Lesbian couple were 'taking in kids no one else wanted'
Topekans in middle of child support battle between state, sperm donor
Posted: February 3, 2013
By Aly Van Dyke
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
The lesbian couple at the center of a sperm donor case has six children between them — a lot by almost any standard.
But the couple didn’t plan to have that many children — and they certainly didn’t take them into their home to collect cash from the state’s foster care system, claims Angela Bauer, one of the women. More often than not, the pair adopted the children rather than have them remain in the foster care system, which, Bauer said, resulted in less money.
“We’re not free of mistakes. We’ve made plenty of them,” Bauer said. “But we’re not out there collecting kids and living off our kids. We were taking in kids no one else wanted, and I’m in love with all of my children. They’ve all brought something different into my life.”
Bauer asked that the children’s names be omitted for their privacy. Jennifer Schreiner has continued not to respond to Capital-Journal messages.
In telling the story of how she and Schreiner, 34, met and came to have their large family, Bauer, 40, describes a tale of trial and desperation, of children whom nobody wanted because they were mentally disturbed or delayed, and of the power of love and patience that gave their six children a life they might not have had otherwise.
The couple find themselves in the middle of a child support battle between the state of Kansas and William Marotta, who in March 2009 donated his sperm so the lesbian couple might have a child of their own. By the time the little girl was born in December, the pair had seven children in the home and had been together seven years.
Today, the couple has eight children, counting Schreiner’s two biological daughters. Bauer said the couple, despite having split in December 2010, still co-parent all of their kids.
When Schreiner and Bauer got together, they had two children between them. Schreiner had a 2-year-old son from a previous marriage, and Bauer had assumed become the parenting role for her 4-year-old nephew.
In learning to cope with Schreiner’s son’s “significant behavior issues,” Bauer said, she and Schreiner, who both worked in the adults with disabilities field, felt a desire to use their expertise to become foster parents for children with disabilities.
As such, the two fostered five children with severe mental disorders.
The first, in 2004, was an 18-year-old girl with a history of violence and an intellectual disability that caused her to function at a 12- or 13-year-old level.
The second was a 4-year-old autistic boy whom Bauer described as “a wild animal” with no self control. Bauer fought to foster him after learning the 4-year-old had been permanently placed in an institution.
Bauer and Schreiner eventually adopted both, she said. In the case of the boy, she said, the couple’s payments from the state dropped to $500 a month when they adopted him — down from the $50 a day they received as foster parents.
“Once he became available for adoption, it was never a question of whether or not we would adopt him,” Bauer said of the boy. “From the moment he came into my home, he was my son.”
The other three foster children had to find a new placement in early 2011, Bauer said, after she and Schreiner split, leaving the house less stable than the children needed.
“We were devastated,” she said of the three children having to leave. “We felt like we had failed them. It was terrible for everybody involved. They challenged us, but we loved them. They just fit right in with our family.”
In 2007, the couple adopted a newborn girl with Down syndrome out of a desire to parent a younger child, Bauer said. Shortly thereafter, they decided to try having a child of their own. So, after a doctor declined to sign a form so they could go to a sperm bank, Bauer and Schreiner posted an ad on Craiglist soliciting a sperm donor. Enter Marotta, and, three years later, the current court case.
The girl, who was born in December 2009, brought the family’s total to six. Schreiner since has had two biological children in a heterosexual relationship.
Bauer said she and Schreiner broke up in December 2010. She chalked the split up to the amount of attention their children required — an amount that didn’t leave much left over for each other.
“I think for us, we got so involved in taking care of all the needs of everyone else that we forgot to take care of each other,” she said. “We took in these children in hopes of giving them the love that they needed and deserved, but in taking care of so many we just got overstretched.”