I Speak For This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate

by Gay Courter

“I’ll try to calm him down, but I want you to get him some big-time psychological help and fast!”

  “There’s no money for that.”

  “Grace Chandler paid for Alicia’s evaluation out of her court budget. Ask if she’ll do the same for Cory.”

  With a long sigh, Mitzi agreed.

  “Lillian, what can I do for Cory?” My tinny voice betrayed my anxiety. “Your idea of a complete psychological exam is excellent. We’d have to have something like that in place before we could recommend a more intensive placement like Horizons Unlimited.”

  “Frankly, until this trial issue is settled, I don’t think he’s going to cooperate anywhere,” I continued.

  “Keep talking to him, let him know he still has you,” Lillian said consolingly.

  With a heavy heart, I phoned the shelter. “Didn’t anyone tell you?” the shelter director inquired. “Mitzi took Cory Stevenson yesterday after he destroyed some property when we caught him smoking.”

  “Let me ask you something. If you were Cory Stevenson’s guardian, what would you do for him?”

  “He’s a sweet kid and I tried to cut him some slack, but he went down the list of our rules breaking the large ones and the small ones alike. I think he is having major trouble with his impulse control, so he either needs a program that is highly structured or a foster home that can give him plenty of attention.”

  Later that day Mitzi informed me that she had moved Cory to another shelter in a nearby district. “They have never had any of the Stevensons, so I talked them into it, but it is only a matter time. He’s cussing just like Rich.”

  “Cory told me he wanted to go back to the ranch.”

  “They won’t accept him. He’s getting sicker and out of control. I have an appointment with the court psychologist. Not much we can do until then.” Before Mitzi hung up, she told me that Alicia wanted to speak with me.

  “Is it true?” Alicia said, sniffling. Mitzi had told Ruth to tell her that Cory had been moved again. “How many times is that?” she snapped.

  “A lot, Alicia. The first two shelters, the MacDougals, the Hornsbys, the Sheldons, then the ranch, and now two more shelters.” I counted on my fingers. “That’s eight moves in about eight months.”

  “It’s not right! They did this to Rich and you see what happened to him.”

  “I’m trying to find something better, Alicia,” I insisted, but my voice sounded hollow.

  “Promise me you’ll always tell me where he is?” she asked, more distraught than ever.

  “Yes, I promise.”

  The next day I was on the phone to Cory’s new shelter counselor, who reported Cory had lice, probably from someone at the ranch. “He’s so needy he even liked having his head checked for nits.”

  The counselor said he was playing one-on-one ball games with Cory and was receiving a positive response. “I don’t recommend another group placement,” he said. “What this kid needs is a small foster home, individual care, routine therapy at least twice a week, and a trust that someone will stick with him through the bad times as well as the good.”

  “When you find the place, call me,” I replied sarcastically.

  An hour later Mitzi had more bad news. “Cory has run away.”

  In a more subdued voice than usual, she explained how some of the boys who had rioted at Palomino Ranch had been shipped to the same shelter where Cory was staying. “Your darling Cory ran off with the biggest, loudest, foulest of the bunch: Marco Roundtree, the second worst kid in the system, after Rich Stevenson, that is.” Mitzi continued her litany. “Marco is off his antipsychotic medication, so anything could happen.”

  “Are you going to look for him?”

  “The shelter reported them on runaway status to the local police.”

  “But—”

  “Gay, there is nothing more I can do with that kid.” She groaned. “We would’ve had that psychological done by the end of the week. Do you have any idea how many strings I had to pull to get that appointment?”

  “Where do you think he’ll end up?” I asked.

  “Who knows?”

  “Don’t you think he’ll go where he has wanted to be all along?”

  “What do you mean?” Mitzi asked.

  “There’s only one place he wants to live, and that is with his father. What would happen if he went there?”

  “His father would be in more trouble than he would.”

  “Well, Mitzi, I won’t tell, if you won’t.”

