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Starving case stirs disbelief, scrutiny
More articles on this topic: Raymond and Vanessa JacksonCOLLINGSWOOD - Two portraits of Raymond and Vanessa Jackson emerged yesterday.
One depicted a religious, caring couple who opened their hearts and their home to fragile children. The other portrayed a cruel pair who systematically starved their adopted sons.
Raymond Jackson, 50, and Vanessa Jackson, 48, were arrested Friday and charged with four counts of aggravated assault and 14 counts of endangering the welfare of children. Authorities say they starved their four adopted sons, who subsisted on a diet of oatmeal and uncooked pancake batter and grew so hungry they gnawed on windowsills, wallboard and insulation.
Colleen Maguire, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Human Services, said that the case had prompted the state to reassess all 1,000 children under the supervision of the Southern Adoption Resource Center, the agency that placed the boys with the Jacksons. The agency works with the Division of Youth and Family Services.
The Jacksons remained in Camden County jail on $100,000 bail. The sons, who range in age from 9 to 19, all weighed under 50 pounds when authorities found them. Three of them are in foster care; the 19-year-old remained hospitalized.
But peering through the big windows decorated with religious stickers at the Jacksons’ rented White Horse Pike home yesterday, John and Mary Romaska say the horrific tales officials are telling have little to do with their friends.
“In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe this happened,” said John Romaska, who went to the house to see whether any Jackson family members were inside. “I’ve never seen any signs of mistreatment, and I’ve known them for 20 years. These kids are lively. They weren’t walking hunched over. They were dancing, they were singing.”
The Romaskas, of Cherry Hill, met the Jacksons through church - the families served meals together at homeless shelters on Christmas, shared picnics and dinners and sang in the gospel choir together. The Jacksons now belong to Come Alive Church in Medford, so the couples no longer worship together, but they continued to see each other regularly.
The Romaskas said they believed the four sons all had severe health conditions that predated their adoptions, which took place between 1995 and 1997.
Mary Romaska said the sons had always been small, and that Vanessa Jackson told her that Bruce, the 19-year-old who was found rooting through a neighbor’s trash can for food, had the most serious health conditions and eating disorder.
“He would only eat to throw up,” Mary Romaska said. “They probably had to watch what he ate; that’s why they kept things away from him.”
At dinners at the Romaskas’ house, where food was abundant and easily accessed, the four sons didn’t seem ravenous, the Romaskas said. That they weighed so little was just taken for granted.
“We got used to seeing them that way,” John Romaska said. “We never thought anything of it.”
The Romaskas described as polite and well-behaved the Jacksons’ brood of one foster, two biological, and six adopted children - authorities say that the four adopted sons were starved but that the girls were not.
“We love them,” Mary Romaska said. “We will support them until we’re proven wrong.”
The details now making international headlines are stomach-turning, John Romaska acknowledged.
“Had I not known these people, I’d have been ready to punch this guy in the mouth,” he said.
The newly appointed head of the state Office of the Child Advocate said his office would open a full-scale investigation this week into the apparent starvation, including interviews with state officials, caseworkers, family members and neighbors.
Kevin Ryan, who began his work less than a month ago, said yesterday that he had demanded the contact information of every public employee who provided services to the adoptive parents and the children. Those who do not agree to be interviewed will be subpoenaed, he said.
Ryan called the system’s failings “acute and extensive.”
The Department of Human Services has suspended five employees, including caseworkers, a manager and supervisors, pending the outcome of the investigation. One caseworker resigned.
“The caseworker described the boys as active and playful,” Ryan said. “The question is: How does a caseworker go into this home 39 times in two years and see these boys on many occasions and find everyone safe?”
The big beige house on the White Horse Pike had no electricity for six months, Ryan said. The kitchens were locked and the four sons were “obviously physically starving.” Vanessa Jackson, he said, had everyone convinced that they had eating disorders.
“Not only did several doctors rule them out, but the boys gained significant amounts of weight,” he said. “One boy gained two pounds in seven years with the Jacksons and gained seven pounds in the last two weeks” since they were removed from the Jackson home.
Ryan said that Bruce Jackson had been removed from his biological parents after they had starved and seriously abused him. He said the prosecutors knew the circumstances of his adoption and proceeded cautiously in charging the Jacksons.
Eventually, he said, his office will choose from several actions, including suing a state agency, holding hearings, and demanding corrective action.
“The bottom line is we have to identify the problem and demand accountability,” he said. “Why weren’t red flags raised?”
The state will also examine its policies after adoption, said Maguire, of the Department of Human Services. After the Jackson children’s adoptions were finalized, DYFS had no involvement in their lives. The only reason a caseworker went to the home was that the family was about to adopt another child.
In downtown Collingswood yesterday, Mayor Jim Maley said he has had conversations with school district officials making tentative plans to revamp the district’s home-schooling policy.
The Jacksons’ sons were home-schooled, Maley said, which required little contact between the school system and the family.
“We’ve looked internally to see if there was some way we could have picked up on this sooner,” he said.
Maley said he would use a town forum scheduled for Wednesday to remind residents of their obligation to call DYFS about any suspected abuse.
Collingswood, a diverse community of big old homes and a thriving, walkable downtown, isn’t the sort of place where this thing happens, shaken residents said. It is a town on the rise, a once-tired suburb whose property values are spiking and whose buzz makes magazine pages.
Debbie Dugan has lived in Collingswood all her life. Sweeping her flower-lined path a few hundred yards from the Jacksons’ property line yesterday, she said she couldn’t get the image of the four hungry sons out of her mind.
“I never saw those kids, never heard anyone in the yard,” Dugan said. “You wouldn’t even know kids lived there.”
Dugan knows almost all her neighbors but never had any contact with the Jacksons. That wouldn’t have stopped her or anyone else from lending a hand, she said.
“All they would have had to do is turn around and ask anyone for help,” Dugan said, tears in her eyes. “Anyone.”
Looking over into the Jacksons’ yard, she said she was sad and worried about the children’s fates but mostly very, very angry.
“I hope they put them in jail for a long, long time,” Dugan said of Raymond and Vanessa Jackson. “Better yet, I hope they put them in jail for a long, long time and give them just a piece of plywood to eat.”
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