A review by happiestwhenreading
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian
4.0
A horrific story about 2 separate sets of siblings adopted by a pair of mothers who tragically plotted to kill all of them by driving off a 100’ cliff on the California coastline. Haunted by abuse accusations, it seems as if the mothers’ lives were spinning out of control. They were getting to a place where they were no longer able to outrun concerned teachers, neighbors, or friends, so sadly, they killed themselves and the kids they claimed to love so much.
But this isn’t just a story about murder. It’s also yet another story that outlines how bad our social services departments, adoption standards and protocols, and justice systems fail kids time and time again. All claiming to put the best practices forward for the benefit of the child, they all inevitably leave the child to suffer, and in this case, die.
Some of the themes reminded me of a book I read earlier this year with the #readwithtoni book group, Invisible Child. Between Invisible Child and We Were Once a Family, I don’t have a lot of hope for some of our judicial systems. We know it’s broken, we know it doesn’t work very effectively, we know it needs restructured…so how many more stories like this do we have to read before we start preventing it from happening again?
But this isn’t just a story about murder. It’s also yet another story that outlines how bad our social services departments, adoption standards and protocols, and justice systems fail kids time and time again. All claiming to put the best practices forward for the benefit of the child, they all inevitably leave the child to suffer, and in this case, die.
Some of the themes reminded me of a book I read earlier this year with the #readwithtoni book group, Invisible Child. Between Invisible Child and We Were Once a Family, I don’t have a lot of hope for some of our judicial systems. We know it’s broken, we know it doesn’t work very effectively, we know it needs restructured…so how many more stories like this do we have to read before we start preventing it from happening again?