Teen’s death should not deter foster parenting

The story is still unfolding, and there is a big difference between being charged and being convicted, but the deeply disturbing accusations in the death of 14-year-old Grace Packer are apt to have a chilling effect on children service agencies statewide, and on adoption.

However grim this saga, it should not be a deterrent to helping children in need to find a good home, or to open yours to those youngsters.

Police charged a Montgomery County couple with homicide in the death of Packer, a case that reached to Luzerne County in a gruesome way. Packer’s remains were discovered last October in Bear Creek Township near the Francis E. Walter Reservoir. She was first reported missing July 11.

This tragedy taints agencies that work to protect the safety of children, and the entire foster care and adoption efforts of such agencies, because— according to police — Packer was taken in as a foster child at the age of 3 by the woman now charged with killing her: Sara Packer, who later adopted Grace.

Sara Packer and her partner, Jacob Patrick Sullivan, both of Horsham, have been charged in the case.

Bucks County authorities allege that young Grace was beaten, tortured and raped last summer. Finally, Sullivan is believed to have strangled the teen.

Then her remains were stored in kitty litter in the attic of the Quakertown farmhouse where they lived to throw off investigators.

Police now say they dismembered Grace’s body in a bathtub before dumping her body parts 75 miles away in the woods of Luzerne County in upstate Pennsylvania.

Sara Packer was initially identified as a “person of interest” in the case of her adopted daughter’s disappearance.

At the time, police asked the public to come forward with any information in the puzzling disappearance.

According to police, Sullivan and Sara Packer were admitted to a hospital Dec. 30 for attempted suicide.

Sullivan allegedly confessed details about the murder, saying the couple sedated Grace, bound her and left her to die in a cedar closet.

The news of charges and lurid details surfaced over the weekend Jan. 7-8. Since then it has been reported that Sara Packer worked as a supervisor for Northampton County Children, Youth and Families division for adoptions for seven years before being suspended.

Be shocked, but do not be discouraged.

On the contrary, take it as more evidence that children need more than a home, they need a good home, and that their protection merits more effort by the rest of us.

Also in Luzerne County, when Lorine Ogurkis was honored last May for her part in creating Brandon’s Forever Home as a center for both education of adults and refuge for children, Ogurkis painted the problem in stark numbers: More than 400 children in foster care in Luzerne County, but only 85 homes to take them in.

In 2015, 190 of those in foster care aged out, and without support “within three years they will become homeless, they will become drug addicted, they will become in the criminal sector, they will become pregnant, and the cycle continues,” Ogurkis said with palpable compassion. That’s just in one county. Yes, somewhere the system and society failed Grace Packer. And yes, somehow an agency trying to give Grace a new life was entangled with the woman accused of causing her death. These things will be sorted out, and changes made.

But there are thousands of success stories unsung, and as we watch this horror evolve, we cannot let it blind nor deter us.

Foster children need forever homes.

— The (Wilkes-Barre) Times Leader via The Associated

However grim this saga, it should not be a deterrent to helping children in need to find a good home, or to open yours to those youngsters.