http://www.freep.com/news/childrenfirst/echild23_20040523.htm

Child of the system: For this 3-year-old girl, what should have been a
short-term refuge in foster care became a long-term saga

May 23, 2004


BY JACK KRESNAK
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

When you look at the history of her short life, you have to wonder what must
run through Inge Stramaglia's 3-year-old mind:

Why do they call me two different names? Who is my real mommy? Where did my
daddy go? What is this F-I-A that everybody is always talking about? Am I home
now? When can I decide about me?

To date, the decisions in Inge's life have been made by social workers and
judges. Since she was 3 weeks old, the little girl with blond hair and hazel
eyes has been living with a foster mother, Elizabeth Forlini, in Clinton
Township. Forlini wants to adopt Inge and calls her Anna, which is against the
rules for foster parents licensed by FIA, the Michigan Family Independence
Agency.

Inge's father, Mike Stramaglia, is fighting a court order terminating his
parental rights. Inge's mother, Paula Schreiner, has had problems with drugs
and alcohol and lost custody of six other children. She has given up her rights
to Inge, in the hope that the FIA would leave Inge with her father.

Stramaglia has never hurt Inge, either by abuse or neglect. But three months
ago, a Macomb County Family Court judge terminated his legal rights to the
child because he refused to cooperate with the FIA -- and because he tested
positive for cocaine a year ago.

Stramaglia thinks it is unethical and immoral for Forlini to change Inge's
name. Forlini, a divorced woman with no children whose intention to adopt Inge
is revealed in court records, declined requests to be interviewed.

At age 3, Inge is surely unaware that she lives in a kind of legal limbo. She
cannot be adopted until the issue of Stramaglia's parental rights is resolved.
She is a child of "the system" -- and, in Michigan, there are thousands more
like her.

Brutally hard on parents
The goal of the state's child welfare system is to get kids out of foster care
within a year of placement. More than half of all foster children are, in fact,
reunited with their parents within that time. But the state says the average
stay is 19 months.

Nationally, there are a half-million children in foster care because of abuse
or neglect. "For too many . . . what should be a short-term refuge becomes a
long-term saga," the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care said in a report
last week.

The report said one of the glaring weaknesses in the child welfare system is
the separation of siblings. Inge, for example, has never been allowed to see
any of her six half-brothers and sisters nor any other blood relatives except
her father and paternal grandmother, whose visits were suspended in February.

While perhaps confusing for little Inge, her story shows how a system set up to
protect children can be brutally hard on parents who are less than cooperative,
and how it can be manipulated by individuals with their own agendas.

"It makes me sick," says Stramaglia, who recently took to picketing the U.S.
District Court building in Detroit where Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga
was being arraigned on corruption charges. He said Marlinga's indictment was
just one part of the problems with the legal system in Macomb County.

"This is my baby," he said of Inge, "and they just ripped her away. And they
promised that woman my baby."

Frequent disputes
The FIA believes Stramaglia, a rough-hewn 47-year-old construction worker from
Harrison Township, is unfit to be a parent. Besides convictions for drug
possession and drunken driving, he had pleaded no contest in an assault and
battery of Schreiner's 6-year-old son.

Stramaglia denies hurting the boy, saying he took the misdemeanor conviction
without admitting guilt to get the case over with. Prosecutors had charged him
with a felony, third-degree child abuse, but agreed to the plea because the
child's testimony wasn't consistent.

But all that should have been settled in March 2002 when a six-person jury in a
noncriminal trial before Macomb County Family Court Judge Antonio Viviano
decided that Stramaglia had neither abused nor neglected Inge. The jury said
Viviano should deny an FIA request to take temporary custody of the child.
Viviano signed an order to that effect.

But the jury also decided that Inge had been neglected by her mother and that
the judge could take temporary jurisdiction over the child. Viviano did that,
too, saying his only interest was in protecting Inge.

The judge also delivered some angry comments to Stramaglia, accusing him of
being a drug addict. He refused to return Inge to her father.

When Stramaglia asked the judge to appoint an appellate attorney so he could
appeal the ruling, Viviano refused, saying there were no grounds for an appeal.


In the following months, there were frequent disputes between the FIA and
Stramaglia over whether Inge was being cared for properly by Forlini.
Stramaglia complained about Forlini having a "nude" portrait of Inge taken and
hanging it on her living room wall.

Forlini, who had been told by FIA workers that Stramaglia was a convicted
criminal who had hurt a child, went to the FIA with her fears for the child
should Inge be returned to Stramaglia.

Inge or Anna?
In July 2001, just a month after Inge first came into Forlini's care, a state
licensing report said Forlini "feels she has devoted her life to this foster
child and loves meeting her needs and watching her grow and develop." Forlini,
39, also admitted telling Stramaglia that "we both love Inge so much, we should
be married." She told an FIA worker that the comment was made in jest.