  She didn’t reply so I felt she and I had finally agreed on something: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

  Keeping my promise to Alicia, I called to tell her I did not know where Cory was.

  “What do you mean?” she said. “He’s here!”

  “Put him on the phone!” I said, furious and delighted at the same time.

  “How’d you get to the Levys’?” I demanded.

  “We were at a gas station and this man asked where we wanted to go. He was delivering Bibles to a church only a few miles from the Levys’. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “And the other kid? Marco?”

  “He got dropped off at his girlfriend’s house.”

  “Cory, my boy, you lucked out, did you know that?” I spoke emphatically, not mincing words. The kid had frightened me and I wanted him to know it. “There are only two types of people who pick up hitchhikers: folks who are so religious they feel they are doing God’s work so they don’t worry about their own safety; and perverts, who are planning to hurt you. The chances of you ever finding the first type again are very rare. Do you understand me?”

  “Yeah, Gay, I’m sorry.”

  “Good. Because you had me really scared. And I only get scared when I care about someone. I care about you, kiddo, you know that?”

  “Sure, but in another way I’m not sorry, because the Levys say I can stay here.”

  Ruth got on the line and told me more of the story. “I guess it was meant to be. You know I’ve felt that Cory belonged here for a long time. When we got Larry, I thought immediately of Cory, but I didn’t want to push Milo, but now even he says we can’t throw him out. You should have seen the man who drove up with him. He was dressed in a suit and a tie and was delivering gospel tracts in our neighborhood. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is, especially when you realize he also took the creepy kid, Marco. I shiver to think what might have happened if they’d been on the loose even another day.”

  “Have you called Mitzi?”

  “No, she’s not available, but I talked to her supervisor. I said that Cory can stay a few more days to get his psychological evaluation finished. After that, we’ll see. I can’t have him smoking in the house or upsetting Milo, but I think Alicia will help out with that. She’s behaving like a little mother to him, and Larry seems relieved to finally have a roommate.”

  At last Cory had some respite from his sojourns. I took a breather from following his fiery trail and tried to analyze the situation. After almost a year of turmoil, Cory was living once again with his sister with no thanks to the authorities, who, in their wisdom, had removed him from an “unsafe” home and “protected” him from a pedophile. In the care of the state, Cory had already had one incident of sexual misconduct with a seriously disturbed older boy. He had had the opportunity to meet delinquents who had taught him the art of mayhem. He had made friends with a psychotic, who had helped him run away. And where had he run? To the person he cared for the most: his sister.

  Why hadn’t HRS placed these children together initially? is the question rational, though naive, people might ask. Whenever I’d broached the question, heads would shake, eyes would roll, and fingers would wag. That was not how it was done. There were no homes for teenage sibling groups. Boys and girls had to be separated. Nobody would take two Stevensons. From the beginning, the caseworkers had looked at Cory with distaste because he was from a tainted family. While I saw him as a victim of an abandoning mother and an abusive father, the “experts” view
ed him as a problem unit who needed reforming. Where I had sympathy for the fourteen-year-old boy who had been forced by the court to leave a home where he believed he was happy and had been sent, without warning, to a shelter with hard beds and strict rules, the state saw him as a disobedient griper who didn’t appreciate what was being done for him. Instead of evaluating Cory’s requirements and trying to match him with foster parents with whom he might have attached, they put him in an authoritarian home with military-style rules that were in direct opposition to the laissez-faire environment of his childhood. Yes, structure might have benefited him, but not before he felt accepted and trusted. The next few foster homes were not that objectionable on the surface, but they were so overcrowded with needy children that no adult had the time or energy to focus on Cory.

