Va. Parents Trying to Unadopt Troubled Boy

First, she wanted him home after he had completed his sex offender treatment. But then psychologists deemed him a "sexual predator." That meant Briggs could no longer be a foster parent, which she considers her job. Nor could she allow her three grandchildren in her house. Nor could she keep a little girl she had cared for since the day she was born.

She had to choose.

"You don't want to throw somebody away," she said. "But sometimes you have to."

Her choice has left her with none of the rights and many of the responsibilities of a parent. Caseworkers forbid her from contacting the child because he becomes so violent and angry when she does. Yet state law requires that she pay $427 a month in child support and cover court costs when he appears before judges who now decide what's best for him.

With no legal recourse, she is asking politicians to help her find a way out.

"At first blush, you think, 'What, you're trying to give up your kid? You're a jerk,' " said Virginia Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax). "Then you find this lady has received awards for all the foster work she's done. And that she never would have adopted the boy and put other children in danger if she had had the information that was withheld from her."

The technical term for what Briggs is trying to do is "dissolve" the adoption, as if all the bonds of love and hurt could simply vanish into thin air.

A Hopeful Start

When Briggs, 57, went to visit the boy for the first time, she said she saw a cute, happy child. She recalls caseworkers telling her that he was in a psychiatric hospital because he was too much of a handful for his great-aunt.

They were nearing desperation before they found Briggs, records show. Nobody wanted him.

A no-nonsense, old-school "professional parent," Briggs figured she could handle him. When the boy acted out, she gave him limits. When he began pulling his hair out, she had it shaved. And when he kept running away from school and her Lorton townhouse, she turned him over to her husband for a whupping, just like she got as a child -- until caseworkers called Child Protective Services.

Nonetheless, caseworkers noted that the boy thrived in her care. "The Briggs foster home is the most constructive and potentially successful placement option that this child has," they wrote.

Briggs hadn't planned on adopting anyone. There was just something special about this child. He was so thankful he had his own room, with the first bed he hadn't had to share in his whole life, she remembers him telling her.