How was she able to get away with having Carlina for so long especially since there was no birth certificate or anything? Has the issue of a birth certificate never come up before? I know when you enroll in kindergarten one of the things they ask for is the child's birth certificate. I'm confused as to how she was to able to get by for so long with no birth certificate.
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But me and my siblings were in school in the early 90s as well and I remember my mom said she had to get our birth certificate, shot records, proof of address, etc and said you even need a birth certificate (or proof of legal guardianship, or adoption )in order to start getting shots or to be put on your parents insurance. My mom was the one who was really curious about it which made me wonder as well. I'm only like a year younger then her and my brother is actually older and went to school in the early 80s, that's why I'm asking how they could get away with it for so long.
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The schools at the time admitted Carlina without a birth certificate. The mother said she would bring the cert later, then kept coming up with an excuse. They defended their actions years later by saying that their primary responsibility is the safety & well-being of an innocent child. If the school had not admitted Carlina or any other child because of this technicality, then an innocent child would have been out there on the streets, with a potentially unfit mother, being exposed to who-knows-what. There are mothers that pimp out their own children for money or drugs. At least, when the child is in school, they are in the system--being seen by teachers, school nurses and guidance counselors. If the child shows up malnourished or with bruises, or if the child disappears, someone in authority can see & report this. The school board also proclaimed that after Hurricane Katrina, they took in many children without birth certs because the family fled, the certs were lost or destroyed, and the government/hospital copies were in basements of buildings that had flooded.
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Yeah, but Hurricane Katrina was in 2005. If Ann refused to come up with documentation for Carlina, Social Services should have eventually looked into it.
shareI found that strange too. Maybe Ann was lucky and hot away with it. Maybe Netty slipped through the cracks, which is such a shame, because had the school administration done their job, then the nightmare for Joy White and Carl Tyson might have ended 18 years earlier. Carlina's reintegration into her birth family might have been a lot easier. It's tragic really. I don't see how it happened. I remember someone I know had a terrible time getting her son enrolled in kindergarten because they couldn't find the copy of the BC they had, and when she requisitioned one from the local gov't vital records dept. it couldn't be located. There had been some kind of screw-up and the child's birth record hadn't been entered properly, so it was missing in the system. This was a nightmare for the parents. No one just shrugged her shoulders and forgot about it. She couldn't get the kid in school for a couple of months. They ended up having to go to court. It was a big rigamarole. And this wasn't recently.
So somehow Ann lucked out and she managed to elude her crime at the first juncture. Didn't she think the BC would be needed someday? It seems like she didn't want to think about the obvious snags that lay ahead. She didn't look down the road to see where her lies would get unraveled and exposed. She probably thought, oh well, it's a long way off, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. And when she got to the bridge, she had no better idea than she had before how to get around it. I wonder if she thinks now it was worth it, paying the price she is now for getting to have the child she wanted for those first couple of decades.
You're right, and I had to get Social Security cards for my kids in the 90's, too.
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It is possible that the school system accepted the "fake birth certificate" (as seen in the movie, showing the altered date of birth) as being valid. Obviously, Ann needed a birth certificate at some point in time, so she probably obtained the phoney one from the "illegal market."
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See the devastation in NY right now, and how two major hospitals have had their basements flooded so much that they lost their backup generators. If they kept their birth records in the basements, and City Hall did the same, then we could see a lot of children without birth records if the parents copies are also lost.
shareI was wondering about the birth certificate as well, for example what happened when she went to go get her drivers license?
shareThey've had computer backups for birth certificates since the 90's.
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in all hospitals? i'm sure in big cities yes but not all hospitals.
I guess that is when Carlina/Netty started getting supicious because there was no birth certificate. Usually you need a birth certificate it seem like for everything nowadays even for the military they want your birth certificate.
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