Re: Sheriff: Parents didn't report boy missing for a decade
- From: "JonesieCat" <jonesiecactus@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:04:37 GMT
<xzakisax@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:a0c9b5ef-f578-4e12-972e-181fc7a903d6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Jan 6, 7:26 pm, "td" <tinydan...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Lorraine" <remtoxicva...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:lbs7m41sr922v2je5tnbt7a7hjruqpkhhi@xxxxxxxxxx
On Tue, 6 Jan 2009 12:31:34 -0800 (PST), yD <yaffaD...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
According to the article above it wasn't even his parents who
eventually reported him as missing: "...A few weeks ago, a person
notified Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Children's Unit of a
"concern" regarding Adam, Murphy said...."
So, even if they thought he had gone back to his biological parents,
why didn't they check to make sure. Fishy business.
It gets worse. I hope he's just a runaway, but it's not looking good.
There's a whole bunch of people at fault here. Given they didn't report
him missing, I have to wonder if they continued to use him as a tax
deduction. I've been told that they would have been receiving
assistance from SRS, although I thought that would have ended when he
officially left foster care when he was adopted.
Why the hell none of those adults didn't report this is beyond me. They
should all be charged with failure to report abuse or something IMO. This
reminds me of that other one, 'A Death In White Bear Lake'. Except the
little adopted boy in that one was only 4 I think, when the old
bitch/mother
killed him.
td
Article intact below:
http://www.kansas.com/news/story/652772.html
Relatives say missing Butler County boy was abused
BY TIM POTTER
The Wichita Eagle
On Super Bowl Sunday in 1999, the year Adam Herrman went missing but no
one reported it, one of his aunts says she saw the 11-year-old chained
to a bathtub faucet at his Towanda mobile home.
It looked like he had handcuffs on, said his aunt, Kim Winslow. Winslow,
now 48, said it was the last time she saw Adam.
Other close relatives of Adam's adoptive mother, Valerie Herrman of
Derby, say they saw her abuse him over the years and that he was forced
to sleep in a bathtub. In at least one instance, a relative reported
alleged abuse to authorities.
Butler County sheriff's officers plan to bring in search dogs and
ground-penetrating radar to help solve the mystery of what happened to
Adam Herrman.
The Wichita-Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Child Unit received a
tip about a month ago that the child had not been seen for nine years.
Detectives are investigating the case as if Adam were dead, even though
they can't rule out that he is still alive, Butler County Sheriff Craig
Murphy said at a news conference Monday.
Warner Eisenbise, the Wichita attorney representing Herrman and her
husband, Doug Herrman, Adam's adoptive father, said, "I firmly believe
that they are innocent and had nothing to do with his death, if in fact
he died."
But Eisenbise conceded that it is possible that the parents could be
charged with failing to report a missing child.
Murphy released a fourth-grade picture of Adam, who authorities think
disappeared from Towanda in the summer of 1999 when he was 11 or 12.
Murphy asked the public to call with any information.
Relatives say Valerie Herrman, who is in her early 50s, had told them
over the years that Adam was taken back into state custody. Recently,
the adoptive parents have said through their attorney that Adam ran away
and they did not report it.
Law enforcement agencies are bringing in search dogs from other states,
Butler County sheriff's Detective Sgt. Kelly Herzet said.
"We're asking for all the resources we can ask for on this case," Herzet
said.
Relatives' accounts
Winslow said Valerie Herrman, her sister, had told her that Super Bowl
Sunday in 1999 that she locked Adam in the bathroom because he was
behaving badly. But Winslow said she never saw Adam be a problem child
or disobey Herrman.
Winslow, now living outside the Wichita area, and some of Herrman's
other close relatives said they saw Herrman abuse Adam other times over
the years but for the most part didn't report it and now feel terrible
that he is missing.
When Adam was younger, maybe 7 or 8, and living with his adoptive family
in Derby, Winslow said she heard her sister tell Adam to eat food that
his younger siblings had left on their plates. He told her he was full,
and she hit the back of his head, causing his face to come down in a
plate, Winslow said.
Winslow said it bothered her. "I went over to him, and I rubbed his
little head... and I talked to him" to soothe him, she said.
"I feel sick" for not reporting the incident, she said.
She said can't remember seeing Herrman be affectionate to Adam, as she
was to her other children.
A brother's memory
Justin Herrman, 29, who is the biological son of Valerie and Doug
Herrman, said he never saw his father abuse Adam.
"He's actually stopped it many times," said Justin Herrman, who was
about 7 years older than Adam.
