One step at a time

[manouli]

One step at a time


Lesbian couple tries to find ways to help adoptive daughter walk again


By MATT SCHAFER
JAN. 2, 2009




WHEN SHE WAS LESS THAN A year old, Marie Surprenant’s back was broken by her abusive biological parents. Now 3 years old and under the care of her lesbian adoptive mothers, Marie is starting to thrive — but she needs specialized medical treatment if she hopes to walk again.

“They broke her back,” Michele Surprenant says. “She suffered very violent physical abuse. She had a lot of fractures and it was just the final that fracture did it… on Christmas Day of all days.”

On Christmas Day 2006, Marie arrived in an emergency room where physicians conducted an X-ray that showed multiple fractures running across her young bones like lines on a spider web.

“When I met her I couldn’t let her go,” Surprenant says. “She was only nine months old. She was 14 pounds, which is really small for a nine-month- old; most babies weigh that much at two months.”

Surprenant worked as a social worker at Scottish Right Children’s Hospital and had fostered several special needs children in the past. When the foster agency Surprenant worked with asked if she would give Marie a temporary home, something changed for Surprenant.

It wasn’t an easy decision. Surprenant was single at the time and had already adopted Kevin, now 6, who also came from an abusive background and faces his own set of challenges.


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