  If Cory had docilely conformed to the patterns of a new household and moved zombielike through his days without making waves, HRS would have been delighted. Yet any clinician would have seen that as a dysfunctional response and have diagnosed a depressed child. If Cory asserted himself by trying to attract attention to his urgent needs, he was seen to be acting out and misbehaving, which was reason to move him to a different place, renewing the cycle of maladjustment and failure. By now Cory had been labeled a troublemaker and was despised by the workers managing his file. To me, he was the victim of their stupidity, shortsightedness, and inattention. It was as if they had taken a child out of his bed and left him in the street to be run over by a truck, then had put Band-Aids on his massive wounds, and ended up surprised that, six months later, they had to deal with bones that didn’t heal and a fulminating infection. If they had taken the time in the beginning to place Cory in intensive care, he might still have a few scars but would have healed better and been able to walk again.

  Cory had not been offered any therapy to deal with the upheavals in his life. He was supposed to shut up and accept the loss of his father, his grandfather, his siblings, his school, his friends, his bed, his bike, his pets, the groves, the fishing pond, and everything that formed the sphere of life as he knew it. He was expected to absorb a new family and new set of values instantly, without any professional assistance. And none of this took into consideration the incredible conflicts about his sister and brother’s accusations of their father, his father’s jail sentence, the terror of the impending trial, or the reappearance of his biological mother. The bottom line was that Cory had no one who loved him and no home of his own.

  I blamed myself. As Cory was moved from place to place, I followed behind in the wake, mopping up blood stains, but I had done nothing to get treatment for the wounds either. Lillian tried to convince me that, considering the circumstances, I had done my best, but I refused to accept this.

  “I’ve tried being nice, Lillian, and that failed. So, I’m changing my tactics. Do you mind?” I asked if she would cosign a letter with me that listed everything that had not been done for Cory and set out a plan to make improvements in his life.

  She agreed wholeheartedly. “Hey, you know my motto: whatever it takes.”

  I called Mitzi Keller and discussed how long Cory might remain with the Levys. She was noncommittal. Then I told her to expect a letter from me to her with copies to her supervisor.

  “Oh, no! Are you going to accuse me of doing the absolute minimum for this kid?”

  Precisely … I wanted to reply, but answered, “No. I am just going to formally request a staff conference to develop a long-range plan.”

  To try to stay on top of the situation, I talked with Ruth Levy almost daily and went to her home twice a week. During one visit, Ruth complained that Cory and Larry were doing a lot of wrestling. She explained that Larry had been severely sexually abused and she couldn’t trust him not to “hit on” Cory.

  I said I thought that Cory, who was the same age and size as Larry, should be able to handle himself.

  “I mean that Larry has been known to act out sexually with other boys.”

  “Great,” I muttered, then reiterated the need for therapy.

  When I was alone with Cory, I asked him to call me if he was uncomfortable rooming with Larry.

  “Yeah, okay …,” he replied dejectedly. For the first time, I saw that the mischievous glint had faded from his eyes. His face was pale and drawn and his once robust appetite was gone. He told me that everything felt “hopeless” and that he would never get home again. When I asked what he wanted, he said, “I don’t care anymore.”

  Since it was summertime, he spent his days playing video games or sleeping. He did routine chores sloppily, but without protest, and spent very little time with his sister or the others in the family.

  Ruth said she was thrilled that Cory wasn’t making any disturbances and that Milo had been surprised that a Stevenson boy could be so “little trouble.” She said, “If this keeps up, I’ll be happy to have him here permanently.”

  “Ruth, if this keeps up, the kid might end up dead.” She seemed startled when I told her I thought Cory was seriously depressed and asked her to report any suicidal notions at once.

  As part of my more active role in heading off a crisis, I took Cory and Alicia out to dinner at the steak house that evening. I handed each cards with my home and business phone numbers.

  “You’re supposed to get in touch with me through the Guardian ad Litem office, but that can take time. I want you to promise to call me first if either of you leave the Levys’. You can always call me collect. I’m not suggesting you should run away, but Cory already put himself in an unsafe position once. And, Alicia, if you leave this home for any reason, I won’t tell on you. I won’t report you, but I will say you are safe and try to see that you don’t get arrested.”

  “Can you do that?” Alicia asked.

  “To me, being your guardian means making sure you are not harmed. After that, everything else is a big second. If I knew exactly where you were, I would have to tell HRS, but you wouldn’t have to give me a phone number or the location. However, if I know what is going on, I can offer safe solutions.” I put my arm around Cory. “I was so worried about you. I thought maybe you’d go to your father’s.”

  “I did call him first,” Cory admitted, “but he told me not to come to him because then he’d be in even more trouble.”

  Alicia gave Cory a weary look. “You forget how horrible it was with Dad.”

  “You think it is going to be better with Tammy? She left us for another man and never gave a shit what happened to us.”

  Alicia’s eyes filled with tears. “Everything would be perfect if Cory could stay at the Levys’ with me …”

  I nodded, and squeezed her hand and her brother’s at the same time.

  I knew from Ruth’s frazzled voice what had transpired. Right on schedule Cory had bounded out of the honeymoon and limit-testing phases into a big-time all-out demonstration of: GET OUTTA MY FACE!

  “He’s driving me crazy!” Ruth said. “I mean BAD with a capital B. Last night we got into a shouting match. When I asked, ‘What do you want?’ he screamed ‘I want to leave.’ This was ten o’clock at night, so I said no way, it was after hours and I wasn’t calling HRS unless it was an emergency.”

  “That’s what he needed to hear. Of course you know he was just testing you.”

  “Well, he’s darn good at it!” she said with a sarcastic laugh.

  “What are you going to do with him?” I asked, holding my breath.

  “He says he was happier at Palomino Ranch, but I know they won’t take him back. Mitzi’s on vacation. I promised her that no matter what happened with Cory, I’d stick it out until she returned.” She groaned. “I guess I’m not cut out for boys.”

  The next afternoon I called Ruth. “How is he today?” I asked, holding the phone away from my ear slightly to mute the expected negative response.

  “Better. Like nothing ever happened. Interesting point, though, today was the day he was scheduled for his court psychological. On the way to the doctor I asked if he still wanted to leave m
y home, and he said he didn’t. Then he cried. When we stopped at a light, I said, ‘You need a hug.’ I leaned over to give it and he came right toward me and hugged me right back. That calmed him down, and by the time we got to the appointment, he was almost normal. Later I told him that I really liked him, but not his outbursts. Then I explained that I wanted him to stay with us, but I knew he could control himself better.”

  “That’s just what he needed to hear, Ruth.”

  “I’ll be interested in what the psychologist has to say,” she replied.

  “Me too,” I said, then praised Ruth again for handling a difficult situation with such aplomb.

  For a few days everything was calm and then Ruth phoned about his latest outbursts. “I pulled Cory off Larry, whom he had on the floor crying, then he exploded with language that is unrepeatable. I didn’t stop him. I told him he could say anything he wanted, but he couldn’t hit anyone. He claimed he ‘had to hit’ Larry, and I asked him why he thought he could hurt someone. He said, ‘because I’m better than they are.’ What do you think of that?”

  “Ruth, you know the cycle of abuse better than I do. Already Cory’s trying to move from powerless victim to powerful victimizer, which makes me think he received much more abuse than he admits.”

  “I know, but when he gets so mouthy and defiant I almost lose control. God help me, but I wanted to slap him across the face. I lifted my hand, however instead of touching him I pointed to a sign in my kitchen that says: people who are the most unlovable need the most love. He said, ‘Do you mean Larry?’ Well, I really meant Cory, but that was even better. He went in and apologized for upsetting Larry.”

  “Great,” I said, exhaling loudly. “Hey, thanks for hanging in there.”

  In a few days we had Cory’s psychological diagnosis: attention deficit disorder mixed with some specific learning disabilities. His ability and performance tests indicated that he might have difficulty completing high school and alternative educational opportunities should be sought. He was expected to be a credible witness for his father’s defense.

  “I’ve argued all along that he needed professional help,” I said to Ruth. “Can you try to schedule some therapy at the county clinic?”