowingly using a weapon to cause great bodily harm, disfigurement or death..
Both appeared in court Friday in “suicide smocks” and handcuffs. Mrs. Schumm has hired an attorney, but Jonathan Schumm has been assigned a public defender because“We just hired an attorney for the kids being removed,.” (Another report says he ahs now retained counsel.) Bond is $35,000 for Johnathan Schumm and $20,00 for his wife. The Topeka City Council is lookingremoving him from office.
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Surprise!
All the kids were home schooled
Ready for another surprise? Jonathan Schumm sits on the board of Project Belong, a Christian non-profit that encourages (matches?) children with Forever (church) Families. In 2012 the Schumms were named Project Belong’s Adoptive Family of the Year.
Project Belong’s website spells it out:
Project Belong is a Christian ministry working in partnership with the Church, families, and the community to awaken the Church to the call of James 1:27 and to recruit, train, and support foster and adoptive families.
James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
It gets skezzier. While finding families for kids who need them may sound noble, the mission is clearly evangelically rooted in salvation with two ends: (1) provide resources for “families” with no identifiable resource” to adopt children and (2) evangelize children, even if they are in the churchy environment for a short time: .
We believe that the Church can impact the lives of these children, even in the shortest amount of time in a placement. If a Christian foster family can impact the life of a child, no matter how long they are involved in their lives, these children will experience the love of God and know they have a place to belong.
What kind of resources their demographics need to adopt aren’t mentioned.
Dr. Karyn Purvis: the scariest “adoption professional” in the world.
Project Belong offers 20-hours of foster and pap training based on the teaching of whackadoodle Dr. Karyn Purvis at Texas Christian. I’ve had the dubious privilege of sitting through several workshops held by Purvis (aka the Story Lady cuz that’s how she talks.) In her PhDerly wisdom, she equates wheeling your kid around the store in a grocery cart with child abandonment and suggests that stressed out adoptees should snort up cotton balls soaked in vanilla extract to calm down. (I can’t make this shit up!) Next time I go to a legislative hearing I’ll remember to bring bottle of them. Purvis, hands- down is the scariest “adoption professional” I’ve ever met.
Here’s more on the training:
Project Belong Christian Core Training
(“Faith, Attachment, Love, and Support: A Faith-Based Approach to Foster and Adoptive Parenting”)
This twelve-hour training will cover the four areas of faith, attachment, love and support for foster and adoptive parents and offer key thoughts and insights into parenting children who have experienced trauma, abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Using a faith-based, Biblical perspective, the training will prompt parents to consider their own motivation and abilities to care for foster and adopted children in order to help them gain an understanding of the importance of their faith and their ability to provide unconditional love for a child in their care.
Pretending to be the Duggars without a TV show to pay the bills. 20 in the house and counting.
Maybe the Schumms have been reading To Raise Up a Child with a flashlight under the covers at night. Between Purvis and the Pearls I can’t think of a more painful or schizoid way to rear children. Or maybe stuffing 20 people in a small house finally got to them.
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Mrs. Schumm documented her adventures in adoption in her blog “‘Schumm Explosion”. Of course, I went over to look at it, and it’s gone. But the Wayback Machine is a researcher’s friend. Some of it is recoverable, though difficult to read. Not because of what it says, but because of the violet and orange on peach design. I went through it a little bit, and there is enough of it it to give us an idea of Schumm Explosion. I don’t have the time tonight to go through it, but I can give you a little idea of what it says.
Schumm sees her adoptive family as a ministry. “One of the biggest purposes of Schumm Explosion” she writes “is so that our family can minister to other families. I’ve uploaded a series of 15 photos to instagram, facebook and google+ with 15 different virtues (Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self Control, Respect, Honestly, Charity, Obedience, Diligence, and Attentiveness) It looks like she then lectured on each.
She also tells us she has been “given a passion for the subject bonding with God, spouses, and children (foster, adopted, or biological).” Some of the children’s stories are published along with pictures of them (which I won’t post here.)
On disturbing blog, Do you know what your child believes about eternity is particularity disturbing. Allison Schummr recounts how Satan has gotten his clutches into 4-year old Kyrsten who tells mommie the way to get to heaven is to be good.
This made me think about what a masterful liar Satan is. He has my precious baby girl who we’ve tried to clearly share truth with her whole life that she just has to be good and she will be granted entrance into heaven.
I can just seen him dancing around gleefully whispering these lies into children’s ears. If you think about it, it is what most people believe:
If I’m just good, I’ll go to heaven.
As a family we’ve been careful to never indicate that good works save, we go to church services that constantly renounce good works as a salvation method, and yet to our 4 year old, that’s the message she’s received. It’s an eye opener for us to realize that that idea still has worked it’s way into her mind.
Being good in itself will never be good enough. What else did Satan whisper in the childrens’s ears? Enough to get somebody choked? Or maybe Jesus told she was a bad evangelizer.
The blog ends abruptly in June 5, 2014:
My writings here have been fun, but I’m sad to say God has closed this door for our family. I’m sad to see it go, but life has change enough that I’ve not had time to write or a desire and I honestly feel that it was God preparing me to move on. …Pray for our family as we travel the journey God has planned for us!
I don’t know when the blog was taken down
