King signs bill to close loophole in adoption background checks

AUGUSTA – A newly remarried mother of two young children goes to court and asks a judge to allow her husband to adopt her children.

The judge agrees to allow what’s known as a “stepparent waiver,” in effect allowing the husband to avoid the criminal background checks required before all adoptions in Maine. It turns out that the stepfather has a record of child abuse, and his behavior goes unchecked long after the adoptions are granted.

Scenarios like the one that played out several years ago in the Rockland area should no longer occur now that Gov. Angus King has signed a bill, LD 1070, closing a loophole in Maine’s adoption background-check law.

Jo-Ann Cole, vice chairwoman of the Maine Family Law Advisory Commission, told the Judiciary Committee before the bill was enacted that the Rockland-area case was not an isolated example of what can go wrong.

“Other families have also been duped and manipulated by the strategies of child abusers,” said Cole, whose group studied the issue for two years before it asked that the bill be introduced.

“We have more than 20 years of research to support the fact that child abusers will do everything in their power to avoid detection,” Cole said.

Maine’s current adoption ap-proval process includes a self-reporting system in which prospective parents sign releases requesting criminal history records from the state police. They also request child-protective screening from the Department of Human Services, according to John Levesque, DHS adoption program specialist.

The bill signed into law by King requires probate judges to ask the DHS to review the child protective files, and state police to run criminal history background checks.

Criminal history background checks must be based on the prospective adoptive parent’s fingerprints, and include both Maine conviction data and national criminal history information from the FBI. The cost of doing the background checks will be included in adoption petition filing fees.

In short, said Cole, the law requires state and national checks in every case, ensuring that judges don’t inadvertently sanction adoptions that may turn out to harm a child. The Maine Human Services Department supported the legislation.

In the case Cole cited, the mother seeking adoption approval for her new husband was unaware that he had a previous history and conviction for child sexual abuse, Cook said in a statement to the Judiciary Committee.

“The adoption was granted. The adoptive father sexually abused his adoptive daughter from the time she was 4 until she was 13,” Cook told lawmakers.

The bill came up as Maine’s child protective services remain under intense legislative and public scrutiny after the Jan. 31 death of 5-year-old Logan Marr in a Chelsea home. The child’s foster mother, Sally Schofield, is charged with manslaughter in Logan’s asphyxiation death.