One year ago, a toddler's screams echoed through the house on Pear Street as she was taken from the couple who had raised her for 21/2 years and turned over to her biological parents.
Today, Jessica's swing set, slide and turtle-shaped sandbox still are fixtures in Roberta and Jan DeBoer's back yard - and the DeBoers look forward to the day the baby boy they are adopting will play with them.And her screams still pierce the memory of the couple who lost the toddler the world came to know as "Baby Jessica." Their grief spills out in Roberta DeBoer's just-released book, "Losing Jessica."
The many notes and gifts she and her husband have sent the child were returned by her biological parents in Iowa, Dan and Cara Schmidt. The Schmidts changed the toddler's name to Anna after the court order granting them custody.
"There's been no communication on their part. . . . We miss Jessi a lot. It's been a very difficult year," Roberta DeBoer said Tuesday at her home. The Schmidts had said they would consider some visitation after six months, she said, but that didn't happen.
The Schmidts have an unpublished telephone number. Their lawyer, Pam Lewis of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, did not return telephone calls for comment.
The book says the DeBoers last heard from the Schmidts three months after the transfer. A message on their answering machine updated them on Jessica's prog-ress in potty training and told how she adored her baby sister, Chloe.
Cara Schmidt ended the message by saying, "I trust you'll keep this call confidential and act responsibly for once because Jessi doesn't need to be the freak show that you turned her into anymore," Roberta DeBoer writes.
The saga began in 1991, when the DeBoers took Jessica into their home days after she was born to Cara Schmidt - then Cara Clausen. They had planned to adopt Jessica.
But shortly after Clausen signed away her parental rights, she changed her mind and revealed she had deliberately named the wrong man as father on the adoption papers. She told her ex-boyfriend, Dan Schmidt, that he had fathered her child and he began seeking custody. The pair married in 1992.
The DeBoers argued they should be granted custody because they were the only parents the child had ever known.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the DeBoers' appeal of a court order requiring them to return the brown-eyed, dark-haired child to the Schmidts.
In a televised transfer on Aug. 2, the sobbing toddler was whisked away from her Ann Arbor home.
The case spurred new custody laws in at least two states, said Annie Rose, president of the DeBoer Committee for Children's Rights.
"I think the blame for what happened to Jessi remains not with the adoption system but with the court system. The justice system in this country has archaic laws. They need to start focusing on the best interest of the child," Roberta DeBoer said.
The DeBoers are in the process of adopting a newborn boy, Casey. Roberta DeBoer, who is unable to bear children, said they hope to adopt one or two more children.
In the book, Roberta DeBoer advocates early therapy for Anna. She said changing her name has only made it more likely that she will suffer.
"Jessi had a past; she had a life before," she said. "I don't see any psychological studies that say she is going to be fine."
But a therapist who supervised the visits between the two couples and Jessica before her transfer disagrees.
"Some people, possibly the majority of psychoanalysts, think it's inevitable (she will need therapy). I don't," Lucy Biven of Ann Arbor said Wednesday.
She said she believes the Schmidts changed their minds about visitation because they are angry about a television movie about the bitter custody dispute. The movie was made with the DeBoers' cooperation.
"There was such a tidal wave of public opinion against them - and it was inaccurate," Biven said.
Biven said she has seen Anna twice in her new home near Blairstown, Iowa, and speaks regularly with the Schmidts. The transition has gone far more smoothly than most child experts had predicted, she said.
"Anna took to them right away. She never went through that screaming, crying, misery - all the things that people were so sure would happen," Biven said.
"A child that age can't hide that kind of trauma. She would suck her thumb or cry or whatever if she were feeling that way. That's why I'm hopeful."