I Speak For This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate (63 page)

If this sounds like the far-fetched rantings of a bleeding-heart liberal, let me tell you about the latest case I just received. Sharonda James is a bright, lively girl of fifteen. Her mother was murdered when she was eight. Sharonda was in the room at the time. Sharonda’s father is in prison, again. Sharonda and her younger sister were raised by her maternal great-grandmother, who is now almost ninety and blind. Most of the time the sisters either fended for themselves or helped their grandmother, but she can no longer care for them. Her paternal grandmother tried to raise the sisters, but they refused to follow her strict rules, so she threw them out. Since then, they stayed in various homes of friends, relatives, and men. Sharonda has never received financial support other than that received by her grandmother and great-grandmother from Aid to Families with Dependent Children. She has been in the juvenile justice system for several years. All her arrests have been either for stealing food or clothing or for running away from home. After her last arrest, the judge, thinking that part of her problem might be the lack of a parent or home, ordered her into foster care. Lillian noticed that she had never been assigned a Guardian ad Litem and asked me to take the case because “nobody else will.”

HRS put Sharonda with the Fowler family (Lydia’s foster parents), forty miles south of her school, family, and friends. She was the only African-American child in that home, neighborhood, or classroom and demanded to be moved somewhere in her own community. Reluctantly, her caseworker agreed. During a rest stop at a convenience store, the caseworker went inside and a taxi drove up. Sharonda got into the taxi and disappeared. Nobody found her for six months. She surfaced again when she was arrested for stealing food. Her juvenile justice worker has used the detention system to provide housing for Sharonda because there is no place else to put her. She has spent most of her time in state custody in a punitive environment. These programs do not even attempt to reform or educate. Each time Sharonda is committed, she emerges more criminally sophisticated than when she went in and further behind in school. When Sharonda became ill recently, she was seen in a hospital emergency room and given a prescription for an antibiotic. However, because she was given a legal status that put her in a limbo between foster care and a family placement, she did not qualify for Medicaid benefits and thus could not get the medication. When I complained that she needed services, her HRS worker told me (and her) that to qualify for help, she should get pregnant.

Sharonda is one of two million children who will be in state custody this year. More than 500,000 will enter the correctional system, and more than 400,000 will be in foster care. At least another 700,000 children will be reported as abused or neglected and will receive some services even though they will remain in their homes.

Sharonda has fallen into a crack where she receives nothing in the way of assistance or programs. She is currently living with a friend who has two small children. She receives no food stamps or any other financial aid. She is not in school because her caseworker has not done the paperwork to enroll her. She has not seen a dentist or doctor (except in an emergency) in years. The first time I met her she had not eaten in two days. A week later she was arrested again for stealing jeans. This child is technically in foster care, but who is the neglectful parent? And how can the state justify its actions? Ironically, unless Sharonda hangs herself in a cell or commits a gruesome crime, nobody will ever find out about her plight because the privacy laws that are intended to shield her protect the system instead. Since Sharonda’s juvenile court records are sealed, the system avoids scrutiny and does not have to be accountable to anyone—except the guardian, now that she has one, and thus the courts. Yet even with my very late involvement in her life, what can we predict will happen to Sharonda in the months and years to come?

If you think that the world is fine because you have enough food, shelter, clothing, and love in your life, think again. If we don’t raise strong healthy children who not only want to contribute but also have some skills to offer, we end up with parasites whom we will have to support with expensive back-end facilities like prisons. Studies conclude that most criminals were consistently mistreated, demeaned, and neglected as children. Also there is evidence that the degree of adult criminality may be in proportion to how seriously abused they were. The roots of crime are in the home. Alcohol abuse and family violence are found in the parents of most male rapists and robbers. Most female prostitutes had abusive, drunken parents. It costs more to keep one child in prison than in the finest prep school. With the exponential growth of serious crime, we will be paying a major portion of our tax money for prisons. And no matter how secure and healthy you are, you will not feel safe when those children who have been neglected and abused find illicit ways to settle the score.

In order to prevent a fear-ridden society, we have to prevent children from suffering through pitiful childhoods. These children deserve to be wanted. Unplanned pregnancies result in neglected children. Neglected children feel unloved. Unloved children don’t care about anyone else. In fact, they hate everyone for making their lives miserable, and as soon as they are strong enough—or have access to weapons that make them feel strong—they vent that rage indiscriminately.

Lydia and Alicia, Rich and Cory, Simone and Julie, Nicole and Sharonda, and all the others in the system represent children in dire situations. These are children whose nightmares begin when they wake up each morning.

Who will chase their very real monsters for them?

Marian Wright Edelman entreated all of us to “offer your hands to them so that no child is left behind because we did not act.” Don’t think that one person alone can do nothing. There are many people who can point to such a one caring person who made all the difference in their lives. Advocate for a child, just one child, and start making a significant difference, for the ripple effect of little victories will help win the war and change the future for all our children.

8
It All Depends on What You Mean by Home
Where Are My Children?

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

—
ROBERT FROST

I
SHOULD HAVE CALLED IT SOMETHING YOU SOMEHOW
haven’t to deserve,” is the way Frost talked about a home, and yet most of my guardian children are homeless either in the mind, body, or heart. Deep inside, in that place where we know who we are, they don’t feel that they ever deserved to be cherished and kept forever in a place called home. While I know I would receive an unconditional welcome in many homes of family and friends, Alicia and Lydia and Cory and Rich had nobody they could trust who would take them in. Sadly most of the 20,000 children who graduate from foster care without a permanent family each year end up with no place to go in times of trials, triumphs, or even for school vacations or work holidays. According to the Child Welfare League of America, as many as 36 percent become homeless, 56 percent become unemployed, and 27% of male former foster youths serve time in prison. Fewer than one in eight graduate from a four-year college and less than half even graduate high school. Forty percent become parents as a result of an unplanned pregnancy.

In the first edition, I proposed that if the state, in its wisdom, accepts the burden of becoming a parent for abused and neglected children, we must insist that they not abandon their progeny on the date of their legal majority. Finally the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999, commonly known as the Chafee Act, after the late Senator John Chafee, an advocate for foster youth, began meeting their needs. The federal act funds mental health services, life skills classes, mentoring, employment preparation, continuing education, stipends for housing, extended Medicaid eligibility, and more.

All of this came too late to help the children in this book, many of whom have kept in touch. Few have had even moderately happy lives.

When
Lydia Ryan
(“The Girl Who Loved Robert Frost”) turned eighteen, she was still in her adult education high school program, making excellent progress. She was eligible to participate in the state’s independent living program, which theoretically would have helped her get housing, start a savings account, and finish school. But after an argument with her caseworker about her choices of friends, Lydia decided to strike out on her own. She phoned her mother and told her this decision, and surprisingly, her father agreed to allow her to return home for the first time in several years. For six months she remained with her parents and completed her high school equivalency requirements, but she was soon asked to leave again. Her boyfriend Nick’s family permitted her to move in with them. However, his mother had psychiatric problems, and after a psychotic incident, Lydia and her boyfriend moved to the home of the boyfriend’s grandmother, who allowed the young couple to camp out in their toolshed.

For several months I visited Lydia. Her weight plummeted and her health declined. I took her to a doctor, who volunteered his services, and he diagnosed an ulcer and anxiety, as well as malnourishment, but Lydia could not pay for her medications. Lydia expressed interest in birth control but didn’t have transportation to the health department. When I came by to deliver her Christmas gifts, she confided that she was pregnant. She was tense, but happy.

“Now I can get the medical care I need,” she said.

Indeed, as a pregnant mother, she was eligible for Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, and other maternity benefits. However, her boyfriend’s grandparents decided that it was not good for Lydia to sleep around paints and chemicals in the toolshed now that she was pregnant. After a few months of living with friends, Lydia and her boyfriend were able to rent a trailer.

As the first edition of this book was being readied for publication, Lydia said, “I am determined to love my baby the right way,’’ Lydia told me, her eyes shining with expectation. Sadly, determination was not enough. In training guardians are taught about the cycle of abuse and how powerless victims often grow into powerful abusers. Knowing this, I wanted to help Lydia as much as I could. I stayed in touch throughout her pregnancy, bringing her and Nick groceries and visiting frequently when baby Nathan was born. When Nathan was two months old, Lydia told me that Nick had been having jealous rages and she was afraid of him. Even though her relations with her parents had thawed, they wouldn’t allow her to move back home with her baby. My husband and I offered them our spare bedroom. We helped Lydia find a job as a part-time medical receptionist. The only other condition was that she was to stay away from Nick.

After less than a week, Lydia quit the job. She neglected Nathan at our house, knowing that my husband or I would pick him up if he fussed. One night she asked if she could run to the store with her friends while Nathan slept, but didn’t come back until dawn. When we told her that we would not baby-sit so she could spend the night with Nick—or anyone else—she disappeared with the baby for a few days. At that point we “loaned” her the money for the first and last month’s rent and she moved out. A few weeks later Nick moved back in.

When Nathan was three, Lydia called in a panic. She had been separated from Nick for almost two years. Nathan was living with his father but she had custody on weekends. The previous week Nathan had refused to mind and she had spanked him hard enough to leave bruises. When she returned him to his father, Nick lodged an abuse complaint against Lydia. “What should I do?” she sobbed.

