A family defined by love

05/17/2007

By Sandy Banks,
LA Times Staff Writer
May 17, 2007


FROM her first glance, Dayna Bennett knew that Casey was not the kind of kid featured in adoption brochures. Fifteen and a spindly 6 feet 2, he was so unkempt and forlorn, he "looked like a ragamuffin" when they met in the visiting room of a state mental hospital three years ago.

Bennett knew his history: Casey had been removed from abusive parents at age 6 and spent eight years in foster care, shuttled among relatives, strangers and group homes. Four years ago, when he was bounced from a group home for stealing, his arrest added another label to those he'd picked up along the way: mentally ill, emotionally damaged, developmentally delayed and, now, juvenile delinquent.

The labels didn't trouble Bennett, the single mother of two daughters adopted from foster care, one of them Casey's younger sister, Samantha. She wasn't looking to add a son; she was just there to meet her daughter's brother.

But last summer, just weeks before he turned 18, Bennett, then 29, officially became Casey's mother.

The adoption was heralded by county officials and children's advocates as groundbreaking, the first anyone could recall of a foster child from the juvenile delinquency system.

Shadowing the celebration, however, was an unspoken challenge: How much damage can love undo?

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