In her application for a foster care license, three of Forlini's friends
described her with words such as "assertive," "aggressive," "considerate" and
"opinionated."

She once spoke about Inge's case with an assistant Macomb County prosecutor who
was in her hair salon -- a violation of the child's confidentiality. An FIA
worker said Forlini described the conversation as "a case of having diarrhea of
the mouth, maybe having talked too much in her frustration."

But foster care workers "feel she is very dedicated to her foster children," an
FIA report said. The report added, however, that Forlini "does continue to have
difficulty in separating herself from her foster child."

During visits, Stramaglia said his daughter seemed confused whenever he called
her Inge. He suspected that Forlini was calling her something else.

When FIA workers noticed that the girl would not answer to "Inge" but readily
responded to "Anna," Forlini admitted to using her own choice of name for Inge.


Each time the case was reviewed, the Foster Care Review Board expressed concern
about Forlini's willingness to comply with a foster parent's mission: to help
reunite Inge with her father.

During 2002, Stramaglia complied for the most part with orders from Viviano and
the FIA, to a point where he was allowed to have Inge for unsupervised,
overnight visits. He was then living in Harbor Beach, near the tip of the
Thumb, and proudly took Inge around to his church and the homes of his friends.


Spies and drug tests
Angie Basacchi, owner of the Randolph's Motel in Harbor Beach, said she met
Stramaglia through her church, the Lighthouse Assembly of God, about three
years ago.

"As far as a man who would be a good father, I think he would," Basacchi said.
"I know that he loves that baby. As long as I've known him he's been fighting
for her."

Basacchi said that over theDecember holidays in 2002, two private investigators
who said they were from "the court system" stayed at her motel and told her
they were investigating Stramaglia.

"They were going around and (video) taping," Basacchi said. "One fella worked
the night shift, the other daytime."

According to foster care records, Forlini said she was given permission by an
FIA worker to hire someone to investigate Stramaglia, although workers later
assigned to the case told her that was inappropriate.

In January 2003, someone dropped off a videotape at the FIA office in Mt.
Clemens that showed Stramaglia buying beer in a party store while carrying
Inge. At the time, he had completed probation for drunken driving and was under
court orders to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Stramaglia denied he was drinking and said he bought the beer for friends. Two
weeks later, apparently because of the tape, the FIA told Stramaglia to go to a
local clinic and be tested for illegal drugs. The test was positive for
cocaine. Stramaglia insists he hadn't used the drug in more than three years
and called the test an "FIA setup." However, the agency filed a petition
seeking to terminate Stramaglia's parental rights. His visits with Inge were
suspended for several weeks, then restricted to the FIA office, under
supervision. Stramaglia said he offered to take more drug tests at different
clinics, but the FIA would not accept the results.

Conflict of interest
John Bologna, Stramaglia's attorney in the jury trial, said Viviano had an
apparent conflict of interest in the case.

The judge had been seen having coffee with Forlini, the foster mother, and also
met in his chambers with the FIA caseworker minutes before a hearing on the
case. Bologna said the worker, who had supported returning Inge to Stramaglia,
abruptly changed his mind and testified he had concerns about Stramaglia's
fitness as a parent.

Viviano told the Free Press that he knows the Forlini family from his church
and often dines at the family's restaurant, Che Cosa, in downtown Mt. Clemens.
Viviano said he saw Forlini and Inge at the restaurant once but did not discuss
the case.

The judge said he frequently calls FIA workers into his chambers before
hearings to find out if all the parties and attorneys are ready to proceed.
Other judges use court clerks for that purpose.

Prompted by the Free Press, Viviano also remembered that he had ruled in
Forlini's favor in a divorce case in which she refused to pay her ex-husband
$67,000, his share of their marital estate, for more than five years. Viviano
ruled that an arbitrator's award was ambiguous. The Court of Appeals reversed
his decision and Forlini paid the settlement in March of this year.

But Viviano said "the foster mother has nothing to do with this case" of
Stramaglia's parental rights.

Because of a court reorganization, Inge's case has since been transferred to
Macomb Family Court Judge Matthew Switalski.

Meantime, despite filing bankruptcy, Forlini has spent thousands of dollars to
make her Clinton Township home more accommodating for Inge and a second foster
child, a boy. She added a new floor and cabinets to the kitchen, a back porch,
a swimming pool and a deck, according to state licensing reports.

Murray Davis, vice president of the National Family Justice Association, said
his review of the case shows that Stramaglia lost his parental rights "in order
to further the personal adoption goals of the foster mother with whom the judge
may have had a personal conflict of interest."

Davis, who mans a Southfield office for the Georgia-based parents rights group,
said cases like Stramaglia's "amount to nothing short of court-assisted child
abductions . . . from otherwise fit parents."

As all these adults keep arguing and spying and protesting and accusing, you
have to wonder whether little Inge and all the children like her have any grasp
of what's going on -- and which of these grownups will ever honestly explain it
to them.



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A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown