Three Little Words

by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

  “In all my years as a guardian, I have never seen such shoddy social work!” Gay grumbled. “Why were so many of the homes grossly overcrowded? How could they even consider Sam Rhodes as a placement when his own children had grown up in foster care? He was violent and a substance abuser! Caseworkers, licensing people, even supervisors knew of the Mosses’ abuse, and they all looked the other way,” she ranted. “Remember when they first investigated the home and Mrs. Moss forced you to recant? Well, that same night someone else called the abuse hotline and said you children were afraid to tell the truth in front of Mrs. Moss. For some reason, the child protection supervisor decided it wasn’t necessary to check up further.” Gay rearranged a few more documents. “Then, a week later, someone from the school again contacted the hotline, but the worker assured the caller that you were okay and the child protection team didn’t follow it up!”

  The more upset Gay became, the calmer I felt. It was as if she were lifting a heavyweight off my back. “Look at this!” She showed me evidence of yet another time the department officials met to discuss the inappropriate discipline in the Moss foster home.

  “If my mother had forced Luke or me to drink hot sauce, paddled us, or not fed us, we would have been placed in foster care, wouldn’t we?” Gay nodded. “Then she would have had to go to court, sign a case plan, and attend classes to get us back.”

  “I know,” Gay said gently. “It’s hard to understand why the Mosses weren’t at least held to the same standard as parents.”

  “What gets me is that the state paid them a lot of money to take care of us, but they wouldn’t give my mother a cent,” I added.

  “I’m still floored that the department kept noting that they were overcapped but didn’t remove any kids. Plus, they were allowed to use ‘inappropriate discipline techniques’ because they were frustrated and overwhelmed.” Gay tossed her head as if to try to clear it. “Supposedly, they just clarified their discipline policy with the Mosses,” she said facetiously.

  Then Gay’s voice deepened and slowed—always a bad sign if I had done something wrong, but now it was soothing. “Phil and I felt that the process of becoming licensed adoptive parents was exhaustive and intrusive, but we put up with it because we understood the state must protect children who already were victims of abuse and neglect.” Gay slapped some of the Moss papers on the floor, where she had been rummaging through their box. She stood, stretched, and rubbed her temples. “I’m shocked at how many red flags their licensing workers overlooked.”

  “You mean when they first became foster parents?”

  “Yes. Anyone with half a brain would have realized that Marjorie Moss was probably too troubled to care for needy kids.”

  “In what way?” I asked, looking for more validation of my feelings.

  “First of all, according to her foster parent licensing file, Mrs. Moss’s mother was a strict disciplinarian who whipped Mrs. Moss on three occasions when she was a child. You’d think that would make a person more compassionate, but sometimes it just makes it worse. Guardians are taught about the cycle of abuse—how those who are demeaned eventually take revenge on those who are weaker.” Gay caught my apprehensive expression. “Don’t worry, Ashley, you’ll be fine. You are going to break that cycle.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “You are going to have advantages—and education. You’ll be around better role models. Mrs. Moss had several violent, failed marriages.” Gay studied the files. “And one of her sons who lived on their property was a convicted felon?” She groaned. “That’s another reason they shouldn’t have had foster kids.”

  When Phil came home, Gay told him what she had learned about Mrs. Moss’s background. “I’ll never understand how anyone can be cruel to anyone, especially our child!” he said. “You know I wasn’t in favor of this lawsuit, but maybe it will change practices so they don’t allow people like this to become foster parents in the first place—or at least get rid of them at the first sign of trouble.”

  “Their blunders are unbelievable,” Gay said. “Some of the workers, who were supposed to see Ashley monthly, ignored her for long periods. Others falsified their time sheets. One even worked a second job when he was supposed to be visiting children and was arrested on drug charges. Another worker was accused of soliciting. Administrators sent her to South Carolina without the proper judicial order, and you already know they left that telltale note about destroying some of Luke’s files.” She took a long breath. “There was even more. The Mosses were not the only foster parents with a blighted record, and Sam Rhodes was not Ashley’s only caregiver involved with violence. Mrs. Pace was charged with aggravated assault against her husband with a motor vehicle even before Ashley lived there.”

  Phil turned to me. “What do you think of all this?”

  I shrugged. “I was too young to remember.”

  “What about the Pottses?” Gay acted as if she were tiptoeing through a long, dark hallway.

  “I’ve told you about that creepy movie!”

  “What if I told you that Boris Potts really was a creep?” Gay began slowly.

  “In what way?” My breath caught, and I felt like I was slipping underwater.

  “He was arrested shortly after you left.”

  “For what?”

  “Pedophilia.”

  “You mean molesting kids?”

  Gay nodded.

  “Well, he never touched me!” Most of my memories of the Pottses were rather pleasant—except for that film. Then again, I was a chatty kid, so he might have been afraid to pull anything with me for fear I would tell someone.

  The next day I combed the files for more details. Three years before I lived with Mr. and Mrs. Potts, a relative reported that their son, who allegedly had been charged with attempted murder, was living in their home while a foster child was there. The same relative also reported that Mr. Potts had a pornographic movie collection.

  Instead of closing the Potts foster home, the department merely asked the Pottses for an explanation about each of the accusations. They told the authorities that their son had moved out and that he had been charged with only false imprisonment and spousal battery. Regarding the filthy films, they said they watched the Playboy Channel after their foster child was in bed. It was like questioning a criminal who says he is not guilty and then closing the case based on his word.

  I wanted to talk to Gay about it, but I was afraid that she would get the notion that Mr. Potts had sexually abused me and I was repressing it. I remembered so much—surely I would have recalled if he touched me. The paperwork, though, was sickening. Mr. Potts had driven other foster children to family visits and medical appointments. After he had transported a baby girl, they found blood in her diaper. The incident was categorized as an “injury to the vaginal area, but no known perpetrator.” The report also noted that the Pottses were the only transporters of that child.

  Something else was strange. The Pottses had been foster parents for many years and had received a license for two children. For the first time, I was in a home that was below capacity. Why, if they had room for Luke, was I there alone? In the Pottses’ licensing file, a caseworker noted, The current placement, A. R., has been with the family two plus months. Mrs. Potts reports she is “perfect.” And yet I was sent elsewhere. There was no evidence that any worker checked on me during the five months I was there, even though they were already investigating Mr. Potts for molestation. The officials must have decided it would be prudent to remove a female foster child from his home, because not long after I left, Boris Potts was charged with committing a felony offense of lewd, lascivious assault on a child under sixteen, plus one count of sexual battery.

  “You have a way of finding photos of criminals online, don’t you?” I asked Gay.

  “Who are you trying to find?”

  “Some of my foster parents.”

  “Mr. Potts?” she said as if she had been expecting the request. She handed me a printout from another file.
“I found him on a sex offender page. Mary Miller and I ran background checks on all your foster parents for Karen Gievers.”

  I stared at the old man’s face. His mouth drooped like a hound dog, and his expression was more worried than scary. “That’s the foster father who gave me all those gifts,” I said. “I thought he was just being nice.”

  After Gay called a Hillsborough County detective, she reported to me. “I asked him whether any of Mr. Potts’s victims had lived with him, and he said that one had been their foster child—before you were there—but the other cases involved children Mr. Potts had transported.” Gay’s skin was the color of an eggshell, and her expression was so tight, I thought her lips might crack. “I’m glad they took you out of there,” she said. “The saddest part is that they sent you to live with the Pottses’ daughter, and even if you had wanted to, you couldn’t have confided in her.”

  I wanted Karen Gievers to represent Luke, too. Because he was still in foster care, he needed an adult to bring the legal actions on his behalf. Mary Miller, who had now been his Guardian ad Litem for six years, agreed to fill that role.

  Both Luke and I had separate negligence lawsuits against the Mosses as well as against the state. Ms. Gievers also contemplated filing additional lawsuits in federal court under the civil rights statutes because the caseworkers in question were not merely stressed or poorly trained; many were sloppy, a few were downright incompetent, and others may have willfully neglected their duties. Mary Miller pointed out that since the Mosses, Mr. Potts, Sam Rhodes, and Mrs. Pace had all had criminal charges brought against them before or shortly after they cared for us, almost half of our foster parents had been people of questionable character. Ms. Gievers, Gay, and Mary wanted someone to take responsibility for this. After all, someone had selected these families to care for us, someone had supervised them, and everyone had acted with the understanding that they were accountable for the kind of care we received.

  Ms. Gievers developed a list of the individuals most responsible and filed a federal civil rights suit against them. It asked for relief due to the defendants’ “reckless disregard and deliberate indifference to and violations of plaintiff’s constitutionally protected due-process rights to be safe, and free from harm and cruel and unusual punishment while in the custody and control of the Florida foster care system.” The puppeteers who had pulled the strings of my lost childhood became defendants—but the case dragged on for several years, and I admit it was not at the forefront of my thoughts as I enjoyed life in high school.

  In the meantime, the class-action suit, which still included Luke, proceeded until U.S. District Judge Federico A. Moreno decided that the dependency court already protected foster children. The attorneys appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case.

  Gay told me, “The ruling says that Florida’s laws ‘provide sufficient protection’ for children in state care.”

  “When did I ever have ‘sufficient protection’?”

  “You still can make a difference—like when you give your speeches.”

  “Could the courts or someone force me to stop?”

  “Not a chance!” Phil said with a hearty laugh. He placed his arm around Gay’s shoulders.

  As I looked from him to Gay, I felt a surge of something I could not quite define swell inside me. If I had been the type, I would have hugged them both. I did slide closer to them. I recall being once again struck with the realization that they would be there for me. They had let me pursue my legal rights, even though they initially had doubts about going that route, and they always had a fresh way to solve my problems. There was a time I didn’t think I needed anyone; now I wondered how could I need these people so much.

  The class-action lawsuit didn’t have the Hollywood ending I’d wanted. But my cases against the Mosses and the state were still alive, and we received notice that Mr. and Mrs. Moss were going to give their depositions. The Courters said I did not have to be there, but I wanted to hear what they would say—under oath—with me sitting across from them.

  We drove to Tampa on a cloudy morning in April. Instead of the courtroom I had envisioned, we were crammed into a dreary conference room in a court reporter’s office. At first I avoided looking at the Mosses, and then I dared a sideways glance. They appeared older and much more drab than the goblins in my nightmares.

  Ms. Gievers interviewed Mr. Moss first. She tried to determine the extent of the Mosses’ assets. Mr. Moss admitted they had received more than $265,000 in tax-free subsidies, plus Social Security checks for some of the children they had adopted. When the questions turned to Mandy and her brother, I perked up. I had not known that their mother, who had tried to give them away in a bar, was actually the sister of Mrs. Moss’s daughter-in-law. Those poor kids had traded one hell for another—and now they were back in foster care limbo.

  Mr. Moss admitted whipping two of the children he adopted, but not any foster children. I was shocked when he divulged that they currently had joint custody of a seven-year-old boy, even though a condition of Mrs. Moss’s probation prohibited her from caring for any more children. When Mr. Moss was asked if he had seen me since I had been removed from their home, he said I had called three or four times wanting to visit. I gaped in amazement as he declared that he had picked me up from a home in Brandon and had taken me to spend the weekend with them.

  Seeing my reaction, Ms. Gievers called for a break.

  “How could he say that?” I hissed in the hallway. “Not only would I never have made such a call, but I never lived anywhere near, Brandon!”

  “Calm down,” my lawyer said. “But I’m glad you told me that.”

  After lunch Mrs. Moss swapped seats with her husband. Until that moment, she had not said a word, but when she began to answer questions, she spoke in the same deceitful voice she had used to con caseworkers. When asked about the squatting, she said that when children stood in the corner for time-outs, they would scratch the drywall. “And my solution to that was to face the corner, arms like—well, sometimes they would go down on their knees—however they’d want to stand there. That’s not me making them squat. They’re doing whatever, as long as they’re facing that corner and they’re quiet. They got time to think, that’s what the corner is for.”

  She emphatically denied telling an investigator that she sometimes punished with hot sauce or that she had paddled another child.

  Ms. Gievers asked, “Do you remember putting children into an empty garbage can and beating them while they were in the can?”

  “No.” Mrs. Moss’s lips turned into a snide grin, an expression that used to precede some of her meltdowns. As a reflex, I bit my cheek.

  Ms. Gievers checked her notepad and asked, “Do you recall—” Seeing Mrs. Moss’s smirk, she asked, “Is there something funny about children being abused?”

  Mrs. Moss tried to cover her blunder. “That did not happen.”

  Ms. Gievers looked her straight in the eye. “What do you recall about Ashley?”

  “She was very, very smart.” Mrs. Moss glanced in my direction, and then her voice became smooth as syrup. “I remember her, me, and Mandy going shopping. And they matched up and dressed alike and we had a good time.”

  You are making that up! I wanted to scream; instead, I continued to chew my cheek. I was furious that she could still twist everything, but what hurt the most was that she could still make me feel helpless. A wayward teardrop slipped down the side of my nose. Phil handed me his folded handkerchief.

  Mary Miller caught Gay’s eye. Gay followed her gaze, then covered her mouth as if she was going to cough. Mr. Moss had been sitting slightly behind us on our left. We had been concentrating on Mrs. Moss and Ms. Gievers. Phil noticed what was happening first and nudged me to turn and look at Mr. Moss, who grunted. I realized he was snoring. Not only had Mr. Moss fallen asleep, his dentures had slid out of his mouth! Mary and Gay had lost it and were laughing behind cupped hands. The Mosses’ attorney tapped her client on th
e shoulder. He startled awake. His wife motioned him to replace his teeth.

  After that, I listened dispassionately as Mrs. Moss gave a made-for-television version of their lifestyle that included trips to the circus and Ice Capades, dinners out on Fridays, and pizza every Wednesday night. She contradicted reports she had given to a deputy about how she punished us, confused the names of the children, and made up a story about burning wrapping paper to cover her threats to destroy our Christmas presents. She claimed she read us bedtime stories, wrote us poems, put our baby songs in individual life books. When Ms. Gievers asked where these books were, she insisted that she had sent them along with us.

  “What about Ashley’s Easy-Bake oven and her dolls?” my attorney asked.

  “I don’t remember anybody asking me about an Easy-Bake oven or dolls,” she said hesitantly. “These kids sit around and they go over it and over it and over it.” After hours of questioning, her inner shrew finally emerged. “And they read it in the paper.” Her voice became as shrill as fingernails on a blackboard. “Then one kid picks up what the other one says and it just goes on and on.”

  Ms. Gievers’s voice was firm. “Let’s stop a minute, Mrs. Moss.”

  “The kids wanted to do it—and they did!” Mrs. Moss continued anyway.

  “The only article that has ever appeared in the newspaper didn’t appear until after you were arrested and charged criminally in 2000, correct?”

  “The kids picked up on these reports. And the people that come in asked the same questions.”

  Karen Gievers softened her voice. “Did you ever stop to think that the report sounded similar because you kept doing the same things to the children?”

  Mrs. Moss was defiant. “But I didn’t, and that’s why I know how they did this!”

  Ms. Gievers shook her head. “Do you have any idea of the harm that you caused the children?”

  Mrs. Moss’s attorney interrupted. “Object to the form.”

  “I haven’t caused harm because that stuff is not true! I think y’all are causing more harm by playing along and letting them say this stuff and encouraging them. I know that’s where your money comes from, but I don’t think that is a fair thing to say.”