Solomon's Sword: Two Families and the Children the State Took Away

In an important and heartrending critique of the child welfare system, Shapiro focuses on two thorny cases. The first involves Gina Pellegrino, a New Haven, Conn., cashier and single teen mother who abandoned her newborn daughter in a hospital in 1991. The state assigned the baby, Megan, to Cynthia and Jerry LaFlamme, but four months later Gina decided she wanted to reclaim her daughter. In the protracted legal battle that ensued, Connecticut's Supreme Court gave Megan back to Gina, while the state awarded the LaFlammes $27,000 to adopt an orphaned child from Russia. In his nuanced narrative, Shapiro, an assistant professor at Columbia University's Journalism School, condemns the court's decision as disruptive to Megan and unfair to the LaFlammes. The second case involves the five unemployed, uneducated Melton sisters (three of them drug addicted), who were raising 17 children on public assistance in a two-bedroom Chicago apartment the judge described as a ""cesspool."" In 1994, a criminal court found the Meltons guilty of child neglect; one sister went to prison; two were sent to residential drug treatment centers; the children were split up among relatives, adoptive and foster homes. Shapiro believes that instead of taking an adversarial stance, the court should have encouraged the Meltons to remain part of their children's lives. As an example of the community-based approach he favors, he profiles the Center for Family Life, a Brooklyn, N.Y., agency run by two nuns and 25 social workers. Author tour. (June)