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Adoptive couple deny charges of starvation
More articles on this topic: Raymond and Vanessa JacksonTheir church pastor and relatives defended them.
Through their pastor, a Collingswood couple who have been the focus of international scrutiny strongly deny charges they starved their four adopted sons.
And, in a statement e-mailed to The Inquirer, family members - including the couple’s four grown children - backed those claims, saying Raymond and Vanessa Jackson were loving parents “who would never deliberately do anything to harm their children.”
In another e-mail, the Rev. Harry Thomas of Come Alive New Testament Church in Medford made public excerpts from jailhouse interviews with Raymond and Vanessa Jackson public at their request, he said.
“I feel like Daniel when he was thrown to the lions,” Raymond Jackson told Thomas, at whose church the family has worshiped for more than a decade. “All these things were false.”
Authorities say the Jacksons deprived their four adopted sons, ages 9 through 19, of food to the point where they gnawed on walls. When police removed the four from the home, they weighed 136 pounds combined.
Raymond Jackson’s brother and sister-in-law, Bill and Lynne Jackson, said Raymond and Vanessa took in children with “significant mental, emotional and physical problems” because they wanted to “help children who needed it the most.”
“My children have spent countless hours with their cousins,” Bill Jackson wrote. “They never, not once, said anyone was treated badly or even one or some were preferred over others.”
According to Thomas, Raymond Jackson said his family was fed several times a day, every day. The sons had been to doctors. Authorities have rushed to judgment, vilified his family, and ignored his sons’ complex medical histories, he said.
Raymond and Vanessa Jackson said the sons weighed so little because of complicated medical problems that predated their time with the Jacksons.
M.J. and K.J., two of the younger boys, have fetal alcohol syndrome, their parents said. Bruce Jackson, the 19-year-old, had been sexually abused by his biological father and kicked out of several Pennsauken schools, they said. Bruce Jackson, who police initially believed was 9 or 10, took medicine for acid reflux.
Two adopted daughters were born addicted to drugs, they said.
Bill and Lynne Jackson said “the children had normal diets and lifestyles although some faced serious problems that started even before they were born.”
They said the children were always playing and smiling, and they had an affinity for board games, video games and superheroes, “especially the Power Rangers.”
Of their children, Bruce Jackson, who was found rooting through a neighbor’s garbage can in the middle of the night, was the most troubled, Raymond and Vanessa Jackson said. But they loved him fiercely, taking him to Disney World with their biological children even before he was adopted.
The couple’s four grown children, LaRae, 21, Jere, 22, Vernae, 20, and Raymond, 19, said their parents never told the boys they were adopted so they would not feel different or left out.
“They also encouraged all their children to pursue their own dreams and goals… and, if anyone ever needed to talk, my mom and dad would have the biggest ear,” they wrote.
Raymond Jackson took exception to the idea that he and his wife adopted a large family to make money, Thomas said. They were receiving about $30,000 annually in government funds.
“To have people say that we did this for the money is foolish and dead wrong,” Raymond Jackson said through the pastor. “When you decide to go from foster parenting to adopting, they tell you that even though the child is a special-needs child, they cannot guarantee assistance.”
Thomas told the Jacksons “we loved them regardless of the outcome of the accusations,” he said.
Thomas, who has visited with most of the Jackson children as well, characterized the case as a rush to judgment by authorities.
Church members have established a fund for the Jacksons’ defense and living expenses, and a Web site - www.savethejacksons.com - was expected to be operational by last night, Thomas said.
The minister said he read Bible passages to Raymond and Vanessa Jackson, whom he visited separately. At the end of his meeting with Raymond Jackson, the pastor said, Raymond prayed for his family.
“Pastor,” he said, “I want the church and my friends to know that God really is working in us. Be encouraged. Be strong.”
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