The Hyres, Chapter Four:
Kelsey
We assumed, after we finished telling the Hyres’ sad story on this site in late 2003 that that was the last we were going to hear about it. Gerald and Bonnie had moved on with their lives to the extent that they possibly could, and at the time they were both in prison.
Nathan was living with Bonnie’s parents. Kelsey had been taken into foster care and, presumably, we would never know who with. It was also likely that she would end up being adopted again, but as these things are always kept confidential we would never who, or where she lived.
But that assumption turned out to be wrong, thanks to us having put this website up.
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One evening late in July of 2005, Dan went upstairs with Anguel after dinner to check email. Just like the night around that time of year several years before when Constance Bady called from out of the blue after having read our ODHS complaint, there would be more to our story to come.
This time, one of the emails was from Sue Minick — Kelsey’s new mother. Not just foster mother, mother. Kelsey’s second adoption had been legally concluded just the month before, and Kelsey had her last name now.
One of her other daughters had been searching on the Internet on Kelsey’s name, since the story had gotten out there, and landed on our website.
A computer crash several days later sent the original email to data heaven, so we don’t have it, but that’s OK as we were able to chat on the phone since we had printed out the email. Dan called her up and talked to her for a while.
She was very glad to have found our website, as we had apparently filled in a few details of Kelsey’s original adoption from Russia, things she knew Kelsey would want to know.
We wanted to know, for our part, how Kelsey was doing. “Great!" she told us.
She had been a longtime foster mom, had never worked outside the house, and had a family of seven, most of them children she’d taken in and eventually adopted along with her husband. One of her daughters, Amanda, had also come to her after being paralyzed from injuries suffered at the hands of an abusive father. She and her husband had tended the girl through her treatment and rehabilitation, so she felt uniquely qualified to take care of this.
When she heard about the case on the radio, she had felt such a sense of déja vu that she went down to the county’s family services office and demanded that Kelsey be placed with her as she would know the girl’s needs very well. Eventually she got her wish.
Two years later, she didn’t regret it in the slightest. Kelsey has adapted to life in a wheelchair as well as she can, and most notably, she said, has a very positive and upbeat attitude.
That’s good, because she said the doctors said Kelsey was lucky to be alive following her injury (that’s right, lucky to be alive). If it had been more severe, in a different part of her spine or she hadn’t gotten prompt medical attention, she would have joined the other 13 Russian adoptees in America who have died at the hands of their adoptive parents. So far, in fact, she is the only one we know of to have survived severe physical abuse (Gerald has never told anyone, as far as we know, exactly what he did that night, and at this point it’s not of pressing importance as he has faced the consequences, and continues to do so every morning of his life).
She asked us also about adopting from Russia, which she knew nothing about. She thought Kelsey might like to have a sister of her own ethnic background, and she had always tried to give her kids someone else in the family with an issue they could relate to (one of her other adopted children had a disability, too). We told her it was getting harder to do (it was) and she’d be better off, and richer, for not making the effort.