Over the years, at different homes around the Wichita area, his mother
"would start hitting him or beating him with a belt," Justin said.
His father "would stop her and say, 'That's enough, Valerie,' " he said.
One time, Justin Herrman said, his mother threw Adam, then around 4 or
5, against a wall and pulled his hair, and Justin stepped in to stop it.
Justin Herrman said he called to report it and Derby police officers
came to the home. But he said his mother persuaded him to tell the
police that he lied. He said the officers lectured him about lying and
left.
His mother started locking Adam in the bathroom, and the boy slept in
the bathtub, Justin Herrman said.
"She would just tell us he was threatening us," and that he had mental
problems and couldn't be trusted, Justin Herrman said of his mother.
He said that for years his mother told the family that Adam had gone
back into state custody and only recently said that he ran away.
'We all believed it'
Margaret Davis, mother of Valerie Herrman, said she was stunned to hear
that the attorney now says that Adam ran away.
Valerie and Doug Herrman had a number of foster children before adopting
Adam and his two younger siblings, Davis said.
She said her daughter "can be very, very mean sometimes" and that they
have been estranged off and on.
Once, at a Derby home where the Herrmans lived before they moved to
Towanda, Valerie's aunt had to use the bathroom, and Valerie Herrman had
to unlock it first.
Behind the locked bathroom door, Davis said, she saw Adam in the tub
with a pillow and blanket.
Valerie Herrman told Adam to go immediately to his bedroom, and he
obeyed, Davis said.
"She told us that he had threatened them... he was going to wait until
they went to sleep, and he was going to kill them," Davis said.
Although Davis said she wasn't around Adam much, she said that when she
was, he seemed to be "a darling little boy."
She said her daughter told the family that Adam went back into state
custody. "We all believed it," she said.
Christmas Eve call
Linda Bush, a former sister-in-law of Valerie Herrman, said Valerie
Herrman called her Dec. 24 and in a shaky voice told her that Adam was
missing and that investigators suspected the Herrmans had something to
do with his disappearance.
Bush, 55, of Wichita, said Valerie Herrman asked her to call detectives
investigating his disappearance "and tell them about how they loved
Adam, and she only wanted to do good when they took in foster
children... that they would never hurt a child."
Bush said she never called the detectives.
In the Christmas Eve conversation, Valerie Herrman told her former
sister-in-law "that she beat Adam once with a belt" and that Valerie had
gone into her room and cried about it, remorseful.
Bush said Valerie Herrman told her that that after she used the belt,
someone at Adam's school saw bruises, and authorities were called to
investigate.
Authorities' next steps
At the news conference, Murphy said this is the first case he has dealt
with in which officers didn't learn that a child was missing until years
later.
Sheriff's officers searched the Towanda mobile home park last week where
the family once lived but did not find any human remains, Murphy said.
Investigators are planning to conduct more searches but have not said
where.
Murphy said Adam, who is described as having brown hair and brown eyes,
may have been home-schooled. They believe he disappeared during the
summer of 1999. According to records, the family moved from Towanda to
the town of Sedgwick later that fall.
Investigators plan to release a computer-enhanced photo soon showing
what Adam would look like today if he is still alive. He was born June
8, 1987, in Wichita and would now be 21.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
That's so sad that a child can fall thru the cracks like that.
========
Fell thru the cracks?! He was MURDERED after years of torture witnessed by
other family members. His body likely went into a dumpster, never to be seen
again. And mostly, family members who say it didn't report it. Aren't they
just swell? Not that reporting it did much good either apparently.
And husbands of this variety of female crim, they remind me of the women who
hook up with men who abuse and kill their children, sorta, in the sense that
they are spouses and partners who manage to overlook grotesque behaviour
right under their noses. What's THAT about? And it's always the grotesques
who rule the roosts.
And again a very poorly written article. "Adoptive" this and "adoptive"
that. Bugs me when the adjective "adoptive" or "adopted" is used
inappropriately. Couldn't the reporter have concisely explained up front
that Adam had been fostering with this family, and then legally adopted by
them? The woman who killed was his legal MOTHER.
jc
.
- References:
- Sheriff: Parents didn't report boy missing for a decade
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- Re: Sheriff: Parents didn't report boy missing for a decade
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- Re: Sheriff: Parents didn't report boy missing for a decade
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- Re: Sheriff: Parents didn't report boy missing for a decade
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- Re: Sheriff: Parents didn't report boy missing for a decade
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