My heart filled with lead as I talked her through the legal steps she needs to take. Lydia now has three children and I saw a picture of Nathan holding his mother’s hand in the local paper on the day he entered Kindergarten.

At the end of the book, the
Stevenson
siblings were still apart.
Cory
and
Alicia
finally did visit their mother Tammy in Washington. They enjoyed the visit, but both were anxious to return. Cory wanted to be with his father and grandfather; Alicia was too tied to her current boyfriend and Ruth to consider a change. Also, Alicia said she was uncomfortable with her stepfather. A few months afterward, though, Cory and Red Stevenson began to clash. After one heated battle, Cory asked if he could go to live with his mother. Alicia was furious and tried to talk Cory out of it, but in the end she decided he was better off with their mother than their father. Tammy welcomed her son, but within three months he clashed with her husband. After Cory had some minor trouble with the police, Tammy placed him in foster care in Spokane. He remained with the same foster family for more than two years but did poorly in school and was arrested a few times for minor offenses.

I knew Cory was back in Florida when I saw a notice in our local paper that he had been arrested for stealing car parts. I’ve heard that he has stayed in the area, is married, and has settled down.

Rich
Stevenson and his young wife, Janet, continued to live together, although they were legally divorced. I last heard from him when his father made headlines again, and gave him what information I had about his siblings.

Alicia’s life took a difficult turn when Ruth Levy decided not to continue as a foster parent for health reasons. All the girls in her care were divided among several foster homes. In November of her senior year in high school Alicia moved away from her schoolmates, foster sisters, and the security she had known for the past three years. A week after she moved, Alicia turned eighteen. I asked Mitzi about putting Alicia in the independent living program. “She won’t qualify,” Mitzi said. “She’ll have to get a job and catch up on the eleventh grade classes she failed and finish her senior credits.”

I bristled at Mitzi’s negativity and stopped by her foster home regularly to help her with her homework. At first she was enthusiastic and got a few As. When I dropped off some library book she was home napping. “Is she sick?” I asked the foster mother.

“I cut school at her age,” she replied. “Besides she was out late.”

Alicia admitted she had a new boyfriend who had invited her to move in with him. I explained that the minute she left the foster home, she would no longer get any benefits and urged her to say until she graduated.

During spring vacation, Alicia took her foster sister, who was only fifteen, to a party and they stayed out most of the night. Mitzi heard about this and Alicia was blamed for corrupting the younger child. Angrily, Alicia went to a pay phone, called her boyfriend, and disappeared for the night. The next morning she was told to gather her possessions. The paperwork was processed and she had officially “aged out” of foster care—the term used when someone leaves the system without a permanent home through reunification or adoption. I was also discharged as her guardian.

Two weeks later her foster mother died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage and I took Alicia to the funeral.

A month later she asked me to come for her because her boyfriend was going to kill her. I arrived to find her sitting on a curb with a small sack of clothing. “Alicia! Look at you! You’re a homeless person.” I tried to convince her she needed more stability. She cried and agreed. I called Ruth Levy, who came to get Alicia.

Ruth offered to keep Alicia until she finished school, provided she would attend classes and come in at a reasonable hour. That afternoon Alicia phoned a boy she knew in the neighborhood. He came to get her that evening.

A month after that Alicia landed with a young married couple who invited her to live in their trailer and help with housekeeping. Something about the situation made me uncomfortable, but Alicia seemed content. Then she left abruptly and moved to South Carolina with the Chuck, the husband, but not the wife. She claimed that the couple had originally asked her to conceive a baby for the infertile wife, but she and the husband had fallen in love.

When she could not get medication for her ulcers, she told me, “My best bet is to get pregnant because they’ll give me money and medical care. I also knew that she thought a baby would give her something to love, and just maybe someone to love her. The health department, which would not fill her prescriptions, did remove her Norplant birth control for free.

After six years and two children, Chuck and Alicia married. Their son is autistic. Domestic violence and poverty issues plagued their marriage and they eventually separated with Chuck getting custody of the children. There were abuse reports in his home and the children went to foster care. According to Ruth Levy, Alicia’s children disappeared in the system and she did not try to retrieve them.

Once again the cycle of abuse continued.

Ten years after the Stevenson family became my first guardian case, my phone rang. “This is Emily Monaco, do you remember me?” Before I could plumb my past, she continued, “I was Bernadette Stevenson’s best friend.”

Bernadette, who started dating Red just before he was arrested for sexually molesting his children, had been his staunch supporter during the trial, and had married him after his not-guilty verdict. “Do you remember my daughters?” Emily asked.