exposing the dark side of adoption
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Indy Staff

Foster mom and child daycare operator Sylvia Vasquez, charged with neglect and abuse of her four adopted children, was back in lock-up Tuesday morning after Judge Joseph Lodge increased her bail from $1 to $5 million in response to allegations she defied the court’s order against contacting her children. Vasquez allegedly arranged to have a letter delivered to her 14-year-old son, now in protective custody, despite having been ordered by Lodge not to seek communication with her children after prosecutor Joyce Dudley protested that such contact between defendant and witnesses was improper and could contaminate the case. According to Dudley, Vasquez wrote a letter to her son and gave it to one of his classmates to deliver last Friday. Accused of keeping three of her adopted children locked downstairs – two of them sometimes in cages – Vasquez and her supporters have countered that three of the kids suffer from Reactive Attachment Syndrome, claiming she struggled heroically, if imperfectly, to deal with intense behavioral problems.

2006 Mar 2