Home Schooling Is a Way for Abusive Parents to Hide Abused, Neglected Children Like Natalie Finn

Caption: Maria Houser Conzemius fortifying herself at the Sag Wagon Bar before riding the Ididaride February 4, 2017 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was cold and windy! Photo taken by Shana Kellor, Lone Tree.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and his Republican minions have a lot of nerve celebrating “school choice,” which includes home schooling, after Natalie Finn died of a heart attack due to starvation in a home schooling arrangement through her adoptive parents. Abusive parents have the opportunity to hide abuse, neglect, up to and including torture and starvation of their children through “home schooling” choices. Natalie Finn’s surviving younger siblings were hospitalized after being similarly tortured. An older sibling had already left the household. The Department of Human Services (DHS) and the police were called to check on Natalie and her siblings months before she died. They both dropped the ball till it was too late.

Two DHS workers, a worker and his/her supervisor, were fired. That, in and of itself, is remarkable. When two-year-old Shelby Duis died after her daycare worker, with tears in her eyes, begged her DHS social worker, Chuck Ilg, to remove her before she was tortured to death by her biological mother and her mother's boyfriend, Chuck Ilg refused. Shelby was covered with bruises and had a severe diaper rash. Shelby died two days later. Ilg was kept on and his supervisor was demoted. DHS has been broken a long time. Children are still dying after all these years of dysfunction under DHS chief Chuck Palmer and best buddy Gov. Branstad.

When I was a social worker for a private agency subcontracted by DHS in 1992-94, I worked with two children in separate Iowa foster homes who had been in a satanic cult family stretching back generations to Germany. Their biological mother had multiple personality disorder. Satanic cult families often don’t register the births of their babies so they can be sacrificed without anyone knowing that a person was murdered. Home schooling would be another way to hide these children if they survive infancy, which obviously many of them do. The kids I worked with did.

It’s hard to believe that satanic cult families exist in Iowa until you are assigned to one. I can’t reveal any more details about either case for fear the children might become identifiable. Thank God the Department of Human Services found and removed these children from their mother, but I can’t say that the boy had a happy ending. Last I knew he had been removed from foster care and confined to an institution.

It’s folly to allow parents to keep their children at home for home schooling without frequent visual check-ups to make sure they’re not being kept in the home to avoid being scrutinized as opposed to being educated.

Given that DHS probably can’t be fixed, certainly not for as long as Gov. Terry Branstad is governor or a Republican like him is governor, it would be easier to set up on-site visual evaluation and testing for home schooled children or abolish the practice altogether because of the risks. DHS has been broken for a long time, so I would opt for more heavily supervised home schooling or abolishing it altogether.

It’s not that I haven’t met well educated, polite, and seemingly normal children who were home schooled until high school and then put in the Iowa City Community School District, where they performed at a high level and did just fine. I have. One of my children was friends with a boy and girl who were home schooled, and they seemed to turn out better than average.

But then there’s Natalie Finn and other dead children who fall through the cracks while being “home schooled” (concealed from public observation). Is unsupervised home schooling worth the risk?